Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History

Pope Leo the Great, Confronting Attila the Hun, and His Role in Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon

Pope Leo the Great, Confronting Attila the Hun, and His Role in the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon

10/05/2025 0

As Pope Benedict XVI writes: “The times in which Pope Leo lived were very difficult: constant barbarian invasions, the gradual weakening of imperial authority in the West, and the long, drawn-out social crisis forced the Bishop of Rome” “to play an important role in both civil and political events.”
“In a period of profound crisis, Leo the Great knew how to make himself close to the people and the faithful with his pastoral action and his preaching. He enlivened charity in a Rome tried by famines, an influx of refugees, injustice, and poverty. He opposed pagan superstitions and actions of Manichaean groups. He associated the liturgy with the daily life of Christians.” […]

Did Rome Fall, or Evolve to Barbarian Kingdoms? Sack of Rome, and Attila the Hun’s Invasions

Did Rome Fall, or Evolve Into the Barbarian Kingdoms? Sacks of Rome, and Attila the Hun’s Invasions

09/15/2025 1

Peter Brown contends: “The Roman Empire was not violently breached by barbarian “invasions.” Rather, between AD 200 and 400, the frontier itself changed. From being a defensive region, which kept Romans and barbarians apart, it had become, instead, an extensive middle ground, in which roman and barbarian societies were drawn together. And after AD 400, it was the barbarians and no longer the Romans who became the dominant partners in the middle ground.” Indeed, after AD 400 barbarian tribes served in the army of the Huns, and barbarians from most of the tribes, including the Huns, served in the Roman armies. […]

Summary of Papacies Between Trent and Vatican II. How Did These Popes Prepare the Way for Vatican II?

08/08/2025 0

How did the Catholic Church survive the French Revolution, the conquests of Napoleon, and the Revolutions of 1848? Was the Second Vatican Council a continuation of Vatican I? Was Pope Leo XIII, who issued Rerum Novarum, the social justice encyclical that sympathized with the working man, a conservative or a […]

Pope Benedict XV and Pope Pius XI: Confronting World War I and World War II, and Fascism

07/27/2025 1

Mussolini signaled in a speech that he was open to negotiating the Roman question. Mussolini was not a practicing Catholic and was famously a serial philanderer. Like Napoleon before him, Mussolini realized that it was in his political interest to settle this issue and regularize the status of the Vatican City.
O’Malley writes: “The most momentous aspect of the Lateran Agreements was the establishment of the Vatican City as a fully independent and sovereign state, with its own postal service, police force, full diplomatic corps, and so forth. The Italian state agreed never to interfere in the free functioning of Vatican City and ensured full and safe access to it by anyone the papacy wanted to receive. The papacy agreed never to try directly or indirectly to reestablish the Papal States, and it relinquished in perpetuity all claim to the city of Rome.”
The Vatican was paid a generous indemnity for the loss of this territory, and the state would pay an annual stipend for the upkeep of historical monuments. In addition to the 103 acres in Vatican City, the pope could also use several churches and castles traditionally at the church’s disposal. […]

Pope Pius X, Promoting Piety, Rejecting Modernism

07/27/2025 0

After the long and momentous papacy of Pope Leo XIII, the cardinals sought a candidate who would be a pastoral pope. They chose Guiseppe Sarto, who had spent his entire priestly life as a pastor, last serving as patriarch of Venice. He was from a family of modest means, and for nine years he served as a priest in a country parish. His formal education was meager, he studied at a seminary in Padua.
Our author John O’Malley explains: “Pope Pius X had never set foot outside Italy. He saw things in terms of black and white. While still Patriarch of Venice, he wrote to a friend: ‘When we speak of the Vicar of Christ, we must not quibble. We must obey. We must not evaluate his judgments or criticize his directions lest we do injury to Jesus Christ himself. Society is sick. The one hope, the one remedy, is the pope.’ The words ring like an Ultramontanist manifesto.” […]

