Winter Newsletter

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2022 Winter Newsletter - Catching Up

Dear Friends,

We missed our usual January Winter newsletter to our entire email list due to the vicissitudes of aging as well as the yearend busyness on the backend here at The Cornerstone Forum office. Chores, these days, seem to take longer than they did a decade ago. As technology advances, I feel I fall further behind. Both Gil Bailie and I find we can only do one thing at time, which usually means we now only have one spinning plate on a stick. And even then, it’s a challenge to keep it from shattering on the floor.

Our complimentary downloadable MP3 this month (being made available to all on our mailing list) is the first of a two part series on the poetry of WH Auden. Click on the button below to download the MP3 audio file. Our sustaining donors are being mailed the complete 2 CD sent this month, and our regular donors will have part two of the series emailed to them in March.

Poetry of WH Auden Pt 1

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Notes in the Margin

There is a feeling in the air that something more disturbing than an airborne virus is circulating around us. The cumulative effects of two years of wearing masks, lockdowns, isolation, and the sense of uncertainty about the waves of Covid variants, along with the emergency use of novel vaccines and medications whose long-term effects are unknown, have produced a wariness as well as a weariness as we trod this pandemic path. I discussed aspects of this a year ago in my reflections on “Everything is Broken” in which our fallen and sinful human nature is offered the grace of mercy and repentance.

René Girard’s thematization of the sacrificial crisis that results when we no longer have recourse to the cathartic resolution of the scapegoat for societal conflicts provides a way to understand our current situation. But this intellectual understanding does not bring about the healing of our broken world. Rather, it points to the ultimate futility of placing our hope in a particular political or socio-economic solution when a religious response is called for. It was the crucifixion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ that exposed and overthrew the sacrificial basis of human solidarity. And it is the same Jesus Christ that calls each of us to faith in the transcendent God ensconced in the Trinity and revealed in the Judeo-Christian scriptures.

We are facing difficult days. We will need resources of faith and hope that can sustain us in times of adversity. Such can be found in the sacramental graces offered in the Eucharist. Each person is called to find and follow a path to the Eucharistic table. And Christ seeks each lost sheep. Here is a song that may help along the way, Cannonball Adderley’s Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.

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According to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the coincidence of theology and

anthropology constitutes "the truly most exciting part of Christian faith."

The Cornerstone Forum is a product of that excitement and an effort to communicate it to others.

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