Author Archives: frjamesdiluzio

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About frjamesdiluzio

January 2022: Director of the Paulist Fathers' Office of Ecumencial and Multi-Faith Relations while continuing to offer some of my missions and retreats. As a missionary priest, actor & singer, Paulist Fr. James DiLuzio developed a Mission/ Retreat entitled LUKE LIVE! Now in his 8th year traveling throughout the USA proclaiming Luke’s Gospel from memory with preaching and song meditations, his goal is to inspire , entertain and exemplify how we may more fully personalize and celebrate scripture in our lives. See www.LukeLive.com Throughout my mission/retreats, I offer many suggestions on how we may share our faith comfortably in all kinds of situations and contexts—highlighting the Paulist charism of Evangelization, Reconciliation, Multi-Faith and Ecumenical Dialogue.

Appreciating the Paulist Fathers

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For those of you who know me and /or other Paulist Fathers, do you appreciate our devotion to the Holy Spirit that empowers us to reverence the dignity of all persons, the legitimacy and value all faiths and denominations have to offer?   Have you experienced our positive approach to American culture that, albeit  not uncritical, still affirms the best in people to foster the greater possibilities for a common good?  If you know us as “those who serve” those inside and those beyond the Church following Christ’s dictate to serve?  If so, please consider an end-of-the-year donation to PAULIST FATHERS:

Paulist Fathers, 415 West 59th Street, New York, NY 10019-1104.

If you would like to show your support for my particular ministry of Luke LIve-The Gospel of Luke In Word & Song, simply write  “LUKE LIVE!” in the memo line of your check and add “Attention:  Fr. James DiLuzio” at the bottom of your envelope.  Your tax deductible contribution to PAULIST FATHERS will simply be noted as one that has come through my Luke Live ministries.

For more information, see http://www.LukeLive.com and

Paulist Fathers: Giving the Word a Voice

Any questions? Please write me at lukelive@lukelive.com

 

 

Pope Francis’ private meetings with Kim Davis and others at the Vatican Embassy in New York:

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Because Kim Davis had become a public figure championed by many people for many reasons not necessarily her own (who knows?), the Vatican needed to acknowledge that as it welcomed her as an individual. The truth is that some people who champion her are not only against gay marriage in the secular state but are those who promote hate and prejudice against the gay and lesbian community. Yes, Pope Francis met with Yayo Grassi, a gay man AND his partner– a fact that addresses the issue of consistency regarding his stance of being welcoming and promoting dialogue. But without clarifying that and qualifying the Davis visit, opportunities for misinterpretation and politicizing of her visit became rife. Kim Davis is a public figure, whereas Mr Gassi is not. Had Mr. Gassi been a public figure, the playing field would have been more balanced.

I would like to affirm and promote Pope Francis’ insistence on ongoing dialogue. A Church that promotes love, charity and that preaches against prejudice and hatred, must always be open to hear all sides, all perspectives to inform her pastoral response. Love requires a listening stance. Of course the Bible is an essential source in the conversation but by no means can it be an exclusive one. If the Church took every verse of the Bible on an absolute literal level (without honoring context, Church Tradition and the latest in biblical scholarship) adherents could justify prejudice against all kinds of people. Tragically, they have throughout history. In other words, without ongoing dialogue with all kinds of people and all branches of knowledge such as psychology, anthropology along with the Bible, and peoples’ experiences, the Church would condone all kinds of bigotry and hatred in God’s name–just pick your verse. As for those who adhere to a strict literal interpretation of all Biblical prohibitions, even they admit to various criteria for prioritizing them. In truth, most acknowledge that charity and love toward others must always prevail whatever they may choose for themselves. God bless them. God bless us all.

Gut Response to Republican Debate Sept. 16, 2015

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I watched ALL of the Republican debate on CNN.  Here’s my gut response:  Jeb Bush comes across as the most humane (and yes, he had more energy); John Kasich quite sensible.  The rest?  Ugh.  I take particular umbrage with Marco Rubio.  Could anyone be more myopic? His tirade against environmental concern is so extreme.  Is there no middle ground with him?  If some jobs are lost, wouldn’t more jobs be gained in the new technologies?  Has he no concern for clean air and water?  He likes to drink water.  God help him.

