Category Archives: Random

Who Were the M‘amadot?

Yesterday, I came across a pretty obscure reference in a book by Jim Davila, the most profilic of biblical bloggers to whom I have linked for years. He wrote a commentary on some of the Dead Sea Scrolls entitled Liturgical Works (Eerdmans, 2000). On p. 242, I found this tidbit on the so-called “Words of the Luminaries” (4Q504, 4Q506). Davila speculates that the text

“was used in the m‘amadot service (a pre-Mishnaic institution in which delegations of lay representatives would participate in the temple sacrificial services for a week at a time).”

Twenty-Four Divisions of Lay People

Huh? I had never heard of the m‘amadot. Who were they? Unfortunately, there is very little information about them out there. The word is a feminine plural, which means “stands” or “posts.” The Encylopedia Britannica has a tiny entry on them. Even the Jewish Encyclopedia is extremely sparing in its reference.  It distinguishes between on the one hand, the “mishmarot,” which were the 24 divisions of the Levitical priests who would take turns serving at the temple, and on the other hand, the m‘amadot, which were 24 divisions of lay people that mirrored the 24 divisions of the Levitical priests. The JE says that “on the return from the Exile 24 (Israelite) ammudim (m‘amadot) were established, parallel to the priestly and Levitical mishmarot (Tosef., Ta’an. 4:2).”

 

The Talmud on the m‘amadot

There is a reference to the m‘amadot in Ta’anit 27b: “Rabbi Ya’akov bar Aḥa said that Rav Asi said: Were it not for the non-priestly watches and the Temple service, heaven and earth would not continue to exist, as it is stated: “And he said: Lord God, by what shall I know that I shall inherit it?” (Genesis 15:8)” (see sefaria.org). So the laity, not just the priests, kept watches in the temple—and at least to some rabbinic authorities, their role in the temple service was cosmically necessary. This section also goes on to describe the deeds of the m‘amadot: they would remain “in their towns and would assemble in the synagogue and observe four fasts each week to correspond with the days of creation:

  • Monday: a fast for seafarers, “as the sea was created on Monday”
  • Tuesday: a fast for “those who walk in the desert, as the dry land was created on Tuesday”
  • Wednesday: a fast that children would not fall subject to croup – corresponding to the day on which the luminaries (me’orot) were created (a word similar to “curses” me’erot)
  • Thursday: for pregnant women for “living beings” were first created on this day
  • Friday: no fast since it was Sabbath eve
  • Sabbath: no fast

I’m left wondering when these people would eat! I guess they would eat a huge feast on the sabbath to be sustained throughout all these fasts.

 

The Word of the Luminaries and the M‘amadot

Davila points to a source by Daniel K. Falk to illustrate his point. I’ll quote a whole paragraph here so we get some context:

“Another possibility, if we continue our speculation along these lines a bit further, is a connection of the weekly prayers in Words of the Luminaries with the lay ma‘amadot services. About these little is known, and there is not even a hint that communal prayer placed any part in these services, although scholars often assume that it must have. Nevertheless, that each course [i.e. division, of the 24 divisions] met for one week would make a weekly cycle of prayer appropriate, and their reading of particular passages from the creation story in sequence for each day of the week is at least analogous to the weekday prayers in Words of the Luminaries which also follow a historical progression, albeit from creation to post-exilic times.” (Daniel K. Falk, Daily, Sabbath, & Festival Prayers, Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah, vol. XXVII [Brill, 1998] p. 91)

Now Falk doesn’t say a whole lot here, but he does highlight the fact that the nature of these m‘amadot services likely included communal prayer. The groups met for a week at a time and perhaps this one source we have from the Dead Seas Scrolls, “The Words of the Luminaries,” is an example of a text that they would pray when they gathered.

