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“…a guide preparing the heart and mind to enter into a post-secular age.”
April 2, 2025 The Ethics of Evidence Foundation in collaboration with Herder and Herder has released two new publications. This marks the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the Ethics of Evidence Foundation, incorporated in New York, in the spring of 2015, an organization for education and research, with the mission to support the search for meaning in the age of information. The Ethics of Evidence Foundation has divisions for Medicine, Social Justice, Physics, and Cosmology.
As the next volume in the series on the leading-edge theory of A Christian Cosmology by physicist-theologian Richard J. Pendergast, SJ (1927 -2012), Volume 2, The Cosmic Hierarchy: The Universe and its Many Irreducible Levels, is now available together with the introductory Volume 1 and Volume 6 on the Eucharist. Please visit herderandherder.com/pendergast-series for more information.
Dr. Valerie Miké, a mathematical scientist, historian of science, and editor of the Pendergast series, has prepared a companion volume, From Information to Insight: Toward a Consistent Reading of Science and Faith, that offers independent testimony for the compatibility of faith and reason, science and religion.
Special attention is called to three important issues discussed in this work:
More information can be found at herderandherder.com/pendergast-series
“In this companion to A Christian Cosmology, Dr. Valerie Miké introduces the reader to the comprehensive vision of physicist-theologian Richard J. Pendergast, S.J., in a historical perspective that testifies to the compatibility of faith and reason, science and religion. A mathematical scientist, Dr. Miké was a witness and participant in the advent of the Age of Information. Her work, informed by the application of statistics to medicine, and by the Ethics of Evidence approach to understanding the world, brings philosophical realism to the existential and scientific uncertainty of our day. Seeking the truth, using the best available methods in each and every discipline, Dr. Miké addresses the irreducible nature of uncertainty, to overcome the ignorance, deception, reductionism, and fear of the unknown that are so endemic to our age. The book is invaluable as a guide preparing the heart and mind to enter into a post-secular age.” — MSGR. STUART W. SWETLAND, STD, President of Donnelly College, Kansas, National media commentator on religious issues; Academic degrees in theology (Pontifical Lateran University), physics (US Naval Academy), philosophy and economics (Oxford).
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Contact:
Msgr. Stuart W. Swetland
913 621-8700
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of RNS or Religion News Foundation.
null / Credi: cinemavision/Shutterstock
Vatican City, Apr 2, 2025 / 13:28 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis on Wednesday said Jesus continues to go out in search of those who are lost or without hope in a catechesis titled “Jesus Christ Our Hope.”
In his written catechesis, released by the Vatican on April 2, the Holy Father described Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus — a man “who seems irredeemably lost” — as having a “special place” in his own spiritual journey.
“Perhaps we too feel this way at times: without hope,” he wrote, reflecting on the scene in St. Luke’s Gospel. “Instead, Zacchaeus will discover that the Lord was already looking for him.”
Like Zacchaeus, the pope said Jesus continues to go out in search of those who seek God even when faced with personal limitations, struggles, or uncertain circumstances.
“When he comes to know that Jesus is passing through the city, Zacchaeus feels the desire to see him,” he said. “But when you have a strong desire, you do not lose heart. You find a solution.”
While commending Zacchaeus’ courage and simplicity for not being intimidated by those who excluded him because he was the chief publican “who collects taxes from his fellow citizens for the Roman invaders,” the Holy Father noted that it is Jesus who takes the first step to start a conversation with the man “despised by everyone.”
“Jesus asks Zacchaeus to come down immediately, almost surprised to see him in the tree, and says to him, ‘Today I must stay at your house!’ (Lk 19:5),” he wrote. “God does not pass by without looking for those who are lost.”
Reflecting on Zacchaeus’ reaction to Jesus’ openness toward him, the pope said: “It is the joy of one who feels that he has been seen, acknowledged, and above all forgiven.”
After welcoming Jesus into his home, the Holy Father remarked that it is the merciful gaze of God that inspired Zacchaeus to transform his life and “imitate the One by whom he felt loved.”
“He gets up to make a commitment: to return four times what he has stolen,” he said. “He does so because he understands that this is his way of loving.”
