by Father Robert Lauder As I have mentioned frequently in past columns, I have come in recent years to appreciate in a new way the importance of friendships. For many years, I thought of friendships, and indeed all interpersonal relationships among human beings, as more or less extrinsic to religion and to spiritual growth. Though […]
Arts and Culture
Fr. Robert Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University and the author of “Pope Francis’ Spirituality and Our Story” (Resurrection Press).
Our Capacity to Relate Is a Gift
by Father Robert Lauder Back in the early 1960s, my bishop at that time, Bishop Bryan J. McEntegart, asked me to do graduate work in philosophy with the goal of obtaining a doctorate. The bishop was planning a four-year college seminary, which eventually became Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception in Douglaston. He wanted me […]
The Human Journey Revolves Around Relationships
by Father Robert Lauder When I like a book as much as I like W. Norris Clarke’s Person and Being, I try to focus in on key insights in the book so that I can communicate those insights to friends, who I hope will be as enthusiastic about the book as I am. As I […]
Hidden Dynamo Drives Human Spirit Toward the Infinite Good
by Father Robert Lauder Almost everything that I have read in W. Norris Clarke’s book, Person and Being (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1993, p. 113), I want to share with others. When, in rereading the book, I come upon what I think is an exciting insight, I want to tell friends about it. While preparing […]
Humanity Is Oriented Toward God
by Father Robert Lauder Recently I have been recalling my experience of studying philosophy as an undergraduate in the major seminary many years ago. Statements that professors made at that time and ideas that I read in books about philosophy, which meant little to me when I first was introduced to them, came to be […]
The Conversion Experience
Reading and thinking about the new evangelization has moved me to reflect on the experience of conversion. Two thinkers who have helped in my reflection are St. Augustine and the 20th-century theologian, Jesuit Father Bernard Lonergan. When I read what Father Lonergan wrote about conversion and tried to come up with examples of the types […]
Love Unites and Distinguishes
by Father Robert Lauder IN HIS BOOK, Personalism (University of Notre Dame: Notre Dame, translated by Philip Mairet, 1952, $2.25, pp. 132) Emmanuel Mounier, whose philosophical vision greatly influenced Dorothy Day, stresses that love is creative of distinction. Some poetry and love songs can give the impression that lovers lose their identities in one another. […]
Finding Meaning in a Broken World
by Father Robert Lauder Of the many things that I like about the personalist-existentialist philosophy of Gabriel Marcel — and there are many — is his insight that some actions can move us into the mystery of being. Marcel stresses that acts of faith, hope and love can move us beyond the ordinary workaday world […]
Every Being Is a Free Gift from God
by Father Robert Lauder AS I BEGIN to write this column, I am recalling a retreat experience from when I was in the major seminary. In those days, seminary retreats were silent. And around the time of the retreat, I was reading a book by the great French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain. It may have been A […]
Beings Are Messages from God
by Father Robert Lauder IT IS ALWAYS a pleasant experience when you think that you have some insight and then discover that someone has expressed that insight in print. The discovery that your insight has been expressed by someone in something that has been published is like a stamp of approval. This was my experience when I […]