Finally. As planned the introduction and first chapters of my book, which is being published in a series of installments, has been published. The first part of my book is published here, and if you get Kindle Unlimited, you certainly won't complain about the price. (The Return of the Goddess: Part One (And the Goddess Spoke: An Exploration as Mary, Mother of Jesus, as Primordial Goddess) - Kindle edition by DeFazio, Peter. Religion & Spirituality Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.)

I would like you to join me as we partake in a journey that stretches back millennia, examining the goddess tradition that continues to this day, at times hidden in plain sight.

I will be publishing excerpts from my books, and other features, on this site. Please keep checking back.

For them, apparently, it is conceivable that the God who fails to intercede to save human lives nevertheless chose to protect a mediocre, plaster statue of his mother.

It should be a WTF? moment for Catholic media in the United States--but it won't be.

After all, CNA is a fully-owned media outlet of Eternal World Television Network (EWTN), which more than any other Catholic organization has tried (and largely succeeding) in politicizing American Catholicism. EWTN (which acquired the National Catholic Register many years ago, immediately retrofitting that Catholic newsweekly to hard-right wing clone of the cable television, satellite and radio media giant, has been promoting its own vision of Catholic Orthodoxy for more than three decades. Through its affiliates on cable, satellite and radio, it has been skewing Catholic Church teaching toward the far-right wing of American politics, specifically the hard right and even alt-right of the Republican party for decades.

In an undeclared war with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) since at least the mid-1990s, EWTN has in a sense achieved its victory.

• The USCCB leadership is increasing conservative and more overtly political leaning.
• The media arm of the USCCB had been maligned, discredited, and has now been eliminated.
• And members of the USCCB are now also on the Board of Executives of EWTN.

Essentially, by honing on those aspects of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (first published in the early 1990s) that align most strongly with right-wing American political positions, the rest of Church teaching is ignored. This has been the EWTN M.O. for decades but now they have the power as well.

No More Catholic News Service

Catholic News Service (CNS) had been founded in 1920 by the USCCB, then known as the NCCB. However, it was defunded and relegated to the dustbin in 2022, following the latest USCCB elections. CNS's domestic services shut down effective December 31, 2022.

What's left for Catholic media in the US?

There are some good options. Our Sunday Visitor has always been a slightly more moderate source of Catholic News. But in the toxic alt-right Catholic climate, the very hint of any kind of openness to discussion or introduction of faith informed by reason in the best Thomistic traditions will be likely decried as liberalism. OSV has also recently acquired parts of the defunct CNS.

America magazine is a great source of intellectual discourse among Catholicism, but is more or less marginalized by nearly four decades of anti-Jesuit propaganda by EWTN and its affiliates. They have promulgated the idea that all but a handful of the most scholarly religious orders such as the Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, Cistercians, etc., have gone astray. It is part of the EWTN narrative that has been rather skillfully promulgated and imbibed like mother's milk by generations of American Catholics.

So forget it, Crux, National Catholic Reporter, and other fine Catholic publications who are also willing to communicate the full range of Catholic discourse in the United States. It is an uphill climb to to even be considered by the close-minded, ever rigorous, scrupulous-to-a-fault American Catholics who have been drinking the EWTN Kool-Aid their entire lives.

So expect more headlines like this one:

   Of course denial of the reality of global warming and man-made climate change was part of their propaganda.

   It turns out that the oil and gas industry's own private research that had been with kept close to their proverbial vests revealed industry caused climate change all along. So the cars got bigger and bigger and bigger. And as fuel efficiency increased the tanks got bigger and the vehicles grew larger and heavier, hence mpgs hadn't changed much in thirty plus years.

   And here we are. 

   Not coincidence of course. It could have easily all been hybrid engines by 15 years ago, making deep cuts in gasoline consumption, right? But...

   No. This insidious oil and gas lobby could give two shits about the future if humanity. It is an old story about unbridled greed. The same greed that drove slavery. The same greed that drove monoculture agriculture industries in Latin America, raping the land and starving the people. 

   It's about the greed that an elite relative few beneficiaries living in the moment perpetuate at the expense of the majority.

   But shits getting realer everyday. Climate change is harder and harder to deny and the world's largest glacier? It is not just that Thwaites glacier is melting. It's breaking up! 

   Melting is not the entirety of the looming disaster that is the world's largest glacier, located in Antartica, Thwaites. Remember, Antartica is a continent, a land mass. The glacier atop this land mass thst is retreating into the ocean is deadly serious. 

   Let's look at in simple terms. If ice is 100% on the ground, a land mass, then its melting is not immediately going to cause a rise in the ocean level. But what happens when said glacier is breaking off from a land mass and dumping into the sea?   

   Here we are at Thwaites:  The glacier is retreating into the ocean. Try adding ice to a bathtub full of water. Frozen or melted, the water rises. As Antartica's glaciers break apart and enter the water that surrounds it, it directly contributes to sea-level rise. This known as displacement, right? You can do the exoeriment yourself with a glass of water. Pop a few ice cubes into the water and see if it rises. Obviously it does.

   That's our world now. Our coastlines. So now Antarctica’s Thwaites ice shelf is nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier because of the above-described crazy-ass ice-melt and inevitable increasing rise in sea level. In a recent news article, scientist Britney Schmidt of Cornell University described what they were able to observe using specially designed robots. 

   "Where it’s melting so quickly there, there’s just material streaming out of the glacier."

   This is the climate reality we are living in...coastal flooding will soon be an understatement and changes to the global map are imminent.

   But to those in positions of power within the oil and gas industry, top investors, and their enabling politicians, like Michael Corleone in the Godfather stated: “It's not personal. It's just business.”

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. And really, it needs no promotion: The 12-Steps associated with Alcoholics Anonymous and so many other recovery groups. But really, it is an ingenious--I would say inspired--program of recovery founded by Bill W., Bill Wilson, some hundred years ago.

I do not make a habit of speaking publicly about my recovery journey very often. Well, it is highly personal, right? But on the other hand, there is a saying in halls of AA and MA, and that is, "You are only as sick as your secrets." I agree with this sentiment. And coming from a Roman Catholic background and being aware of the secrecy. The harm it does, and the evil that is perpetuated by its continuation. John XXIII was onto something when he wanted to throw open the windows and let the let of the sun cleanse the Church. But alas, he never really got to finish what he began.

