In my last two essays I posted, Mathematical Models of Human Communities: Parts and Wholes and Mathematical Models of Human Communities: We Live in Narratives, Not in Models, I acknowledged the usefulness and potential truthfulness of mathematical models but claimed we need to consider wider aspects of this world and of all of Creation. In … [Read more…]
In his spiritual biography of John Henry Newman, The Spiritual Journey of Newman, Fr Jean Honore (a future cardinal and Archbishop and member of the committee which supervised the writing of the Catechism of the Catholic Church) told us that Newman had seen the problems the Church (and all Christian churches—in my opinion) was having … [Read more…]
Recent centuries have seen a mysterious retreat from the mainstream of modern thought on the part of Catholic clergymen and also Catholic laymen whose intellectual work is oriented directly to the needs of Christianity. I’m far from being a well-read historian but I’ve read enough survey works to see the retreat of Catholic thinkers into … [Read more…]
I’m currently reading The Principles of Quantum Mechanics by P.A.M. Dirac, though I’m missing more than I’m getting. With a weak educational background and a lack of the toughness to dig in and learn how to learn on my own, I’d abandoned my physics major in college more than 30 years ago. I made up … [Read more…]
I’m puzzled by those who think it wise to be Christians without having a way to think of God’s Creation on its own terms but from a Christian viewpoint. They worship and then move back into a society more skeptical than pagan. The big problem is that we modern men have piled up huge mountains … [Read more…]
I’ll start by asking two seemingly strange questions: Should we expect Heaven, the world of the resurrected, to be a magical world as in pagan myths of other worlds? Should we expect to spend time without end gallivanting around with all sorts of strange winged creatures and looking down into the Abyss of Hell — … [Read more…]