HerbEly

Should The “Widow’s Mite” Story Make Us Feel Guilty?

    In Sunday’s gospel reading (Mk 12:38-44 ) we hear three contrasting positions on the use of money:

• The scribes – glory seeking religious leaders of the day – rapaciously consume the savings of poverty stricken widows.
• Rich people who put large sums in the temple treasury
• A widow who gave the last of her meager savings to the temple – “all she had, her whole livelihood.

Through the years, I’ve heard this gospel interpreted as a criticism of the rich for failing to contribute even larger sums. The meaning is different and in many ways more challenging than a surface appeal for more funds. To get to the meaning, it helps to compare this story with the advice of St. Paul, in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, (Chapters 8 and 9.)

Search Engine Enables Comparison of Catholic Blogosphere Interest in War, Sex, and Work

Back in February, I wrote CatholicBlogs to tell them that there search engine would not recognize search requests for three letter words. Searches for "just war theory" (or, perish the thought, "Herb Ely") returned no result. This was, I suggested a serious flaw - at least the inability to search for articles mentioning "culture war" or actual "war."

CatholicBlogs can now find 3-letter words. (Certain 4-letter words are could always be found - but we weren't interested in them.) This is an important upgrade. I urge Catholic (and other) bloggers to use it as a research tool.

A search of CatholicBlogs.com may indicate a comparison of levels of interest. A search for "war" yielded 1926 hits. A search for that other three letter word of great interest - "sex" - yielded 1328 hits. A search for "theology of the body" yielded 161.

Sports has much to teach about the relationships of mind, heart and body. A good coach can teach many spiritual lessons about integrity, anger management, courage, etc. Courious to see if the theology of the body had explored any of these connections, I tried a search for "sports" and "theology of the body", sorted it for relevance and found nothing. This strikes me as a major oversight. As we heard in yesterday's reading from Mk 12: 28b-34 we are commanded to:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength.

As an Old Married Guy and father of four, I am glad to see John Paul II's emphasis on the goodness of sex through his writings on Theology of the Body. As a martial arts student, retired federal manager, public speaker and civic leader, I need to point out the obvious but overlooked fact that there is more to the body that just sex. Classroom teachers know that body messages are essential to classroom discipline and effective teaching. We need a much more fully developed spirituality of the body.

For what it is worth, a search on "work" and "spirituality", yielded 191 hits. Less than ten percent of these touch on the practice of spirituality in the workplace, even though most of us will have far more influence on the world through our jobs than we ever will through church inspired work for social justice.

This strikes me as an exact reversal of priorities. It is safe to assume that Catholic bloggers spend more time working than in either of the other two activities.