Coffee Break

Coffee Break

 

Perhaps the biggest piece of news this week is also the most disturbing. Not to diminish the matter, but I also feel like I was the last to know, like, why didn't more people talk about this and share it? Rick Warren's son, Matthew, committed suicide at the beginning of this week. Rick Warren is the acclaimed pastor of Saddleback Church in California. His son, who I know very little about apparently suffered a long time battle with mental illness. No doubt, this is a sad and shocking story. My prayers have been with the family. You can read the story here. The autopsy which emerged this morning tells that it was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Very little words come to mind other than "tragic" when thinking of this issue. A kid I ate lunch with in High School did the same thing to himself.

The good people at Catholic Answers discuss the Catholic Church's teaching on suicide: http://www.catholic.com/video/church-teaching-on-suicide

An important issue, too. Little did I know, the first story I heard that led me to trust the Catholic church was a suicide story, which also led to me choice of a Confirmation Saint, St. Padre Pio.

St. Pio was a man of so many miracles and spiritual gifts. In confession he would often tell the person what they did wrong if they held anything back, or he would tell them information that would be impossible for them [or him] to know. Popular too, he would spend some 16 hours on some days listening to confessions. He had a big gift as a seer. So a married man, sick with depressions takes his life on a bridge. Padre Pio was always surrounded by crowds so much that it was tough for anyone to get through to him. The woman knew of his gifts and wanted to ask Pio to pray for the man's soul but could not get to him. The story goes that when she almost gave up, Pio came to an abrupt halt, pointed through the mass of crowd as to make a path straight to the woman and yelled, "don't be afraid, he confessed on the way down." The woman knew what he was talking about. It remains one of the most vivid stories from St. Pio's many. It was compelling to me, enough to give Catholicism a look.

One piece of news that is of specific interest is the attack on a Egyptian Coptic Christian Cathedral today. You can read that here.

A bit of disturbing news in the domestic world, a US Army Reserve picked Catholics and Evangelical Protestants as "extremist" religious groups. Read it here. Disturbing, cause they classify these next to the Klu Klux Clan and Al Qaeda.

What else happened this week?