Pastor Foltz is Pastor Emeritus of Saint James Lutheran Church in Gettysburg, PA and author of the the Frontline Study content.
If my first attraction to the Benedictine Rule was its hospitality, my second was its stability. A pastor easily felt the impact of the mobile technology at first offered and then demanded. Children leaving town for college, exciting vocations, and big time salaries brought new opportunities. However, before long, opportunity became demand as there were […]
How in the world do you handle obedience in today’s world? Supposedly, freedom means we respect no person’s authority to tell us what to do. Yet we are continually forced to comply with the demands of the system. And we all suspect there are some Wizards of Oz back there manipulating the whole thing, even […]
I first read the Benedictine Rule at the very beginning of my ministry. I remember being impressed that the porter was to treat every one who knocked at the monastery’s door as if they might be Christ himself and that special attention was to be given to the poor and the pilgrim. Two weeks later, […]
In 2000, Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone. It has quickly become a classic for understanding modern American community. His thesis is that our nation has lost our sense of the common good, because technology inherently promotes radical individualism. He used the breakdown of voluntary groups such as bowling leagues, social clubs, fraternal organizations, and churches as […]
The media greeted the 70s with more than the usual number of articles on what the future held for the next ten years. As a young pastor, I read as many as I could thinking they might indicate how I should be preparing to minister. As I remember, number one on every list predicted the […]
I am going to take time off from Chittister to acknowledge the wide variety of responses I have received to the recent lessons. Obviously now, as in the past, there have always been efforts to find better forms of community. Our participants reflect the usual positions, running from the need for correcting the present system […]
The classic definition of economy was the management of the family or community that makes sure everyone is treated with dignity and has enough. We find ourselves in trouble because the model of the economy, that served us well in the past, no longer works in a technological society. That model believed work bestowed dignity […]
The first thing mentioned by my class in Montgomery County, Maryland was how the Rule mandated treating work tools just as meticulously as worship articles. The group was surprised that a monastic community would think work was as important as worship. One of the members referred to the 31st article that reads, “Regard all utensils […]
My first response to Sister Joan remains that she seems to be writing about the self-evident. My second is she confronts exactly what is wrong with our present society. Her take on humility that she designates as the lost virtue is a perfect example. Once you examine what she, Benedict, and Jesus say about humility, […]
I really experienced what St. Benedict meant about the importance of conversation in any Christian community while teaching Sunday School last week. I was pointing out how much Luke-Acts associated the Holy Spirit with speaking boldly. A good one-third of this action-packed history, over 300 of its 1000 verses, are speeches. Some participants responded by […]
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