Peace Be with You Podcast

The bishops meet again next month to reflect further on the path forward beyond the scandals destroying trust in the Catholic Church. With that in mind, I would like to offer the following suggestion for their consideration.

Immortal souls immersed in Divine Love are drawn into divine relationship. And, ultimately, this unity of “Being-In-Love” is what makes peacemaking possible.

In a faith-based approach, we expand the collaboration model. We not only seek to satisfy our interests and the interests of the other party, we also seek to satisfy God’s interests — typically referred to as “the Will of God.”

All conflict is the result of one False Self becoming entangled in opposition to another False Self. Each False Self is comprised of ego traits and swirling clouds of intentions desires. There is one way to de-escalate conflict: Vanish the clusters of False Self traits. Peace arrives after we scrub away ego personality.

Peacemakers encounter a clash of two primary worldviews: The dominant secular culture advances Materialism. The other worldview, a spiritual worldview, rests on the philosophy of Idealism.

Large institutions, such as universities, typically employ ombudspersons. But the Catholic Church lacks such a program.

At Christmas we celebrate not only the birth of the baby Jesus, but also a major supernatural event — the Incarnation. Caught up in celebrating the birth, we forget to reflect on the Incarnation, on the idea expressed in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us…”

Peacemakers must offset destructive Catholic tribalism by promoting widespread catechism in Benedict XVI's theology of relationship.

The False Self brings about habitual responses to conflict. Thus, for us to reconcile we must strip away the False Self, a cluster of destructive ego traits.