Fr Jim's (old) Blog

This year's Social Justice Sunday statement Everybody's Business challenges the neo-liberal principles which we take for granted run our economy and businesses. Five long established tenets of Catholic Social Teaching were used to critique the way business and the economy are run: The dignity of the human person means that people are not just units of production The universal destination of goods means that everybody deserves a share Solidarity means that the powerful, wealthy and capable must stand for and with the weak and poor The preferential option for the poor means that the more must be included in decision making The common good means that all of society, not just shareholders must be taken into account Why? Pope Francis tweeted inequality is the root of social evil  Social researched Richard Wilkinson shows in his TED talk that the inequality caused by unchecked economic growth causes social inequality which is detrimental not just to the poor but to the ...

The National Church Life Survey which the parish completed in November 2016 showed some good news which we celebrated on the weekend on our Holy Cross Feast Day: we have improved significantly since the last survey five years ago, and are above the diocesan average on a range of measures.

The Ladder of Inference is an idea developed by Harvard professor Chris Argyris to show how we can often make inferences in the way we perceive other people and their actions towards us. With several steps on this ladder, there is plenty of room for error on our part if we assume that we always know what is right and that we are hearing other people correctly. A humble stance can allow us to acknowledge that perhaps discernment is needed. Two examples I used in a recent homily are below.

"What is your image of God?" is a question which is often asked on retreats. We know the "right" answer will say things like God is loving, kind, and forgiving. However, sometimes beneath the surface, there are other, unacknowledged images which we actually operate from, but which are different to our professed image. These operative images of God are important to uncover, acknowledge and deal with, for sometimes, especially if they are of a harsh, judgemental or controlling God, they can undermine our faith, our spirituality, and our sense of self. Noreen Wilkie Au develops this idea in her book God's Unconditional Love: Healing our Shame

Last weekend I preached on "White privilege" as part of exploring how Jesus moved beyond his own Jewish-only worldview to embrace the Canaanite / Syro-Phoenecian woman as an individual, a woman of faith, and worthy of his attention  (Matt 15:21-18). White privilege isn't meant to be a perjorative term. Rather, it is a humble acknowledgement by white / Anglo / Caucasian people that there are privileges which I am often unaware of in my culture. Or rather, there are obstacles which others have to overcome which I don't have to consider, which make life easier. Naming and owning my sense of privilege (which can also be male and heterosexual) helps me to become more compassionate to others who don't share this privilege. Author Peggy McIntosh who coined the phrase's article is here , including 50 signs of white privilege, some of which I used in the homily.

These are photos taken by our parishioner John Lovell of a rare halo cloud, perfectly poised above the church on August 16th.

Yesterday I went to my friend Eric's Lutheran church where he is pastor. It was great to see him in action again presiding at a service which has the same liturgical format as a Catholic Mass, but a little more informal. The most touching thing is that he doesn't preside from a presider's chair at the front, but its in the front row with his wife and small daughters. It makes  me think about our married deacons and how we can make space for them to worship with their families as well as minster at the altar. Eric is a great preacher. He preached on the feeding of the 5000 and referred to the the common idea that God invites our cooperation in his work. But he did it so well. He made the scripture account alive, painting a picture of the scene and emphasising that Jesus didn't push the disciples out of the way saying "step aside, I've got this covered I' m going to do a miracle". He told them to "give the people something to eat yourself", ...

For some people a flight is a time to watch films, read a novel, or sleep. But I discovered another opportunity on my three and half hour flight from Omaha to Seattle: a mini retreat. The last two days at Creighton were a rush: final classes, final essays due, then, even before we'd finished those we were packing down kitchens and common rooms, people were packing their bags, and then started leaving. Some of them rushing and running down the hallway to get to a flight on time. There wasn't much of a sense of closure or finality. So the time on the plane was time to, as we say at Creighton, "gather the graces", that is, to reflect on all that has happened, to see God's hand in it all, and to give thanks. I felt a rush of sadness as the plane taxied toward the runway, wishing I could stay just one more day. But there's nothing there to stay for. The people who make the experience have already dispersed. The experience of Creighton is a confluence of people ...

 One of my classes this term has been The Spirituality of Social Concern. It overlaps with other courses on Catholic social teaching which I've done previously, but it goes further, in that it looks at the spirituality which underpins and animates the rich heritage of the Church's social justice teaching. The Church is more known for its teaching against abortion and divorce, but for more than 120 years there have been official statements by popes, councils and conferences of bishops on economic, political, social, racial and environmental issues. The Second Vatican Council reinvigorated the Church's sense of its place in the world, being an agent of the Kingdom of God, to be used by God for the transformation of the world, not as a refuge from the world. Fr Rutilio Grande SJ In the 1960s the bishops of Latin America got together and made a bold statement that the majority of the peoples of Latin America were poor and oppressed, and that from now on the Church woul...

