Religion

Pope Francis is preparing to convene an unprecedented summit on sex abuse this month, widely viewed as among the most pivotal moments of his papacy, but the Vatican is cautioning not to expect too much.

I nearly always observe God showing up on the margins of our lives as well. That makes me wonder if our spiritual centers just may not always be where we think they are.

Good manners were important in my childhood home. Chew with your mouth closed. Say “yes ma’am” and “no ma’am.” Always say please and thank you, and never, ever interrupt.

The Christmas season has become a commercialized event, beginning with Thanksgiving Day, finding its culmination with the ushering in of a New Year. Tucked away between these two days, obscured by the lights, the trees, and the carols, lies the birth of the eternal hope of mankind, obscured by the busyness of the world.

“One of the blunders religious people are particularly fond of making is the attempt to be more spiritual than God.” Wow, really? I think that Frederick Buechner was right when he wrote this irreverent insight in “Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC.”

Editor’s note: SpokaneFaVS.com has a feature called “Ask A Buddhist.” Recently someone wrote about a friendship gone sour, and asked for advice on how to handle disagreements with friends. This is the response. Sounds like this was a meaningful friendship. I’m sad to hear you lost it, although I believe true friends can disagree and still support one another overall. It’s worth examining the nature of that particular friendship.

The holidays have a way of being both joyous and wistful. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of spending Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family. We usually celebrated it at my grandma’s house. She, my mom and my three aunts would prepare food in the kitchen, my uncles would sit in the living room watching football and I would go off and play with my cousins.

I tend to grow more and more impatient with the superficial ways we toss the word “hospitality” into our conversations. It is a very ancient, honorable word. But we domesticate it, reduce it to pleasant manners and forced smiling at others. Hospitality is transformative when it is authentic! Examples of biblical hospitality are many (Genesis 18:1-15; I Kings 17: 9-24; Luke 24: 13-25 to cite three). The transformative power of hospitality really shows itself, whether biblically or in today’s experience, when it finds ways to turn hostility into the friendship and freedom of hope.

I don’t have the post-election blues. It isn’t because all my candidates of choice won. Because they didn’t. And it’s not because the measures I voted for passed. Because not all of them did.

Spokane’s bishop doubled down on his criticism of the Vatican Thursday, saying its decision to bar U.S. dioceses from taking action on the ongoing sexual abuse crisis within the church “could be interpreted as a lack of care and concern for victims and their families.”

Light streamed into Bishop Thomas Daly’s office one recent afternoon as he spoke, in sometimes blunt terms, about the widening scandal of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in the United States. “It’s a moral crisis,” Daly said. “We have degenerate behavior, hypocrisy and now cover-up. My thought is, ‘How much more can the people of God put up with?’ ”

I’m often asked why I became a religion reporter.

Self-examination requires we look deep and wide for our “better angels.” Resolve requires we listen courageously to those better angels.

Leading up to the primaries in the 2016 presidential election, I was talking to a friend of mine at church. She told me, “I’m going to vote for Trump because he’s going to win anyway,” even though she didn’t think he was the best candidate. We continued to discuss candidates, and when I mentioned Bernie Sanders, she responded by saying, “Oh! I didn’t know he was Republican!” My friend assumed that because our religious affiliations were aligned, our political affiliations would be as well. The idea that I could claim the same God and Gospel as she did but not vote the same way was perplexing to her.

As sex abuse scandals continue to buffet the Roman Catholic Church, Catholics in the U.S. are steadily losing confidence in Pope Francis’ handling of the crisis, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.

Earlier this month I spoke on a panel addressing racism and prejudices in our community. I had prepared a short talk on how I went from a child who didn’t see color to a teenager who saw it too clearly. Kids don’t see people as white, or black, or brown. That comes later, when we hear our peers, our role models and the media make issue of the categories.