Back to recovery. AA and other 12-step groups do not need much in the way of introduction and promotion. They appeal through attraction and reputation. Which is great.

As I was writing this I was reflecting upon how cold it was outside today. Arctic weather, well below freezing. But here I am in a warm interior, with clean clothes and coffee. I have a lot to be grateful for. Ordinarily on a Saturday am--when the weather becomes more temperate--I attend an outdoor meeting.

So my journey began in August of 2020, but it was not a journey that I was compelled to take--not as the results of the kinds of consequences some people report having, whereby a spouse, an employer or a legal authority forces one into recovery. Nothing like that. I had been flying below the radar for a long, long time. But I wanted to stop and I was not able to end my addictive behavior on my own.

I had reached a point--the bottom--where I had the recognition, finally, that I was powerless over my disease of addiction. I wanted to stop and I could not. And so I reached out to another person, asked for help, and the journey began. An unexpected spiritual voyage whereby I had to surrender my life, my will, to a power greater than myself, the God of my understanding. That is it in a nutshell.

The AA literature and that of most 12-Step groups refers to the God of ones understanding. Interestingly, at a meeting I was recently at we had a discussion about changing the name of God in our AA literature to Higher Power. At first, I was indifferent to this. It occurred to me that God probably does not care how we refer to him or her or it. But, upon further reflection as I mulled over the proposal these past few days, I began to lean toward no change. Keep it as God, in other words. Why? What was my rationale?

The terminology in the 12-Step literature that refers to God in a few places--is rather generic. And I do respect those who do not say the name of God, or do not have a theistic belief, or believe in and pray to Goddess, or Allah, or Jesus, or some other name of the deity. But isn't that the beauty and the ingeniousness of the book first published in 1939 by Bill W. He was prescient enough to use the phrase "God of one's understanding."

I am such an admirer of this book--Alcoholics Anonymous--and I even got myself a re-print of the 1939 edition--it is a wellspring of spiritual insights, and yes, 100-year old American English can be difficult to read at times. Some of the terminology is archaic. And every now and again, revised editions do update the terminology somewhat. But I would err on the side of caution when tinkering with such an inspired set of writings, that has had decades of profound and far-reaching impact on the lives of many. Let's not tinker too much or we might lose something of value.

Mental illness. The very words make people uncomfortable. Whether we are talking about people who have fallen through society's meager safety nets, and are wandering the streets. Or perhaps, seemingly ordinary people who one day snapped.

In the news recently was a young mother named Lindsay Clancy, accused of strangling to death two of her three children, ages 3 and 5. And critically injuring a third child, an infant. Horrifying, right? They say it was related to a really bad case of post-partum depression.

In speaking of compassion for perpetrators of heinous crimes when they themselves were clearly suffering from mental illness, such as PPD, and not in their right mind, there are always those who are ready to pick up stones. They do not want to speak of compassion. It is is a messy reality that threatens a black-and-white clearly delineated world view.

Unsettling. Discomforting.

I remember the mid-1990s getting the pushback and rather harsh judgment from the editor of a magazine I had written some articles for, including a short poem. The poetry was titled, "Say a prayer for Jeffry Dahmer, because no one else will."

The Dahmer case, recently popularized—sensationalized really—by a streaming series, now 30 years after the horrifying events.

He was an extreme case, right? A human being so badly broken, something so fundamentally wrong in his psyche, that he had become a murderous cannibal. But the supposedly civilized criminal justice system of ours did something quite unjust in placing this clearly severely mentally ill human being in with a general prison population. And of course, where he would be inevitably abused and murdered. Many people cheered when it had happened. Justice was served, they said. But I had felt nauseous.

The things Dahmer had done were monstrous. Absolutely ghastly! But this was a severely psychotic individual, who needed permanent institutionalization. Not incarceration in an ordinary prison environment where, among the ordinary convict population anyone could foresee a violent outcome.

Few people cared.

My editor at the time printed my tiny poem, Say a Prayer for Jeffrey Dahmer, against her own better judgment. Her rationale was explained to me. She had an adult brother who was schizophrenic, but able to live a normal life as long as he remained on his medication. And she was concerned that the Dahmer case would skew people’s ideas about mental illness to only include the most extreme cases. Most mental illness harms the individual suffering from the affliction, and does not threaten the safety of others. I respect these concerns.

Most people with post-partum depression, for example, or PPD as it is commonly known as, pose only a threat to themselves. The Clancy case was an extreme example, a rarity, where a mother suffering from PPD murdered her own children.

But we are called to muster up compassion. Indeed, as recipients of daily grace from a power greater than ourselves, we can honestly recite that old saw, there but for the grace of God goes I.

In speaking of compassion for perpetrators of heinous crimes when they themselves were clearly suffering from mental illness, such as PPD, and not in their right mind, there are always those who are ready to pick up stones. They do not want to speak of compassion. They want justice.

It is is a messy reality that threatens a black-and-white clearly delineated world view.

To talk about the perpetrator of some terrible crime as an ordinary human being who somehow broke, well, that is too close to home for many people. It leaves each one of ourselves vulnerable. It could lead to the admission that we too are capable of breaking.

Sadly, it much easier to look for a good rock to throw.

They are closed minded. Like I often have been. Just read on, please...

I was just the same way for many years. Closed minded, because that is the mainstream Catholic position that somehow, human life in the womb is the most important aspect or subset of human life. Because literally, in practice, the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church a.k.a. the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, with very few exceptions, as led by the U.S. Bishops, has made neonatal human life the most preeminent life issue.

What they are saying is that as soon as a human sperm implants itself successfully into a human egg (ovum), and forms a zygote, the most important kind of human life has begun.

I am going to sound quite heretical in my tone about this because--read the Summa Theologia if you do not believe me--St. Thomas Aquinas said nay to this. At a much later point in embryonic development, Aquinas believed there was a quickening, which was the moment God implanted a human soul into the developing fetus. (Now don't stop reading here...the bus is still moving. Please.)