Concluding his catechesis with an invitation to take “practical steps” forward so as to welcome Jesus and his forgiveness into our own lives, the Holy Father said: “Let us allow ourselves to be found by the mercy of God, who always comes in search of us, in whatever situation we may be lost.”
INUKJUAK, Quebec (RNS) — Outside, on the banks of a chilly river flowing into the blue-black waters of Hudson Bay, it was only 10 degrees.
Inside St. Thomas Anglican Church, in the northern Canadian hamlet of Inukjuak, about 70 people were gathered — one of them an imposing, 6-foot-1 man with a thatch of white hair, a full beard and the long, sweeping red, black and white robes of an Anglican bishop.
Bishop David Parsons, holding up a red paper heart to signify the blood of Jesus, a black one to signify sin, a Bible and a flashlight, said: “This Bible is a light to show us where to go. For 12 years, I’ve worn the robes of a bishop. The robes remind me that I am a sinner.”
Parsons had recently turned 70, the mandatory retirement age in the Anglican Church of Canada, and was taking a farewell tour after a dozen years heading the Diocese of the Arctic. Covering Canada’s northern third, it is the largest Anglican diocese (by area) in the world. Inukjuak, population 1,821, is in Nunavik, a region at the diocese’s far eastern end in the remote northern reaches of Quebec.
Translating for Parsons was his predecessor and mentor, Andrew Atagotaaluk. Wiry and compact, with bushy eyebrows and silvery-black hair, and standing almost a foot shorter than Parsons, Atagotaaluk was the diocese’s first Inuit bishop and one of four translators of the first Inuktituk-language Bible.
Together, the two bishops had created an evangelical outpost with 34,171 members and still growing amid the more liberal ACC that is dropping numbers so fast, the entire denomination may not last beyond 2040.
The diocese’s bishops have consistently voted throughout the years against same-sex unions, gender transition liturgies and other liberalizing trends in the ACC. “The South doesn’t want to support us because we’re too biblical,” the bishop mused. “We believe Jesus is Lord, we’re not interfaith and we don’t have the intelligence to run things on our own without the Holy Spirit.”
If its congregations are growing, however, Parsons’ successor, who will be elected May 9 in Edmonton, will grapple with the never-ending problem of how to attract priests to the Arctic. Only 16 full-time clergy serve the diocese’s 49 parishes, recruited from around the world to serve in 13 hamlets ranging from Kugluktuk to Kuujjuaq. Parsons has used a patchwork of retired clergy, deacons and laity to lead another two dozen churches, leaving 10 parishes with no clergy or lay leader.
Meanwhile, climate change, geopolitics and tourism bring the world farther north every year. The Anglicans, who have been in the region since the late 17th century, and the Catholics, who’ve been there a century, are seeing a bit of competition. Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslims have established footholds in the Arctic, and independent Baptists and Seventh-day Adventists have also moved in.
To meet that challenge means a constant search for new blood, which is tremendously draining. The onetime corps of missionary Anglican clergy from the U.K. eager to minister in the Arctic no longer exists. Many non-Inuit clergy leave after a few years due to the isolation of the Arctic and easier career opportunities elsewhere.
Add to this the simple wear and tear on the body from constant travel in subzero cold. Born in Labrador, Parsons is used to living up north, but his first post as a lay minister in 1989 in Aklavik was truly remote. Only reachable by plane or ice road, the village, near the Alaskan border, was a trading post for the Hudson Bay Co. and the site of the diocese’s first cathedral.
Parsons adored his four years there, he said, as there were several clergy within a day’s journey to mentor him. “It was like a party for me,” he said. “I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. These were high-caliber people who treated me if I were one of them.”
One of them, Atagotaaluk, ordained him and sent Parsons to head a parish in Inuvik, a town on the Mackenzie River Delta near the Arctic Ocean. Parsons served happily there until Atagotaaluk announced his retirement in 2012, and Parsons was nominated to replace him. Parsons dithered on whether to keep his name on the ballot.
“Dad,” said Davey Parsons, the bishop’s youngest son, then 30, “how long are you going to run away from everything?”
Parsons’ name stayed. He was elected after several ballots. “The next morning,” he remembered, “a member of the Nunavut government asked me what I was going to do about all the suicides.”
