Safe Haven

5. Well, yes, I'm excited.  The greatest quarterback of all time, joining his buddy, the greatest tight end of all time. Now, don't get me wrong: I admire Coach Belichick and the entire Patriots organization. I honestly do. But anyone is curious to see what ol' Tom Brady has left in the tank. He'll be 43 before they start. 4. I'm excited in that awkward way, among struggling people who think maybe tackle football isn't a good idea. 3. This stupid pandemic! It's awfully hard to gain experience teaching, when the schools are closed. 2. Meanwhile, if the Catholic schools don't hire me, I'm happy to go to the public schools. I shall preach among the Gentiles. [That's offensive.--ed.] Blame St. Paul, not me. 1. This stupid pandemic! Right now, the greatest tennis marvel of the last 22 years, Roger Federer, is just sitting at home, aging. It makes me so mad. I love him. No, seriously.

15 years ago today, Bryan Cross became a Catholic. And then, the rest of that immediate family did as well. I would not have become Catholic without Bryan and Carol, and the grace they came to me through them. It's not really about them, though. It's about God, and His mercy. Without prejudice to what is going on of great value in the other Christian communities, and communities in other religions, it sure seems like God is calling his children back to the Catholic Church. Granted, the Church's apologists have celebrated converts from day one. Also, the Protestant separations are particularly painful for us here in the West, but also for everyone united to the successor of Peter. I was just thinking that all of us will probably be joyfully stunned by the way God has used us to touch people with the good news of Jesus. In my mind, it was like when you're watching a football game, and they show a "coaching tree" that stems from a coach they want to praise. S...

I don't know what you are feeling, but I am feeling lost. This pandemic is intensifying the feelings of being superfluous, and even in the way of something, or someone. We tend to call the famous story, "the parable of the prodigal son," but as has been pointed out to me in numerous sermons since I was a very young adult, perhaps the heart of the story is the generosity of the father. I will not absolve myself of responsibility, but largely we are in a "far country" not of our own making. I have never felt as nostalgic as I do right now, but it seems different than nostalgia at other places and other times. I am longing for something very simple and very normal, for a life we knew and understood only months ago. I have no heart or courage for a culture war, with respect to what we ought to do; I only know that I don't think things can stay the same for much longer. I am a strong personality, with a well-defined sense of purpose. It seems as though that p...

5. Biden 2020: Not Completely Hopeless With Whites 4. Biden 2020: Like Family At The Holidays: You're Going, And That's Final 3. Biden 2020: The Midwest Is Not Just An NCAA Tourney Region 2. Biden 2020: My Twitter Will Be Cat Videos 1. Biden 2020: The Stuff I Forgot Is Better Than The Stuff He Says Intentionally

I read Ephesians this morning. I have to say, I don't necessarily feel like I'm seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus right now. And yet, I sense that I am indeed being lavished with grace. The only thing that the enemy of our souls can do is to try to convince us that Jesus made a mistake when he died on the cross for you and me. God shows his own love for us in this: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. I'm not even going to quote it; maybe sometimes we need to read it in plain words, as if it were spoken by a friend, because it is and has been. I need the sacraments so badly. We had almost been in a habit of saying that we took them for granted, and then they were taken away. We found out that indeed we have taken them for granted. This quarantine stuff is getting to me. It's probably true that I don't like people that much, but this is a crazy level of isolation. The most foundational reality is that God's generous attitude towar...

I feel most at home in the Bible. That's not an odd thing for a Christian to say, I hope. And this is not to say that I have some great training or special insight into it, though I do have some training. Nor is it to say that I am this great prayer warrior, who always applies the Scripture to my life in the proper way, at the proper time. It is to say that I'm continually thankful for the Magisterium. We Catholics don't have to sit around arguing about what the Bible says. We can start getting into its spiritual meaning, and really letting God speak to us personally, without doubting anything about its literal sense. I tell people all the time how lucky we are, because we are freed up to be doers of the word, and not only hearers. Then again, that freedom is in the context of widespread ignorance concerning the Scriptures among American Catholics. Certain clergy have probably been responsible for this ignorance of Scripture, and perhaps some lapses in morality and pi...

I'll spare you the usual Catholic speaker platitudes that jump right to, "We should have that same sacrificial love for each other!" No, we need to think about the Cross, before we try to apply it to our lives. The Protestant and Reformed error is to say that the Father is pouring out wrath upon his Son. I'm simply not going to waste any time refuting that on this occasion. On the other hand, all of us should rightly fear the idea proclaimed in some quarters that Jesus did not die for our sins, or that there is no hell. We do need forgiveness of sins, and the sacrifice of the Cross was the means by which it was accomplished. It is a picture of the Father's love, but it is not only a picture. There is also wide agreement--though it does not appear so at first--that we are not only saved by Jesus's death, but by his life. Jesus made the enduring sin offering, and the reason the treasury of merits is inexhaustible is because Jesus is well-pleasing to the Father...

