The tyranny of time so limits what we can know and should know. By the choices we make, we control what seeps into our minds. Where we devote our time and energy ensures that so much out there will never reach us to be digested or to be understood. Our ignorance and our knowledge are demarcated by what we read, hear and focus on.

Cynthia Toolin, professor of dogmatic and moral theology at Holy Apostles Seminary in Cromwell, Conn., writes a stern message to Roman Catholics in the March/April issue of Social Justice Review magazine, a 100-year-old magazine by the Catholic Central Verin Union of America. She titles it The Goal of Religious Education and complains that Catholics are amply provided strong opportunities to be indoctrinated and taught, but too many are being selective as to what they accept or they are absorbing theology from the non-Catholic culture.

A person cannot become a good Catholic without undergoing this learning process, Toolin insists, noting that the same is true for a Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Wiccan or anyone else. Within each tradition, a person must learn what it means to be a proper adherent of that religion. Unless one follows a rigorous learning experience, a follower is one in name only, she said. His life cannot be called a way of living as a Catholic. The intensity of a Catholic school education, for example, can meet that goal. As a result, the student should develop a truly Catholic world-view and moral stance, Toolin explains.

The complexity and vastness of Roman Catholicism teaching is daunting. So the chance that Catholics will fail to learn and retain the essentials seems high. Many Catholics are ignorant of, and misinformed about their own religion, she said. They often fail to understand the perpetual virginity of Mary, the mother of Jesus; or the existence of hell; or the infallibility of the pope or the right and duty of the Magisterium (the pope and bishops) to speak on moral issues. She notes how commonplace is the failure of some Catholics to not understand immaculate conception. It doesnt refer to Jesus conception as free of sin. It applies to Mary and holds that she was the one fully human being who was preserved from original sin because she is the mother of God.

Another issue Toolin raises is that other Catholics clearly understand what the churchteaches, but are not willing to accept her teachings. To some extent, this lack of acceptance is willful disobedience born of a desire for the church to be a democracy where the majority opinion rules. Thats a strong statement. It boldly suggests that what comes down from church hierarchy is not-to-be-challenged truth. And, it follows, if parishioners dont buy it, they are disobedient or poorly taught or indoctrinated. Or, additionally, their thinking has been diluted or permeated by outside doctrine what can only be described as a syncretistic mess.

Oh, really? Such an argument flies in the face of enlightened reasoning and the sovereignty of the human mind and conscience. It suggests Catholics best hope for a happy life is keeping wholly and narrowly immersed in all that is Catholic, thanks to the fact that God has blessed that church with his flawless teachings. Such top-down flow of knowledge and thought is inconsistent with the Western experience.

Toolin insists a Catholic be well-grounded in church teachings and the Catechism of the Catholic Church before the troublesome worlds stuff come challenging. Then, and only then, should the student be introduced, in an academic manner, to the other major world religions, she said. A vigorous presentation of other religions history, beliefs and practices can follow, along with a comparative examination of Catholicism vis-avis the others for their relative strengths and weaknesses. The professor ends the piece with what seems again like a Catholic elitist position: If this process is followed, the student should be able to evaluate these religions and see the range of the acceptance of truth among them, as well as to understand the inaccuracies, insufficiencies, deficiencies and errors present in them.

Do I interpret them to be all the examined religions, including Catholicism? Probably not, for that would infer inaccuracies, insufficiencies, deficiencies and errors present in them mean some might exist in the Church of Rome as well. No chance of that.

Certainly this church, which claims one in four Americans, is far from alone in claiming the corner on theological truth and flawless teaching. But such a position seems self-righteous in a religious marketplace where many other faiths can legitimately claim meeting universal tests of spiritual integrity, love of God, ministering to needs and placing value in the discerning power of the individual.

Much has been written in articles, books and doctoral theses on the curious requirement for celibacy for Roman Catholic priests. Ive seen several well-done documentaries seeking to show where the ban began, the impact its had and how some clergy have skirted the demanding rules that forces them to, in essence, set aside a part of their own being.