Consolidating Insights on the m‘amadot

While the sources are patchy at best, we can pull together a few key insights on the groups of lay people referred to as the m‘amadot:

  1. There were twenty-four divisions of m‘amadot that paralleled the twenty-four divisions of the Levitical priests.
  2. These groups took turns attending the daily temple liturgies (the Tamid) a week at a stretch.
  3. Their observance included specific daily fasts for specific intentions.
  4. Their observance probably included communal daily prayer.

It would be nice if we had more ancient sources describing the function and practice of the m‘amadot but there is not much there. Perhaps there are some interesting works out there that say more. For now, I think of the m‘amadot as the daily Mass-goers of Second Temple Judaism. They were dedicated lay people who came to the temple to worship every day when their division was on duty. In this way, they were quasi-priestly kind of like the Nazirites who would take a special vow for a time period. They remind me also of the apostles in the book of Acts who were “going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour” (Acts 3:1), which would indicate the time of the evening sacrifice. While we cannot be sure, perhaps some of the early believers were members of the m‘amadot. I hope that over time we can learn more about these interesting devout Jewish worshippers from the Second Temple era.

 

For further reading:

The only additional reference that I have not had time to pursue is Esther Eshel and Ḥanan Eshel, “4Q471 Fragment 1 and Maʻamadot in the War Scroll,” in The Madrid Qumran Congress: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Madrid, 18-21 March 1991, 611–20, (Brill, 1992).

Online Archives of Charismatic Magazines

The Recency Bias of the Internet

One of the great challenges of the Internet is that it came online after so many other wonderful information technologies like the printing press, radio, tape recording, newspapers, magazines, and so on. While much of that material has been “digitized” in so far as it has been scanned and uploaded, so much of it is inaccessible, hard to find, and not truly adapted to the current version of the Internet (are we on 3.0 now?). As a result the Internet has a terrible recency bias. Whatever was published most recently gets the most click-throughs, links, hits, and eyeballs. Oftentimes, the better information requires a little more digging—not that we have to go through dusty old boxes of papers, but we need to know where to search and look for what. We need to understand the stories and beliefs that drove people to do what they did.

Finding Pre-Online Sources

I have been reading a bit about the history of the charismatic movement of the 1960s–1980s and finding that the sources available are thin. That is, very few well documented books about this era exist. However, the recent book Age of the Spirit by John Maiden (Oxford, 2023) is a welcome exception. It is a superbly documented book of the “Spiritscape” of those times. But what about contemporary sources? No one in the ‘70s had a website or a blog, but what they did have was magazines galore! The way you got your message out was through magazine production: articles, photographs, letters to the editors, columns, and so on. This was also the dawning age of the cassette tape, so plenty of teaching and information was distributed through tape sets you could buy from listings in the magazines. I’m interested in tracking down and posting links to all the charismatic magazines to help researchers find their way into this material. I came up with a list and I thought that some other people might find it helpful.

Charismatic Renewal Magazines From the 1960s-1980s

Trinity magazine (1961–66)

Trinity was the first mainline Protestant charismatic magazine. It was launched by editor Jean Stone, a parishioner at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California. It was there in 1960 that the pastor Dennis Bennett announced that he had received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, which divided his congregation. The magazine was only published for about five years: 1961–66. http://www.societyofstephen.org/pubs.php (I have no idea why there’s a chicken in the picture!)

 

Pastoral Newsletter (1967–1971)

This informal newsletter was published by the Catholic/ecumenical charismatic groups in Ann Arbor and South Bend, which would soon become True House, People of Praise and the Word of God. It was succeeded by New Covenant. I have not found an online version of this newsletter yet. (Edit: Hat tip to commenter, who pointed out that this publication’s last issue was June 1971.)

