Category Archives: Science-Fiction

Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics is out!

“Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics,” my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better is now LIVE and available for purchase on Amazon Kindle

“Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics” is a call to arms, or rather, a call to pens, paintbrushes, and video cameras, for creative Catholics to take up St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe’s call to infiltrate pop culture and help alleviate the ills that pervade contemporary society. St. Maximilian saw back in the 1920s how the use of cinema, radio, and mass-market books was corrupting society. He thought that those same tools could be used as a countercultural force to overcome this corruption. 

 

BuildingaCivilizationofLoveCover81224-4.1 copy.

 

Furthermore, it explains through the example of three critical apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Guadalupe, Lourdes, and Fatima how she herself suggested strategies and alternatives to the dehumanizing and increasingly pagan contemporary culture we have today.

“Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics” concludes by showing how the Catholic Faith can be used to provide a road map out of our current morass and a blueprint to build a more just and fair society constructed according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy and other elements of traditional Catholic Social Teachings.

You can keep up to date on developments such as when it becomes available in paperback as well as through other distribution channels by checking its website or ‘liking’ its Facebook Page.

 

NOTE: This book is an expanded and revised version of a previously published book entitled, “The Catholicpunk Manifesto.” The text of that book is mostly contained in Chapters V and VI of this work, as well as the Appendices A through C and E, with parts of it in the Preface and earlier chapters.)

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

An Agrarian hope through Catholicpunk?

At the root of The Catholicpunk Manifesto is the notion that the contemporary world has lost its way and needs redirecting. Jesus Christ is “The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and He established the Catholic Church to promulgate and defend His teachings, all with the idea of guiding souls to Heaven. Therefore, the Catholicpunk Movement that will hopefully arise from the book is one method by which Catholic creatives will participate in that mission.

All Catholic Christians are called to evangelize. It springs forth from our Baptism and especially from our Confirmation. We are to be ‘Christ-bearers’ to others. 

As I said in this earlier post:

It’s one thing to preach the Gospel by talking about Jesus; it has worked successfully for 2,000 years. But there are additional avenues that the Catholic evangelist can walk down in attempting to convert the world for Jesus.

One method is creating a fictional world that is in marked contrast to our own. I have a belief, unsure where I got it, it might be an actual Original Thought, or it might be derived from someone else, that technology is a sign of a Fallen world. We read in Genesis 3 that Adam and his descendants have to work by the sweat of their brow. Before this, theologians had thought that Adam and Eve were people who had their needs met by God. They didn’t have to ‘work’ for their food. They dwelt in Paradise and had it easy. But that was spoiled by their rebellion and henceforth people have to struggle to meet their needs.

Society is rushing headlong into deeper decadence and depravity; these were motivating factors in my writing the book. And I do not think that the fact that our technology is also developing at an exponential rate is just a coincidence. Technology is not evil in itself; it’s just a  tool. And since Adam after the Fall needed tools to meet his and Eve’s needs, tools have been part and parcel of our march down through the millennia. Often for good; but often for evil. But always to make life easier in response to its difficulties. And this may have moral or immoral qualities. 

Rather than continue in this post on technological development, I’ll switch to the “creating a fictional world that is in marked contrast to our own” point I mentioned earlier. 

While we will probably never return to an idyllic agrarian past, except perhaps as a highly positive or proactive response to a post-apocalyptic scenario, we could take the example of JRR Tolkien’s Shire, and create stories set in an ‘idealized’ non-technological world. While not practically advocating such a future, (except for the post-apocalyptic idea in the previous sentence) creating an idealistic, hopeful setting, and providing therapy for contemporary folk, can at the same time offer radical solutions or alternatives to contemporary problems. How? Have you ever heard the advice about “aim for the highest, so that if you miss, you’ll still land higher than if you settled on a lower target?” That isn’t the exact wording, I searched and kept coming up with Andrew Carnegie quotes and other non-relevant things like song lyrics. But you get the idea. “Don’t sell yourself short,” is another way of putting it. Now, take that concept and extend it to society and culture as a whole. Fundamental problems require radical solutions. Aspiring to create a slower, more peaceful, and humane world by intentionally limiting technology may get people to take a look around and give pause to advancing ever further towards a dehumanizing future. A more balanced society, with technology being responsibly developed with due regard for morality, ethics, and maintaining our essential humanity.

