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Take responsibility for your spiritual maturity

Peter Pandemonium (not an official diagnosis) is the term some psychologists use to describe adults who refuse to act like grownups. Like the fabled Peter Pan, they choose to remain children forever, at least in how they engage with the outer world. Also known as Peter Pan Syndrome, the term describes those who avoid responsibility, blame others for their problems and behavior, throw temper tantrums when disappointed and can’t commit in relationships. Someone quipped that these folks can be easily recognized because they buy SpongeBob SquarePants underwear to wear as adults. (Yep, ...

Vatican prosecutors suffer embarrassing loss as tribunal says their appeal is inadmissible

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican appeals tribunal put an end Thursday to prosecutors’ efforts to salvage their claims of massive fraud in the Holy See’s “Trial of the Century,” in which a once-powerful cardinal and nine others were accused of fleecing tens of millions of euros from the church. The tribunal declared the prosecutor’s appeal in the case was inadmissible, meaning the court refused to admit prosecutors’ requests to overturn acquittals on more than two-dozen charges. The court said prosecutors had failed on a basic procedural point: to provide specific reasons ...

Cherish and preserve Christian unity

By Mark Wilmoth If the Apostle Paul ever decides to write our church a letter (Yes, I know Paul’s been gone a while!), I hope it’s like Philippians. I don’t want a letter like 1 Corinthians, that lists all the problems in the church and dictates corrections. I certainly don’t want a letter like Galatians. In that one, Paul is so disturbed by the direction the Galatian church is taking that he skips the customary courtesies and begins to scold, saying, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a ...

God’s guaranteed income

By Mark Wilmoth Kelsey Piper, a well-respected Stanford grad who is appreciated in liberal circles because of her consistent emphasis on effective altruism and her association with publications like Vox and The Argument, recently raised eyebrows when she published a column headed “Giving People Money Helped Less Than I Thought It Would.” In the column, Piper laments the failure of a liberal tenet: Guaranteed Basic Income. Piper, like many on the left, once believed that those in crisis – single moms, the homeless and families struggling with poverty – would be able to turn their ...

Assessing the risk of serving or not serving

By Mark Wilmoth People don’t assess risk very well. Ask folks to list dangerous occupations and you’ll hear about folks in the military and about first responders who risk their lives on behalf of others. In fact, though, firefighters’ risk of death is only 3.4 per 100,000 and in Fiscal Year 2021, the last date for which statistics have been published, the on-duty ground Soldier fatality rate was 1.3 fatalities per 100,000 Soldiers. By comparison, the fatality rate for trash and recycling collectors is 34.9 deaths per 100,000 and being a truck driver is actually 4 times riskier ...