Pope Leo XIII: Catholic Social Justice and Rerum Novarum, Confronting the Modern World

07/27/2025 1

O’Malley writes: “Rerum Novarum is a long encyclical. It reaffirms previous papal condemnations of socialism and communism. But its tone throughout is serene, and free from rant.” “While it proclaimed private property as a natural right, it insisted it had its limits. If private property was a right, so was the right of the worker to a just wage and to humane working conditions. Most remarkably, the encyclical endorsed the right of workers to organize in order to obtain and secure their rights.”
Pope Leo XXIII was labeled the Social Pope and the Pope of Workers since he endorsed the necessity of paying workers a living wage that enables the worker to feed, clothe, and house his family with dignity. Rerum Novarum encouraged the formulation of social justice doctrine, leading to the Catholic concept of the preferential option for the poor. Subsequent popes endorsed the theology of this encyclical: Pope Pius XI issued the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, Pope Pius VI issued Octagesima Adveniens, and Pope John Paul II issued Centesimus Annus on the fortieth, eightieth, and hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum. In addition, Pope John XXIII issued Mater Et Magistra on social justice. […]

Pope Pius IX, 1848 Revolutions and First Vatican Council

07/11/2025 1

Why did Pope Pius IX call the council? John O’Malley notes: “Some people speculated he wanted it solemnly to confirm the Syllabus of Errors. He may have wanted it as a show of Catholic strength worldwide against the church’s enemies, especially in Italy.”
O’Malley continues: “Despite the broad agenda that was anticipated, the council dealt with only two items. The first was the relationship between revealed truth and the powers of human reason.” The council affirmed both the distinction and compatibility between them. With that resolved, the council planned to discuss “church-state relations and the role of the bishops, but with the encouragement of Pius it bypassed them and moved directly to consider” “papal primacy and papal infallibility.”
Papal primacy was not new; the Catholic Church had held this view for fifteen hundred years. But the pope and many bishops felt that the church needed to definitively state that the pope had full authority, not only over matters of faith and morals, but also over discipline and governance for the church worldwide, for both clergy and laity. […]

Popes Between Trent and Vatican I, Including Napoleon, the French Revolution, and Pope Pius VI

Catholic Popes from Trent to French Revolution and Napoleon to Vatican I

07/10/2025 2

Negotiations for a Concordat between France and the Pope dragged on for thirteen months and over two dozen drafts. O’Malley writes: “Pope Pius VII and” his secretary of state “Consalvi stalled for time, intent on getting out of Napoleon every concession they could. The delay drove Napoleon crazy. He threw tantrums. He threatened to become a Protestant. He threatened to have his troops march on Rome. But finally, on July 15, 1801, the concordat was signed.”
What were the terms of the concordat? Although it acknowledged that most French were Catholics, there was freedom of religion, and Catholicism was not the state religion of France. O’Malley notes: “The buildings and real estate seized from the church during the Revolution were to remain in the hands of the new owners, but cathedrals and churches needed for worship were put at the disposal of clergy as needed. The clergy, who must swear to uphold the government, were paid by the state, which is the first time in history for such a provision.” It reaffirmed that “the state had the right to nominate bishops, subject to the approval of the papacy.” […]

Summary of Youth and Military Career of Ulysses S Grant

Summary of Youth, West Point, and Generalship of Ulysses S Grant, From Mexican-American War to Civil War

06/27/2025 0

Those who fought the Civil War grew up in the America of Andrew Jackson, when the giants of the second generation of American leaders fought to hold the United States together. These great orators, including Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, would later inspire Union soldiers to fight and die to preserve the Union. These were the years when the slave-owning Southern President Andrew Jackson threatened to deploy federal troops to prevent the secession of South Carolina over tariffs during the Nullification Crisis in the 1830s. […]

General Ulysses S Grant’s Victory at the Bloody Battle of Shiloh, and His Earlier Civil War Battles

06/20/2025 0

Chernow recounts: “Before Shiloh, Grant had nursed hopes for a titanic battle that would triumphantly crush the rebellion. Now, stunned by the combative spirit of his foes, he knew there would be many more bloodbaths in a long, grinding war of attrition. This began is conversion to a theory of total warfare in which all of southern society would have to be defeated.”
Chernow continues: “For Grant, Shiloh represented a personal victory. He had rescued his army from his own errors, showing a gumption and an audacity that altered the battle’s course. He had shown coolness under fire and a willingness to take monumental gambles. The battle also instilled lasting confidence in the Army of the Tennessee, shattering anew the fighting mystique of rebel soldiers.” […]

Early Life and Career of Ulysses S Grant Through His Service in the Mexican American War

06/13/2025 0

What was young Ulysses like? Chernow says that in his youth, Ulysses “seemed forgettable and colorless,” was not wayward or rambunctious or mischievous. “Like his mother, he was self-contained, as if he had trained his face to mask emotion and keep his inner life secret. Like Hannah, he was uncommonly even-tempered.” Unlike many great men of history, Ulysses in his youth had no vision of a great future and was prepared to live his life in obscurity. He was underestimated by many who met him.
Chernow describes traits that would serve him well later in life. “Never one to initiate a fight, he refused to back down when bullied. He was roused to fury if sadistic boys tormented an innocent child or a defenseless horse, and small boys embraced him as their steadfast protector.”
Ulysses was born with a love for horses. Chernow notes: “He liked to ride without a saddle or stirrups, sitting astride a blanket on the horse’s back, and he was so expert at handling horses that he began riding at age five. He became known for breaking in wild horses for local farmers.” “He tamed even the most refractory horses through a fine sensitivity to their nature rather than by his physical prowess.” […]

JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: How Was It Influenced by Nordic Mythology and Catholicism

JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: Was It Influenced by Nordic Mythology, Homer’s Iliad, and Catholicism?

05/10/2025 0

What inspirations did JRR Tolkien draw from for his best-selling series The Lord of the Rings, and the Hobbit? Like his friend CS Lewis, Tolkien was an English Professor specializing in medieval and ancient literature and languages. When CS Lewis was contemplating whether to return to his Episcopalian roots, abandoning his youthful agnostic views, Tolkien argued that he should convert to Catholicism. CS Lewis resisted these pleas. IMHO, though CS Lewis was conducive to Catholicism, and may have even confessed his sins to a priest, he likely thought he would be more effective evangelizing through his books as an Episcopalian.
Both JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis fought in the trenches in France as British soldiers during World War I, they both lost many friends who fought beside them: they both experienced the horrors of war. Both were too old to serve in World War II, but this struggle against the evils of Naziism directly influenced CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, both released shortly after the war. […]

Who Were More Violent: Black Civil Rights Protestors or White Supremacists?

02/14/2025 0

We had a recent comment on the somewhat peaceful protests organized by Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders during the tumultuous decade of the Sixties: “They were violent rioters, not peaceful protesters.” How violent were these protesters, and how violent where the white supremacists they were confronting? And […]

Jimmy Carter, Raising Crops and Livestock, and Health and Hygiene, in Rural Georgia During the Depression

02/07/2025 1

Although both blacks and whites experienced health and hygiene challenges during the Depression, poor health was more prevalent among black laborers and sharecroppers. Jimmy Carter remembers: “The life expectancy of black men and women was less than fifty years.” “During most of the year, they ate only two meals a day, usually cornmeal, fatback, molasses, and perhaps sweet potatoes. The more industrious families also had small gardens that provided some seasonal corn, Irish potatoes, collards, turnips, and cabbage, with a few rows of peas and beans planted alongside the garden fence. The combination of constant and heavy work, inadequate diet, and excessive use of tobacco was devastating to the health of our poorer neighbors.” His mother encouraged her black neighbors to grow vegetables in their own gardens, and shared with them the vegetables from the Carter family garden. […]

Jimmy Carter, Memories of Sharecropping, Civil Rights, and Life in Rural Deep South Georgia

Jimmy Carter, Memories of Sharecropping, Hoboes, New Deal, and Civil Rights in Rural Georgia

02/05/2025 1

“There was an issue that troubled my mother during my political years, when the news media began to probe our family’s history. One day she said to me, “Jimmy, one thing bothers me. Reporters have criticized your daddy lately about not being for racial integration. What they don’t recognize is that he died in 1953, when there was no such thing as integration, and nobody had ever heard of Martin Luther King or any civil rights movement. Your daddy always rejected all the racist organizations that degraded or persecuted black people, and both races always knew him to be fair and helpful. I was real controversial in the community sometimes, but he supported everything I did to help black people and to treat them well.” […]

Jimmy Carter: Christmas in Plains Compared to Christmas in the White House and Afterwards

01/14/2025 3

Jimmy Carter grew up on his family farm in Archery, Georgia, several miles from Plains. He remembers: “In those earlier days, all my close neighbors were black families.” Their children “were my intimate friends with whom I played, fought, fished, hunted, and worked with in the cotton and peanut fields that were owned by my father.” When he went into town to sell peanuts, and when he started school, he felt that he “was in an alien environment in Plains, away from my black friends.”
Jimmy Carter continues: “The Great Depression was a time of almost incredible poverty, not only in rural Georgia but all over the country. Although my father was a landowner, cash money was scarce for us and for everyone else. Land seemed to have the only permanent economic value, and hard work was the key to survival. The celebration of Christmas during these times was quite different from what we know today: much more frugal, but with a degree of personal intimacy that brings back warm recollections.” […]

Jimmy Carter Biography Presidency Carter Center

Jimmy Carter, His Presidency, and Founding the Carter Center

01/02/2025 0

Jimmy Carter was elected as President when many voters wanted an honest President after the nation witnessed the Watergate scandal and coverup by a criminal president who was facing impeachment. Not only was Jimmy Carter seen as an honest man, but he was also a sincere born-again Christian. But his support for civil rights turned many white Christians against him. In the introduction, Jimmy Carter proclaims: “Vice President Mondale summarized our administration by saying, ‘We told the truth, we obeyed the law, we kept the peace.’ I would add, ‘We championed human rights.’” […]

Jimmy Carter’s Youth and Navy Years: From Plowing With Mules to Nuclear Submarines

12/31/2024 3

While Jimmy Carter was transitioning from a technologically demanding naval career working with nuclear submarines to move back to rural Georgia, where farms had yet to transition from mules and horses to tractors, rural Georgia was also experiencing the same racial transitions that the military was dealing with. The year after his retirement, the Supreme Court issued the Brown decision, mandating that public schools be desegregated with all deliberate speed. […]

Why Did Trump Win? What Should Democrats Do Now?

11/26/2024 0

Trump’s only path to victory in 2024 was to continue stirring up the hate and prejudice that won him the election in 2016. Simply put, more Americans approved of Trump’s divisive message than disapproved. Trump’s question to black journalists: When did Kamala Harris turn black? may have been more calculating than it seemed. Since Kamala Harris could pass for white, Trump wanted to hammer home the message to his base that Harris was as black as a burnt black kettle.
In this past election, we learned that many older white voters who will vote for an old boring white guy will never vote for a younger black woman, whether she could pass for white or not. Joe Biden won in 2020 because he was an old boring white guy with significant support from black voters. Unfortunately, in 2024 black and liberal voters did not turn out in sufficient numbers to tip the balance. My gut feeling is that a Tim Waltz-Kamala Harris ticket would have won, but that was a political impossibility given the short time frame needed to swap the candidates. After Biden’s disastrous debate performance, he was not seen as a winner.
Again, do not forget that half the country lives in the news bubble dominated by right-wingnut media, including Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart, Steve Bannon’s podcast, and Alex Jones, that lie with abandon. […]

