Dear Friends,

News from the pews 

See links on TMC’s website home page: https://thomasmerton.org/  

TMC bulletin page: https://thomasmerton.org/bulletin  

Save the Dates: 

The Parish “Journey Together in Christ” series on December 5^th at 7:30 p.m. in the St. Albert the Great Hospitality Center will include Todd Fries, Executive Director of the Northern California Innocence Project and a recently exonerated gentleman. See below.

Fr. José Antonio Rubio will lead an Advent Morning of Reflection, Saturday, December 7^th, 2024 from 10 a.m. to Noon, St. Albert the Great Hospitality Center. (Flyer is attached--please scroll to the  bottom under "Documents").

EVENTS

Learn about legal work of the Northern California Innocence Project 

Todd Fries, Executive Director of the Northern California Innocence Project and a recently exonerated gentleman will speak at the Parish “Journey Together in Christ” series on Thursday, December 5^th at 7:30 p.m. in the St. Albert the Great Hospitality Center. Enhancing our spiritual connections to social justice, we welcome all to come learn more about the legal work of the Northern California Innocence Project exonerating innocent people for a crime they did not commit and securing their release from prison.  

Reflections on Advent Liturgical Readings

Please join us for an Advent morning of reflection with Fr. José Antonio Rubio on Saturday, December 7th, from 10 a.m. to noon in St. Albert the Great Hospitality Center. Fr. Rubio is a regular celebrant at The Merton Center's 9 a.m. Sunday Mass. Fr. Rubio will reflect on the Sunday readings in Advent followed by reflections on weekday Advent readings. 

We look forward to his insightful observations on the Advent scriptures and to deepening our awareness of the holiness and hope of the season.

NEWS

Bishops seek an elusive unity while Trump's shadow threatens their flock

Michael Sean Winters writes on Nov 15 in NCR

…The shadow of Donald Trump hung over the U.S. bishops' meeting in Baltimore. Alongside their efforts to find unity among themselves, the fears of many Catholic immigrants loomed large.

…. Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, gave an excellent presentation on the fruits of the synod and here we find one of the bright spots of the week. Flores not only took the lead in the synodal process for the bishops' conference, he may be the most widely respected bishop in the conference.

After he was finished, San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy called for the creation of a task force to help the conference implement synodality. Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich then asked if it would be helpful to obtain a sense of the body on the proposal.

A voice vote followed and only a few bishops grumbled a low-volume no. The ayes had it. This ensures that the proposal, first floated in an interview both cardinals gave to NCR Vatican correspondent Christopher White, will not die on the vine. 

Read the complete article: (here)

Five larger trends to make sense of the 2024 election

Having followed the American political scene since I was a graduate student in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1970s, I know that this process of blame and praise often ignores larger trends that really mattered.

Instead, here are takeaways that I believe political scientists and historians will be pondering for years in an attempt to make sense out of this election.

… it was the economy, stupid.

… Under President Bill Clinton, free trade and globalization were supposed to make everyone's life better, but in reality, they only made the lives of the college-educated better. Blue-collar workers were told to retrain for new industries after their jobs were lost, but the programs meant to facilitate this were a joke.

…nativism, racism and isolationism, which have afflicted America in the past, are by no means dead.

Kamala Harris attempted to mobilize women…

… Yet despite the GOP doing everything it could to push women the party doesn't seem to have lost its share of women.

Evangelical leaders continue to compromise their Christian beliefs for partisan ends. While most Catholic bishops do not endorse candidates or political parties — and I thank God they don't — they also fail to point out that LifeSiteNews, Catholic Vote and Catholics for Catholics are political not Catholic organizations.

Read the complete article: (here)

Interview: How Pope Francis has ‘disrupted’ the church

Inside the Vatican

On this week’s episode, host Colleen Dulle interviews Catholic author and academic Michael W. Higgins to discuss his new book, “The Jesuit Disruptor: A Personal Portrait of Pope Francis.” They unpack the pope’s responses to scandals, his reform efforts, and his spiritual and intellectual formation—all of which have profoundly shaped his moral voice at the helm of an evolving church.

Read the article.  See also link to the podcast

(here)

Note: Prof. Higgins was sponsored by the Spiritual Education Committee to speak on Thomas Merton during our speakers’ series commemorating the100^th anniversary of Thomas Merton’s birth.