The point is, since the Catechism of 1994, the Church's leadership asserts dogmatically that human life and ensoulment both begin at the very moment of conception. But this was not always what the Church taught--it used to be a long the lines of, "We do not know the precise moment of ensoulment."

With all of this said, I am not an advocate of abortion. I am not encouraging abortion or proposing it as something good. But I do know that there are times and cases, when difficult decisions have to be made. Who is going to make those decisions? A Catholic bishop? A politicians? Or the individual whose body and life is most directly impacted?

Hang on please. Stay with me if you would. If there is anyone who is an ardently Pro-Life Catholic still on board this bus.

Look, I have rode a few of those buses back and forth to Washington, DC. for the annual Pro-Life events. And these trips have been a really wonderful time. Times of camaraderie, friendship, fellowship, prayers, and songs. Watching movies, learning about aspects of our faith as Christians. I had been on a few similar kinds of bus rides to both Washington, D.C. and New York City as well. These were Peace Marches, a lot like the March for Life. Only the focus was on peace or civil rights.

Mea culpa time. I am sometimes really good at tossing out inflammatory comments as I argue a point--and in this respect, I do not consider myself to be a skilled debater. A good debater should inform but never insult, and seek only to persuade not bully or harangue.

But, along the lines of the bus trips to and from the March for Life--it takes nothing away from the positive aspects of this shared experience to say it can be more, that it can be better.

This is what it could be folks. A bunch of Christians and other people of faith or good will, getting together to call for the advancement of all human life issues:

-Reducing poverty by advocating for living minimum wages and policies that reduce wealth disparities

-Ensure adequate safety nets are retained and strengthened

-Endorsing universal healthcare

-Advocating for family and medical leave

- Which must include prenatal care, postnatal care, and daycare--creating the needed Pro-Life infrastructure.

-Uniting to end institutional racism including police brutality and injustice in sentencing/incarceration

-United for an end to institutional sexism, and the evils of sexual violence and sex trafficking

-Advocating for an end to all discrimination against lgbtq+ people

-Ensuring fair and affordable housing, including adequate shelter for homeless and those struggling with mental illness or substance use disorder

-Demanding immediate action on climate change

-Calling for reasonable gun control policies

-Agreeing upon the end of the death penalty nationwide

-Advocating for compassionate immigration policies

Why? Because if we embrace all human beings with love, respect and dignity, and truly care for people, there will be less abortion. If we provide access to comprehensive health care, housing, paid family leave and daycare, and create a life-sustaining, promoting, and nurturing society, there will be a lot less abortion. If we encourage men to treat women with dignity and respect, and have a culture that seeks to eradicate sex-trafficking and sexual violence, there will be less abortion.

This is really creating a holistically kinder, and more humane culture. Which if we step back, and just think about it, isn't this also a more Christlike vision of society? A society where more people will choose life and less people will stick their noses in where they don't belong.

We don't call the Christian religion churchianity for a reason.

A friend wrote me that yesterday.

Hah! Some don't call the Catholic religion Christianity. But that is beside the point.

In my YouTube video of earlier today, I said, Rest in Peace, Pope Benedict XVI. Requiescat in pace.

Ratzinger was an imperfect man, an imperfect priest, bishop, consultant to a Church counsel, prolific writer, professor, theologian, and I pray that they do not ruin his legacy by trying to make him a saint. But he was brilliant. Even amid disagreeable positions, wrongheaded battles, and I think, a naivety of ecclesial corruption.

Did he not realize that as he railed against two moms or two dads raising a family, tucking in their children at night, walking them to school, holding hands in public, he was surrounded by men who literally were keeping Roman prostitution in business, were some of the main patrons of undocumented male escorts (trafficked and exploited human beings), and some of the biggest sexual predators on the planet?

So yeah, it is an understatement when I say he was wrong about some things, naïve about others, and he had his blind spots. For sure. This is why I said, he was ignorant of human nature, basic human behavior, and reality in my opinion.

For the second or third most influential Vatican official in some ways--for decades before becoming pope--he was strangely ignorant of the extent of corruption within the church.

The Catholic Church is filled--especially at the very highest levels--with men suffering from severe arrested development. These men have no wives or mothers to keep them on the straight and narrow so their worst inclinations come out, and are indulged in. A bunch of men who are emotionally teenage boys, with unlimited $$$ and power, and no adult supervision.

I think it is institutionalized misogyny. It is always denied but the misogyny is baked into it. "Yeah, but they have the blessed Mother and all these female saints..."

True.

But too bad that the bad boys of the Vatican don't listen to these feminine voices within the Church.

"But Pope Francis..." Wow. Even today already I am seeing puff-ball news stories about Papa Francisco in major papers. Hello!? Anyone paying attention to the Pope's very own Harvey Weinsteinesque predator--Jesuit artist/priest Marko Ivan Rupnik, who I keep calling RupCo.

Francis is busy rearranging the proverbial deck chairs on the Titanic as it sinks.

But seriously--despite all of this--I love Benedict XVI. Cardinal Ratzinger. He was Fr. Joseph Ratzinger so briefly, a popular theology professor quickly selected as an expert advisor to Vatican II and quickly made a bishop and then a cardinal thereafter. Such a great writer. His written work will endure the test of time.

People will blame him for the pedophile crisis and sex scandal that continues in the Church. But bottom line: Benedict attempted to deal with it--call him a Johnny Come Lately if you want to, but he tried to take action against some prominent predators, like Uncle Teddy McCarrick that virtually every American prelate had known about for decades, and was--dare we say it? Forced out? Pressured to abdicate? To resign?

Meanwhile Francis says some nice things and keeps up certain appearances but allows the disease to fester. Can you spell RupCo$$$Rupnik?

As Christopher Altieri has been bravely reporting in the Catholic World Report. In the words of one of his victims, a consecrated religious sister: "[Rupnik] Father Marko asked me to have threesomes with another sister of the community, because sexuality had to be, in his opinion, free from possession, in the image of the Trinity where, he said, “the third person would welcome the relationship between the two.” On those occasions, he would ask me to live out my femininity in an aggressive and dominant way, and since I could not do so, he would deeply humiliate me with phrases that I cannot repeat."

So yeah. The Catholic Church is like a scene from the lower levels of Hell in Dante's Inferno.

