Brother Louis is at it again: challenging the very nature of belief in the modern world and how human beings can practice an authentic spirituality in the twenty-first century. His newest book is aimed specifically at Roman Catholics, but it will be read by seekers of all Christian denominations, all faiths, and all those searching for a faith that makes sense to them today.
In our own perplexing attempts to peer beneath the veil of theological convention, we may discover there is a higher truth in questions that can’t be answered than in answers that can’t be questioned. Jesus, the great communicator, used the things with which his disciples had everyday familiarity to convey his message of salvation and the power of universal love: the lilies of the field, wheat and chaff, a mustard seed, lost sheep, fig trees, the power of Caesar, toiling in the fields, the nets of the fishermen. But is that how he would choose to speak to us today, in the third millennium since his death? Would he not speak instead of quarks and Wall Street capitalism, organ transplants, nuclear arsenals, gender identity, our failing stewardship of the planet, racial animus, income disparity, and unwelcome refugees? Who, we may ask, are the outcasts of our society today with whom he would seek communion? What contemporary hypocrites would suffer his scorn? Whom would he drive from the temple today? These are questions that have the power to engage and awaken us.
Brother Louis DeThomasis, FSC, a member of the De La Salle Christian Brothers, is President Emeritus of Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota and Chairman of Christian Brothers Investment Services–Global. He is the author of Flying in the Face of Tradition, Dynamics of Catholic Education, All Things to All People, and co-author, with Cynthia Nienhaus, CSA, of The Silent Schism: Healing the Serious Split in the Catholic Church.
</