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patschma.bsky.social
@patschma.bsky.social
12 followers 40 following 7 posts
Former stay-at-home dad, evangelization in DioDav, pro-biblical literacy, and an amateur lover of all things Lonergan. Writer, lay-minister, and theology nerd.
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patschma.bsky.social
Even Walter Cronkite would be locked in an echo chamber...We all have our neighbors to the north top of mind. This column is not about Minneapolis, but it is prompted by it. More directly, it is about developing human authenticity.

open.substack.com/pub/schmadek...
February 5, 2026 at 9:56 PM
Reposted
jonathanrheaps.bsky.social
Meanwhile, the social situation’s growing absurdity and the culture’s mounting derision militate against the idea that intelligence, morality, or religion really have any purchase on reality at all. People lose the courage to act on their convictions, and eventually they give up on the very sense-making from which such convictions emerged. It’s better not to ask, not to pay attention. If some glimmer of hope in intellectual ideals persists, no one imagines they can become operative without the backing of force. Force itself becomes seen as the only possible vehicle of progress. “Reality,” Lonergan wrote, becomes no more than "the economic development, the military equipment, and the political dominance of the all-inclusive state. Its ends justify all means. Its means include not merely every technique of indoctrination and propaganda, every tactic of economic and diplomatic pressure, every device for breaking down the moral conscience and exploiting the secret affects of civilized man, but also the terrorism of a political police, of prisons and torture, of concentration camps, of transported or extirpated minorities, and of total war." When, in a nuclear age, every heart has turned to stone, the only thing left to do is wait for the world’s ashen fate. “A civilization in decline,” Lonergan said, “digs its own grave with relentless consistency.”
January 28, 2026 at 9:25 PM
patschma.bsky.social
This is what happens when we forget that people are more important than politics and families are more important than ideologies: open.substack.com/pub/schmadek...
January 19, 2026 at 7:32 PM
patschma.bsky.social
The Spring semester of 2008 had unfolded much like other semesters....

open.substack.com/pub/schmadek...
What would Our Mother say?
Letting the eyes of a mother guide our actions
open.substack.com
August 29, 2025 at 2:09 PM
patschma.bsky.social
I was 22 when Pope Francis was elected pope. His death hurts. Here is why I am grateful for his papacy.

open.substack.com/pub/schmadek...
A pope of the Spirit, a pope of the people
Looking back and carrying forward
open.substack.com
May 6, 2025 at 1:39 AM
patschma.bsky.social
Reflecting on our baptism isn't a *bad* way to begin Holy Week, right? Here is something to chew on if you'd like.
schmadeke.substack.com/p/bound-to-e...
April 13, 2025 at 11:46 AM
patschma.bsky.social
One thing I do not doubt: the price one's soul pays for power is related to whether one understands that power as for the benefit of oneself and one's own kind, or for the benefit of all.

open.substack.com/pub/schmadek...
March 13, 2025 at 6:42 PM
patschma.bsky.social
I feel deep sympathy for Mrs. May in Flannery O'Connor's "Greenleaf." Only love can restore a broken worldview. Only genuine encounter can melt away anger and reverse resentment.
schmadeke.substack.com/p/we-become-...
February 18, 2025 at 6:15 PM