My cursory study of local weather science tells me that something is happening on our planet that probably has not happened since the “Big Bang,” that moment in evolutionary history when order was set in place by a benevolent Creator. Thus it has been for trillions of years (earth time) until this most recent age when it has become evident that something is awry.
Parents have different roles from their children. Teachers have different roles from firefighters. Mothers have different roles from fathers. And individually we also have different personalities that play important roles. But — and this is the important part — amidst our diversity there is an underlying unity that holds us together.
In an effort to promote Catholic education, three Anchorage youth were awarded scholarships for winning essays on the theme: “Jesus loves us; How do we spread that love?”
The Catholic Daughters of the Americas court in Anchorage organizes the annual student essay scholarship. This year the Daughters partnered with the Knights of Columbus council at Holy Family Cathedral, which allowed for an increased number of award winners.
Seminarian Brother Thomas Aquinas Pickett, 25, is in Anchorage for his one-year field assignment — a period of training that all Dominican student brothers complete as part of their eight-year formation for the priesthood. A graduate of Gonzaga University and Bishop White Seminary, Brother Pickett has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a passion for utilizing creative ways to spread the Gospel.
Anchorage Archbishop Roger Schwietz has issued a list of allowable activities for parishes to engage in during the upcoming political season. The June 6 memo was sent to all parishes and agencies of the archdiocese to remind them of allowable activity during elections.
What does “develop” church teaching mean? What part of the just war doctrine needs to be developed? What does that development consist of? Should church teaching conform to our politics or should our politics conform to church teaching?
It’s safe to say that we live in a time when the historic message of Christianity is being drowned out and watered down. Hyper individualism has many believing they can reinvent and reorient their lives however they wish. Belief in fixed moral realities and religious truths are increasingly difficult to swallow and are more likely to be seen as naïve sentiments held by children and those who grew up in a simpler time.
Alaska’s Orthodox Christian leaders praised Pope Francis and applauded a series of recent high profile meetings between him and Orthodox Patriarch on Constantinople Bartholomew, but they also expressed guarded enthusiasm about whether the encounters constitute significant progress toward uniting the long-divided churches.
The Dominicans at Holy Family Cathedral are hosting their annual Friars’ Fest Aug. 9, from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the cathedral courtyard. The public is invited to partake in an afternoon of food and games. Entertainment throughout the day will be provided by AKSAXO Jazz, harpist Colleen Duncan, the Dynamic Dominicans and several dance groups. Various food booths will serve ethnic cuisines, along with Kaladi Bros coffee, ribs and Tastee Freez ice cream.
Part of the unethical character of drug abuse flows from the fact that we are treating something good, namely our personal, conscious experience as if it were an evil to be avoided. Recreational drug users seek to escape or otherwise suppress their lived conscious experience, and instead pursue chemically-altered states of mind, or drug-induced pseudo-experiences. Any time we act in such a way that we treat something objectively good as if it were an evil by acting directly against it, we act in a disordered and immoral manner.