Yes, excellent priests have followed the rules and done what they can to suppress their sexual drives and have remained chaste. Most can articulately state the case why it must be that way, why chastity is a gift and how it better permits them to serve Christ and the church. And how chastity is far more than sexual forbearance. They say chastity is no burden and that it manifests a deeper expression of their sexuality. And we are not to pity them for not having someone to hold in their warm arms at night.

The catechism teaches that chastity is the spiritual power which frees love from selfishness and aggression. Thats pretty heavy. Ive yet to hear a convincingly case of why God gave humans powerful sexual drives and structures, and then determines certain folks are better off shutting down that part of their physiology. Especially a church that so celebrates life and multiplying. Theres every reason to believe the priest shortage of the early 21^st century could be sharply reduced, or eliminated, if the ban were dropped and celibacy and singlehood were options.

A British professor, Conrad Leyser, asserts that, from his research into Catholic history, the godly calling of chastity stems from the hierarchy quest to protect church property from moving into the hands of wives or offspring and to reign in careerist clerics.

Celibacy was created as a mechanism to help carve up church wealth between lay people and priests during a period of upheaval, he said. Leyser believes the rule was a way of stopping priests from siphoning off church resources to their wives and children and really went, hand in hand, with a new view of what the clergy should be.

The rule imposed by the
Vatican in 1137, he said, can be traced to the complicated life and trial of Pope Formosus corpse in 837 during what was called the Cadaver Synod. The popes body was exhumed after his death the year before and put on trial. His body was brought to the court for the bizarre trial. The verdict: Formosus had been unworthy to be the pope and his papal vestments were torn from his decayed body. He had illegally left his post to seek promotion to the papacy, Leyser explained.

Leyser said the case of celibacy was underscored in the following decade when Pope John X was rumored to be having a love affair with Theodora, the most powerful noblewoman in the city of Rome.

These historical events give a strong case to those arguing for abandoning the vow of celibacy as a way to reverse declining numbers of priests, he said. If the church is to find a way of reversing this decline then arguing that celibacy is God-given holds no water By imposing celibacy, the church it could show communities they could trust this newly professional clergy and that priests were not in it for their own gain.

During his 18-month research, supported by a foundation and a research council, Leyser determined that the traditional view argues that celibacy gradually gained ground over the 1,000 years following the letters of St. Paul, which are often taken as the first major Christian statement on sexual abstinence. He points to scholars findings that Pauls main message was the end of the world was coming, dont try to change your sexual status because its not important and there isnt time.

Leyser believes the view that the celibacy of the clergy was an inevitable development doesnt stand up to scrutiny. There were calls for clerical celibacy from the 380s onward, but these never added up to a coherent campaign.

It was only after the controversies of the 10^th century that attitudes fundamentally changed, the British professor argued.

Its one of Tempes most enduring traditions the Good Friday afternoon climb by ArizonaState University students up A Mountain, bearing a cross, and making stops at the 14 stations of the cross.

They head up the mountain again on Friday. Organized by the All Saints Newman Center at ASU, the campus Roman Catholic community, it is a solemn and somber ritual that may bring out 300 to 400 students for hiking, prayers and singing. Over the years, the climb and devotions have taken part in it and written about the simple open-air experience among cactus and birds.

The Rev. Fred Lucci will lead the crowd of climbers, who are to arrive by 1:15 p.m. Friday at Danforth Chapel on Cady Mall and next to the Hayden Library. That gives time to get organized for the walk to start at 1:30 p.m. With prayers and commentary all along the way, the students will pause at the predetermined stations and rehear about the suffering of Christ. Readers, carrying amplified speakers, will seek to be heard across the mountainside, with the bustle of Tempe below them, challenging the quest to hear what is being said.

In this recreated Via Dolorosa or Way of Sorrows, participants are asked to use the exercise as a powerful journey for pondering and meditating on the final hours of Christ, replicating what has been a custom going back to the early church. It is not unlike walking tours taken by those who travel to Jerusalem today and visit historic points along Jesus gruesome trek to Calvary Hill.

