A few weeks ago I finally bought myself an iPhone. And since then, I’ve been playing with it and delighting in the expanse of freedom I have to access all kinds of information, instantly. And then I read this paragraph in an article by Andrew J. Bacevich in a recent issue of Commonweal: “The Information [...]
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“The appalling silence of the good people” – A Buddhist Dialogue with Martin Luther King, Jr.
In the New York Times of May 15, Michelle Alexander wrote an op-ed piece that hit me soundly in my Buddhist-Christian stomach. In her essay, she comments critically on a recent good news/bad news scenario: many politicians, including Republicans, are calling for a reduction of mass incarceration (good news), but not out of any concern [...]
The Sitting Buddha and the Crucified Christ
One of the most difficult, and therefore one of the most promising, topics that came up in my recent conversations with Korean Buddhists a couple of weeks ago was embodied in the central images of our traditions: the Buddha sitting in quiet contemplation under the Bodhi tree and the Christ agonizing on the cross. There [...]
Would Archbishop Dolan get a “CR” or “CD” at Union?
That’s the question I couldn’t help asking myself when I read in today’s (Nov. 26) NEW YORK TIMES the Letter to the Editor of my good friend, Dan Maguire, who teaches theology at Marquette University. He makes some pretty sharp, but I think pretty accurate, observations about the bishops of the American Catholic Church. The [...]
Thank you, Mr. President!
I owe President Obama a thank you — and maybe an apology. It turns out that I was too quick to criticize and challenge him in my last blog about not really “speaking his mind” concerning the Muslim Center in lower Manhattan. Two days after I posted the blog, in which I quoted from his [...]
The Pope Just Doesn’t Get It!
He may be infallible. But he sure can screw up when it comes to public relations. That was painfully clear in the latest Vatican publication of “Substantive Norms” on how it is going to get tough on priest pedophiles. As reported in the New York Times and in the National Catholic Reporter, the document, in [...]
Where Buddhism Helps: Action with Equanimity
When I ask myself the question: “How has Buddhism helped me in the practice of my Christian ideals?” I realize immediately that there is no one answer. But amid all the ways in which the teachings and the practice of the Dharma have enabled me to clarify, confirm, correct and enliven my efforts to live [...]
Pope Benedict, May I quote Josef Ratzinger?
In a recent article in the New York Review of Books on the morass of pedophilia crimes and cover-ups facing Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church, Anthony Grafton offers these words of encouragement and hope for bewildered Catholics: “Again and again, Catholics have proved astonishingly resilient and inventive, and have come forward to offer what [...]
Muhammad on South Park – Ouch!
What would a Buddhist Christian American make of South Park’s portrayal of Muhammad in its April 14, 200th episode? Was it imprudent? Impudent? Or was it something you would just expect from the always irreverent, usually tasteless (at least for an old fuddy-dud like me), and sometimes embarrassingly funny fare that producers Trey Parker and [...]
The Limits of Moral Outrage
In these days of widespread – including my own – moral outrage at sacerdotal pedophilia and episcopal cover-up, this sentence from Richard Rohr’s The Naked Now stopped me in my moralistic tracks: “Moral outrage at the ideas of others hardly ever serves God’s purposes, only our own.” (p. 132) Rohr is right, uncomfortably but also [...]