Not much of a eulogy. Sorrow Benedict.

You deserved better. An imperfect holy man surrounded by some of the biggest hypocritical scumbags on the planet earth. You tried to clean it up but found out he could not. The real story of your resignation has yet to be written but someday it will be.

Go to God, Pope Benedict XVI. You were a true believer and holy man living in the viper's den. Requiescat in pace. May blessed Mary and the angels bring your soul to the bosom of Abraham. Jesus remains your strength.

(All images courtesy of Wikipedia Commons and are in the public domain.)

In one encounter, the presumed goddess would say, "I wish that temple be erected here quickly, so I may therein exhibit and give all my love, compassion, help and protection, because I am your merciful mother, to you and to all the inhabitants of this land."

Only later did Juan realize that the woman identified herself as the mother of Jesus, the mother of the deity worshiped by the foreign conquerors and occupiers, the Spanish!

Until this association had been made, Juan Diego had presumed the woman to be the goddess Tonantzin. In fact, once the cult of Guadalupe had spread among the indigenous people of Mexico, this association would continue to be made, as Mary the mother of Jesus and the goddess Tonantzin would become equated in the beliefs of some, a case of inculturation. But that is a future article.

Probably, most of you know the story how Juan was compelled to be the ambassador for Our Lady of Guadalupe before the Archbishop of Mexico City, Juan de Zumárraga. And that in one of the very last appearances, the Lady miraculously caused her image to be imprinted upon the cactus fiber tilma that Juan Diego had been wearing, hence the origin of the icon that is venerated to this day. (I was fortunate to visit Mexico City and see this image just a few years ago.)

I had been reading an English translation of writings by the Greek philosopher and poet Parmenides (late 6th to early 5th century B.C.E.) a few months ago when I encountered something that immediately reminded me of Guadalupe. Parmenides describes, perhaps an imaginary or possibly a real mystical experience. In this encounter, this unnamed goddess grants Parmenides a ride upon a heavenly chariot, borne aloft by the daughters of the sun. The goddess he meets imparts to him words of wisdom: "Learn both the ways of the unwavering heart of persuasive truth and the untrustworthy opinions of mortal human beings." This Elijah-like experience brings Parmenides much sought after enlightenment. It is hard not to see parallels in both the philosophy and mysticism found in the Old Testament or Jewish scriptures, or even ancient Hindu and Buddhist religious texts.

In the book of Wisdom, chapter 7:25-26 for example, "Wisdom, She is a breath of the Deity. A pure emanation of the Almighty's glory...She is a reflection of eternal light, and the untarnished mirror of divine power, the very image of God."

St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) associated the above pericope and many other similar Old Testament passages with St. Mary. Most of the Christian commentators I have read interpret such lines from the book of Wisdom as metaphorical, where Divine Wisdom is personified in the feminine. This tradition is also captured in eastern iconography, where a popular ancient icon is the depiction of Holy Wisdom or Saint Sophia. many examples of this are found within the Russian Icon Museum in Clinton, MA, for example. Interestingly, the first time I encountered such an icon, without knowing what it was depicting, I assumed it to be an image of the Blessed Mother. But I digress.

So, to wrap this up, you have a fuller idea now of where I got the name for this blog and my associated vlog from. As you can tell, I enjoy comparative religion and as one who is no longer serving as a minister of a particular religion, I am unhindered in my studies of world religions and the spiritual traditions of people everywhere. This site is dedicated to dialogue, the pursuit of knowledge, the fostering of understanding and empathy, and also, one's own spiritual journey. Although we all embark upon a voyage that has to be undertaken alone, we can nevertheless benefit from our shared experiences and wisdom.

"

I ask this question as much of myself as of others: "Do religious people often draw the wrong lessons from tragedy?" Finding a plan or a design, and ultimately blaming God, when bad things occur?

Depending on one's own faith tradition or religious beliefs, how one refers to God may differ. God. Goddess. Higher Power. Deity. Jesus? Intercession of an angel or a saint or a Jin? Gods or goddesses in the plural? But there is still the universal question: Does this Deity or deities intervene in our lives and if so, in what way?

Those who celebrate the Advent season as a build up to Christmas believe that God intervened in a remarkable way by becoming a human being, born in Bethlehem. Nearly 2,000 years ago. But even among believers of Jesus there is a lot of disagreement about the significance of the Christmas event. How it happened, when it happened, why it happened? And, what was the purpose of the life and teaching of Jesus? Even the question of who and what Jesus is something even some Christians disagree about. God incarnate, son of God, great prophet, teacher, rabbi, miracle worker, a combination of these?

But today's topic is miracles, and their inverse, tragedy--sorrow, grief, hurt, devastation, events that crush body, mind and soul--amid a seemingly indifferent, uncaring Higher Power. What are miracles anyway, do they occur, and if so, how do they occur?

For the past couple of weeks I have been recovering from a corona-virus like illness. And, I have watched interviews on Youtube of Rabbi Harold Kushner. He has an interesting perspective--one which is enlightening and practical. Perhaps some of you have read the 1981 book he wrote regarding when bad things happen to good people. Rabbi Kushner is not one who believes in big, physical miracles. He does not believe in a God that acts in a bold way upon the natural world. The natural world of space, time, atoms, molecules, DNA, diseases, epidemics, natural disasters, and human choices is not the space that God operates in, according to Kushner. He makes it clear What he and his wife went through in losing their 14 year old son to a fatal disease had challenged Rabbi Kushner's faith. How can a God who intervenes in the world stand by and allow a 14 year old, to suffer a terrible disease, and then tragically die.

A lot of Christians believe in a God who picks and chooses miracles to perform--sometimes saving lives, maybe through the intervention of a saint or angel in Heaven--and sometimes not. If only we pray hard enough! If only we attend healing Masses with faith, with fervor, speak in tongues, invoke the Holy Spirit loud enough. (And I am not disparaging charismatic worship style.)

But how is it that this loving God, permits horrible things to happen on the one hand and intervenes and heals on the other.

