I suspect that a good percent of active East Valley church-goers are “in debt” to their congregations. They have pledged to their churches for building and expansion campaigns — campaigns with eminently lofty titles like Building for Faith Tomorrow or Building for the Harvest or On the Wings of Faithful Vision.” They could just call it. “We Need Big Money Again.”You can’t be around very long in a faith community and not be part of a fund-raising campaign to buy land or build or renovate. Of course, a building …

I read recently how standardized and uniform Catholic funerals can be, that they can be true cookie-cutter rites. Just plug in the name and keep the Mass to a prescribed time. I was reminded of my sheer disappointment some years back attending the funeral Mass of a Tempe friend who had some prominence and who had lived a fulfilled, dynamic, significant life.But it could have been just about anybody’s funeral. The substance of his rich life was omitted. I knew people who had intended to speak to exalt …

As mostly a non-fiction book reader, I was in no big hurry to read The Da Vinci Code. I made time in recent weeks to get it read, as a professional duty. My wife read it in a couple days between everything else. Now we are trying to make time to go see the film. We are not particularly discriminating and critical film-goers, so I suspect well enjoy it.As mystery thrillers go, I found the book a great read. But I could never get …

High school graduations are this week, and many schools are holding their final classes. By this weekend, the Closed for Summer Vacation” signs will be up. There will be a few weeks of summer school for remedial help, but for schools and houses of worship, the summer is here. Sigh of relief.While there are some congregations with the tenacity, plus volunteers and staff willing to keep going, most gladly welcome going into lower gear. Choirs thin out after Easter and choir lofts often go empty all summer. The …

His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is proclaiming a bright new fortune is dawning but didnt we hear that a dozen years ago with the harmonic convergence?Over the years, I have grown more and more skeptical, and even cynical, by upbeat religionists saying good times for humankind are just about here, that there is a transformation in human events at hand

It reminds me of my days almost four decades ago as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay. We P.C. volunteers naively believed we Americans in foreign …

Most of us should be able to sympathize with Mormons who must be irked and fatiqued by the media coverage of Warren Jeffs, the fugitive leader of the Fundamenalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.First of all, with as much national coverage as the polygamous sect (the Fundamentalists) has gotten and with those in some parts of the country less familiar with the distinctions between them and the Church of Jesus Christ of Ladder-day Saints, there will be incorrect and misleading reporting. CNN, for example, superimposed …

Some voters in various East Valley cities on Tuesday will be going to houses of worship to vote. It may be unsettling to have to cast their votes on religious property. For others, it has become so routine, they hardly think about it.But some cannot accept church spaces as neutral ground to perform their public duty to vote. They may even be on the alert for anything that seemingly is “in their face and religiously obtrusive.

In the spirit of sensitivity, poll workers often …

Whatever your talents or skills, invariably you are asked to employ those abilities in some way for the organizations and congregation you belong to. Whether it is computer technology, cuisine, art, flooring, teaching, retail, marketing or carpentry, there always seems to be a calling in your house of worship for expert, free labor.As a journalist, I have long been the person groups recruit for their newsletters or to be the scribe and secretary for the meeting minutes, producing brochures and editing materials. For a church early in my newspaper …

The Rev. Chris Carpenter, former pastor of Christ the King Catholic Church in Mesa, now living in southern California, recently sent the Valley media a lengthy letter that he titled, Something Died. It is a long lament to mark the period two years ago when Bishop Thomas Olmsted instructed nine priests to remove their names from a statement that was sympathetic to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgenderd people. He was one of eight who begrudgingly did so.Carpenter, a priest since 1995 and known as “Father Flick” for his review of …

Demands on our lives preclude us from so much that’s out there. I fantasize about being given a life sentence — confined to a large, well-stocked public library. What could be better than wiling away the rest of the hours of one’s life immersed in the best ideas recorded throughout human history? Oh, the amazing works that wait for the time and the opportunity to be devoured.I fret that KTAR (620 AM) airs its wonderful program, The God Show, with host Pat McMahon at 7 …