Trump was a bit more cordial than the last time.  He is so very entertaining.
Carly Fiorina comes across as a solid hawk, perhaps even more than most of the men.  Do you think she overdid it to show that she is a strong person?  I don’t know.  But I applaud her statements not to fund Planned Parenthood (NO reason tax dollars should support abortions not only because it’s a great moral issue but also because the tax paying public is so divided on the issue.  PP will have no problem getting funds from the private sector anyway) and I appreciated her passion against legalized marijuana as a gateway drug. For all that, I think all of the candidates want to take funding away from  PP.
Sadly Jeb didn’t get to summarize his tax plan, although Carson and others did.  Having read Jeb’s in the NYTIMES, it definitely seems reasonable.  Carson’s tithing (10 %) across the board for everyone is intriguing, but he’s not a viable candidate and the tithing thing doesn’t seem practical on some levels, although it would totally simplify everything. Plus it’s biblical!
I wish these debates would focus more on the issues than the usual political rants and idealistic speeches.  The moderators don’t ask penetrating questions!  E.g. on the hot issue of the Iran deal:  during the considerable number of sanction years, Iran has built up considerable uranium deposits and, without any Western communication , sources say it would be ready to build a bomb in the next three months.  So what good did the strict sanctions do?  They only isolated a sick and diseased country and allowed its leaders to do what they wanted while the common people suffered there.  Why would no one state the obvious here? Sadly, central points like these are never brought up in most debates.  At least some of the potential candidates did state the obvious:  with or without this agreement the USA can bomb Iran any time it likes.  And so can Israel for that matter. So what is the big deal here?  In the past, some diplomacy with an enemy has had greater potential than none at all even when war became inevitable. And as Kasich repeatedly stated, we gain more support from Europe when we at least try the diplomatic way first.
Have a wonderful day.  You deserve it!

Clean Coal is no Coal. Time to move on.

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In honor of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si  (“Praise be to you, my Lord”)  and the care of “our common home,” I would like to offer this thought : The people’s right to clean air is greater than the coal industry’s right to make money.  Just because something is available doesn’t mean we have to use it.

Furthermore the coal industry continues to be dangerous for all the men and women and their families who work in it and live in the industries’ surrounding communities.  How many have died from lung disease?  And don’t forget the coal mine collapse in Peru in 2012 and in Chile 2010!  These miners died in hazardous conditions in order to support their families and they died for us to have the conveniences we have.  Perhaps it was a necessary suffering for “Progress,”  but now there are so many more alternatives–ones which can and rightfully require conservation on the part of the public for everyone’s benefit.

And if, at the present time, coal is essential to the world economy as some will argue, the economy must adapt.  Industries and governments can help the coal companies transition to other forms of energy, particularly technology.  Workers can learn to work in aspects of new technologies in environments that are cleaner, healthier for them and everyone.   Everything has its time.  Nothing lasts forever except God and the human soul, and perhaps the souls of animals. (Contemporary Christian theologians are exploring this last insight.)  The time to move from coal is now.

More than “Mind over Matter”

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Mind over Matter is only part of the human reality.  Circumstances, Health, Relationships, Opportunities (and genuine lack thereof) and I daresay “Providence” also need to be part of the equation.  As noted in this NYTIMES Op-Ed: “equality, justice, truth and ethics” must compliment the American Dream.  If everyone continues to buy into the self-empowered “Superman / Superwoman”  ideology – that ever-present  Nietzsche (1844-1900)  concept –  to the exclusion of other realities that comprise the human experience, will there be room for Love, Peace, for learning about others beyond the confines of our self-empowered “little worlds?”

Interested in this topic?  Read Carl Cederstrom’s OP-Ed in today’s New York Times. 

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/18/the-dangers-of-happiness/?ref=opinion

Also related: T. M. Luhrman on “The Anxious Americans”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/opinion/sunday/the-anxious-americans.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Pope Francis’ Challenge to us all

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I’d like to begin with a “Quote for Today:”  Quote of the Day: “Human beings and nature must not be at the service of money,” he said. “Let us say no to an economy of exclusion and inequality, where money rules, rather than service. That economy kills. That economy excludes. That economy destroys Mother Earth.” Pope Francis in Bolivia

I posted this on Facebook and received a comment from one of my friends as follows:
“It sounds Socialist to me. For the life of me I don’t understand why Pope Francis is so into Politics. He should have been a Prime Minister or the President of a Nation instead of a Pope IMHO.”