But in a traditional Catholic and also, Protestant view, this is how God operates. And it is a mystery. Augustine wrote that God never wills evil but allowed for the permissive will of God, a God who does not and cannot do evil but permits terrible things to unfold in order to later extract some good, or ultimate justice, out of it. This leaves Christians in an uncomfortable spot, basically: praying to God for miracles and even boldly declaring it when they seemingly occur but the flip side, left in a very awkward and painful space when the miraculous intervention fails to arrive.

How many people have expressed to me this year the pain this year's holiday season brings as they recall the loss of loved ones--indeed lots of folks are not here this year who were present a year ago. We are still dealing with the fallout from coronavirus plus the usual scourges that befall us, not to mention increasing deaths due to fentanyl overdosing and gun violence. Last week's Washington Post said that the fentanyl crisis is the number one epidemic in America. It is the number one killer of people in their late teens, 20s and 30s. More than Covid. More than gun violence. More than Cancer. How many funerals...some of us have gone to far too many of them.

Physical miracles...I am not saying they do or do not happen. But why would they? Why would two parents in an emergency watch their child die, for example, as a hospital away God permits another child to pull though?

Rabbi Kushner's perspective has been consistent over the past 40 or so years, in saying that the real miracle is not a physical change or some dramatic intervention by God in the physical world. God does not intervene in the physical world; God does not control laws of nature, genetics, falling trees, natural occurrences nor human acts. Rather, one's God or Goddess or Deity or the Higher Power operates in spiritual realm--the metaphysical realm--perhaps a Hindu or a Buddhist would refer to this as the realm of the mind and the heart. The Christian would say it is occurring on a metaphysical level, a spiritual level, or on a psychological and/or emotional plain.

The realm of the soul or the subconscious...but even then, not in a controlling way...

Kushner says there are no strings. God does not pull strings. As Kushner put it, and I may paraphrase only slightly, "God's job is not to make sick people healthy. God's job is to make sick people brave."

God imparts hope, strength, courage--the courage to persevere even when hope seems elusive. In the halls downstairs at St. Monica's and St. Peter's churches in South Boston where the AA meetings take place, there are signs up that say don't leave before the miracle happens. Isn't that the exact kind of miracle that Kushner is talking about? An intangible strength that goes beyond what the individual herself or himself can muster--a power outside oneself, greater than oneself, like step 2 in AA, NA and MA circles--a strength beyond oneself, one's own ego.

This is subtle, and less dramatic, than the kind of miracles some might want to believe in. But this is what Rabbi Kushner speaks about. God imparts courage...the courage to deal with illness, bad news, tragedy, addiction...the strength to persevere and survive loss...and to lend comfort and support to others. Not a string puller, but inspiring us to be the change we want to see in the world.

But part of rehabilitating Thanksgiving might be simply asking ourselves what it has become, in practice. For most Americans, the holiday is a long weekend, to gather with family and friends and celebrate--pardon the alliteration but it is about feasting with friends and family, in a spirit of gratitude--whether to God or to others.

Subtly religious roots, the idea of giving thanks to God for the blessings he has bestowed upon us, has a certain tarnish to it when one considers that this was intimately connected with a sense of entitlement. White power and privilege, over perceived inferior races with darker complexions. Whether from Spain, Portugal, England or France, the lighter-skinned conquerors of the Americas seemed to never question that they had an absolute right to disrupt, displace, and utterly annihilate the indigenous cultures encountered in the so-called New World. Wave upon wave of arrivals came, including cargo ships from Africa with dark-hued human beings chained and stacked like lumber. There seemed to be no bottom to the depravity these so-called Christians could commit, and no misery that they were not willing to impose upon their fellow human beings. Entitlement unlike the world had ever seen. Civilizations pushed aside. Lands devastated. Even the earth itself turned upside down in the quest for raw materials.

Religious bureaucracies were, by many accounts, the largest beneficiaries of the wealth that was extracted from the Americas, by the blood of African chattel slaves, which in Central and South America was combined with the involuntary toil of millions of Indigenous peoples, worked to death, as decades stretched on to centuries.

We now know it was all a big lie: That the Native Americans were somehow primitive or had no culture, or civil institutions. How the myths were told for centuries up and down the western hemisphere, of how the Europeans brought religion and civility to these "savages," these "red skins" and "brown skins". But villages were sacked, and further south, cities, temples, and libraries were destroyed. Gold and silver extracted. Tens of thousands, maybe much more, of scrolls set on fire. Political and religious leaders were tortured and executed. And yes, this genocide was certainly aided and abetted by the diseases and epidemics which the White Man, at first inadvertently, brought, for which the native populations had no natural immunity. But make no mistake: The Europeans never came in peace.

I am just old enough to remember the days in elementary school where we would reenact the mythical first Thanksgiving, half the class dressed as Pilgrims and the other half as Native Americans. The awkward pause as a child would invariably ask the teacher, "What happened to all the Indians?" "They died out," the teacher would quickly stammer. Next subject?

Gratitude.

Gratitude is certainly a virtue. But can we speak of being grateful? Sure, why not? Grateful for friends, and families, and wellbeing. And sure, faith can be part of that. Thanking whatever gods or goddesses or higher powers we worship for all that we have and all that we hope to preserve. But let us say another kind of prayer as well. Let us pray that our generation does not repeat the kind of errors that generations past made, in thinking they were better than other human beings. Rather, let us strive every day to be a little bit kinder, a tad more forgiving, less angry, and more self-reflective. May we never justify hatred, or bigotry, or violence, nor commit the worst blasphemy imaginable, that of dressing up our prejudices with piety, telling ourselves that God somehow wills it.

When I was a priest. It seems ages ago. Just 6 months now.

I wrote about this season a lot. And preached of it even more often. I had studied the traditions, the devotions, and freely shared this information.

Religious texts are full of verses, alluding to suffering, death, dying, the soul's journey beyond the death of the body, time, and into eternity. Yes. Some texts are clearer than others. But the context of all are often obscured by one's own bias and history, culture, or the language in which it was originally written.

Tradition and interpretation is relevant, exegesis and eisegesis, and very often the interpretive lens is the respective church or community an individual belongs to. What power the cleric has over the minds and hearts...

