Views from a Hermitage: Theological Reflections on Religion in Today's World

This book consists of a collection of about one hundred short essays on the subject of the influence, for better or for worse, of religion in today's world. They were written by a retired Catholic priest and theologian who, beginning in 1981, left academia to live a more strictly contemplative life in a cabin in Michigan's north woods.

Selected from about two hundred such works written over seven years' time (late 1999 to mid-2007), the essays in this book have been rearranged into ten sub-topics ranging from faith and belief, science and religion, war and peace, ethics and politics, and Jesus and Christianity, to ever-mounting concerns over the environment. Nevertheless, within each broad subject the chronological sequence and development of the author's views has also been retained.

Originally inspired by both the example and the advice of the late monk and writer Thomas Merton—although he makes no claims to being a poet—the author, who once specialized in the thought of Teilhard de Chardin, nevertheless emulates the pastoral example of Merton's favorite theologian, Karl Barth. It is Barth who is said to have written his sermons at his kitchen table with a Bible at one hand and a newspaper at the other. It is in this same spirit of living a contemplative life that is still deeply engaged with the world that the author shares his thoughts with anyone who cares about the future of our planet and the human race.