Saturday, September 29, 2007

October Schedule E.R.I.

I apologize for failing to post to this weblog recently. As you can see from the October itinerary below, the Emmaus Road Initiative schedule leaves precious little time. This schedule will remain posted on our sister blog.

If and when it's possible, I will try to post something here as well. Thanks so much for all the encouragement and support. In the final analysis the work is far more exhilarating than exhausting, though it is a bit of both. I feel privileged to be called to it, and immensely grateful to all those who help make it possible.

The October schedule for the Emmaus Road Initiative is below.

There are two alterations from September:

SAN FRANCISCO, CA
This month we will have a San Francisco venue, at which I will give an overview of the three fall sessions. Because we have just now made plans for a San Francisco venue, and because the November schedule makes a San Francisco stop impossible, the meeting at St. Thomas More Parish in San Francisco on Wednesday, October 10th will be an introduction and a preparation for monthly sessions at the same location beginning in January.

GLASTONBURY, CT
The other scheduling change is due to a mistake on our part: One of the many changes we made in an effort to arrange a very busy and complicated schedule was not communicated to our friends in Glastonbury, Connecticut. So we are having to cancel that venue for October. At the Monday, November 12th session at St. Dunstan's Parish in Glastonbury I will give a synopsis of the October session prior to presenting the material for November. We hope to have complimentary CDs of the October sessions on hand as well.

The Emmaus Road Initiative sessions for October are as follows:

Washington, DC – Saturday, October 6th

Washington Theological Union
6896 Laurel Street NW
Washington, DC 20012
9:30 to 11:30 a.m. (Coffee at 9:15)

For more information: 866-506-5451

MAP

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Glastonbury, CT – CANCELED IN OCTOBER
The E.R.I. session on Monday, Nov. 12th
will be an abbreviated “double” session.

St. Dunstan's Church
1345 Manchester Road
Glastonbury, CT 06033
7:30 p.m.
For more information: 860-633-3317

MAP

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Seattle, WA – Tuesday, October 9th

St. Benedict's Catholic Church
1805 North 49th Street
Seattle WA 98103
7:30 p.m.

For more information: 866-506-5451

MAP

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San Francisco, CA – Wednesday, October 10th

St. Thomas More Catholic Church
1300 Junipero Serra Blvd.
San Francisco, CA 94132

7:30 p.m.

For more information: 866-506-5451

MAP

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Santa Rosa, CA – Thursday, October 11th

Spiritual Enrichment Center

360 Farmers Lane
Santa Rosa, CA 95405
7:00 p.m.

For more information: 866-506-5451

MAP

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Dallas, TX – Saturday, October 13th

St. Monica’s Catholic Church
9933 Midway Road
(at the intersection of Midway Road & Walnut Hill)
Dallas, TX 75220
10 a.m. to Noon

For more information: 972 416-5815

MAP

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Dallas, TX – Sunday, October 14th

St. Joseph’s Catholic Church
600 S. Jupiter Road
Richardson, TX 75081
Noon to 1:30 p.m.

For more information: 866-506-5451

MAP

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Dallas, TX – Monday, October 15th

University of Dallas
1845 E. Northgate Drive
Gorman Lecture Center, Room B
Irving, TX 75062
7:00 p.m.

For more information: Mrs. Suzanne Alexander 972-721-5219

MAP - Map to the Campus

MAP - Map of the Campus

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San Diego, CA – Wednesday, October 17th

University of San Diego
Degheri Alumni Center

5998 Alcala Park
San Diego, CA
7:00 p.m.

For more information: 866-506-5451

MAP - Map to the Campus

MAP - Map of the Campus

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San Diego, CA – Thursday, October 18th

Immaculate Conception Church
2540 San Diego Avenue - Old Town
San Diego, CA 92101
10:00 a.m. (Coffee at 9:45)

For more information: 866-506-5451

MAP

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Wheaton, IL – Monday, October 22nd

St. Michael Catholic Church
310 S Wheaton Avenue
Wheaton, IL 60187
7:30 p.m.

For more information: 630 220-7329

MAP

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Houston, TX – Wednesday, October 24th

St. Cyril of Alexandria Catholic Church
10503 Westheimer Road
Houston, TX 77042
7:30 p.m.

For more information: 713 789-1250

MAP

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Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Last September Stop: HOUSTON


Houston, TX Wednesday, Sept. 26th

St. Cyril of Alexandria Catholic Church
10503 Westheimer Road
Houston, TX 77042
7:30 p.m.

For more information: 713 789-1250

MAP

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Next Stop: WHEATON


Wheaton, IL Monday, Sept. 24th

St. Michael Catholic Church
310 S Wheaton Avenue
Wheaton, IL 60187
7:30 p.m.

