Everyone has their own habits as regards the consumption of news. I often scour CNN, the NY Times, CBS and Fox News – a way of seeing what is being said about the topic of the day – or even one network is even covering something. It is all revealing.
Once I week I check on Crux News, “Taking the Catholic Pulse.” Crux was founded by the Boston Globe, but is now independently owned. It dedicated focus concerns Catholicism in the United States Crux features deep coverage of the Holy See by the long-time Vatican watcher and reporter John L. Allen Jr. – a “go-to” interview by the national networks when things Catholic are headline news. Crux also employs Inés San Martín, as Rome Bureau Chief. San Martin is also a veteran of Vatican and European Catholic reporting.
This week’s article by Allen is interesting and worth the read. It is a reminder the American Catholic view is just one view in global, culturally diverse Catholic Church of more than 1.3 billion members: “Each Catholic culture brews a controversy made to order” Take a moment and have a read.
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Way back in the day, before this life as a Franciscan, I was helping out with a teen ministry program at my parish. I will always remember one comment a young woman made: “It’s not like I have a contract with God or anything.”
As we noted in last week’s article, Francis expected his brothers to learn by imitation – and to understand that as Francis sought to imitate Christ, so too should the brothers. But in reality, the first generation of Assisi-area brothers simply did what Francis did: daily prayer, work at a local leprosarium, go to local churches to participate in Eucharist, eat, pray again, witness to the local Umbrian people near Assisi, and live a life in community. You have to remember this was all new. Prior to this “Franciscan moment” the spiritual journey of medieval people consisted of being a monk or cloistered nun behind the walls of the monastery, being a priest and living close to the sacraments and the Scriptures, or being a lay person and hoping the other groups were praying for you. And then along comes this different, new, intriguing way of being spiritual in the world. And it was not set down in writing; it did not come with instructions. But sometimes is borrowed from the past. 
Today I celebrated the Rite of Committal for a US Marine Corp veteran. Given our proximity to the Quantico National Cemetery, we are called upon several times a week to assist families with the committal of their loved ones – most often retired service members or their spouses. Sadly, we also serve when an active duty member is interned. They are mostly connected to the Marine Corp, but the hallowed grounds honor members from all branches of the military. 
Chaos Theory is often misunderstood, misrepresented, and spoken of by lots of folks who toss around a term to convey the idea of complete randomness of this or that. The study of chaos is branch of mathematics that looks at apparently random states of disorder and irregularities that are actually governed by underlying patterns and deterministic laws. Those patterns and law might not be readily apparent, they are just highly sensitive to initial conditions.
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