I would like to share my response with all of you who care to read it:

What was said of Saint Charles Borromeo and his cousin and fellow monk Federigo Borromeo (16th-17th centuries) is quoted in one of Pope Francis’ favorite novels of his youth: I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni. (The great Italian novel compared to the best of Charles Dickens in the English speaking world.) Francis tries to emulate these saintly men described by Manzoni as follows:

“Convinced that this life is not meant to provide a treadmill for the majority and unending holidays for the few, but rather to furnish every one of us with a task to perform, of which an account must one day be rendered , he began at an early age to consider how to make his own life holy and useful.”

This isn’t socialism. It’s love and kindness. This way of life is not depriving anyone of profits or rewards for their hard labors or studies or expertise. It does not try to deprive people of enterprise or personal initiative. It does, however, remind them, that each of us belong to a larger human family, that Providence is alive and active in every single person’s success and that “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more. ” (Jesus in Luke’s Gospel 11: 48.)

Plenty of good, capitalist companies follow this guide with plenty of profits and well paid, respected employees besides. What makes this socialism? What makes this so bad? Why are there people who find this scenario so offensive? Every company, bank and investment firm has the opportunity to be a thriving community with initiatives rewarded but also checks and balances as in families and communities and governments. Everything and everyone is inter-connected in the cosmos. There’s an interdependence of all beings, all things. We all can get ahead with as little collateral damage to others, to other creatures and the earth as possible. Capitalism CAN DO THIS. It just isn’t doing it very well at right now. Why settle for what is when what “can be” offers so much more? God bless!

Fun and Insight with Disney/Pixar’s INSIDE OUT – a movie review and spiritual reflection

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Disney/Pixar’s INSIDE OUT is a joyous ride through Psychology 101 fitting for children of all ages.  Well, I’ll qualify that: 8 or older.  I think it is a little too complex for the Pre-School and Kindergarten set, although it is colorful to an eye-popping degree  The heart of the story concerns an 11 year old girl adjusting from a family move from Minnesota to San Francisco.   Encouraged to be the family’s “happy girl,” as an anchor for her parents’ anxieties, Riley has nowhere to go with her feelings of loss of place, friendships, school and those deeper ones evoked as she tries to renegotiate her relationship with her parents and her new surroundings.

Enter the film’s central conceit: Riley’s” Interior Self” is personified by characters representing primal feelings: Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger and Fear.  Empowered by Riley’s parents and our cultural compulsions to be “Happy, Happy, Happy,” the effervescent Joy works overtime in limiting the impact of the others–all to Riley and her families’ detriment.  Sadness in particular demonstrates through heightened dramatic conflict a truth that Joy tries desperately never to acknowledge:  all feelings need to be acknowledged.  Meanwhile, audiences can enjoy the affirmation of our interior feelings being exposed along with all their associated thoughts and impulses in such a playful, conflicted arena as the human heart and brain.  I give INSIDE OUT an A + for originality, cleverness and success in accomplishing its noble goals.  Indeed, INSIDE OUT is a wonderful movie that will surely evoke laughter and tears most readily in most viewers.

As for the spiritual dimensions of the film, I invite you to consider the many ways psychology and spirituality intersect.  The tremendous benefits of psychology and the advances in the behavioral sciences notwithstanding, there are deep spiritual roots in the value of tears.  After all, the phrase “It’s alright to cry” didn’t have its origin in the 1960’s.   Jesus conveyed this 2,000 years ago in his admonition “Blessed are those who mourn.”  For those who take the scriptures beyond their face value (I hope we all do), it is clear Jesus is highlighting here far more than basic grieving of the death of our loved ones, important though that is.  Building on his Jewish heritage as recorded in the PSALMS, Jesus acknowledges the benefits of lament, complaint and frustration over all kinds of “deaths” – failures, tragedies, disappointments.  His statement makes evident that tears, in fact, are prayers.  Tears also are indications of healthy bodies and healthy relationships—two essential LIFE criteria!

To cry with and for others reflects the reality that we all belong to one race, one humanity.  When we cry with others, we may find gratitude in the fact that we have cultivated relationships of trust and that there are those with whom we can express ourselves freely. When trust brings forth a wellspring of tears, we have a little bit of heaven on earth, a deeper experience of God’s compassion for the human condition through one another.

When we cry alone we are in fact reverencing our bodies and the way God made us; tears shed in solitude invite us to embrace the outright loneliness that is a universal aspect of the human condition.  In the great paradox of being, even experiencing loneliness unites us to everyone on the planet.  To quote an ancient Native American proverb: “Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet earth and the great silence alone.”  Ironically, accepting our aloneness can bring us to a place where we are more humble and more compassionate in the company of others.  Loneliness is not alienation unless we make it so.  Being alone offers opportunity to encounter God Himself/Herself.