The 14 stations are 1) Jesus being condemned to death; 2) the cross is given to Jesus to carry; 3) Jesus falls with the cross for the first time; 4) Jesus encounters his mother, Mary; 5) Simon of Cyrene takes up the cross for Jesus; 6) the face of Jesus is wiped by the veil of Veronica; 7) Christ collapses on the street a second time; 8)the daughters of Jerusalem meet Jesus; 9) Jesus third fall; 10) Christs garments are stripped from him; 11) the Savior is put down onto the cross and his limbs nailed to it; 12) Christ dies on the cross; 13) his body is taken down from the cross; and 14) Christs body is laid in the tomb.

When it is over, participants often descend in silent reflection. Some walk in small groups or pairs discussing the experience as they walk down A Mountain and back to concrete, the buildings, the traffic and academia.

The American religious landscape is constantly analyzed because so much is at stake.

Religious faith groups and so many para-religious organizations rely on data and trends to keep ahead in a field where so many billions are invested and so many want to reach the large unaffiliated masses and bring them into the fold.

What if churches intentionally and effectively reached the tattooed subculture? What are the implications of baby boomers staying in the work place longer and being just too busy to watch the grandkids? The majority of seminarians are women, yet congregations that heretofore think only in terms of male pastors may need to reconsider.

Phoenix-based Church Executive Magazine, a leading medium that keeps abreast of operations and leadership in Christian communities, carries an article True Trends or Passing Fads The Changing Social Scene Impact Churches. Its written by George W. Bullard Jr., who is ministry partner in a community of Christian leaders seeking to transform the capacity of the North American Protestant Church to pursue and sustain vital Christian-centered ministry.

Bullard has chosen to respond to seven issues he found in the 2007 book Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrows Big Changes by Mark Penn, with Kinney Zalesne. Bullards seven selected issues were some of 75 trends in the book. Bullard advices churches to choose only those trends that they can embrace, handle and make happen to go where God is leading it.

Under Swing is King, it suggests the North American religious culture is turning from rigid ideologues and more to pragmatists and the Third-Way movement, which includes seekers who want true dialogue. He says, When congregations declare left or right positions, they drive people away to other congregations or out of church life.

Another area is labeled Stained-glass ceiling breakers, which suggests that women may be thriving in many fields, but not really yet in religion. Still the implications are that women are changing the tone of congregational ministry as they lead the census at seminaries and move out into churches. In some cases, this is going to cause a theological clash, although some churches have long since moved beyond that.

The Mini-churched trend suggests all types and models of congregations are being developed, and that the world is getting more religious rather than more secular. By one count, there are 10,000 distinct world religions, and new ones being fashioned daily. Folks are choosing their faiths and their communities of believers and are presumably happier. It means smaller crowds in the pews, but presumably happier ones, the books authors said. As a result, the house church movement is back big time.

Bullard also singles out the issue of militant illegals. They are said to be a 12-million low-profile group that keeps growing. They are ripe for ministry in the shadows, an outreach that could be risky and daring. Bullard believes the theology of welcoming the strangers should be emphasized and adds that Ilegals are not going away, in spite of future laws.

The writers call for churches to provide support services for home-schoolers. Keeping kids home to learn online is booming. Once regarded as an oddball idea, home-schooling is gaining currency as just about the best way to bring up kids in this crazy online world, Microtrends asserts. They call on churches to help homeschools even if they already are strong backers of public schools. The target group is growing too fast to ignore, Bullard said.

Last summer, my wife and I toured the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. I still remember how drained I was when we finished our three hours there. The grim images, the mass of suitcases, shoes and hats collected from the Jews before they were gassed stay on my mind. The overwhelmingexhibits amply communicated the efficiency of the Nazis to carry out what was, for them, the final solution.

In 2001, we toured the partly restored Dachau concentration camp outside of
Munich, Germany, which opened in 1933 for political prisoners and became the model for the many other camps with ovens that the Nazis erected and used to methodically wipe out whole segments of the European landscape during World War II. More than 200,000 prisoners were housed at Dachau, a third of them Jews, according various sources. An estimated 5,000 Jews, and more than 30,000 people in all, were exterminated there. Obviously other camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka, whereasmany as5.4 million are estimated to have been executed, were the most notorious.

Somehow, there are people who insist the Holocaust never happened. Never mind the eye-witness reports, stories of American and Allied soldiers who liberated the camp, the massive photography, films, letters and the missing millions of people. Doubters have been discredited and revealed as mostly bigoted haters with no scholarly evidence.