 

New Covenant magazine (1971–2002)

New Covenant was the official voice of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services Committee, originally edited by Ralph Martin and published in Ann Arbor. While it was largely for the Catholic movement, it included a strong ecumenical flavor with some articles and announcements by non-Catholic charismatic writers and groups. You can find a complete archive here: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000554189

 

New Wine (1969–1986)

New Wine was originally launched by Eldon Purvis and his Holy Spirit Teaching Ministry (HSTM), which later became Christian Growth Ministries (CGM). It was the principal publication of the so-called “Shepherding Movement” of the 1970s led by the “Fort Lauderdale Five”: Derek Prince, Ern Baxter, Charles Simpson, Don Basham, and Bob Mumford. https://csmpublishing.org/publications/new-wine-magazine/

 

Pastoral Renewal (1976–1990)

Pastoral Renewal was a monthly quasi-academic pastoral publication published by the Word of God community in Ann Arbor, Michigan for leaders and pastors in the charismatic movement. It was edited by Peter S. Williamson. It ceased publication after the Ann Arbor community broke apart. I have not found it online yet, but it is available in quite a few libraries around the country under OCLC number 4303284 and ISSN, 0744-8279. A few books were published under its auspices, for example, Summons to Faith and Renewal (1983); Christianity in Conflict (1986); and Christian Allies in a Secular Age (1987). Pastoral Renewal was briefly succeeded by Faith & Renewal: For Christian Leaders, but I think that only lasted one issue.

 

Renewal (1966–)

Renewal was based in the United Kingdom, published by Fountain Trust and edited by Anglican priest Michael Harper. It launched in 1966 and eventually merged with a UK magazine called Christianity. I have not yet found a complete digital archive, just one issue from 1966.

 

 

 

 

Logos Journal (1971–1981)

Another magazine that existed for a very limited time frame was the Logos Journal (no, not the same as this one or that one). It was published by Dan Malachuk and Logos International Fellowship bimonthly for about a ten- year period (1971-1981). I have not been able to confirm exactly when it started and ended. I was able to find about a dozen digitized issues from 1979-1981 at Oral Roberts. Perhaps more are out there somewhere. Oral Roberts University, in fact, has a nice collection of digitized periodicals related to Pentecostalism.

Full Gospel Business Men’s Voice (1952–)

The Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International was founded in Irvine, CA by Demos Shakarian in 1952 as a coordinating body for Latter Rain Pentecostal groups. They have published a magazine ever since and all the archives are available online.

  • 1953–1961 at Oral Roberts University library
  • 1960–2024 at Full Gospel Business Mens’ Fellowship International

 

 

 

If you want an even fuller listing of charismatic periodicals, check out p. 238 in Age of the Spirit by John Maiden (Oxford, 2023). I’m not sure if anyone is looking for this material, but there is so much out there, just under the surface of the search results on the Internet and I hope that these archives will be useful to you.

What is the Sin of Curiosity?

I have always been curious (pun intended) about sins that take place only in the mind. It is very strange to think that a violation of God’s command could happen within your neurons. In other contexts, I’ve discussed before the interior nature of the sin of coveting and the interior sin of lust and whether it needs a purpose clause or not. Of course, “to covet” and “to lust” are very similar sins that have external objects of desire. What about a more purely intellectual kind of sin where the object of the mind is not external but internal? Can a mind sin by desiring knowledge?

The Short Answer

The short answer is “yes.” Curiosity  about forbidden knowledge–e.g. knowledge of witchcraft or knowledge of what it feels like to commit a horrendous crime–leads the mind astray, and left unchecked can prompt a person to descend into sin. Not all knowledge is innocent. Seeking out forbidden knowledge is a sinful pattern, where the intellect is not being used for its intended purpose (to contemplate God), but rather is indulging in its own self-interested designs.

Wait, But Isn’t Curiosity a Good Thing?

It’s hard to find books that warn about curiosity. Typically, in our apathetic age, teachers, pastors and leaders encourage people to stop scrolling their social feeds and “get curious” about important and interesting topics. This kind of intellectual inquiry is not just harmless; it’s actually essential to our intellectual development. If we are not interested in things that matter, then we won’t bother learning about them and if we don’t learn about them, we will be less than we could have been. So some curiosity is a good thing, it’s true. We want to be intellectually interested in learning about the truth.

