Oxygen in the Room

Where should we be focusing our attention in these days? Lets see…there is:

• the danger from foreign governments interfering in US elections
• the on going investigations of the President which may lead to an impeachment
• the human rights abuses from abortion to police racial profiling
• the global climate change crisis
• the opioid abuse crisis
• the immigration crisis at the southern border of the United States, as well as in Europe from the Middle East and Africa
• the danger of resurgent terrorist activity due to wars in Syria and Afghanistan
• the outrages over male sexual predation, e.g. Harvey Weinstien, Jeffery Epstein, #Metoo, college rapes, etc
• the economic slowdown and possible recession due to strained trading relations with China
• the homeless crisis in large cities across the country.

One could go on and on…and each of us could prioritize the list according to our individual prudential understandings. With so many important issues clamoring for our attention it is understandable that people complain of fatigue whether from outrage or empathy – these matters use up all the oxygen in the room.
And then there is the crisis within the Catholic Church; from the massive damage done over the past decades by clerical abuses to the possibility of portentous changes in the Church herself guided not by her scriptures and traditions but rather by a new spirit from the depths of the Amazon – a spirit that looks and sounds suspiciously like the spirit of the age.
Earlier this year Gil Bailie at the Convocation of Fellows at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology spoke about this latter concern.  His recorded remarks are below:
[videopress lTrzDYWe]