“Captain gets 36 years for deserting ship.” That headline in this week’s news stream defined the life of one man in a single snapshot. Snapshots are how human beings judge each other. This captain of a South Korean ferry was…
If you’ve ever channel surfed in the afternoon, chances are you found an episode of Judge Judy. Chances are also good that the case you landed on involved a landlord vs. a tenant from hell. These cases usually have a…
Something bittersweet happens amidst the blood and guts that fill the nightly local news reports about murder and accident victims. Eulogies. These are stories of ordinary people who never made headlines before, but in their sudden exit from this life…
Many 4- and 5-year-old girls were captivated by the movie “Frozen.” It’s the story of a girl whose newly discovered power to create ice and snow nearly kills her little sister, causing the big sister to isolate herself from the…
Only two years ago, U.S. customs and border officials seized counterfeit goods worth around $1.26 billion. By 2016 counterfeiting is expected to be a $1.7 trillion industry. Human beings have thrived on phoniness since Adam and Eve donned fig leaves…
This Sunday’s gospel made me think of Homer Simpson. Picture this paunchy, self-satisfied ignoramus sitting in his man cave watching football, and his wife comes in and says “Ned Flanders invited us over for a get together with some friends…
The word of God is a powerful seed. The Bible is the history of its cultivation and the distribution of its fruit. It’s also a manual offering instruction on how to keep that crop viable. Humanity has not always been…
The following headline made Section A of last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal : “Mass Shootings on the Rise” The report said the mindset of the shooters in these incidents is often the same: “a real or perceived deeply held personal…
Pete, the manager of Kingdom Enterprises, sat in his office pondering his future. It was midnight, but time on the job hasn’t mattered since the Boss tore out all the time clocks and instituted a new “continuous improvement” program. He…
God may be part of a trinity, but this Sunday’s readings make Him look two-faced. There’s the Old Testament God depicted as mean and vengeful in our first reading (nm 21:4b-9), striking swiftly after Moses’ flock complains about their conditions…