Some Definitions

The Catechism of the Catholic Church does not spend much time on this, but allows that the Gospels were not written to satisfy human curiosity (CCC 514, 548), warns us against “unhealthy curiosity” about the future (CCC 2115), but it does not say much about the sin of curiosity. Fr. Jordan Aumann’s Spiritual Theology warns of “vain curiosity” and also “Morbid curiosity. This is characteristic of those who eagerly seek out the esoteric aspects of mystical phenomena or have a fascination for the occult or preternatural.” Even Tanqueray doesn’t talk about it much. St. Bernard of Clairvaux says that curiosity is the “first step of pride,” defining it as “when the eyes and the other senses attend to what is not one’s concern.” St. Thomas goes even deeper on this point and teaches that:

For the knowledge of truth, strictly speaking, is good, but it may be evil accidentally, by reason of some result, either because one takes pride in knowing the truth, according to 1 Corinthians 8:1, “Knowledge puffeth up,” or because one uses the knowledge of truth in order to sin.

So here, we see two potentially sinful results of a desire for knowledge: 1) pride, 2) knowledge used to sin (e.g., knowing recipes for poison). Pride, in this way, is a “sin of the neurons”–in that it is an inflated self-regard. The second kind of curiosity though really only becomes sinful when it is used for some further aim.

St. Augustine on “curiositas”

Here is a tidbit on St. Augustine’s teaching on the vice of curiositas:

“Augustine also included curiosity in a triad of sins (along with pride and carnality) which constitute the roots of the soul’s sinful movement from God….Like every expression of lust, curiosity disrupts the soul’s proper mid-rank position between God and lower bodily natures. It thereby prompts the soul to submit itself to the very things it should govern, to love what it should use for the love of God, or to become engrossed in acts proper to itself, to the neglect of universal laws common to all.” (N. Joseph Torchia, “Curiosity,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald [Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999], 260.

So, curiosity is disruptive. It leads the human soul into error, to love itself too much rather than to love what is good for it, namely God.

The Longer Answer: The Purpose of the Human Intellect

Curiosity itself is hard to classify as a sin. It is more of a vice, a tendency toward sin that can lead to sinful seeking out of forbidden knowledge, seeking knowledge for the wrong reason (pride), or seeking knowledge in order to commit sin. It’s interesting that St. Thomas actually struggles with the thought that maybe the original sin of Adam and Eve was curiosity: they desired knowledge of good and evil, a kind of knowledge that they should not have desired, and so disobeyed God (Thomas asserts though that it was out of pride that they sought this forbidden knowledge). But if we reduce things to their basic essentials, we can consider why we human beings were given an intellect in the first place. What’s the ultimate aim of all our minds? Well, God, of course. God is the aim. So anything that is diverting us from that kind of ultimate truth-seeking is leading us astray. If our pursuit of knowledge is leading us away from God instead of toward him then we are succumbing to the sin of curiosity rather than embracing the path to Truth.

It’s still hard for me to think of Curious George as an archetype of evil, but…

For further reading, check out: Paul Griffiths, The Vice of Curiosity: An Essay on Intellectual Appetite (2006).

Video: Finding God in the Age of Distraction

Recently, I was invited to give a parish mission at Christ, Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Manchester, Missouri–affectionately known as “CPOP”. They streamed the talks to YouTube for your viewing pleasure.

The first one is Finding God in the Age of Distraction, where I take on the problem we are all confronting–how to live a spiritual life with a smartphone in your pocket. It’s not easy! I present some of the statistics that you’ve probably heard about how much we use our phones and then dive into some strategies for overcoming the problem and reconnecting with God:

The second talk you might have heard before, as it is based on my book Suffering: What Every Catholic Should Know: 

Thanks to Fr. Christopher Dunlop, Fr. Gerson Penna and Fernanda Thurmond for inviting me!