For more information: 630 220-7329

MAP

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Like Father, Like Son

My son, Hunt, is the manager of Murphy's Irish Pub in lovely Sonoma, where I lived for many years. He competes each year in the local bartender competition. His skills in this area are legendary. For something on this year's competition: here.

The apples don't fall far from the tree. If Oscar Wilde was right when he said that a couple of shots of whiskey is capable of producing something very similar to intoxication, then Hunt and I are in the same general line of work. I'm sure his perfectly genuine smile and his heart of gold do his customers more long-term good than the margaritas and the mai tais do.

In a more solemn and serene moment, here is a photo of Hunt and his Dad renewing their baptismal vows in the Jordan River.

And here we are a few years earlier:

Next stop on the Emmaus Road Initiative tour: Wheaton, Illinois


Monday, September 17, 2007

Next Stop: SAN DIEGO

San Diego, CA Wednesday, Sept. 19th

Immaculate Conception Church
2540 San Diego Avenue - Old Town
San Diego, CA 92101
7:00 p.m.

For more information: 866-506-5451

MAP

Note: in following months the Wednesday evening presentation will be held on the campus of the University of San Diego.

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San Diego, CA Thursday, Sept. 20th

Immaculate Conception Church
2540 San Diego Avenue - Old Town
San Diego, CA 92101

10:00 a.m. (Coffee at 9:45)

For more information: 866-506-5451

MAP

Friday, September 14, 2007

Next Stop: DALLAS

When it come to prayer, we all have to pitch in.

(Thanks to my friend from Perth, Australia, Mark Baumgarten)

Dallas, TX Saturday, Sept. 15th

St. Monica’s Catholic Church
9933 Midway Road
(at the intersection of Midway Road & Walnut Hill)
Dallas, TX 75220
10 a.m. to Noon

For more information: 972 416-5815

MAP

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Dallas, TX Sunday, Sept. 16th

St. Joseph’s Catholic Church
600 S. Jupiter Road
Richardson, TX 75081
Noon to 1:30 p.m.

For more information: 866-506-5451

MAP

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Dallas, TX Monday, Sept. 17th

University of Dallas
1845 E. Northgate Drive
Gorman Lecture Center, Room B
Irving, TX 75062
7:00 p.m.

For more information: Mrs. Suzanne Alexander 972-721-5219

MAP - Map to the Campus
MAP - Map of the Campus



Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Multiculturalism in the light of day . . .

Bruce Thornton has a marvelous summary of the multicultural ideology in his piece in the current issue of City Journal. He write this:
Let’s start with the ideology of multiculturalism, which has become pervasive, from university and grade-school curricula to Disney cartoons and the mainstream media. Don’t believe the spin that multiculturalism just recognizes the contributions of other cultures and ethnic minorities; the West has been doing that since Herodotus wrote admiringly about Egypt in 450 BC. In fact, multiculturalism attacks the West as uniquely oppressive and destructive, all the while idealizing the non-Western “Other” as more authentically human and humane, more in tune with nature, more communal, and less materialistic than all those repressed Westerners enslaved to technology and the “cash nexus.”

Even a cursory survey of world history explodes these romantic clichés and noble-savage fantasies. The West’s sins have been the sins of humanity everywhere. But the goods of the West—political freedom, consensual government, human rights, rationalism, and respect for the individual, to name a few—are unique to the West and account for its success. Just ask the millions of non-Western Others who every year risk their lives to migrate to Europe and America, even as virtually nobody goes in the other direction.
His piece is here.

Tonight in Seattle

For those who might be within range of tonight's session, here's where we'll be:

Seattle, WA – Tuesday, Sept. 11th

St. Benedict's Catholic Church
1805 North 49th Street
Seattle WA 98103
7:30 p.m.

For more information: 866-506-5451

MAP

Monday, September 10, 2007

Tonight in Connecticut

I just returned from Washington, DC, where we held the first of this year's Emmaus Road Initiative programs last Saturday at the Washington Theological Union. Tonight I drive to Glastonbury, Connecticut for a session there and leave tomorrow for Seattle and several stops in California.

For those who might be within range of tonight's sessions, here's the information:

Glastonbury, CT Monday, Sept. 10th

St. Dunstan's Church
1345 Manchester Road
Glastonbury, CT 06033
7:30 p.m.
For more information: 860-633-3317

MAP

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Robbing the Young of the Mystery

Dispensed as it is today by those institutionally constrained and catechetically ill-equipped to explore its deeper mysteries, the vast majority of public school sex-education courses manage only to convince the young that sex is largely reducible to the biology of plumbing and the technology of contraception. About the real mystery and sacramental potential of sexual attraction, the young learn less than nothing. For, in being reassured that they have been taught what they need to know, they are even less likely than they might have been otherwise to give credence to the subtle religious feelings that stir beneath the choppy waves of the copulative instinct.

