Under the Fir Tree

Was I too harsh? That’s the question I'm asking after that last piece . And it’s the right question. If we’re going to talk about judgment in the Church, we should begin by judging our own words. So let me say this clearly: I still believe the basic point—that a parish can be “open” and yet, in a deeper sense, dead. But I also think the way I said it can be heard as simpler and cleaner than reality ever is, especially for the men who actually have to govern entire dioceses, not just paragraphs. Let's name a few things. Parish : a local family of believers gathered around Word and Sacrament. Administration : the hard work of keeping that family housed, fed, and ordered. Fidelity : not perfection, but real obedience to Christ in faith and morals. My earlier piece pushed one side: fidelity first, buildings second. That’s right as far as it goes. But if we stop there, we can grow careless about the other side: the sheer tangle of responsibilities that land on a bishop’s desk. Think...

It’s a strange scandal of our time that a parish is more likely to be closed when the roof leaks than when the faith does. We count heads, we count envelopes, we count square footage, and we imagine we’re being very practical. Like sober stewards tightening belts. But the one thing we rarely count is what actually makes a parish a parish: those who kneel to adore, who confess their sins, who consent to be judged by God and not by whatever slogans pass for morality this quarter. A church can be poor, tiny, hidden behind a gas station—and still be a battlefield where grace and sin wrestle in the dark. What we have now, far too often, are buildings full of people who don’t even admit there’s a war. So yes, there are times when the Church not only could, but probably should, close a parish not because it’s dying, but because it’s already dead and doesn’t know it. Not for money, not for numbers, but because the lamp on that altar has become a stage light for another religion. Think of the o...

What if your problem with God isn't rebellion but bad eyesight? Not moral rebellion—spiritual astigmatism. You look out at life and just…don't see what believers say they see. No blazing "God-shaped hole," no midnight despair, no urgent sense of Someone missing. Just work, friends, Netflix, maybe therapy. Reasonable. Bearable. Fine. So what's a "God-shaped hole," anyway? Desire : a hunger nothing in this world quite fills. Secularism : living as if God is irrelevant, whether or not He exists. Perceptual deficit : not a lack of data, but a lack of awareness of it. The honest secular person often says: "I don't feel a need for God." "Religion looks like human fear of death dressed up as doctrine." "Science, not a personal God, explains reality. Let’s take those seriously. 1. "I don't feel a need for God." Fair. You also don't feel a need for oxygen—until you're underwater. A feeling is a thermometer , not ...

The god of our age is very small and very kind. He smiles from the posters of youth rooms and from the lit screens of our children's phones, a gentle specialist in "feeling better," an invisible therapist in casual Fridays who never raises his voice and never, under any circumstance, bleeds. Sociologists have given this god a name— Moralistic Therapeutic Deism  (MTD)—but he was already sitting at our kitchen tables long before anyone baptized him with that phrase. He’s there when we tell a child, "God just wants you to be happy," as if the Lord of heaven and earth were a sentimental guidance counselor.  This little god has a very simple gospel. First: Be nice. Niceness is the whole law and the prophets. No need to speak of justice or truth, still less of holiness; those words smell of old wood and cold stone, and we prefer carpet and climate control. Second: Feel good about yourself. Your heart is never wrong—unless, of course, it accuses you; then it must be si...

More thoughts on the profound transition the church in the United States is undergoing  and why the central strategic question of evangelism in a post-Christendom context is not merely, "What should we say?" but "Through what kind of community will the Gospel travel?" And for those who prefer a storytelling method for learning... # # # The Honeycomb Parish Chapter 1 – The Pivot at Saint Gabriel’s On a flat November morning, Father Jonas unlocked the big red doors of Saint Gabriel’s and heard the echo answer him. An hour before Mass, the building felt larger than it had a right to feel. His shoes clicked on stone; the sound went up and vanished into the vault. The banners from the last capital campaign still drooped from the rafters: "Growing Together for Tomorrow." The thermometer poster in the vestibule stalled at 61%—like a promise no one had had the heart to tear down. He flipped on the sanctuary lights. The stained glass woke up on cue: saints glowing ...

