The January-February 2024 issue of Liguorian magazine, a Redemptorist ministry, features a guest editorial written by Brother Louis DeThomasis, FSC, of the Midwest District. Brother Louis is president emeritus and professor of interdisciplinary studies at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. Cofounder of Christian Brothers Investment Services, Inc., he was awarded the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Medal and is a member of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem. Six universities have given honorary doctoral degrees to him. The article is shared here with permission.
Perplexing Perceptions and Perspectives
By Brother Louis DeThomasis, FSC
Marcel Proust, a baptized and confirmed Catholic who became an atheist, could very well have taken his insight from St. Paul, who admonished his listeners:
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Romans 12:2
Today, Pope Francis echoes these same insights. He calls us to see and create a new, more welcoming Church in which its faith-filled followers go “out there” to the peripheries, bringing new life to a world transformed by the Gospel. However, today’s geopolitical conflicts and the growing cultural “religious warrior” uproars arising in the Church — even within the hierarchy itself — pose a complicated, perplexing problem for spreading the Gospel. Do we bring those Church tensions with us to the peripheries or hide them?
Perhaps we need to reflect upon Pope Francis’ use of the word peripheries also as a metaphor. A metaphor that will grasp our perceptions and propel our perspectives beyond geographic borders; and, a metaphor that embraces our imaginations and generates new frameworks of actions and possibilities for all, especially the young. We must envision a new horizon that can make the evangelization of the Church more relevant and effective for today’s world, beyond geographic borders!
Louis DeThomasis, FSC, Ph.D., “Perplexing Perceptions and Perspectives”, Liguorian, 2024. Reprinted with permission from Liguori Publications, a ministry of the Redemptorists.