Society
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Shea Week Eight
Practices that incarnate the Christian vision The world is somewhat blind to the spiritual reality that is actually more real than what the world sees. So part of our mission is to have the spiritual world become a living force in our minds and manifested in our lives. We have to become those witnesses that Continue reading
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Shea Week Six
We see inside the Catholic Church today some of the tensions that would naturally arise between a component of the church that was nostalgically looking for a return to Christendom or foolishly thinking that nothing really had changed and everything was fine versus a component of the church that is already adopting an apostolic strategy. Continue reading
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Shea Week Five
The author introduces a term “imaginative vision” that he says is a set of assumptions and a way of looking at things especially with regard to moral matters and spiritual matters that is largely taken for granted rather than argued for. As a holistic way of seeing things, it is usually secured by a religion Continue reading
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Shea Week Four
The pace of change over the last hundred to 150 years has been so rapid that institutions aligned to the eternal mindset of God seem to be pretty far behind the curve. The Catholic Church was established by Jesus Christ and is protected by the Holy Spirit. God — who is eternal — set up Continue reading
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Age of Change
Contributing to the idea that everything is changing in this age, and therefore change may be the defining characteristic of this age, is the rapid pace of technological innovation and revolution. We spent about 100 years moving from horse-drawn vehicles that moved at about three or 4 miles an hour to automobiles — that is Continue reading
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Christendom and the Need for Something New
Christendom is a term that means different things to different people, so it will be important that we define it for our purposes and for the purposes of understanding Monsignor Shea’s message. Let’s consider world history from a very high perspective. In the ancient world, there were many dominant civilizations tied to pagan religions. The Continue reading
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From Christendom to Apostolic Mission
Monsignor James Shea Monsignor Shea is the president of the University of Mary, in Bismarck, ND, and he is the driving force behind the two books that constitute the text for this series on Sunday mornings that will take us to the end of the calendar year. Monsignor Shea was ordained in 2002, and he Continue reading
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Apostolic Mission
A clean heart create for me, O God,and a steadfast spirit renew within me. Psalm 51:10 The readings today bring to mind cleanliness and renewal. We are all born with the stain of original sin. It is the sacrament of baptism that cleans us and prepares us for a life in Christ. And when we Continue reading
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Christ is Truly King
The Feast of Christ the King is relatively new, having been instituted in 1925 by Pope Pius XI. The point of the feast is relatively old, for it weighs in on the question of whether or not those who live in the world but do not recognize Jesus as their king are nonetheless his subjects. Continue reading
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Discerning Caesar
The gospel reading today has much to tell us about discernment. The end, the goal, of discernment is the identification of the best or truest outcome, and the determination to do what is necessary to achieve it. Last week, the parable of the wedding feast was also about discernment. The wedding banquet was not limited Continue reading
Bound in Love 