They deserve better, but, apropos the post immediately prior to this one, now that the education in such matters has fallen -- indeed: fallen -- to the State, and now that the secular State is on high alert to interdict anything suggestive of a (Judeo-Christian) religious provenance, this is what they'll be getting. As a friend who long taught the young once told me -- as he looked back on his years of working with young people: "The young people today have lost the mystery of holding hands."

"It is only a short step from here . . ."

Try to guess when the following observation was made:
… the more completely secularized public education becomes . . . the more the Christian element in our culture will diminish and the more complete will be the victory of the secularization as the working religion, or rather counter-religion, of the American people. Even today the public school is widely regarded not as a purely educational institution in the nineteenth century sense . . . but as a moral training in citizenship, an initiation and indoctrination in the American way of life; and since the public school is essentially secular this means that only the secular aspects of American culture are recognized as valid. It is only a short step from here to the point at which the Christian way of life is condemned and outlawed as a deviation from the standard patterns of social behavior.

Unless there is a revival or restoration of Christian culture – of the social life of the Christian community – modern civilization will become secularist in a more . . . aggressive way than it is today. And in a Godless civilization of this kind, it will be far more difficult for the individual Christian to exist and practice his religion than it has ever been before, even in ages of persecution. In the past, as for instance under the Roman Empire, the family formed an independent society which was almost immune from the state, so that it could become the primary cell of an unrecognized Christian society or culture. But today the very existence of the family as a social unit is threatened by the all-persuasive influence of the state and the secular mass culture. Yet without the Christian family there can be no Christian community life and indeed no church in the traditional sense of the word: only a few scattered individuals who maintain an isolated prophet witness, like Elijah in the wilderness.
When was this observation made, and by whom? It was made by the British historian, Christopher Dawson in lecture at the Harvard Divinity School in 1959.

Reaching back much further than 1959, Isabel Lyman quotes a 19th century Princeton Seminary theologian, A. A. Hodge:
I am as sure as I am of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.
Lyman adds: "Have events of the 20th century proved him wrong?" And from her own essay entitled "Taking Back Our Children," Lyman offers this:
Abetted by mandatory education laws, many modern schools now serve as de facto indoctrination centers where little kids, tweens, and teens are compelled to listen to half-truths about everything from the Founding Fathers to the free market.
I might add that the moral indoctrination the young are receiving very often deals with matters of far great import than the Founding Fathers and the free market. For they are being taught to accept as the moral prerequisite for social respectability suppositions which, as Dawson warned almost half a century ago, call into question "the very existence of the family as a social unit."

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Two Weblogs?

The Emmaus Road Initiative programs begin this weekend, and we have decided to create a separate weblog for the sole purpose of communicating with those who are taking part in the program.

Since I will be making connections every month in Chicago, Denver, and Washington, DC, it is possible that at some point I may need to post a last-minute notice about a schedule change -- due to weather-related or airline cancellations. We have set the weblog up so that, if necessary, I can post to it from my cell phone. (I imagine being stranded at O'Hare airport with little to do but peck out text messages about being snow bound.)

Anyway, take a look at the new weblog. It's here.

This weblog will continue to be the one to which I post occasional reflections, but given my upcoming travel schedule, the postings will likely be somewhat less frequent.

Thanks for keeping us on your radar.

My best,

Gil

The 0.1% Solution

If the Reuters story is correct, British regulators are inching toward approval of the creation of hybrid human-animal embryos for medical purposes. According to the September 4th report, what is being proposed is the creation of a creature that would be 99.9% human and 0.1% cow. (I'm not making this up.)

It turns out that the British institution with the authority to determine this matter, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (I'm not making that up either), in its efforts to plumb the moral and cultural depths of the issue, conducted an opinion poll! (I'm not making this up.)

In the poll, 2000 people were asked whether they would approve of such human-animal hybrids for medical research. When the nature of the research was left unspecific, 35% of those polled indicated their approval of the procedure, but when it was specified that the research was for the purpose of seeking a cure for Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, 61% approved.

In an article I wrote not long ago, I offered this:
Ameliorating the suffering of others is a inescapable Christian duty, but today great moral catastrophes are in the making for which the official justification is the alleviation of suffering. Not only is Christianity the world’s preeminent source of that philanthropic ethic, it is the only source of the theology of suffering, without which the ethic will be used to justify moral calamities.
When moral matters of this weight are being decided on the basis of opinion polls, you can be sure that we are teetering on the edge of a moral abyss.