CARING ABOUT YOUR NEIGHBORS You asked about my politics the other week, and I had trouble answering fully. Here's my attempt at a better explanation. Localism is simply this: power kept near the people who live with it. Regionalism adds texture: different places are allowed to stay different. Decentralization is the guardrail: no single center gets to swallow everything. America was built on all three. It’s been trying to forget that ever since. The colonies started as little experiments, not one sweeping project. A Puritan village, a Quaker town, a rough coastal port—they didn’t match, and they weren’t meant to. The continent was too large for a single script, so freedom came disguised as clutter: charters, compacts, assemblies, town meetings. Authority was layered like an old stone wall—parish, town, county, colony—so no single layer could pretend to be the whole landscape. The town meeting was the first civics class: you argued with people you’d see at church and market. You cou...

A CRITICAL-METAPHYSICAL REFLECTION Most Americans (I'm liking this new intro) who still crack open a Bible treat it like a manual: a handbook for family values, a guide for inner peace, a sourcebook for “life principles.” The text gets sliced into takeaways and action points. That approach isn’t wicked; it’s just small. Far too small. It assumes the Bible is mainly there to help a basically self-contained life run a bit better. But the Bible doesn’t see you that way. It isn’t a set of tips; it’s a window into the way being itself  hangs together in God. The consequence is simple and devastating: if you read only for guidance, you miss the fire. We live in a culture where “real” means measurable, fixable, useful. The average American reader carries that habit straight into Genesis or John without noticing . Creation becomes a backstory, miracles become illustrations, divine names become slogans. The metaphysical claims—the staggering statements about what God is ,   what creatu...

A CRITICAL REFLECTION Last post I suggested most Americans read the Bible in a moral, therapeutic, or historical manner. It’s probably truer to say most Americans who read the Bible approach it like a combination of a rulebook, a Hallmark card, and a campaign flyer. They hunt for life tips, comfort verses, and reinforcement for what they already think. God, in this mode, is basically a very opinionated sky-person who wants you to be slightly nicer, vote correctly, and feel vaguely forgiven. What drops out almost entirely is the metaphysical shock of the thing. The Bible as an Ontological Event, Not a Devotional Book Taken on its own terms, the Bible isn't primarily telling you how to behave; it’s telling you what reality is. "Let there be light" isn't just a poetic opening—it’s a claim that being itself is spoken, gifted, contingent. "Let there be." "I AM WHO I AM" isn't a mysterious line to breeze past; it's a metaphysical grenade lobbe...

A SIMPLE REFLECTION What if the most "unread" part of the Bible isn’t the obscure prophets, but the metaphysics hiding in plain sight? Most American Bible reading is moral, therapeutic, or historical. We ask: What should I do? How can I feel better? Did this really happen? Those aren’t bad questions. They’re just small compared to the questions the Bible is actually screaming at us: What is reality? What is God? What is a human being, in the deepest sense? That’s metaphysics: the study of being as such —what is most fundamentally real and why anything exists at all. From "Helpful Book" to "Ontological Shock" Think about how we typically approach Scripture. We treat it like: A spiritual self-help manual A rulebook with stories A devotional Hallmark collection But look at what’s actually being claimed: There is one God, not one being among others, but the source of all being. This God speaks reality into existence. This God is not part of the universe; the u...

Our age mistakes sovereignty for sanity. We're told to be authors of ourselves, to curate identities with the care of a museum and the speed of a market. The result is a sovereignty that feels like solitary confinement: a self-managed, self-financed, self-justified life—efficient, anxious, and airless. Oppressive autonomy is not the lack of options but the obligation to be the final court of appeal for everything we are. The mirror becomes a tribunal. # # # Adoration is the rebellion that doesn't shout. It's not flattery directed upward or superstition disguised as manners. Adoration is simply attention consenting to be captivated; the mind kneeling without humiliation. It names a relation where the self isn't abolished but re-proportioned by what's greater than it. In adoration, we trade the closed loop of self-reference for a line of sight. Picture a simple scene: a stale room, a window stuck with paint. You lever it open; cold air shoulders in, dust lifts from th...