This is a fair warning: this post will contain extremely bitter thoughts. Sometimes, we know goodness from its opposite. It seems to me that most people, if given a choice between suffering with you, and inflicting suffering upon you, will take the latter. Some more intentionally than others. I confess that I have been tempted to say that I don't want to love or trust anyone. Or at some level, it is more than a temptation. This pandemic has given me cover to get away from people, and frankly, to not feel bad about it. On the other hand, I suppose that if I am buffeted by all these emotions, I haven't given up. I can't say that I don't care what people say and do, because that's obviously not true. Still, I want not to care. It seems like it would be a great grace to me if I did not. On another hand still, the recognized experts in not caring are sociopaths. I'm fairly certain I don't want to be a sociopath. And then there's forgiveness, of course. ...

I could read 30 columns all criticizing Donald Trump. He doesn't become more acceptable to me as time passes. In fact, one of the things I promised to myself is that I would never stop being angry in some form about the things which ought to make a person of good conscience angry. That's the danger in the politics game: you've got your side, and as long as either your side is winning, or the other side is as appallingly bad as they've always been, you feel the pressure to ignore or overlook wrong things from your own side. The grisly reality of abortion, and the damage of the sexual revolution still doesn't go away. I can't join the opposition, because the opposition believes in the tenets of the sexual revolution. It's difficult, because I do believe the government is supposed to be a force for good, to actually regulate the exchange of goods and services for the sake of the common good. I'm not on the Right, precisely because I believe the common goo...

You know, if anyone is currently in a position to criticize right-wing American fused religiosity, it's me. I have the ability, the willingness, and the inclination. I just saw a meme from John Fugelsang, a man who was a minor comedian-actor in the '90s, and as much as I'd love to pile on the president and his wacky supporters, I gotta deal with this meme instead. You know how they go: re-cast Jesus as a rebel and a revolutionary, and point out how non-judgy he was, mention the outcasts and sinners, take a couple jabs at political opponents and current issues, and we're done.  Now understand this, my friends: I constitutionally despise reductionism in political thinking. The reason I am where I am politically is because I don't like taking shortcuts through ideas for short-term political expediency. I left the Republican Party because of Donald Trump. I also began to see the weaknesses in the conservative movement with respect to economics because of the smalles...

Happy Easter, everyone. To tell you the truth, I haven't felt much like celebrating. These feelings have gone on for many months. It was the worst day of my life. Seven months ago. Never mind the details. I reached out for help, and I heard in effect, "You're not good enough. You're not being your true self. Many people are disappointed in you." I have been frozen in that day since it happened. But you see, no one is actually harder on me than myself. The outward confidence, the outgoing gregarious nature, all that is the fruit of overcoming the internal struggle, the negative self talk that by definition must be false. I give all of you the good stuff, and I keep the bad stuff between God and me. It had brought me so much joy to see the good work that God was doing in so many other people. I was once called "The Encourager" in college, and it sort of internally stuck. This is who I am; this is what I do. And it's not happy-clappy or fake. If you...

I watched the national nightly news just a bit ago, and there was a story that broke my heart. I want to say it was in North Carolina, but a guy lost his father to the coronavirus. And I noticed he said it a couple of times, "My dad was…" I don't want to beat up on the guy too bad, because he just lost his dad. Yet it's wrong to say, "was". I want to acknowledge the reality of our separations from loved ones in death, without conceding some sort of ultimate reality to death. We can have all the space and time we need to grieve that separation, but I do not talk about my loved ones in the past tense, unless I'm telling a story that happened in the past. My dad is Richard Kettinger; he is a fan of the Dodgers. He is a son, a brother, a father, an uncle, and whatever else. Love in every form--even if imperfect--makes everything present. A friend asked me how I felt some time ago on the anniversary of the death of another friend. I felt like a crazy person...

I wanted to talk more about the fourth critical area where Deneen says liberalism has impacted the social fabric most negatively: science and technology. To raise a protest about any sort of technology in today's society in a certain sense proves Deneen's point about our universal adoption of what Pope Francis describes as the "technocratic paradigm". Our conveniences and their use Deneen says are actually determining the course of our lives, rather than we as individuals and groups using technology to further some specified goal. Living spaces and economic arrangements which are fitted to human scale often describe a philosophy known as "agrarianism". Deneen certainly offers the modern globalized society as an example of something in general that erodes human society, and its numerous small intimate human connections. He does approvingly mention Wendell Berry in this regard. He seems to argue that we cannot critically examine the use of a particular good, w...

I'll probably over-analyze this, as is my way. I think humor is the unexpected juxtaposition of seemingly contrary things, which forms an absurdity. Another aspect of humor is the intentional breaking of taboos, usually coupled with self-mockery or self-parody. Many people are perplexed by various types of crude humor, but I have realized that it's only actually funny as a contrast, perhaps to the way we're expected to behave in most places of our lives. Even the tolerance for that kind of thing is a matter of taste. If we're crude all the time, crude humor doesn't shock or surprise. I think the unexpected is a key ingredient of humor. I still haven't watched a whole lot of the TV show Seinfeld. I know, I need to do that. That comedy works, because we have expectations about how decent people are supposed to conduct themselves. None of the erstwhile protagonists are flagrantly evil, in any sort of historic sense. Still, they consistently miss opportunities t...