One of the things I love about being here in Omaha is the opportunity to go to Mass and sit & kneel in the pews, rather than be up front presiding, much as I enjoy that too. I think we all, when visiting a new parish, can tend to praise or criticise the way Mass is done there, be it the music, the homily, the proclaimers of the Word, the priest or other people in the congregation. Indeed, sometimes these are the reasons people change parishes or make decisions about which Mass they'll go to. It's particularly easy as a priest to be critical of other priests' ways of preaching and presiding at Mass, perhaps as a chef might critique other people's cooking. On weekdays I usually go to the 5pm (there's 7am and midday as well) and on Sundays I go to 10.30am. You never know which priest you're going to have, because there is a whole community of Jesuit priests here who take turns, each with their own unique style.  So it's easy here to be distracted by the...

As you can imagine, I have a few books to read. These are my books for my four subjects this term: Discernment and Spiritual Direction last term, and Contemplation and Social Justice this term. Fortunately the three large books on Christian Spirituality are recommended, not required so I will only use some chapters. The rest, yep, cover to cover. I'm going to have some heavy bags coming back....

Each weekend here is needed for writing the papers which are due the following week. But the weekend between the first and second terms was completely free, so my room mate ( a US term meaning flat mate) and I headed out country for the weekend to go camping. I wasn't quite sure what we were going to. Remember that Nebraska is flat and Iowa is even flatter, so magnificent mountains weren't on the cards. One of my classmates cautioned us to not get trampled by a cow.  But what we did find was Hitchcock Nature Centre in Iowa, which was a small national park with some low hills and nice wooded areas. It's also part of a north-south bird migration corridor, so there was plenty of bird life, and even observation towers where serious twitchers go to survey the numbers of particular birds at key migration seasons. This was unlike my usual multi-day distance treks. We found a little campsite to pitch the tents, and unlike most Australia national parks in summer could make a fir...

It's the Fourth of July, US independence day. It's big deal here in the US. American's don't really need an excuse to wave the flag, but it is also a public holiday, and it is just wonderful to have a day off from classes, after all weekend was spent writing the end of term papers. There's still reading to be done for class tomorrow, but I was able to go and do some of it in a hammock. I also appreciated the irony of the organist who played God Save the Queen before Mass. I don't think many people noticed... I'm looking forward to the fireworks tonight, which unlike Sydney's NYE show I just wandered down to last year and I stood closer to any fireworks I've ever seen before, feeling the percussion of each firework go off. I've been inviting my classmates to come watch the display with tonight, but a couple of my classmates from Africa told me they don't like fireworks. Why not? Because the sound reminds them of gunfire from back home, ...

This is another exercise I did for the Discernment of Spirits class, this time applying Ignatius' Rules for Discernment to a time when I experienced the presence of God, which Ignatius calls consolation. While it mightn't all make sense if you haven't studied all the rules, it might give a sense of how we can firstly use the rules to interpret our experience, and then to make good decisions.  "I woke up at 6am on my first day at Creighton this year after a broken night’s sleep from jetlag. I decided not to stay in bed and to try for more sleep, but to get up and to start the day in prayer. I sat down facing the window, and even before I my prayer began I experienced a rush of joy and excitement, and my imagination opened up with the realisation that this was the place where I would sit for prayer every day for the next eight weeks. I entered into prayer joyfully and renewed my commitment to start each day with an hour of prayer, knowing that my time at Crei...

One of the unique contributions of St Ignatius of Loyola to the spiritual heritage of the Church is his Rules for the Discernment of Spirits. Ignatius takes seriously that both God (whom he calls The Good Spirit) and forces opposed to God (the flesh, the world and the devil whom he collectively calls The Bad Spirit) influence us. We remain free to choose, and Ignatius gives rules for understanding and choosing how to act. One of our assignments this week has been to identify a challenging time in our lives when we were influenced by both the good and bad spirit. I wrote about my awful jetlagged retreat here in Nebraska last year, which I'm sure I told many of you about already last year. The references in brackets are to the various Rules. "Last year I arrived at Griswold Retreat Centre keen to begin my 8 day retreat prior to the first term of CSP. I had been in the US for several days already to begin adjusting to the timezone. However on the first night I f...