This can be attempted with agrarian fiction, be it science-fiction or fantasy. If you say that science-fiction cannot be ‘agrarian,’ then your perception is biased or you never read Clifford Simak and pastoral science-fiction. One of the definitions of science-fiction that I read when I was growing up and reading Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, and so on was something like it is ‘humanity’s response to the advances in science and technology.’ So, what if that response to science and technology was to rein it in? And so this is a perfect concept for Catholicpunkers.

This is a continuation of the previous post, “Peter Maurin and Catholicpunking” and develops it a bit.

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

So, what is ‘Catholicpunk’ and what’s a Catholicpunker?

And thus begins a series of posts on who is a Catholicpunker what Catholicpunk is! 

A Catholicpunker is someone who Catholicpunks. Essentially, you are a creative Catholic who believes that there is something seriously wrong with the world and you believe that the Catholic Faith has the answer. After all, Jesus is ‘The Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and He established the Catholic Church to shepherd the world on its way Home to the Lord.

And so you wish to evangelize. Then it hits you: “I can evangelize through my art!” Therefore, you begin to infuse your art with Catholic teachings. It could be easy if you’re a writer of fiction or you make movies and television shows (any type of fiction or filmed stories). Create a world that reflects the doctrines of the Church. There’s the Beatitudes, the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy. There’s an entire economic theory that’s founded on Papal writings: Distributism. There are numerous Catholic political theories: Subsidiarity, Solidarity, Christian Democracy (which incorporates Subsidiarity, Solidarity, and Distributism), and even Catholic Monarchism! Whether you create contemporary dramas or veil your Catholicpunking plans in fantasy or science-fiction, it doesn’t matter. 

But you show via the written word or visual images an alternative to the craziness abounding today. You Catholicpunk. It’s one thing to preach the Gospel by talking about Jesus; it has worked successfully for 2,000 years. But there are additional avenues that the Catholic evangelist can walk down in attempting to convert the world for Jesus. Expressing a Christian culture through art isn’t new, but I think it’s time that we ‘ramp it up’ a lot and engage people that way!

If you engage in other forms of art, I’ll address that in another post soon!

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)

Through Nothing to the Infinite: How an Atheist Lead me to God

An atheist leads me towards belief in God during a tumultuous time in my life through his use of vivid storytelling within a deeply imaginative universe.

It begs the question of, “How can a non-believer help someone to believe?” 

Saints and spiritual writers often say that God can bring good out of evil. Evil is not just found in such actions as abortion, genocide, or slavery, but when any personal will opposes the Divine, however minor the act is. Atheism is that kind, ranging from mere unthinking disbelief to the more militant. God wills us to know and love him; atheists reject that will. I am not sure where in that range J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of the 1990s sci-fi TV show, “Babylon 5,” falls. He had a Catholic background but strayed from belief somewhere along the way. One episode of his “Babylon 5” drilled me to the floor with its consideration of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Passing Through Gethsemane” (S3E4) made me look at Christ’s Agony in the Garden from a perspective that treated it not as some pious event memorialized in the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, but a reality to enter into so as to ponder how your actions might manifest themselves.

Straczynski is an atheist, yet he treated religious belief with a respect at variance with today’s atheists. He regarded religion as being part of the human condition serving as an excellent vehicle to explore it.