A Museum Accident of Biblical Proportions

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare (ok, maybe not worst, but close): you take your 4-year-old child to the museum and he or she curiously touches something, accidentally shattering an irreplaceable artifact of human history that dates back millennia–and it just happened to a Dad at the Hecht Museum in Haifa in Israel this week, as the BBC reports:

Boy accidentally smashes 3,500-year-old jar on museum visit

Ugh! His four year old boy wanted to know what was in the giant amphora, grabbed at the rim to look and then it took a tumble. The rest is history:

Shay Levy, Hecht Museum

Shay Levy, Hecht Museum (via BBC)

Or, I guess, it was history. Now I think my blood pressure will go up even more next time I take my kids to a museum. This jar was from before 1500 BC. That means half a millennium before David and Solomon. It could be 4,000 years old. When a four-millennium old piece of pottery goes up against a four-year-old, we know who wins–and it’s not the jar. I would imagine that the Hecht museum curators are face-palming themselves over their desire to display artifacts without glass protection because of the “special charm” museum-goers feel. Oh well, I suppose by the time the eschaton arrives all clay jars will be smashed. I’m not sure which proverb to cite, but maybe “He who digs a pit will fall into it” (Eccl 10:8 ESV) or perhaps better would be Jeremiah’s prophecy about the broken flask: “So will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, so that it can never be mended” (Jer 19:11 ESV). Keep a close eye on the artifacts next time you bring a little child to a museum or they might be so broken that they can never be mended again! 

Two Interviews: Suffering Video and Wisdom Radio

Last week, I got to speak with Bob Krebs on “Catholic Forum” out of the Diocese of Wilmington about my book on Suffering. It aired on Relevant Radio and Bob recorded it as video and put it on YouTube for you:


Yesterday morning, I appeared on Spirit Mornings Catholic Radio out of Omaha with my friends Bruce and Jen. We got to talk about the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture series and my new volume on Wisdom of Solomon. It was early and it was a fun conversation. Check it out:

Two Written Interviews on Suffering

Aleteia published an interview with me earlier this week. Here’s an excerpt:

Suffering is part of everyone’s life. It comes in all shades and varieties: illness, disability, pain, loss, depression …
Every news website today is replete with people’s suffering from around the world. Some regions of the world seem to have an unfair burden of suffering.
But most of the suffering that people endure is much less dramatic, and might not even be thought of as suffering: relatively small annoyances that stem from the rudeness of neighbors, the impatience of our own temperament, or simply the ups and downs of daily life.
Catholic spirituality has a lot to offer on not only the reasons for suffering but the ways in which we can fruitfully respond to it. (Link: https://aleteia.org/2024/04/14/if-you-are-suffering-and-you-probably-are-this-book-can-help/ )

And Catholic World Report published another. An excerpt:

   All of us suffer. We live in a fallen world, and suffering is simply a part of life. This suffering can take many forms, and we are all affected differently by it.
But why do we suffer at all? How are we to understand suffering? Is there any purpose to it? And what are we to do with the suffering we face? (Link: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/03/08/interview-with-mark-giszczak/)

The Passing of Steve Clark

Stephen B. Clark was a giant of the post-Vatican II era in American Catholicism. His name was synonymous with Cursillo, Charismatic Renewal and Covenant Community. I had the privilege of meeting him and interviewing him last year. He died two days ago on March 16, 2024.

Early Life

Steve Clark

Steve Clark

Steve was born in 1940 to a secular Jewish couple on Long Island. His parents were Louis Seidenstein and Estelle Edna Clark Seidenstein. His only sibling, Joseph, his older brother was nine years older. Steve was a talented student and got a scholarship to the elite Peddie School for Boys. From there, he achieved a full-ride General Motors Scholarship to Yale in 1958. At Yale he studied history and graduated in 1962 at the top of his class with “philosophical orations”–Yale’s equivalent to Summa cum Laude. JFK himself gave the graduation address. During his college years, his father passed away and his mother remarried and moved to Florida.