In 2012, after he prayed about how to answer the government official’s question, he realized the key was hiring a youth coordinator for the at-risk teenagers dying by suicide. He hired one and got a $45,000 grant to help train parish leaders in suicide prevention. Then COVID-19 hit. Meanwhile, the youth coordinator married, got pregnant and quit.
The question of suicide came up at the bishop’s next stop, in Puvirnituq, the largest town on Hudson Bay’s eastern coast and home of the new $4 million (Canadian) St. Matthew’s Anglican Church. Its priest, Esau Tatatoapik, and his wife, Mary, a deacon, met him at the airport and took him to their home beneath skies green with the northern lights.
Just before Parsons’ plane pulled in, the couple had presided at a funeral for a woman who’d been killed by her drunken grandson. Esau averages three funerals a month, but this past week he’d had four. Parsons asked what was killing everyone, and the couple — along with their youth group leaders — responded that the causes were alcohol-related, drug overdoses or cancer.
“Mary and I are so tired,” the priest said. “There have been so many funerals. So many of the clergy have had suicides.”
Parsons had been going all day, but somehow, he had to encourage this dispirited group. “I am soon going to be gone,” he said. “It will be you guys who will need to look for an answer. We need to get people in their 20s. We need to empower a crowd of teenagers. Instead of killing themselves, they need to come alongside each other and build each other up.”
He repeated a prophecy that Anglicans across the north have talked about for years: Through the Arctic, God will revive the South. There have been prophets among their own people, he said, that have said the dying southern half of the Canadian church will be awoken by a resurgent, evangelical, spiritually powerful North.
He repeated this message at an evening confirmation service whose Pentecostal-style hymns were led by a six-piece band. Parsons asked the youthful crowd of 70 how many teens were present without their parents. At least 10 raised their hands.
“Where are the elders?” he asked. “They are home drunk … with busyness.”
His 40-minute sermon reassured his listeners they have a destiny despite their remote locale. “God wants to send the people of the North to the whole world.”
The irony was maddening; here he had plenty of people but not enough leaders, while dioceses in the South have plenty of clergy, but no people.
The next day, Parsons was off for Ivujivik, a scenic village in a tiny fjord off Digges Sound, at the very northern tip of Quebec. The local priest, Peter Ainalik, who would turn 80 in a few days, was one of the men Parsons has talked out of retirement to staff the tiny St. Columba Anglican Church. He met with Parsons for several hours before the service to pray and reminisce.
Ainalik told the bishop that church members wanted a prayer time for all the suicides in town. Thirty-two people — mostly women — made their way through the falling snow for an evening service where one person was confirmed. When Parsons invited people up for prayer afterward, the floodgates burst open. A petite dark-haired woman named Piellie asked for prayer for a broken heart: Her 32-year-old son, Lucassie, died by suicide the year before, she said between sobs. Many others wept as well.
“Some of them cannot heal after suicide,” Parsons reflected afterward. “So many young people are doing it. Many have been lost. It’s hard to find the answer why.”
The next day, Ainalik, engulfed in a mustard-yellow parka, saw Parsons off at the tiny airport. The priest and the bishop shook hands.
“See you in heaven,” Parsons said.
Reconstruction of the face of St. Teresa of Ávila as she would have appeared at approximately age 50. / Credit: Courtesy of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, Iberian Province
Madrid, Spain, Apr 2, 2025 / 12:23 pm (CNA).
A scientific reconstruction of what would have been the face of St. Teresa of Ávila when she was 50 years old was presented recently in Alba de Tormes, the town in Salamanca province in Spain where the Carmelite nun died and where she is buried.
The reconstruction was based on an anthropomorphic and forensic study, historical evidence, and contemporary descriptions. The work was directed by Professor Ruggero D’Anastasio of D’Annunzio University in Chieti-Pescara, Italy, and carried out by Professor Jennifer Mann, a specialist at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine at Monash University in Australia.
The presentation of the scientifically reconstructed head is the result of the canonical recognition of the tomb of the reformer of the Carmelite order, authorized last August by the Vatican.
Mann explained in a statement released by the Iberian Province of the Discalced Carmelites that, in addition to scientific data, her work was based on other important sources such as “a portrait by Friar Juan de la Miseria and a detailed description of St. Teresa written by Mother Mary of St. Joseph, who lived with the saint.”