However and wherever we find release of our emotions through tears, we increase our ultimate capacity for JOY.  As we and/ or others acknowledge our hurts, fears, angers and all of their composite sadness without judging or dismissing them, Joy is in the offing.   “May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of JOY.”  (Psalm 126: 5)  You will experience both watching INSIDE OUT.

To explore the film’s psychological dynamics further, read this excellent article in the NYTIMES SUNDAY REVIEW, July 3, 2015:

THE AVENGERS: ULTRON a brief commentary

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I saw THE AVENGERS: Ultron last night.  It is a riff on Noah and the Ark!  In this case Ultron plays God who is fed up with humanity and wants to start over.  It reminds me of how we need to read the Noah epic differently than the ways our ancestors did.  NOAH expresses how humanity often has the urge to “start over,” and wipe out the past. It is far more human centered story than an exploration of God. So, too, Ultron, though a robot, is a simplistic expression of human’ nature’s shadow side. Not a bad story, nor a bad movie.  This time the Hulk and Black Widow have the greater focus.   Enjoyable but with a couple battle scenes too many.

Love You As You Are

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I must call your attention to David Brooks again. Every parent MUST read this! Plus every believing adult must know that true Faith offers a God with Unconditional LOVE that is NOT based on what we do but for the unique individuals that God created. Think of those times when you simply LOVE BEING YOU when you are not doing or achieving anything. Like waking up in the morning or having your coffee or comfortably drifting off to sleep at night. GOD LOVES YOU!

Disney’s CINDERELLA

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Let’s cut-to-the-quick: With its beautiful Art and Set Direction, outstanding Costumes, lush Special Effects (a perfect pumpkin-turned-coach sequence), and a gorgeous waltz-laden score (composer Patrick Doyle a most excellent choice!), the film deserved a superior script. Having chosen “Courage and Kindness” as the film’s central theme, (the values Cinderella embraces from childhood) seasoned screenwriters Chris Weitz and Aline Brosh McKenna could have been far more clever and less heavy-handed in their set-up.* The result: the first third of Disney’s CINDERELLA is ponderous and overly simplistic up to and including the Stepmother and her daughters’ arrival. The early scenes with the child Ella (to become Cinderella) and her parents are superficial. Her mother’s story would have been better served in the form of memory (or even flashback) instead of the short moments provided here to portray her dying words to her daughter. Moreover, the writer’s attempt to convey Cinderella’s apprehension regarding her father’s remarriage lacks sufficient motivation until we actually meet them. With no nuance, no subterfuge –even in the presence of Cinderella’s father!–the characters as written provide no sense whatsoever as to why Cinderella’s father would have chosen them or tolerate their behavior! Worst of all, the script handicaps Cate Blanchett’s captivating performance as the calculating Stepmother with far more caricature than depth. Her two poignant motivational scenes arrive a bit too late and they feel more like inserts than part of an organic whole. Anticipating those scenes, I would have welcomed a little more guile and giddy manipulation from the Wicked Stepmother earlier on. Instead of the abrupt way she banishes Cinderella to the attic, for example, I could easily have accepted Stepmother sending Cinderella on an errand to allow the stepsisters moved into Cinderella’s room! And, alas, in regard to style and pacing, I expected more from Director Kenneth Branagh whose HENRY V and HAMLET remain among the most outstanding modern Shakespeare films. He does a fine job, however, in the scenes between Cinderella and her Prince. Indeed, Branagh makes “Love at First Sight” believable. Overall, once Cinderella’s father is out of the picture, the pace quickens, the performers take flight and the magic begins.

Kudos to all the actors! Lily James is an enchanting Cinderella. We need and want her in every scene. As noted, Cate Blanchett is a wonderfully menacing and wounded Stepmother and I liked Holliday Granger’s and Sophie McShera’s buffoonery as the selfish step-sisters. As the Prince, Richard Madden is fittingly charming and understated. Helena Bonham Carter makes for a most bewitching and fun-filled fairy godmother in both her old lady and youthful guises. Oh, what fun had her role been expanded! Still, what we have in CINDERELLA is, in the end, enough to be good. Once our impatience to “get to the magic” is addressed, a grand time at the ball awaits.

*FYI: Weitz’s best films are IN GOOD COMPANY and A SINGLE MAN; McKenna is best known for THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA.