Doug McManaman is a Deacon and a Religion and Philosophy teacher at Father Michael McGivney Catholic Academy in Markham, Ontario, Canada. He is the past President of the Canadian Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. He maintains the following web site for his students: A Catholic Philosophy and Theology Resource Page.
Contact: dmcmanaman@sympatico.ca
Website:http://fmmh.ycdsb.ca/teachers/fmmh_mcmanaman/pages/index.html
I think one of the most significant points in this gospel is that the miracle was worked only after the Apostles realized that what Jesus was asking them to do was simply beyond their capacity. How do we feed 5,000 with five loaves and two fish?
Date posted: 2013-06-13
Synopsis: If good leadership, in very general terms, is about taking a "back seat" and allowing an order that is larger than the individual leader to emerge on its own, it is counterintuitive that Church government is monarchial in nature. How do we resolve the paradox that the Church, the best institution, adopts the worst form of government?
Date posted: 2013-04-18
Synopsis: When God sees us, He sees a likeness of His Son, and he delights in us as a result of that. There's a sense in which God the Father looks at us through rose colored glasses.
Date posted: 2013-04-18
Behind the ideological conflicts that characterize today's political discourse are, roughly speaking, two different visions of human intelligence. The one sees a clear and distinct separation between intelligence and sense perception, a vision that has its roots in Descartes, the other maintains that human intelligence participates in the limitations of sense perception. Effective leadership is not authoritarian, for authoritarianism is rooted in the former view of human knowing, and this view is not true to the facts. The human person is a psychosomatic unity; human intelligence participates in the limitations of sense perception.
Date posted: 2013-04-06
The liturgy is the celebration of Christ's death and resurrection, which is why it is such an irony when we have not appropriated Christ in his suffering love, but nonetheless have "good" and "reverent" liturgy. What is the point of good liturgy if we don't live and love the cross? What is the point of theology if it does not serve mercy? We have to be in touch with human suffering, and we have to bring the good news of the risen Christ, who is in the depths of that suffering, to those who suffer.
Date posted: 2013-04-06
All relationships have a starting point, and they develop. It is only gradually that we come to understand the one with whom we are in relationship, and we grow in our understanding of that person, in time and through our relationship with him, that is, not merely by what he says, but in what he does. So too with God's relationship with Israel; He reveals Himself precisely in His fidelity to His covenanted people.
Date posted: 2013-03-31
Many people suppose that there is a dichotomy between the God revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures and the God revealed in the New--even among Catholics. The God of the Old Testament is regarded as a God of anger, vengeance, and judgment, whereas the God of the New Testament is said to be a God of mercy, forgiveness, and love. I have wondered about the source of this supposed opposition, and I continue to do so. Whatever the source, it is certainly not the Scriptures.
Date posted: 2013-03-19
Christ changed water used for purification into the finest wine, and this wine symbolizes the complete joy of the heavenly banquet. It is a joy comparable to being drunk on the best wine. But before that can happen, we will all need to be purified.
Date posted: 2013-01-21
Eternal truths are the food of the intellect, but the human heart longs for a Person, to join to a Person, and not just any person, but the Person of Christ, who is God in the flesh. He is everything that the human heart longs for, and he has given himself to us as the Bread of Life.
Date posted: 2013-01-06