The two or three of you who regularly look at my blog may be wondering if I have fallen off the face of the earth since I have been posting so sparsely. I could make excuses and say it was because I was out of town on vacation, which I was. But the main reason is that I do not feel I have had much to say. There is a reason for this.

I have mentioned in previous posts that I have been reading more books of a philosophical nature. It started with von Hildebrand and from there to Josep Pieper. I have learned a great deal from these two wonderful authors but I have also learned something else – how much I do not know. Unlike most of my brothers in the priesthood I do not have any background in philosophy. The reason for this is that philosophical studies are not a part of the curriculum at the Episcopal seminary I attended (or any other Episcopal seminary as far as I know). Due to this lack of knowledge I have felt that I have nothing worth saying.

I addition to this general feeling of ignorance I have also been mentally kicking myself for all the time I wasted earlier in my life. I spent so much time just watching TV or playing video games and had no real desire to learn. All that time I wasted that I could have been laying the groundwork for what I now need to know. Instead, I indoctrinated myself (through the seemingly tame influence of television) in the wrong thinking of our modern society. And now, how much I have to unlearn and how much I have to learn!

Thanks be to God I have a friend at the parish (who is a systematic theologian) who has agreed to help me get ‘up to speed’ in my deficiencies. And I ask you, the reader, to pray that God may open my mind to understand.