The Thanksgiving-Christmas season fast approaches, bringing for many not only particular pleasure but also a particular temptation. We call attention to the essay in which Stanley Paregien speaks a sharp word about gluttony. This brings to mind one evangelist who, it was said, ate himself into his grave. On the matter of death, Thomas Howard’s essay will cause some of us to think a little harder about this experience we all must undergo, no matter how much our culture tries to hide the fact by speaking about “passing away” and by calling mortuary rooms “slumber rooms.” Death’s final sting has been removed by another death, the death of Jesus Christ, which brought death to death and assures us of a final victory over the grave.
James Degnan writes as a Catholic exercised about current trends in his Church. In “The Nonsense of Liberal Catholics” he deals with a problem familiar to Protestants whose churches are caught in the liberal-fundamentalist-evangelical cross-currents of the day, and dares to suggest a course of action for those whose views differ from what the church officially teaches. It becomes increasingly clear that some Catholics are closer to Protestant evangelicals than to other Catholics, while others fall in line with Protestant liberals.
This Thanksgiving Day as we eat our turkey and our whipped-cream-adorned pumpkin pie, let us not only give thanks; let us determine to do our part to feed the hungry around the world.