The global Jewish news service, JTA, reports concerns raised by the disclosure that a book purported to be a memoir of the Holocaust was, in fact, a fake. They say such a book, now 11 years in circulation,will feed into narrative of those who relentlessly insist the Holocaust didnt occur. The article, which appeared in the March 7 issue of the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, say the Holocaust deniers, like David Duke, are having a field day with the story.

A Belgian-born author, Misha Defonseca (real name Monique De Wael), who has lived outside of Boston, Mass., since the 1980s, wrote Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years. The writer does not deny the fabrication. In a statement provided through her lawyer and containing an apology, Defonseca says, This story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving, according to the news story.

The book, published in 1997 and translated into 18 languages, also was made into a popular film now playing throughout Europe, the article said. Doubts were raised repeatedly about the story when the book was published, but there was apparently no active effort to fully check it out. Seems DeFonsecas parents were Catholics and active in the Belgian resistance. They were neither killed by the Nazis but they actually collaborated with them and that the father, Robert de Wael, who died of natural causes after the war, was responsible for denouncing a number of fellow townspeople to the Gestapo.
In the memoir, the author wrote that she lived with a pack of wolves after the Nazis abducted her parents, searched for her parents across Europe for four years as a young girl and murdered a German soldier, the JTA article said. DeFonseca, who isnt Jewish, also contends that her parents were Belgian resistance fighters killed by the Nazis.

On Feb. 29, the online magazine Slate posted a detailed account of the controversy, Crying Wolf. The entire episode demonstrates how murky historical fiction can become.There’s no shortage of cases of massive inhumanity to man — Darfur,the Khmer Rougein Cambodia, Rwanda, Stalin’s Soviet Union, Timor, the Balkans, and on and on. Survivors of those kinds of holocausts have no shortage of material to tell their stories and keep to the facts.

Choir directors are prized stock in a faith community. The church choir I sing in will lose its supremely talented choir leader at the end of the spring because his spouse is headed off to earn a professional degree, and we dread the relationship ending. You simply grow attached to the person who magically gets the best out of your larynx and give majesty to choral music.

It must have been devastating Tuesday night for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to learn that its music director, Craig Jessop, was resigning The Deseret Morning News in
Salt Lake City reported it came as a surprise to everyone.

We cried. We stood up spontaneously and started to applaud, one choir member reported. But that doesnt even begin to say how we feel. We were just stunned. There are no other words for it. We never saw it coming.

Jessop took over the worlds most famous choir in 1999 and had been the associate director, starting in 1995. He told the choir at the end of their Tuesday night rehearsal by reading a letter, which some choir members said they, at first, thought was about someone else resigning. Then it began to dawn on them, wrote Carrie A. Moore of the Deseret News. Later in a church-issued press release, Jessop said, I now find myself at a major crossroads of life. With long and prayerful consideration, I have decided to resign as director of the choir.

He said he would remain active in music, including teaching it. He and his wife, RaNae, and family looked forward to more time together, the choirmaster explained. The choirs president, Mac Christensen, said Jessop had taken the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to great heights in its performances and tours. The story said that, under Jessop, the choir had launched a private record label in March 2003. It released several albums, with some of them getting to No.1 on Billboards Classical Music chart. During the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah, the Tabernacle Choir performed 20 times, including the opening ceremonies.

The popular Music and the Spoken Word, which can be seen on cable channels, including the Brigham Young University cable channel, and on radio is a media fixture going back to 1929. In April 2004, the choir and Music and the Spoken Word were inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame.

Mack Wilberg becomes interim director of the massive choir of 325 men and women. Choir members do the demanding rehearsals and performances without compensation. Some commute 164 miles round trip a couple times a week to fulfill their choral responsibilities with the MTC, which calls itself Americas Choir.

Who didnt have a mother who clipped poems? A mom who didnt hand-copy poetry from a book or magazine and tucked them away? When I cleaned out my parents home more than 10 years ago after my mothers death at 87 from cancer, I found plenty of poetry that she had discovered and kept. She underlined key words for stress. What she had chosen to save spoke volumes about her own personality, temperament and grace.