Unworthy of the responsibility most of the time. And I include myself. When I had been a priest, in times past, I used the interpretive lens of the Catholic Church. Often times, the Church given its multifaceted history, has had numerous interpretations and no settled on version. But to the uber-ortho Catholic, there is the hard right-wing ready to insist upon just one-very-narrow-slice-of-interpretation with the posthumous imprimatur of Mother Angelica and EWTN, Inc.

For the rest, there were catechisms, encyclicals, the writings of saints, biblical scholars’ commentaries, and patristic writings. But even these were not uniform or of one mind. The old Raccolta could be a source of devotional prayers that over the centuries had been given the approval of various pontiffs, or a more streamlined and modern version of this approved by Paul VI could be used. In fact, there were many general instructions, not just of the revised Missal but of all the reformed rites of the Church that could be treasure troves of what the Church still taught about marriage, penance, baptism, the eucharist, death, the life of the soul after death, etc.

Resources. So many go-to sources.

And it all boiled down to this. For me.

All Souls Day. All Saints Day. Bleeding together. The dead. The living. Our loved ones no longer with us, and we miss them. And we know we too shall depart this mortal coil one day.

Grief. Anxiety. Fear. Guilt. Shame. Remorse. Fear. All are resurrected on All Souls Day. These are the ghouls, wolfmen, gargoyles, and zombies that haunt.

Death is never the end. Not for the spiritually inclined. It cannot be. And so at funeral liturgies, a source of comfort is offered in the form of assurances. Prayers offered to people grieving the loss of a loved one: Words that transcend time, space, or even religion: “Saints of God, come to her aid! Come, angels of the Lord! Receive her soul and present her to God the Most High.”

This age-old invocation of ancestors, to come to one’s aid, is a primordial tradition that goes back to cave-dwelling humanity, from what anthropologic discoveries have revealed. Hundreds of thousands of years, transcending religious and cultural boundaries.

I remember a Vietnamese couple in a predominantly Vietnamese-American church community explain it to me one time, before the altar where All-Souls remembrance candles were being lit. In pre-Catholic times, there had been a kind of ancestor worship, they explained. Prayers would be offered to the deceased loved ones in a domain beyond time or space, but somehow, they could see and hear those of us who dwelled on earth. A candle would be lit. A prayer offered.

I asked them, “How is it different now?”

There was a pause. “It’s through Christ now. That is the difference. We recognize that they live in Christ. But we still speak to them, they still hear us. Through Christ, who gives them life.”

I am sure I am paraphrasing a little bit. But that is the gist of it.

And it fits with another tradition I am aware of, which I first read decades ago. In chapter 10 of the Bhagavad Gita, where Arjuna comes to realize that he is in the presence of the One, the Deity Itself. “You are the supreme brahman, the ultimate, the supreme abode and purifier, the absolute truth and the eternal divine person. You are the primal god, transcendental and original, and you are the unborn and all-pervading beauty. All the great sages such as Narada, Asita, Devala, and Vyasa proclaim this of you, and now you yourself are declaring it to me.”

Another deep Hindu text, the Devi Mahatmya offers a Goddess-centric version of the same experience of encountering the transcendent, “She creates this entire universe, both moving and unmoving. It is she who, when propitious, grants the best to humans and shows the way for their final liberation. She is the supreme knowledge, the cause of final liberation, and eternal.”

Life. Death. Eternity.

All Souls Day bleeds into All Saints Day. But in some ways the All Souls side of the coin is less complicated. It is less encumbered by the dogma of November 1st. Because when we start getting into the Lives of the Saints—the great Saints, sure thing—but what about the roguish ones? The ones that the Church declared as Saints but subsequently we are learning some rather unsaintly things about them? Even some recent ones?

Aaaaah. Maybe now I get it. That quote. Or non-quote. Perhaps whether or not Dorothy Day ever said isn't the point. “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.”

So everyday I receive these things, in the form of text messages, emails, Facebook posts, etc. Some are easy to deal with. Block the sender, or unfriend them, or delete and block the text. But others are not so simply dealt with because they come from long-time friends or relatives. And I have deleted, blocked relatives and friends before—but I am more hesitant to do so, because I always think about the past relationship, and the finality of cutting them off—even if only in a social media sense.

But I have blocked a bunch. And sometimes I think people just blindly parrot what they hear, or copy and paste, or resend, what they see and hear. There is certainly a lack of critical thinking.

We’ve heard this before. That Catholic cultural conservatives prefer a smaller, more homogenous church, and they denounce those whom they view as being “Catholic lite.” They want a Church that is like that of a bygone era that they think existed, perhaps based upon a 1955 Baltimore Catechism, or a Michael Voris or Raymond Arroyo diatribe, or Cable re-runs of a dead right-wing ranting, and exaggerating, nun, or some such thing.

But they live in a fantasy. The American family no longer looks a thing like what they profess. Their families do not look a thong like it. These doubly and triply divorced, fornicating or closeted bisexual or homosexual hypocrites will rant about the sexual sins of others all day long. But their own sins could fill a book. Ditto and double on their so-called pro-life and abortion rants, whereby they love to judge other people’s lives but what are they hiding in their past? Old antiquated racism and antisemitism—and ironically—the nativism that used to be directed against Catholics—is resurrected, along with stilted terminology. And this is embraced? By supposed followers of Jesus who railed against hypocrisy, cruelty, and judging others?

I am reminded of a poll from just two years ago: Among those who say they are practicing Catholics, 69 percent supported Trump. However, 60 percent of those who are non-practicing Catholics supported Biden. But look closer—how many of those so-called supporters of Biden have a kind of serfish fealty to him, or regard him as a kind of prophet or cult-leader?

Hmmmmm?

The same Church that never denied Communion to fascist politicians even at the height of oppression and genocide now have prelates and priests calling for the denial of the Blessed Sacrament to Catholic politicians who endorse a woman’s right to choose. Ironic.

Because on other matters, these same far-right adherents want the right to choose for themselves, and rail against supposedly intrusive government policies regarding things that never even come close to touching their bodies and what they can do with them. Just a couple of year’s ago, Cardinal Raymond Burke, the poster child of closeted gayness-while overtly bashing LGBTQ at ever turn, said in an interview, “no practicing Catholic” can vote for pro-choice politicians.

As folks like John Gehring and Christopher Lamb have observed, there is a well-funded Catholic echo-chamber in the United States that parallels the politically conservative one. The end result, the fruits of these efforts, and the perpetual lie machines of the same as ilk Lie-Site News and EWTN-Fascista-Catholic Radio is something vile showing up in my inbox with the phrase, “Judeo-Masonic-democratic degeneracy….” WTF!?!

Gotta talk to you about unnamed male friends. It seems I got a lot of these guys on social media, and some I have known for a long time.

But quite a few of them now. They reached their 40s or even 50s, and they got into guns. Some had liked guns at an earlier age. And a smaller percentage had past military experience, but most of them, nada.

These folks, a dozen or so guys--less than a handful of female friends also--are really getting into the so-called blood sports. Posting photos on FB or Instagram with a bloody dead animal. How lovely.

It's like a midlife crisis thing or something. White people reaching middle age and they decide they need to kill something. Join a gun club, start shooting, purchasing and collecting weapons, often semi-automatic rifles, and starting to hang with the other hunters. Lots of boasting and exhibitionism accompanies this phase. "Aaaaaaaaargh, primal scream. Let's do a meat hunt. Post it online."

If I don't unfriend them all when they see this, they can unfriend me. I won't mind. I am done with it. They scare me. Truly.

People picking up the thrill of the kill at such a late age. It strikes me as odd because I think oppositely. I think we should unlearn the thrill of the kill--whatever indifference to human and animal life we may have acquired early on in life, perhaps overloaded with hormones or recreational drugs, and basically not giving a fuck about anyone but ourselves. Say goodbye to all of that. Why embrace it now? Radical selfishness? Like the world doesn't have enough toxic self-centeredness?

Why don’t these guys discover Taoism or Buddhism or Yoga or something peaceful. Some of you claim to be Catholic--pray the Rosary outdoors then. Take a walk and count your beads. Do you think God wants you killing his creation for no good reason? Heck, learn to knit or paint. Want to be outdoors? Birdwatching is nice.

What is up with you guys? I have nothing in common with any of you anymore.

And they don't listen. Obstinate. I hate their love for guns, their posts with dead animals, and their boasts about deer hunts, "Oooooh, Aaaaah, got a rack of antlers, Rargh," quail season, or grouse season, or bear season…Fucking brag about shooting a friggin' duck. C'mon! They swim right up to you, you asshole!

To me it is horrifying. It makes me sick in the pit of my stomach. Not that I am opposed to people hunting for food in some instances but for the most part, I just find it disgusting.

It is cruel and unnecessary.

Be a human being. Be something better.

Don’t be a killer.

Earlier today I was at Marine Park in South Boston, attending the largest outdoor 12-step meeting that I am aware of, trying to avoid standing down-wind from the cigar smoke. There's so much random cigar smoking at this meeting that my asthma kicks into over-drive. Even as I write this, I have had a hell of day. Way worse asthma symptoms than usual. Had symptoms of bronchitis the last couple of days--not Covid though--and this asthma just compounds it.

The 12-steps are amazing. the spiritual program--the path towards a more enlightened sense of others, of taking personal responsibility and truly cultivating a more conscientious way of living, mindful of not doing harm to self or others. I have a hard time reconciling this with perhaps a kind of common man/woman or blue-collar embrace of this spiritual program while at the same time really not giving a wild fuck about the fact that perhaps the people standing and sitting nearby don't want to breathe in your flaming, burning logs of dog shit.

I can't get my lungs to work right today--thank you fellas. And it is a guy-thing, because while women make up close to half of those attending the meeting there are absolutely none of them smoking brown logs of burning cow manure during the meeting, blowing their smoke in everyone else's faces, and really just not giving a rats ass.

So I am struggling as I write this, to get a breath of air. To get my wind and it is nearly 12 hours after the meeting. But I digress... I thought a walk around Pleasure Bay would help put some air into my lungs between 12:15 to 1:30 or so...

(No, this is not the Loc Ness monster. It is a Loon in the bay. One of an asylum of 10-11 Red-Throated Loons, perhaps passing through along their migration route?)

I was standing trying to get away from the wafts of burning horse feces know as cigars, and found myself under a tall tree that almost had locust like leaves but was clearly not a locust-bean tree. And I instinctively looked to the name-tag, but there was none. But as noted above, the spiritual highlight of my day was (mostly) the Boat Meeting while the naturalistic highlight of my day wasn't horticulture, but ornithology. So I took that aforementioned slow-paced walk around the sugar-bowl at Pleasure Bay and along the end of William J. Day approaching Fort Independence where a flock of 10-11 Red-Throated Loons, swimming and diving in a kind of formation as the traveled southwest just a few yards from the beach.

They were meandering to find fish, I suppose--not unlike my stream of thoughts as the timer on my cell phone just sounded signaling me that my Covid-19, rapid home test kit results are ready. Well, that's good at least. Negative.

Women’s rights. Antisemitism. The rights of migrants. Issues of war and peace. Racism. Ecumenism and interreligious dialogue.

Many do not see the Church as having the same forward trajectory as it seemed to have in the years following John XXIII’s pontificate. Even in 2014, the very year that John XXIII was declared a saint by the Church, the mixed reactions and ambivalence on the part of Roman Catholic clergy polled spoke volumes. The Church is on a different trajectory than that charted by good Pope John.

And I think that is too bad.

Because we are living at a time when the world is in crisis, and a lot of the ugly, fascist movements from previous decades are rearing their heads again. In our own country—actually many countries—we see an alignment between a kind of Christian nationalism, xenophobia, racism, and resurgent sexism and antisemitism.

But only do we live in time when there seems to be increasingly an embrace of extremist ideologies among Catholics and other Christians, but there is a rejection of some of truly affirmative spiritual tends that came out of the Vatican II era, such as ecumenism, interreligious dialogue and cooperation, and centering prayer.

Of the latter, one is more likely to encounter those who dissect and criticize the documents of Vatican II and disparage varieties of contemplative prayer or spirituality that they really know next to nothing about. I thought of John XXIII at the start of this short “rant” because to me he is a Christ-like example of what is so sorely lacking in the Catholic world of today.

I was able to do all of those things and self-medicate too.