In “Passing Through Gethsemane,” a guest character, Brother Edward, (played by Brad Dourif,) is a monk dwelling on Babylon 5 with other members of his order. He has a past, which I won’t reveal for fear of spoiling the show. (Although the episode aired in 1995, streaming services enable new fans to discover the series regularly. If you already know Babylon 5, then you know about this episode.) In it, he is asked by Ambassador Delenn (played by Mira Furlan,) “What is the defining moment of your belief….the emotional core…?” Edward replies with the background on Gethsemane, and specifically that Jesus knew what was going to happen to him. In a moment of weakness, he prayed for the cup to pass from him, so he would be spared the pain of what was to come, including death. But of course, he wouldn’t be spared and he’d be arrested. Edward continues with an emphasis that Jesus didn’t have to be there when the soldiers arrived to arrest him, that he could have left and postponed the inevitable for a few hours or even days. But Jesus knew what would happen and stayed anyway. Brother Edward concludes that he honestly doesn’t know if he would have had the courage to stay.

When I first saw that episode, that latter part blew my mind. “Seriously,” I thought, “does anyone actually look at a Biblical event and personally connect it to their life? As in, what they might do if they were there and then build their faith life from that? Everyone thinks that if they were back in Jesus’ days they’d of course follow him unhesitatingly and would never be in the crowd screaming ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ But, to seriously meditate upon a specific event, dwell on it, and make it the ‘defining moment’ and the ‘emotional core’ of their faith life?”

Perhaps a digression into what my ‘emotional core’ was like at the time. I was ‘raised Catholic’ but left the Faith nearly ten years earlier. My prayers about some complicated desperate situations weren’t answered. I also coincidentally fell prey to some atheistic and libertarian science fiction novels that convinced me organized religion was a sham and a means of exercising mass control over the populace. So I left, and life immediately got better. So much for religion. (But I never became an atheist. I did flirt with libertarianism, though.) Flash forward to how I was when “Passing Through Gethsemane” aired and you’ll read a different story. Life had gotten progressively worse. I had relocated from across the country to escape some more complicated desperate situations (these had the habit of following me) and my ‘emotional core’ meant that drinking was defining my moments. Capt. Morgan and Jose Cuervo were my saviors; here I am being mind-struck by some monk wondering if he would have had the courage to stay in Gethsemane and await the soldiers to take him to his execution. Me, who defined courage by how skillfully I can smuggle bottles into the house.

You’re probably thinking that this TV episode changed my life right then and I found a priest, went to confession, and resumed participating in the life of the Church. No. Reversion was still a few years off. But seeds were planted that started growing, eventually bearing fruit later on.

The crux of this is that faith powers a spiritual life. What I learned from that episode, ironically written by an atheist, is that for faith to have meaning it has to grip you by the scruff of your neck, shake you up and down, and demand that it be lived and taken seriously. The kind of faith that inspires people to willingly sacrifice their lives, not the faux faith that attends Mass whenever they feel like it, or sets it aside when it proves inconvenient to their political or business choices. The latter kind is mental pablum designed to make you excuse your sins and feel good about yourself.

That was in marked contrast to the faith that I had. In the years before I left the Church, my Catholicism was broad but not deep. It couldn’t have done what Brother Edward did; intimately apply some event to my own life to create an emotional core that defined it. 

A faith that defines your emotional core such as what drove Brother Edward to contemplate his place in Gethsemane fosters the willingness to firmly plant your feet and say, “This is what I am about, regardless of the passing fancies of society or what the neighbor’s think. This is me, my self-defined ‘I AM.’” It confronts the crucial significance of belief and its consequences. This is the willingness to face down death; literal death or just those things which challenge you or can kill your soul. But perhaps more importantly, that drawing from this power and courage means you have the willingness to be a transformative force in the society around you in a manner best suited to your unique talents. 

That may have been what Brother Edward was wondering. Not only the literal, “If I was in Gethsemane, would I have…,” but in drawing from that would he have had the courage to face everything challenging him, both personal and external.

These are challenges everyone faces, and an atheist started me on the way.

Are you a creative Catholic? ""Building a Civilization of Love: A Call to Creative Catholics," is my new book exhorting Catholics to apply their faith to change the culture for the better!

Know someone who is an alcoholic or addict? "The Sober Catholic Way" helps Catholics by describing the many ways in which their faith can assist in maintaining sobriety, and is a basic handbook on how anyone can live a sober life. . (Thank you!!)