In her trappings were also plenty of those colorful Ideals magazines, published monthly with seasonal poetry, wonderful idealized artwork and essays that exuded powerful ideas of hope, beauty and love.

In the mail this week was a review copy of 100 Poems to Lift Your Spirits, a trove of famous and not so well-known poems gleaned by author Leslie Pockell of Westchester County, N. Y., assisted by Celia Johnson. Pockell asserts that all people get the blues. Nobody really understands why at times you just dont feel good about yourself or the world at large, he says. Some turn to liquor or drugs for relief.Powerful poetry, instead, brings relief, Pockell said, and the reader does not have to heed any warning to not operate heavy machinery after using it.

The poems are partly “Memory Lane” for any reader — poetry that was required reading in literature or that we commonly found in general reading. The writers were ones we studied in school because they helped shape ideas during in the unfolding human story in eras when poetry sometimes was the common means of written expression.

With an economy of words, of course, poets express themselves on many overt and subtle levels, calling on the reader to determine what is being said. 100 Poems are divided into four sections nature, nonsense, spiritual and The Human Connection, each read to fit the mood of the reader. That last section includes sweeping works: British essayist Ben Jonsons Inviting a Friend to Supper; Sam Walter Foss The House by the Side of the Road (which hung in a frame in our living room during all my growing up years); Filling Station by Elizabeth Bishop; and Rudyard Kiplings If.

The Spiritual section has such wealth as William Cullen Bryants Thanatopsis; Desiderata by Max Ehrmann (I had that on a poster hanging in my Army barracks room in the early 1970s); The Donkey by G. K. Chesterton; The Song of Songs, the sensual book of the Hebrew Bible; and the lyrics of the recent hit Dont Worry, Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin.

It just gets better. Under Nonsense, theres Shel Silversteins classic Where the Sidewalk Ends, Eugene Fields Wynken, Blynken and Nod and Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll.And I havent even mentioned the contributions by one-time Poet Laureate of the United States Rita Dove (who taught creative writing at Arizona State University, 1991-99 and won a Pulitzer Prize while there.). Nor of entries of Robert Frost, Robert Browning, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Guest, John Updike, William Blake and Ogden Nash.

My mother would have devoured the book. 100 Poems to Lift Your Spirits by Leslie Pockell, with Celia Johnson is $12.99, Grand Central Publishing Trade Paperback http://www.HatchetteBookGroupUSA.comAnd take heed of what Sheldon Harnick penned in Merry Little Minute:

Theyre rioting in Africa.

Theres strife in Iran.

What nature doesnt do to us

Will be done by our fellow man.

My newest grandchild was born Monday afternoon. He was named Xavier. Now thats a strong and bold name. He should take the Griffiths surname into yet another generation on our branch of the family tree.

A name starting with an X has mystique. Imagine starting a child to print his name. X should ensure a quick start simply crossing lines. And, in script, its a letter all to itself and not one to easily connect to the next letter.

Weve known about Xaviers gender and his name for a long time, but because his mom and dad, our son and daughter-in-law live in Tulsa, Okla., we were not around for the pregnancy. His delivery was induced a week early because the doctors husband faces critical cancer treatment in the coming week when the natural delivery could have taken place. That gives a different perspective to issues of life.

This is our second grandson and fourth grandchild. It was only 18 days before, on Valentines Day, that our grandson, Ezra, was born in Phoenix to our daughter and son-in-law who live in Avondale. We are not used to names with Xs and Zs. We fired off an e-mail within a couple hours to dozens of friends and relatives and basked in the warm wishes that came back. All will be cut and pasted for posterity.

Xavier, of course, conjures St. Francis Xavier (1506-52), the Catholic Jesuit missionary from the Basque region in Spain, who was known as the Apostle to the Indies and has been regarded as the first and the greatest Jesuit missionary. His groundbreaking work in India and Indonesia was followed with founding a robust Jesuit mission in
Japan. The last 11 years of his life was in that Far East missionary work. One reference book said St. Francis Xavier possessed both profound mysticism and common sense. It was said he evangelized more people to Christianity since St. Paul.

And weve visit the stately Mission San Xavier del Bach, the White Dove of the Desert, along Interstate 19 south of Tucson and completed in 1797.