While at Yale, Steve started reading about Christianity. In particular, The Little Flowers of St. Francis struck him as particularly profound. He was attracted to radical Christianity rather than hum-drum seemingly “normal” Christianity. Soon he approached the student chaplain at the Catholic student center and asked for Baptism. He was baptized around 1960 (though I haven’t been able to pin down the date). He went on a couple summer mission trips to Mexico with the Catholic chaplaincy from Yale and met some people associated with the Cursillo movement from Spain whose faith impressed him. The Cursillo–a “little course” in Christianity–was and is a retreat movement that started in Mallorca in 1949. It had started making inroads in the United States in the 1950s.

Germany (1962–63)

After graduation, Steve went to Germany in 1962 on a Fulbright scholarship to study philosophy–mainly thinkers like Heidegger and Wittgenstein–at Freiburg with such scholars as Fr. Klaus Hemmerle and Fr. Bernhard Welte. He returned to the U.S. in the summer of 1963 and started to pursue a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. That Fall he “made Cursillo” and his life would never be the same. Soon he was teaching other students about Christianity, inviting people on Cursillo weekends and helping organize regular meetings of prayer and discipleship on campus. The cursillistas, as they were called, would have weekly and monthly meetings.

Cursillo and Charismatic Renewal (1964–1969)

By Christmas 1964, Steve had adopted an apostolic vision and vocation. During that break, he convinced one of his Cursillo friends, Ralph Martin (who had graduated from Notre Dame in 1964 and begun studies at Princeton), to drop out of school with him and pursue a life of evangelization and discipleship. The pair went on a long retreat at Mount Savior Monastery in the summer of 1965 to discern for the future. They soon became the “national research staff” for the Cursillo movement in East Lansing, Michigan where they worked closely with Bishop Green, an auxiliary at the time.

In 1966, Steve read the Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson–a book that he soon passed along to his friends at the national Cursillo convention: Ralph Keifer and Bill Storey. These two theology academics at Duquense University would go on to lead the famous Duquense Weekend, a retreat in 1967 that ignited the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR). Soon after the weekend, Ralph and Steve paid a visit to Pittsburgh to catch the fire. As 1967 rolled on, the CCR spread to Notre Dame’s campus and to Michigan State, where Ralph and Steve were serving. That summer, they were joined by two other ND students: Jim Cavnar and Gerry Rauch. The Four were invited to Ann Arbor by the Catholic chaplain to begin working with students at the University of Michigan there.

Their efforts on campus bore fruit in a prayer group that they eventually built into a “Christian base community” (drawing on ideas from philosophers like Wittgenstein, community organizers like Saul Alinsky, and the 1969 Medillin documents from the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopal Council or CELAM). This ecumenical community came to be known as “The Word of God.” It peaked at about 1,500 adult members in the 1980s. At the same time, Steve devoted his life to being “single for the Lord” and founded an ecumenical brotherhood called The Servants of the Word. This group of celibate men still exists today. During the 1970s, Steve was also deeply involved in what was called the “Shepherding Movement,” an American charismatic movement to regulate Christian life with strong “headship” structures.

The Word of God, the First Charismatic Covenant Community

During these early apostolic efforts, Steve wrote many books and papers in support of the new movements and their ideas, most notably Building Christian Communities: Strategies for Renewing the Church (1972); The Purpose of the Movement (co-authored with Ralph Martin, 1974); and Unordained Elders and Renewal Communities (1976). In Building Christian Communities, he states “Christians are complete only when they belong to a full Christian community, a community in which all the things which are ordinarily needed by anyone to grow as a Christian can be provided” (p. 48). Steve was not only the architect of the Word of God as the first charismatic “covenant community,” but he also was an effective national and international organizer of the movement. In 1975, the CCR had an international meeting at the Vatican and was received by Pope St. Paul VI at Pentecost.