Eugenics Under Jim Crow America and Nazi Germany: Sterilization, Euthanasia, Lynchings, and Holocaust

Eugenics and Scientific Racism in the Jim Crow Deep South and Nazi Germany

11/22/2024 1

Was there a similar Final Solution in America? True, there were no gas chambers in the Deep South, nor was there a similar system of systematic mass murder, but there were riots such as the Tulsa Riots where the homes, businesses, and churches of thousands of blacks were torched and looted, and many blacks were injured and murdered. In these riots, mostly occurring in many cities during the interwar years, on rare occasions when there were police arrests, they arrested the black victims who fought back. The major difference is that the Nazis murdered far more people much quicker, and their regime lasted only a decade, as opposed to the seventy-year reign of Jim Crow racism in America. […]

My Favorite Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History

02/26/2026 0

Scholars, like most everyone else, are social creatures, and are eager to please their teachers. This means they usually repeat the narratives they have been taught. Additionally, professors are often so hyper-specialized that they overlook connections to other fields. And, as Professor Steven Pinker noted, back in the day, professors dared not study consciousness until they attained tenure.
Is there anything new under the sun? What I hope to find is someone from the past who confirms my insights, because original insights are most valuable when they are old truths long forgotten, or connections are overlooked because prior generations were blind to how current events affected their views. Even when there is no direct confirmation, I sometimes find reflections from past generations that indirectly confirm, or at least do not disprove my perspectives.
For me, creativity is not a problem, so I prefer to include quotes from ancient and modern authors, to encourage my listeners to read them on their own. Why restate aphorisms in my own words when they are so inspiring when originally uttered? The eastern Church Fathers did not see a need to reword inherited ancient teachings, so why should I? […]

Sunrise Community Police Academy: Police and Mental Health, Canine Officers, 911 Call Center

02/25/2026 0

On homicide week in our Sunrise Community Police Academy, the police instructor showed us the ghoulish face of a dementia patient found face down in a canal. The officer commented that for some strange reason, dementia patients have a strange attraction to water, often drowning.
Roughly sixty percent of dementia patients wander. Experts note that when someone suffering from dementia wanders away, one in four will lose their lives if they are not found within two days. This is why police urge citizens to report a missing person sooner rather than later. […]

Roman Stoic Philosopher Cicero On Friendship and Virtue

02/06/2026 0

Cicero advises us: “The first and sacred law of friendship: Seek only good from friends, do only good for the sake of friends, and don’t wait to be asked! Be always attentive! Banish hesitation! Be ready to give advice freely! Take seriously the good advice of friends. Be ready to offer it openly, even forcefully, if the occasion demands, and also be ready to follow when it has been offered.”
In contrast, Antisthenes, the first Cynic philosopher who studied under Socrates, advises us: “Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to notice your faults.” Often, friends are reluctant to tell us what we need to know, preferring to tell us what they think we want to hear. […]

Sunrise Community Police Academy: What is New? Cameras, Technology, Guns, SWAT Team, and More

02/05/2026 0

Caution is a policeman’s main defense against bullets headed their way. Police are rarely in a rush to approach the driver during a traffic stop, nor are they in a rush to knock on the door for a domestic dispute call. If possible, they wait until other policemen arrive. The more backup, the better.
I was surprised to learn how policemen respond to other police pulling them over when they are in other jurisdictions. They politely roll down their windows, put their hands on their steering wheels, and tell them that they too are police officers. They volunteer where they have their guns, which all policemen carry. They don’t put any documentation in the glove box, because they don’t want to reach in to grab it. […]

Plato’s Republic, Book 1, Reflecting on Old Age, Morality, and Justice

Plato’s Republic, Book 1, On Aging and Morality, a Better Word for Justice

12/27/2025 0

Reading Robin Waterfield’s translation was like breathing fresh alpine air. When I thought that Plato’s Republic was about justice, I reasoned that this was because Socrates sought to train Athenians to be better citizens in a direct democracy, a skill that would not be needed in the later totalitarian Roman Empire. But Robin Waterfield’s translation of the Republic makes more sense and is more in line with Stoic and Christian moral values. I demur from the conventional scholarly opinion that who the translator is does not matter. […]

Paul Tournier, Christian Psychologist on Marriage and Widows in Old Age and Retirement

12/19/2025 0

What is the ideal, according to Paul Tournier? “Growing old together, husband and wife can come to know a love which is, in a way, a prefiguration of heaven, for it is less tumultuous than the love of youth, being less directed towards selfish pleasure-seeking, and because a slow advance in mutual comprehension permits more authentic communication.” […]

Why Are Dementia Patients Who Wander So Drawn to Water? Why Do They Drown?

Why Are Wandering Dementia Patients Drawn to Water? Why Do They Drown?

12/03/2025 0

The biggest objection property managers and association boards raised against performing health and wellness checks on their owners and residents is they are not nursing homes: they do not want to be held responsible for the welfare of their owners and residents. But even if they wanted to, they cannot take on the responsibility of care. Instead, they should call the police and request that they conduct a health and wellness check. They should inform the police about the possible foreclosure of a dementia patient, as this will better enable them to receive any care they may need. Any known family members must also be informed.
Alternatively, or additionally, they can request that the Broward County Council of Aging, or an appropriate local agency, refer the case to a professional. The Alzheimer’s Association 24/7 support hotline at 800-272-3900 is also an excellent resource. […]

Epictetus, Eminent Roman Stoic Philosopher, on Living Well, Dying Well, and Opposing Suicide

10/11/2025 2

Is it wise to complain? Epictetus observes: “If someone dies young, he blames the gods because he is being taken before his time. If someone lingers on into extreme old age, he too blames the gods.” “Despite this, at the approach of death, he wants to stay alive; he sends for the doctors and begs him to do all he can.” “It is quite remarkable to see how people want neither to live nor to die.”
“Is health good and illness bad? No, man. What, then? Health managed well is good, but when badly managed, it is bad.”
Epictetus points out: “If you look at yourself in isolation, it is natural for you to live to an old age, to be rich, to be healthy. But if you look at yourself as a human being and as part of some whole, for the sake of that whole, it may be appropriate for you to be ill, or risk your life at sea, or be poor, or die young. Why get angry then?” “What is a human being? A part of a city made up of gods and human beings,” “a small copy of the universal city.” […]

Doris Day, Everyone’s Girl Next Door: Que Será, Será? Que Sepa, Sepa?

10/11/2025 0

Doris Kappelhoff was born in 1922, she was both a leading movie star and singer from the 1940’s through the early 1960’s, when many movies were musicals. In her youth she was hoping to be a dancer, but when she broke her leg when the car she was riding in collided with a freight train, she instead became a singer. She started singing in the hospital out of boredom, and since her voice was so clear her mother enrolled her in voice lessons.
In the late thirties Doris began her career as a big band singer, recording more than six hundred songs. Early in her career she adopted the stage name of Doris Day, inspired by the song Day After Day, as her original surname was too long to fit on marquees. She made her film debut in 1948, starring in dozens of movies with many leading men of Hollywood, many of them romantic comedies, including Rock Hudson, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Ronald Reagan, Cary Grant, David Niven, and many others.
Her public persona was the virtuous girl next door, so she declined the leading role in the Graduate. In that movie, the role of the randy mother-in-law went to Ann Bancroft, who seduced her future son-in-law, Dustin Hoffman. What was not explored in the movie was what the family holiday dinners were like after he married her daughter. Doris Day was not willing to transition to the Free Love climate of the Sixties, which quickly ended her movie and recording careers. […]

Roman Stoic Philosopher Cicero on Aging and Death

Roman Stoic Philosopher and Politician Cicero on Aging and Death

09/24/2025 4

Cicero advises us: “Enjoy the blessing of strength while you have it, and have no regrets when it has gone, any more than young men should regret the end of boyhood, or those approaching middle age lament the passing of youth. Life’s course is invariable: nature has one path only, and you cannot travel along it more than once. Every stage of life has its own characteristics: boys are feeble, youths in their prime are aggressive, middle-aged men are dignified, while the elderly are mature. Each of these qualities is ordained by nature for harvesting in due season.”
Cicero continues: “Age must be overcome; its faults need vigilant resistance. We must combat them as we should fight a disease: following a fixed regime, exercising in moderation, and consuming enough food and drink to strengthen” but not too much. “The mind and spirit need even more attention than the body, for old age easily extinguishes them, like lamps” with too little oil. […]

Roman Stoic Philosopher Seneca on Aging, Death, and Suicide

09/17/2025 5

Seneca reminds us: “There is indeed a limit fixed to us,” “but none of us knows how near he is to this limit. Therefore, let us so order our minds as if we had come to the very end. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s account every day.” “Let us begin at once to live and count each separate day as a separate life.” What is important is “not how long you live, but how nobly you live. And often living nobly means that you cannot live long.” […]

Roman Stoic Philosopher Seneca on Aging, Retirement, and Death

Roman Stoic Philosopher Seneca on Old Age and Retirement

09/07/2025 4

Seneca faces old age and death as only a Stoic could. “Old age is a time of life that is weary rather than crushed.” Nevertheless, I am thankful, “for age has not damaged my mind, though I feel its effects on my constitution. Only my vices” “have reached senility; my mind is strong,” “it is alert,” “it declares that old age is when it blooms.” “My mind bids me to consider how much this peace of mind and moderation of character I owe to wisdom and how much to my time of life; it bids me to distinguish carefully what I cannot do and what I do not want to do.” “There is only one chain that binds us to life, and that is the love of life.” […]

Classical Christian Psychologist Paul Tournier on Old Age, Death, and Faith

08/26/2025 2

Tournier reminds us that we may experience many successes, but as we grow older, “success retreats, and escapes us, it is limited, unfulfilled.” “When one comes to the end, a man’s life is nothing much.” “Professional life is over, and it finishes unfinished. This is a prefiguration of death, in which the whole of life will finish it, too, being unfinished. That is the dramatic contradiction of death.” Quoting Robert Mehl: “An end, but not a fulfilment, that is the face of death.” […]

Classical Christian Psychologist Paul Tournier on Old Age and Retirement

08/20/2025 4

Paul Tournier notes: “Freud defined psychological health under the double heading of aptitude for love and for work.” But Paul Tournier cautions that “the superficial relationships of working life and of sexual attraction must lead to a deeper personal commitment. And I believe that no commitment can be truly personal unless it takes on a transcendent dimension and become love, in the biblical meaning of the word.”
Paul Tournier is grateful: “As an intellectual, I am specially privileged. It is true that the better educated people are, the more chance they have to enjoy their retirement. First, intellectual work” is not physically taxing. “Second, the capacity for intellectual work is retained longer than physical ability. It can even increase in old age as long as disease does not affect the mental faculties. But most of all, the more one exercises one’s mind, the more pleasure it gives to exercise it. The more one learns, the more one wants to learn, and the easier study becomes.” […]

St John Chrysostom, Voltaire, and Leibniz Ask: Why Would a Loving God Permit Earthquakes?

04/18/2025 2

Theodicy is the term that Gottfried Leibniz coined in 1710 to describe this so-called problem of how an Almighty God permits suffering in the world.[1] The famed textual critic Bart Ehrman describes how he lost his faith over his concern about Theodicy in his book, On God’s Problem: Why We Suffer. As he points out, different books of the Bible answer this question differently. Many of the prophets, like St John Chrysostom, proclaim that natural disasters are often punishment meted out because we do not take care of the widows, orphans, and the poor.
On the other hand, in the Book of Job God does not give a reason for Job’s suffering, instead asking if Job can fathom the purposes of any of God’s inscrutable actions. why God permits the actions of God. Although I often do not agree with Bart Ehrman’s conclusions, I rarely disagree with the evidence he cites in his works. Another recent best seller is by Rabbi Harold Kushner: When Bad Things Happen to Good People. We plan to reflect on both these works sometime in 2025. […]

Michael J Fox and Parkinsons: Symptoms and Struggles

Michael J Fox and Parkinson’s Disease: His Symptoms and Struggles

04/01/2025 2

Where does Parkinson’s disease fall on the spectrum of neurological diseases? On one extreme, dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, degrades the patient’s cognition, including memory and reasoning. Their motor functions decline only as their overall health declines. On the other extreme, ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease degrades the patient’s motor functions, often starting with the legs, then the arms, then they have trouble breathing. […]

Tamara Dawes, On Sex Trafficking and Homelessness, Rotary Club of Sunrise FL Speaker

Tamara Dawes, On Human Trafficking and Homelessness, Rotary Club of Sunrise FL Speaker

02/27/2025 0

I’m just a mom that has seen families sleeping in cars, on plazas, and numerous other places with nowhere to turn. Recently, I had a brief encounter with a single mother and her sixteen-year-old son; they were on a plaza with two small black bags containing all their possession asking for money to buy food. The security guard approached and asked them to vacate the premises, because people were complaining about their presence, and she didn’t want to call the police. The kind security guard allowed me to get some personal information from this mother whom I tried to help. The desperate mother related how frustrated she was in her hopeless attempts of trying to find accommodations, as the shelters are unable to accept them because of the Covid-19 mandate that limits their capacity. I informed her that I too have made numerous calls, so I can attest to the information she shared. […]

What are the Ten Early Signs and Symptoms of Alzheimer’s?

02/12/2025 0

What are the Ten Early Signs and Symptoms of Alzheimer’s? We repeat these ten warning signs from the Alzheimer’s Association website in our book review of Kim Campbell’s biography of the celebrity country music star Glen Campbell from before his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease through his passing. We reflected on […]

Did Pythagoras Influence Plato? How Mathematics and Music Reveal the Divine Order

01/10/2025 0

Diogenes concludes that “the most important aspect of human life, according to Pythagoras, is the power to persuade the soul towards good or evil. Men who acquire a good soul are blessed,” while evil men “are never at rest,” nor can they keep to the narrow path. “Justice has the force of an oath, which is why Zeus is called the God of Oaths. Virtue is harmony and health and goodness in its entirety and god itself.” The universe is governed by “the laws of harmony. Friendship is harmonious equality.”
Diogenes then shares Pythagoras’ instructions for purification, some of which resemble the ancient Jewish laws. “Purity is attained by cleansing, ablution, and sprinkling with lustral water, and by avoiding all contact with cadavers, women in childbirth, and that defiles,” and beans and eggs and other forbidden foods. […]

Meno, a Platonic Dialogue. Why did Xenophon Despise Meno?

Meno, a Socratic Dialogue. Why Did Xenophon and Plato Despise Meno? How Did Meno Die?

12/21/2024 0

Xenophon, in Robin Waterfield’s translation, remembers:
“It was obvious that Meno longed to be rich; he wanted military command because it would bring him a greater share of the spoils, he wanted prestige because it would help him increase his wealth, and he wanted to be on good terms with the most powerful men because then he could avoid being punished for his crimes.”
Xenophon continues, “Meno thought that the quickest way for him to achieve his goals was to use perjury, lies, and deceit. In his opinion, openness and truthfulness were synonyms for stupidity. He evidently felt no affection for anyone, and if he claimed to be somebody’s friend it soon became clear that he was trying to sabotage him.”
Xenophon said that “Meno was frightened of people he found breaking promises and committing crimes, because he regarded them as well protected, and he tried to exploit people who were moral and honest because he regarded them as weak.” […]