I’ve always thought of myself as a spiritual being having a physical experience, rather than the other way around. However you see and experience your being, there is no getting around the fact that we are all affected greatly by events in both realms.

So, in the spirit of this reality I wanted to share my thoughts on the new Pope in the context of:

• The Middle East
• The Eurozone
• America

The Middle East

Yesterday, I attended a lecture “Red States, Blue States and the Israeli State: An Insider’s Look at Washington DC- Jerusalem Relations” given by Gil Hoffman, Chief Political Correspondent and analyst for the Jerusalem Post. I was the only Conservative Gentile in the room of Liberal Jews…the only one who did not vote for Obama. Although Israelis are very skeptical of Obama, they remain hopeful and seem more forgiving of his “missteps” in the region than their Conservative-American friends. While they remain very worried about Iran, their own recent elections in advance of Obama’s visit this week signal improved prospects for peace negotiations. Key word- Hopeful.

Note- The Pope’s first significant outreach has been to the Jews!

The Eurozone

This morning a new term surfaced in the lexicon of the never-ending Euro Crisis. The  Impairment to savers living on the island of Cyprus in the form of a tax (confiscation) levy of 6.75% on the first 100,000 Euros (max amt insurable), and 9.9% on everything above! And when the enraged Cypriot responded to the midnight plunder from Brussels byrunning to their ATM’s yesterday, they were denied!

There is no physical Band-Aid for what we are about to experience here…and I do meanhere! http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-16/europe-does-it-again-cypru...

                                                         America

We have never been more divided! American Politics have become as unpredictable and treacherous as the worst white-water on the most dangerous river you can imagine! As Dr. Ben Carson so poignantly observed this week at CPAC, if he were a President who wanted to destroy America, he would do exactly what this President as done! We are broken on every level. We are broken fiscally! We are broken physically! And we are broken spiritually!

I am, in my heart, a recent convert to the Catholic Church. It seems that across the world there is a break in everything. Only the chronically uninformed or those steeped in denial could possibly remain unaware of it and its significance in their lives.

God is not Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Jew or Muslim…God is God! There are those within my Church who lament the fact that our new Pope is a Jesuit. I myself love that he invoked the love and piety of St. Francis of Assisi in choosing his name as Pope. Think of the refreshing contrast in our world so crippled from its own extravagant excess to have a leader modeled in austere simplicity…This was not Dolan, Mahoney or the Gay Mafia! This is the Holy Spirit!

There are those within my Church who lament the “consecration rubrics” of our Pope during the Mass and what this may portend for the future of our Church.

My concern is this? How few of us in the world even know or care what such a controversy between man and his relationship to God means to them. It is heart-breaking as a taxpayer to know that 80% of our New York City high school graduates are mentally illiterate (as recently reported)! But it is literally devastating to know that an even greater percentage of our world is religiously and spiritually illiterate as well!

From the Middle East to the Eurozone to America, there is nothing in the tool box of men to fix the break in our world! The Holy Spirit has guided me to the Eucharist by pointing me to people, places and things. It is not for me to say where your informed heart will lead you. But it is more imperative than ever for us ALL to turn back to God and seek his light to inform our hearts once again.