"Swim out past the breakers..."

When I decided to reinvigorate this little piece of cyber space late last year I could never have predicted all the excitement 2025 would bring. What a year so far! We've experienced the good, the bad, and the very ugly. But in the face of this, there is reason for hope. Solidarity seems to be springing up tace not just the challenges but the crises we are living. As Pope Francis noted earlier this year, while speaking in his beloved basilica of Saint Mary Major, where he was laid to rest, “Today, we are not living an epoch of change so much as an epochal change.”

In my view, the first quarter of the twenty-first century has been an awful epoch, a paradigm has emerged that badly needs to be changed. Maybe the next quarter century will be better, a time when we start asking why to technology, regulating it smartly, and rejecting stifling ideologies. Maybe it's time, to quote the late Joe Strummer, "to take the humanity back to the center of the ring..."

In the same speech cited above, Pope Francis noted: “The situations that we are living today pose new challenges which, at times, are also difficult for us to understand. Our time requires us to live problems as challenges and not as obstacles.” Above all, he reminded us, “The Lord is active and at work in our world.” The seemingly hopelessness of death overcome by unexpected resurrection.

Catholic social teaching, which is built on the pillars of human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity, offers a lot in this regard, even for non-Catholics, non-Christians, and non-believers. This is why I found the Pope's choice of the name Leo so encouraging.

Speaking of need for change, Fr. Sam Sawyer, S.J., who serves as editor of America magazine, wrote what I think is a great opinion piece for The New York Times yesterday: "Pope Leo XIV May Be a Stern Teacher for American Catholics." I won't rehash Fr Sawyer's short piece. I will just encourage you to read it.

We can all rest easy, Pope Leo is on social media.

With everything going on, I have been "blogging" up a storm. With this, I have posted as many times already as I posted last year. Of course, last year was nearly the end of Καθολικός διάκονος. Hey, it's Easter- Resurrection time!

Καθολικός διάκονος remains for me a labor of love. Writing here is something I want to do, not something I feel I have to do. I re-started in earnest because I was poorer by not doing it. From the beginning, I felt this to be part of my diaconal vocation. It is my prayer that there are others who benefit from what I post, too.

This week's Friday traditio is one of those great '90s grungy kinda ballads" "Santa Monica" by Everclear. Why? In the words of "Bluto" Blutarsky, "Why not?"