Xavier is the name of the Catholic girls college preparatory school in Phoenix, which consistently ranks among the best in the nation by all sorts of indicators.

Some years ago, when our family visited the Field of Dreams, where the Kevin Costner movie was filmed in 1988, outside of Dyersville, Iowa, we took time to visit the Basilica of Saint Xavier there. One of just 52 Catholic basilicas in the U.S., it is the only one standing outside of a metropolitan area. With its two 200-foot towers and 64 stained glass windows, the majestic basilica was completed in 1888 and still waits for a pope to visit.

Our little Xavier was born as the 9^th-ranked Xavier University Musketeers sits atop the Atlantic 10 basketball conference, with a 13-1 record and 25-4 overall. Maybe Xavier will be NCAA champion this year.

So there is a lot in the name of a grandson we have yet to hold and watch. He came home today, a day after his birth. May Xavier have long and wonderful days on earth and is a wonderful force and instrument for good. May life for him be X-ceptional, X-citing and X-cellent.

These are the busy, bustling weekends when all the Valleys nonprofit groups scramble to hold their fund-raisers and outdoor activities when the temperatures are still tolerable. On any Saturday or Sunday, dozens of worthy causes are staged all competing for our time and financial support. Until late May, theyll be rabidly beckoning people to come share their fun for noble reasons.

Those who embrace any groups, movements or projects whether its breast cancer, workers justice, self-sufficiency for the poor or disabilities cannot avoid getting asked out into the sunshine to help and learn. The faith community is right in there, too, with its many projects, outreaches and fund-raisers.

I took in two of them on Saturday and could have been to more events. One was the Local to Global Justice Teach-in at Arizona State University where dozens of progressive groups came together to raise consciousness and share in human development work. Volunteers passions and activism were fierce as they sought to attract more from the public, or each others groups, to share in their mission to address some injustice.

Earlier on Saturday, I spent almost six hours painting an old school with Tempe Cares, sponsored by Tempe Leadership. (I once served six years on Tempe Leaderships board, five as its secretary). About 220 volunteers from nearly two dozen organizations, schools, city departments and corporations gathered at old Mitchell Elementary School near downtown Tempe for mass exterior painting of the school, which opened in 1957 as Tempes second elementary after Scales. But it was closed as a school in 1987 and most recently was used by a batch of Arizona State University departments.

Now the 50-year-old, L-shaped building will house Childsplay, Tempes nationally respected children theater, founded by David Saar in 1977. The campus is being called the Sybil B. Harrington Campus for Imagination and Wonder at Mitchell Park.

With bright, bold and unconventional colors, we painted window frames, walls and walkway ceilings of the 35,000-square feet school. It will cost more than $4 million to develop the campus for Childsplay. Joanie Flatt, Childsplay board president, made her rounds of our project on Saturday, thanking each individual for volunteering.

Tempe Cares had a second, but smaller, team working on landscaping Saturday at Kiwanis Park. Since 1991, Tempe Cares has turned loose volunteers on neighborhoods. For many years, homes in a concentrated neighborhood were targeted for free painting, repairs, yard improvements, new smoke alarms and typically recognized the chance to get facelifts for their houses and welcomed the team of volunteers. In recent years, it has been tougher to recruit a neighborhood for the one-day spring project. Thats partly because of the number of rental homes that often need rehabilitation. Tempe Cares has chosen not to fix up renal homes because absentee homeowners often default on their own responsibility to maintain those properties.

At Mitchell School, each organization was given a segment of the building to paint. My own Tempe Kiwanis Club was assigned a stretch next to that of volunteers for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR. More than a dozen young Muslims assiduously painted beside us and with us. I reconnected with some who have been helpful in past stories about the Islamic community. And I met a woman from
Jordan who is working on her doctorate in physics at ASU and listened to her talk about her studies and future plans.

By 1:30 p.m., the volunteers were largely done and had headed home and to other weekend events. We got free breakfast, lunch and T-shirts out of the deal.

In these delicious 75-degree days of spring in Arizona, take the opportunity to get out to the events that nonprofit groups are holding and volunteer where you can. It underscores how much can be done in a few hours by a lot of helping hands.