People ask me all kinds of questions. These days most questions are about parish life, Scripture, church history, theology, and the topics one would expect to receive when one works in a parish. This week another question has been asked: “How is it possible for a modern submarine to hit an underseas mountain? Don’t they have sonar?”

Brad Lendon has a well-written and concise article which answers the questions far better than I would have. The shorter answer is that the whole purpose of submarine is stealth. Sonar is a loud-speaker announcement “Here I am” and so its not used for routine navigation. But that leads to the question of “don’t submarines have maps?” We have charts, but as Lendon wrote: “Basically, the surface of the moon is better charted than the bottom of the ocean is.”