As I mentioned last week, God blessed me with a wonderfully restful vacation after the Faith and Astronomy Workshop. Restful, that is, until my cellphone died and lost all ability to use the navigation software. When it first happened, I thought, “I’ve been driving these roads in Phoenix, Arizona for four days now – I’ll be fine without Siri.” Four hours later, I thanked God for helping me find the house I was staying at, exhausted from the mental stress of asking, “What is this place, how did I get here, and how do I get home?!” In my defense, even parishioners who spend a great deal of time snow birding (a term used to identify primarily retired people from Wisconsin who spend the bulk of winter in Arizona) complemented me on my courage to try to navigate the city of Phoenix with no GPS. Nevertheless, there is something of the rural kid in me that felt like I failed … Continue reading →

First of all, my apologies for my brief absence from The Catholic Astronomer. I was at the Faith and Astronomy Workshop in Tucson and then was blessed with a week of vacation in Arizona the week after. Though it was a bit of a shock to fly out of Phoenix at 73 degrees and arrive at Minneapolis/St. Paul at -3 degrees, it’s good to be home! FAW2019 was a wonderful success! Now that we have had four workshops, I feel as though we’re “finding our groove.” The main takeaway I had this year was the theme of faith and science not as dueling ideologies, but people developing relationships (both healthy and dysfunctional). It is through these relationships that the true bridge between faith and science emerges through people exploring the wonders of our universe and our common home – both natural and supernatural. We discussed how the strongest bridge between faith and science is not a series of apologetic arguments, but … Continue reading →

Fr. James, did the star of Bethlehem really exist? This is one of the most common questions I get as a priest who also loves to gaze into the heavens. There was a time I would try to explain the multiple theories of what the star might have been. Christopher Graney posted a wonderful reflection on some of these ideas just a couple of days ago. Br. Guy has also put together a wonderful video on The Star Bethlehem. I am so happy that these two brilliant minds, along with others I have read and seen, have put together these reflections to share with you. One of the reasons I’m so happy is because I feel less inclined to delve homiletically into questions of star conjunctions, supernovae, and noonday phenomena at this point of my priesthood. Instead, I find it more fruitful to ask a different kind of question: What did the Magi seek? Stated another way, What did the … Continue reading →

This is a “re-run” of a post that originally ran on December 24, 2016. We will return to the subject of the Star of Bethlehem in two weeks, right on time for Epiphany. Merry Christmas to all!  To mark my first Christmas [in 2016] as a blogger for the Vatican Observatory I must of course write on The Star of Bethlehem.  Consider these verses, from the second chapter of Matthew, that discuss The Star: When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews?  We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.”  When King Herod heard this, he was greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.  Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.  They said to him, “In … Continue reading →

Corporal Work of Mercy: To build a better world through choices that avoid violence, exploitation, and selfishness. Reflect on the collage of images below. At the center is a person deep in thought. Around him is the world in which he lives and the world that his choices impact. He is placed at the center because his choices will ultimately impact him as well. How does humanity’s choices impact the different parts of creation depicted in each image? What are the implications for humanity when those choices are made? What are the choices you face on a daily basis that either support or challenge our call to Care for Creation? The heart of Pope Francis’ Corporal Work of Mercy for Creation is choices: Choices that you and I make and their moral implications. The heart of selfishness toward creation is when we adopt the ethic of, The only choice that matters is what I want to use creation for to … Continue reading →

This past weekend, the readings the Catholic Church used for Mass had a clear apocalyptic overtone. For those of you who are not familiar with apocalyptic literature, it is a series of texts that oftentimes speak of the end of the world. At the same time, we cannot reduce these passages to mere doom and gloom. True apocalyptic literature always points to something from the past, something that is going on in the present, and something that is pointing to the future. Many who interpret the Book of Revelation fixate on future events, trying to guess when the end of the world will come. Christ, himself, in this weekend’s Gospel, dissuades this approach. Rather, we need to stop and first ask, “How would the people of Jesus’ time have experienced these texts?” The problem is, living over 2,000 years after these texts were penned, we don’t have the common experience of Jesus’ time to see the clear connections to what … Continue reading →