Muggsy's Brain

I gave up Catholicism for Lent. The last time I went into a church for religious reasons was probably around 1980, and even then it was because it was how I was raised, not how I felt or what I believed. I began questioning my own beliefs when I was a freshman in high school, and ultimately decided to leave the church. And I am not alone. The recent American Religious Identification Survey by the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life and Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut found that more and more people are moving away from organized religion, some moving towards a more "spiritual" view, while others are giving it up entirely. Similarly, the Christian Science Monitor recently printed an article entitled The Coming Evangelical Collapse which suggests that Evangelical Christianity will all but disappear within the next 10 years. Good riddance, I say. Personally, I think Ka...

On the shores of beautiful Lake Sagatagan, on the land owned by St. John's University in Collegeville, stands a quaint little chapel originally built around 1915 and lovingly restored around 1945. It is very small, only around 500 square feet and is made of field stone and mortar. Inside is a floor made of a locally quarried dark granite. In the center of the floor is a white, six-pointed star set in a circle of reddish stone. It is not used regularly, not officially anyway, but there is a path that circles around the lake that leads to this pretty little house of God and it has been open to the public for as long as I can remember. When you looked at that chapel, with its uneven fieldstone walls, you could see the work and sweat that went into building it. The stones came from the surrounding fields, gathered by local farmers as they plowed in the spring, and were somehow transported across the lake where they were used by local laborers and monks to build a small testament ...