Posts Tagged ‘God’

“God is not in the minority!”

Monday, October 9th, 2023

God is not in the minority… This is an assertion I can make only through faith and Scripture. I believe that God’s presence is expressed in every heart and in every reality, beyond the signs and words (religious or otherwise) that express this presence. “The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, Read more

To see God’s real presence in the Eucharist, we must see God everywhere

Monday, August 28th, 2023
eucharist

The small marble table from a Roman-era home was adorned with carved acanthus leaves and the body of Dionysus. When I saw it in the archaeological museum of Thessaloniki, Greece, I broke down crying, though I had no idea why. Several months later, while giving a talk for my diocese about Scripture and the Eucharist Read more

God within

Thursday, July 6th, 2023
Discernment

It was a crowded church in Singapore, and a young priest was talking about a recent first communion. A little girl had run back to her parents, shouting, “I just ate Jesus!” Later, the child asked her mother, “How does Jesus get from our stomach to our heart?” The mother replied, “Jesus can do anything.” Read more

Does God have a gender?

Thursday, March 30th, 2023
does god have a gender

The short answer to this question is no. Gender is something that belongs to humans; God is beyond gender. But because we believe in a personal God, and people are gendered, some of us can’t help but envision God as having a gender. Throughout Christian tradition, believers have leaned heavily toward depicting God as male. Read more

What my teenage friends think about the church

Thursday, November 10th, 2022
teenage friends

Growing secularism among younger people is no secret. A 2019 Pew Research Center Survey of Americans aged 13 to 17 found that only 50 per cent believed religion was an important part of their lives, as opposed to 73 percent of their parents. This trend has caught the attention of the United States Conference of Read more

How mathematics changed me

Thursday, September 15th, 2022
Mathematics

I have written about mathematics for The New Yorker and, lately, also in my book “A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age,” and I thought that I had said everything I had to say about mathematics and my simple engagement with it, but I find I can’t stop Read more

That someone loves you is the tangibility, the visibility of God

Monday, September 12th, 2022
visibility of god

Most of my adult life I have learned to be logical in my choices. Now, however, it is logic itself that I am doubting. You hear people saying ‘everything happens for a reason’, and so they attach a reason to things. Reason is not the explanation. It’s a face-saving gimmick we humans import to cover Read more

Don’t write off Christianity

Monday, August 8th, 2022
chucking out god

Despite the sins of its members, the Christian faith is far greater than opinion polls in the news. It shouldn’t surprise, given the 2021 census results concerning religion, those critical of Christianity and the Catholic Church have used the fall in numbers to suggest religion is moribund and no longer relevant to Australian society. With Read more

The cost of chucking out God

Thursday, July 14th, 2022
chucking out god

In the space of a generation, sexual behaviour once considered immoral and beyond the pale is now endemic and considered normal. Long gone are the days when the statue of David displayed in Melbourne’s Myers emporium had to be covered with a fig leaf and where nudity in the musical Hair caused moral outrage. The Read more

God: The latest subject of woke pronoun wars

Monday, October 18th, 2021
woke pronoun wars

This memo is a twofer, offering both a lively story theme to pursue and an issue that is now affecting the work of every stylebook and copy editor in the American media. An older campaign by feminists, including those working in the world of liturgy, sought to shun male pronouns — particularly when either gender Read more