Steve Clark and Ralph Martin at Harris Hall in Ann Arbor, Michigan

Steve Clark (left) and Ralph Martin at Harris Hall in Ann Arbor, Michigan (photo: Robert Chase, Ann Arbor News, 1974, donated to AADL)

Steve and Ralph moved to Belgium in 1976 at the behest of Cardinal Leon-Joseph Suenens. The Cardinal hoped that they could help establish the CCR in Europe. During these years, Steve organized an international ecumenical federation of covenant communities called The Sword of the Spirit, which boasts about 100 communities and about 10,000 members (though exact numbers are hard to find).

His most notable book, which came out around this time, was Man and Woman in Christ: An Examination of the Roles of Men and Women in Light of Scripture and the Social Sciences (1980). This deeply-researched and lengthy book was Steve’s response to the feminist movement and the changing nature of gender roles in American society. It preceded new developments in the Christian men’s movement like the formation of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (1987) and Promise Keepers (1990).

Later Years and Lawsuits

The Word of God community experienced a cataclysmic schism in 1990, with Ralph and Steve going separate ways. That’s another story, but Steve continued as head of the Sword of the Spirit.  He wrote additional books like How to Be Ecumenical Today (1996), Charismatic Spirituality (2004), Redeemer: Understanding the Meaning of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1992) and The Old Testament in the Light of the New: The Stages of God’s Plan (2017).

Steve has recently been a defendant in a few lawsuits related to sexual abuse committed by members of the Servants of the Word (additional link from WLNS). Some involved in communities led or inspired by Steve have expressed their hurt and disagreement with his pastoral practices and ideas. See, for example, “Leaving Bulwark” or the many documents critical of Steve Clark and the Sword of the Spirit posted on Scribd by John Flaherty.

Steve Clark’s Legacy

Steve Clark’s legacy will be hard to assess. He certainly influenced many people. As the architect of covenant community, as the leading thinker and community-builder in the CCR, as an ecumenist, as a Christian philosopher-theologian, Steve was not an armchair thinker; he implemented his ideas. Indeed, he gave up the promising future he could have had as a university professor to adopt a radical Christian lifestyle, to disciple other people and to lead a movement. He took concepts of community being discussed in philosophy classrooms and in bishops’ meetings and put them into practice. He connected people around the world to form a coherent movement. He answered the problems of the age with ideas, teachings, practices, communities. He did not just have insight into organizing Christian communities, he taught people how to work together to build a common vision, to “set direction,” and to adopt a common “approach.” His ideas will be important for years to come.

Steve Clark and me

Steve Clark and me

 

Interviews on Wisdom and Suffering

Yesterday, I appeared on Catholic Faith Network, talking about my new commentary on Wisdom of Solomon (starting at 13:07):

CFN Live – March 7, 2024 from Catholic Faith Network on Vimeo.

I also appeared on the Busted Halo Show with Fr. Dave Dwyer talking about Suffering: What Every Catholic Should Know on SiriusXM: https://bustedhalo.com/radio-shows/thursday-march-7-2024

Video Lecture: Repentance as an Act of Hope

I gave this lecture recently at an Augustine Institute virtual Bible conference. I hope you like it!

Description of the Lecture: In a world that has forgotten about sin, those who seek God aim for a high ideal of moral integrity. But they can find themselves crushed under the weight of sin’s severity. “My iniquities overwhelm me, a burden too heavy for me” (Ps 38:4). A conscience wracked by guilt is a heavy burden indeed. When we examine our conscience, uncover the root of sin, and repent, we both take responsibility for our faults and tread the path of hope, believing that restoration of our relationship with God is possible and, furthermore, that his grace will keep us from sin. This simultaneous self-blame and self-entrustment is a radical act of hope that embodies the belief that “mercy surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord” (Ps 32:10).