Those who know Sesame Street, know the song “One of These Things is not Like the Others.” It’s a fun way of teaching children to recognize differences and similarities, to discern patterns, and exceptions to those patterns. To learn about sizes, colors, shapes, numbers, animals, you (just about) name it. It’s not designed to...
Easter will soon be upon us. We have about another week to think about the ways we can continue to turn our few good deeds into mountains of them, and turn our many sins into just some small pebbles. This is challenging work. It’s challenging for us to own up to our faults when...
Take a breath. The holidays and Holy Days are behind us. St. Francis’ Day, Halloween, All Saint’s Day, All the Faithful Departed, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, the coming of the Wise Men, the Baptism of our Lord, and the Epiphany. We’re now in Ordinary Time. The English name is...
Happy New Year! At least to those whose new year begins on January 1, because it doesn’t really begin now for everyone. We all live with different ways of measuring things: years, time, distances and lengths, volumes, temperatures, etc. For example, there are six principal calendars in current use — which replicate astronomical cycles...
In March 1616, the Catholic Church issued a prohibition against the Copernican theory, which claimed that the Earth was not at the center of the universe (geocentric), but that it rotated around the Sun (heliocentric). This led to the Inquisition and Condemnation of Galileo Galilei (in 1633) as a suspected heretic for his subsequent astronomical observations (such...