casual theology

“Christ Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him.” Colossians 1:15-16 (Second Reading from 15 th Sunday of Ordinary Time – July 10, 2022) I must confess that I love Stranger Things, the streaming series on Netflex*. If you’re not familiar with Stranger Things, it’s a sci-fi/horror show set in a fictional Indiana town in the mid-80’s where our core group of characters battle evil forces from the Upside Down, another dimension that is a corrupted copy of their own world. I love how they’ve nailed the whole 1980’s vibe from the music to the clothes to the freedom we had as kids to roam the town with little parental supervision. The storylines are suspenseful, and you get attached to the characters. The primary hero figure is Eleven, a girl with telekinetic superp...

I usually start my day by checking various news websites. I often say I just want to know “if anything blew up overnight.” This morning my attention was drawn to several headlines about Pope Francis and the Church under a picture of the pope:   "Pope: You don't have to believe in God to get to heaven..." "Catholic priests may be allowed to marry amid Papal changes..." I immediately thought, “here we go again”, some statement by the pope has been taken out of context by a reporter who likely couldn’t pass a first grade catechism class. I was not disappointed. There were two “big” stories about the Church. The first alleged that Pope Francis was declaring that atheists could go to heaven without believing in God and the second focused on comments made by the incoming Vatican Secretary of State, Archbishop Pietro Parolin, on the topic of celibacy. Let's take a closer loo k...   Atheists and Agnostics Just Need to Be Good People   The ...