The Real Apple

Posted on by L Reese Cumming

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I found myself in some redundant dismay in finding that an influential, syndicated columnist, professor at Georgetown University, and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, E. J. Dionne (I assume a Catholic?), has apparently little knowledge of what drives man to sin.  Oops! He’s in Wikipedia too, and the credentialed salutations of his experiences are lengthy.  All the better, as with this immense resume he is so much better the perfect illustration of the difficulty in recognizing and understanding moral blindness.  (I mean, if everyone of substance is blind to moral responsibility, how would you know it?) Continue reading The Real Apple

The Poor in Spirit

Posted on by L Reese Cumming

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Before I venture forth, the title above might be misleading to some Catholics who are well aware of Ignatian spirituality.  Its definition for spiritual poverty: that being the complete dependence upon God.  Ignatian spirituality wants the complete emptying of ourselves so that God might fill us.  The spiritual poverty I refer to is the lack of centricity with the holy Spirit, or God Himself.

I recently participated in a Life Teen proclamation in the Youth Ministry of my parish.  This proclamation, titled Beggar, had a goal, and I’ll let Life Teen’s own words state it:

“The goal of Beggar is to help teenagers understand that Jesus identifies with the poor, marginalized, and outcast because He was one of them.  The teens are also challenged to recognize Jesus in those on the periphery of their own lives.” Continue reading The Poor in Spirit

The Cause for the Spirit

Posted on by L Reese Cumming

It’s clear I’ve read too much on this world.  There is a certain bliss in ignorance, isn’t there?  I say this because in looking around, it’s easy for me to find more misery than blessing.  It seems odd to me that mankind chooses to speak in the public square more of his misfortune than his fortune?  Does he not know his blessings? This public square of ours – communications – has less civility than a boxing match.  At least in boxing you shake hands before you proceed to pummel that next door neighbor in the ring of your existence.

Man finds passion in pointing to a myriad of causes for his misfortune.  His intellect meticulously inspects and dissects; slicing at this part and that part of the organ of Man in some hope that he might animate his ailing creation – himself – into the perfection that God desires.  Yet from this all, the cords that bind man together in this world are becoming more and more tangled; the tensions within society both increasing and at times overwhelming; human tsunamis that bring chaos to man’s culture.

Is there a cure; a fix, or perhaps a glue that might align us once again with one another?  Fit us together once again like one of those 5000 piece puzzles of a meadow of grass and spring flowers.  Are we searching for that illusive glue we have yet to find, or are we not?  With glue, there is effect; but where is the cause of the glue, so we might procure the glue? Continue reading The Cause for the Spirit

Is There a Christian Way?

Posted on by L Reese Cumming

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I happened upon a blog post during a recent and rare trip to New Advent; a Catholic site with an amazing assortment of subject matter and an archive of wonder.  I say “rare” only in that I do grow tired of its futile emancipation of things incredibly shallow in nature.  I can read only so many times, “9 Reasons Why Pope Francis Likes Vegetables”, before I want to throw up my vegetables.

Anyways, having gone through the Catholic RCIA program in 2013, that’s the Rite of Christian Initiation for all of you non-Catholics, I found this post of good interest.  I’d have to say in regards to my own experience with RCIA, that it was far less frustrating than the type of one imagined in this post.  It was, nonetheless, similar with the writer’s experience in the fact that the program I went through seemed to offer up nothing as an examination of why I ever came to RCIA and the Catholic Church to begin with.  What was my motive?  Why the Catholic Church and not the Latter Day Saints or the Assembly of God?  Had I been called or was I searching?  Was there any metaphysical substance within me that sought the here-and-now, just as much as the there-and-later?

Continue reading Is There a Christian Way?

The Problem of the Spirit

Posted on by L Reese Cumming

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Worrying about evil is, quite frankly, small potatoes in comparison to a much greater human condition that plagues the vast majority of mankind; the absence of any consciousness of the spirit.

We pursue a path of consciousness that solely imbues our intellect and passions as the arbiters of our existence, and in extension, that of God’s existence.  We actually believe that what we cannot rationalize, at this moment, therefore does not exist, and man’s history has consistently demonstrated this demoralizing condition.

Let’s look at the Bible for a moment.  There is an argument – a position on God’s existence – that takes on the rationalization that if the Bible is errant in its assertions or circumstances, then God must not exist.  I have to ask the question, “Why?”.  Critics, for purposes of convenience and certain lack of awareness of spiritual matters, equate what they can see with their eyes and then perceive from paper pages with ink imprints, as somehow possessing some form of power that dictates over God and not under God.

Man believes his intellect and passions should be the sole arbiters of truth.  My simple argument against that is man’s history.  Such a consideration is obviously not true given the results, and to assert that it is our intellect and our passions that has at least gotten us this far, well that I would agree with you.  We have obviously put performance aside.

Continue reading The Problem of the Spirit