To obtain the final result, the skull was first reconstructed with clay, “correctly positioning the jaw,” reconstructing missing teeth, and using “a combination of forensic facial approximation methodologies used in the United States and the United Kingdom.”
The main muscles were molded with soft, oil-based clay, and the soft tissues (eyes, nose, lips) were estimated using formulas based on head measurements and studying the X-rays.
Other formulas allowed for the calculation of the length, width, and angle of the nose as well as a proportional orientation for the placement of the eyes in the sockets of the skull.
“With the consent of the father postulator general of the Discalced Carmelites, I sculpted St. Teresa of Jesus at around the age of 50, reflecting her plump appearance, as described by Mother Mary of St. Joseph,” the specialist explained.
Furthermore, “the veil, headdress, and habit of St. Teresa of Jesus were inspired by specific paintings, following the advice of Father Miguel Ángel González.”
“This sculpture may be the most accurate representation of what St. Teresa of Jesus really looked like during her lifetime,” Mann said.
St. Teresa turned 50 on March 28, 1565, and the reconstruction work represents her at that age. It was around that time that St. Joseph convent in Ávila was founded, the first of those reformed by the Spanish mystic. She lived there between August 1562 and 1567.
The saint noted in the “Book of My Life,” known as the “Autograph of El Escorial,” that she lived there “the happiest and most restful years of my life, whose peace and quiet my soul often misses sorely.”
In a text by González, Carmelite prior of Alba de Tormes, it is noted that during these times, St. Teresa lived “under high spiritual tension. These were years of ecstatic tension in her mystical life. She was crossing her sixth mansion, with great impetus and a great surge of love, with forebodings of imminent arrival at the port of the other life.”
“Mansions” refers to the stages of spiritual growth detailed in her book “The Interior Castle.”
During those years, she wrote her well-known “The Way of Perfection” and the constitutions for her new way of understanding of cloistered life, a reform that she quickly extended. On Aug. 13, 1567, she left the monastery of Ávila for Medina del Campo, where she began the second of her 17 foundations throughout Spain, geographically distributed from north to south, from Burgos to Seville.
The medical and scientific team that made possible the reconstruction of the saint’s face also submitted a 53-page document to the Order of Discalced Carmelites offering a comprehensive summary of the research conducted by anthropologist Luigi Capasso.
The summary of the report details that all of the saint’s remains examined (distributed between Spain and Italy) have been naturally mummified and are in an “extraordinary state of preservation.”
The report notes that on her face, “the scalp is preserved, with many traces of brown hair, the left auricle, the right eye, which still retains its eyelids, the dark iris, the three-dimensionality of the eyeball, all the soft tissues of the nasal pyramid, including the nostrils and the apex of the nasal cartilages.”
The “relaxed facial muscles still convey the sense of serenity with which the saint shows she faced the moment of her death.”
Anthropometric calculations determine that the probable height of St. Teresa was 156.8 centimeters (a little over 5 feet), and an examination of her bones suggests that she suffered from osteoporosis.
She also had an anterior curvature of the neck and trunk, which gave her “a forward-leaning appearance, with her head tilted downward, which also made her take a forced and uncomfortable supine position, with her head unable to rest on the pillow when lying down.”
The saint also suffered from bilateral knee osteoarthritis, “very severe on the left and milder on the right,” and a bone condition below both heels associated with pain, according to the study.
Regarding her mouth, of which only three teeth remain, it is deduced that she suffered, among other ailments, from “severe dental caries [advanced tooth decay], severe tooth wear, and obvious tartar deposits.”
On her right arm, an injury can be seen that could be a result of her writing habits.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
“Our painful experiences aren’t a liability—they’re a gift. They give us perspective and meaning, an opportunity to find our unique purpose and our strength.” –Dr. Edith Eger, The Choice: Embrace the Possible
The loss of an unrealized dream sent me spiraling down, down into the darkness. A darkness filled with a despair and hopelessness that I had not known before.
It was safer and more comfortable for me to attribute all my grief to losing a loving mother-in-law suddenly in the beginning of 2023. Her abrupt absence not only in my life but also in my husband’s and daughter’s lives …