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The readings that the Catholic Church uses for Sunday Mass and the ones it chooses for daily Mass don’t intentionally line up; the daily readings generally work slowly through a Gospel and another book of the Bible, while the ones on Sunday will work through a Gospel and another book of the New Testament, with…
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At our core, we don’t have a political problem. We have an idolatry problem. In the wake of the shooting of former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, there have been many new calls to return civility to politics. Before we can hope to regain civility, much less the focus on the common good,…
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Get out of the way. There’s a little story in Mark (10:46-52, this Sunday’s Gospel for you Catholics) about the healing of a blind man named Bartimaeus. It’s a pretty straightforward story that only takes a couple of verses, but even a small story like this has details worth reflecting on. Jesus and a crowd…
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Why should you read this book? This is less of a rhetorical question than it sounds, and I hope you’ll let me know if you figure out a good answer. But let me offer that my purpose in sharing this is to tell a bit of my story in hopes that you might share some…
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Who do you look like? They say couples that have been together for a long time start to look like each other. I don’t know if that’s true. But I do know that, if not in physical ways, it’s part of human nature that we start to resemble the people we focus our attention on,…
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I wrote Abandoning Temples because my friends encouraged me to write a book, and this is the book I had in me, apparently. Once I went through the trouble of writing and publishing a book, though, I realized that I’d really like people beyond my friends to buy it and read it. So I’m committed…
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In Abandoning Temples: Letting Go of What We Worship to Find What Truly Matters, Jeff Johnson invites readers on a transformative journey from misplaced devotion to authentic purpose. With unflinching honesty and deep insight, Johnson explores the subtle and pervasive idols of modern life—from career ambitions and political ideologies to relationships and self-image. Drawing from…
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What would Jesus do? I posted something on Facebook about the brouhaha stemming from the Paris Olympics’ Opening Ceremonies spectacle including a performance that was interpreted as a drag-queen parody of the Last Supper, but I want to come back to this and take a different approach. As seems to happen with everything these days,…
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Peace or sword? Which is it? There’s a gospel reading that popped up for daily Mass today (Monday, July 15) that I’ve never much cared for: Jesus said to his Apostles: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.” He…
Reading Francis 