That's why this blog is about spirituality more than anything--and a spirituality without judgment or presuppositions. No one can define your experience with the deity of your understanding for you. That path, the path of trying to manage another's faith journey, leads to destruction.

This is a journey all of us must make alone--although we can certainly share our experiences and relish the emotional support , kindness and friendship of others.

I had acquired a lot of religion over the past few years but had a shallow spirituality.

I seldom talk about my recovery in a public forum but maybe I should so more often. So I have been in recovery for alcoholism/addiction since 2020. And the spirituality of AA changed my life and ultimately led to my reassessing of a lot of things in life. One of the things I am most grateful for is the renewed spiritual path the twelve steps placed me upon. I had been stagnant for so long.

As many of you know, I was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 2014, and requested a leave of absence in April, 2022. I left. Went back to work on a secular career path.

Spiritual awakening.

A lot of folks don’t realize this but my spiritual journey was no longer compatible with the path of a Catholic cleric. This has shocked some people I have spoken to, and frankly, some old acquaintances have not reacted well to this at all. That is ok. They have their paths and I have mine. This blog is about my path. But hopefully it is a help for you to discern your spiritual path. And that’s the point really.

The twelfth step of AA states, “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” (Big Book, Chapter Five.)

McDermott concludes his article, “In the end, you can’t stop an idea through censorship. And usually the impulse to try comes out of fear of others, rather than love for one’s own.” I think this is true. And I think the point that he makes is so sorely needed to be heard and embraced by American Catholics, many of whom are sadly caught up in the fervor of right-wing politics that now seeks to ban numerous books from schools and libraries.

I agree with McDermott’s point that censorship—in the long run—does not work. What concerns me, however, is that in the short-run censorship can stifle democratic discourse, the free exchange of ideas, and have a terrible chilling effect on society.

In the 1920s and 30s for example, as the Fascists rose to power in Italy, it is now well-documented that the Catholic Church from the Pope on down decided to ride upon Benito Mussolini’s coat-tails, and actually often carried his water for him by censoring the Catholic media, from Jesuit publications to church bulletins. (See for example the research of David Kertzer.)

Ideas.

Some ideas challenge and to those being challenged, especially those in positions of power, react.

In 1562, Bishop Diego de Landa Calderón, OFM, ordered the destruction of a Mayan library that pre-dated Christianity by thousands of years. Almost all of the the Mayan manuscripts (codices) –works that as one author notes, “would have been very useful in deciphering Maya script, knowledge of Maya religion and civilization, and the history of the American continent,” were wiped out. Calderón became the gatekeeper of the information that remained about this ancient American civilization—and quite obviously he had an agenda, in the conversion of the peoples of the Americas to Catholic Christianity.

In the long-run, look at what was lost--the damage that was caused?

I have encountered a kind of self-censorship on the part of American Catholics when I attempt to share an article with them from America magazine, or the National Catholic Reporter, for example. Immediately, some react, with a

generalized, “I don’t read that.” What some of my friends and acquaintan

ces are essentially saying is, there are ideas in those periodicals that may challenge their beliefs.

That is what is going on in schools and libraries throughout the United States now.

Ashley Hope Pérez, John Irving, Toni Morrison, George Orwell, William Styron, John Steinbeck, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Art Spiegelman, and George Johnson are just a few of the authors of the 1,648 books banned by school districts in some 32 states over the past year. These books deal with issues such as authoritarianism, human sexuality, race relations, slavery, discrimination, and bullying. Public libraries are feeling a similar squeeze. According to the American Library Association, there were 729 attempts to censor American public library materials in 2021, involving a total of 1,597 titles. And with only part of the 2022 year tabulated, there had already been 681 challenges to more than 1,650 titles!

America, please. And American Christians particularly, and Catholics quite specifically. Please don’t check your brains at the door.

Many, many months back now, I did something that I had been doing for decades--often mindlessly, seemingly by instinct.

I lit a candle.

I was working as the Rector of the Seaport Shrine of Our Lady of Good Voyage. It was an early morning, and I was the only one in the plaza before the entrance to the shrine. As I typically did, after unlocking the door, I went straight to what was called the Mary Shrine. There at this shrine within a shrine, was a roughly 30% of life-size carved statue of the mother of Jesus, the Blessed Mother as she is known, and specifically Our Lady of Good Voyage. Not unlike the similarly named, Mary, Star of the Sea, Our Lady of Good Voyage was invoked by those whose livelihoods were connected to the ocean in some way. Sailors, navigators, fisherman, dock workers.

I lit a candle and my mind wandered to other Marian shrines I had been to, and there have been many...Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal, Our Lady of Lourdes in France, Our Lady of the Pillar in Spain, and more, but I stopped, in my thoughts, at one of the most memorable of these temples, the one built "over" the ancient Roman Temple dedicated to Artemis in Rome: the Santa Maria Sopra Minerva basilica in Rome. How many worshippers of the Goddess Minerva, I thought to myself, had done exactly what I had just done in the present, in Boston's Seaport. How many, in times past, walked into a shrine and lit a candle before an image of a divine figure of spiritual intercession--not so different from the one in the Seaport Shrine.

There were goddesses then! And priestesses also!

(Above photo taken at the location of one of the first Marian apparitions of Catholicism.)

And yet, as I sat alone in that temple built almost exactly in accordance with the appearance of ancient Roman places of worship, I wondered how it can be so. A religion said to be more advanced, a religion that is said to have come from God himself--could relegate women to such obvious second class status. Even the venerated Blessed Mother herself--with her multiple images outnumbering those of her son in the church I sat in--was disqualified from being a cleric. "This discrimination cannot be of God. This cannot be of God."

That was a turning point for me. I had my opinions, and a deep-seated sense of justice, but as I looked about this temple of Roman Catholicism that I myself ministered in, I realized also that the Church as an institutional bureaucracy had turned a corner a long time ago, a patriarchal elitist turn that was predicated upon the subjection of women and nothing was ever going to change.

Some things endure. People's need for spirituality. The seeking of one's Higher Power. The search for meaning. That would have been true in Minerva's temple in Rome. Or Artemis' grand temple in Ephesus, one of the Wonders of the Ancient World, sadly now only ruins.

The lighting of a candle.