Deneen says that the philosophy of liberalism was developed some 500 years ago, and implemented most notably in the United States in the last 250 years. The essential features of liberalism according to Deneen are the individual as a rights-bearer, capitalism is the means to acquire goods and markers of personal identity, and periodic democratic elections, which allegedly ratify the decisions of the set of rights-bearing individuals. Deneen is going to claim that the individual as the fundamental unit of society is a crucial departure from the classical understanding of people and their relations to one another, with their interlocking obligations, many chosen, but some not chosen. Indeed, the biggest promise of liberalism according to Deneen was to liberate individuals from these involuntary obligations, and any identities imposed externally from those obligations. He goes on to argue that in four areas, liberalism faces a crisis of its own self-contradiction. Politics and governmen...

I basically agree with this analysis . Granted, in some sense, it accords with what I want. On the other hand, it does pretty well explain the data we are seeing now. One interesting measure of the mood before any election is the generic Congressional ballot. You should know that it almost always favors Democrats, if only slightly. It is also the case that a small lead for the Democrats (inside three points, for example) sometimes indicates a Republican victory brewing. Right now, the average of the Congressional ballot--which generally indicates voter mood--at Real Clear Politics shows a Democratic advantage of over eight points. That indicates a wave election, and we just had a wave election. The Republicans don't have House seats to lose. How bad could this get for the GOP? Let's be conservative, and say the Democrats flip 15 seats. That would give the Democrats 262 seats, to the Republican number of 166. Right at this moment, there are also six vacancies in the House. Let...

Prayer is a wild thing, when it is real. I just prayed the craziest thing. I asked for some things, and then I said, "We trust in your goodness, even if we die." It's true, isn't it? I won't lie to you and say I'm fruitfully reflecting on my eventual death at every moment. But indeed, faith in Christ and in the resurrection of all of us from the dead means that death is not the end. This is exactly why St. Paul boasts and sings, "O Death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting?" It doesn't erase the human experience of loss and its pain, but we do not grieve as those with no hope. And the substance of hope is exactly this: to move forward, in the reality of God's goodness. God is trustworthy. In simplicity, this is living faith distilled. I've been saying "we" a lot in prayer lately. I suppose that if we really do have "mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won," I never am praying alone. I...

Everyone knows I am a Trekkie. I may not even be a good one, given the fact that I haven't even seen Voyager and Deep Space 9 all the way through. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, that will begin to show you just how deep and abiding the Star Trek canon now is, as it is being added to as we speak. Star Trek would not have endured, if not for the success of Star Trek: The Next Generation. "TNG," as it is lovingly abbreviated, allowed the Trek family to finish the feature films involving the original Star Trek cast with some coherence, and a tie to the present, which was being made by TNG. I digress. One of the more inspired casting choices back then had to be Sir Patrick Stewart as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard. Stewart is and was a Shakespearean actor, but not unknown to science fiction fans as Gurney Halleck in the film adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel, "Dune". I myself have also enjoyed in recent months his cameo turn as the Russian spy...

I keep seeing the first ten minutes of a documentary about the 1995 Chicago heat wave that killed 739 vulnerable and poor people in 5 days. In light of the current moment, I'm having some thoughts. Let me get the caveats out of the way first. I know that politics is often a choosing between two or more less than ideal scenarios. I know that people of goodwill can legitimately disagree about the best way to reach an agreed upon end. The thing is, I'm hearing a voice again, and it sounds an awful lot like Dr. Bryan Cross, my friend and a professor of philosophy at Mount Mercy University. The voice is a little more direct than Dr. Cross tends to be in most arguments, but it's saying, "Who would you have to tax, and how much, to provide every poor person in Chicago with at least a window unit for air-conditioning at no cost to them?" You could say that death comes for us all, and that some people in Chicago would not have been able to escape heat related death that ...

Deneen begins by telling the reader that this book was finished three weeks before the US presidential election in 2016. He goes on to say that its main theses matured over the last decade or more, and in light of recent events like Brexit, and the election of Donald J. Trump, he may have written a different book indeed. Still, Deneen thinks that his main contentions shed light on current events, and that current events vindicate those contentions much faster than he would have anticipated. Deneen argues that liberalism undermines culture and the mores which instruct people in their obligations to one another, and to God in the virtuous life. Meanwhile, the ravages of individualism and capitalism demand an ever-active state to redress its injustices. This cycle repeats and escalates. Politics then becomes the arena for the venting of rage, rather than the considered deliberations of virtuous people in pursuit of a common good. He believes that the current widespread yearning for an i...