MSI Press Blog

The following guest post by Dr. Dennis Ortman, psychologist, former priest, and MSI Press author, will form the basis of a forthcoming book on coping with pandemic conditions, called The Pandemic and Hope . POST-PANDEMIC STR ESS DISORDER  By Dennis Ortman, Ph.D.     I have a fantasy. President Trump will eventually announce victory over the Coronavirus. He will declare, “We have won the war. We have shown our greatness as a nation in working together to defeat this invisible enemy.” He will then express gratitude to all the healthcare workers, who risked their lives, those who supported all the essential services, and the entire nation. He will also report remarkable progress on a vaccine and treatment. American ingenuity again triumphs. Hopefully, this day will come sooner than later.  However, while the war may be won on one front, another remains, the inner battle against fear. We cannot rest on our laurels. Many have aptly compared this epidemic

On October 8, MSI Press author, Arthur Yavelberg, author of A Thoelogy for the Rest of Us,   contributed an article to the Tucson Daily Star about...well, you can read it here and see what it is about: "A Rose by Any Other Name" by Arthur Yavelberg While I am not a Catholic, I've never had a problem with the Trinity. The idea that there is one essence that manifests itself in different forms in different contexts was no challenge to me. The same is true of Krishna in Hinduism, by the way. Depending on the seeker--the nature of the seeker and the surrounding culture--Krishna could take any form that would be positively received. When I was teaching in Chicago, it was not false humility to recognize, for example, that basketball great Michael Jordan and I could say exactly the same thing, but Jordan would get rapt attention while I would be lucky if there was a drowsy yawn. In the Bible, when Moses wants to know the name of God he should use when addressing the Israelites i

  Excerpt from Tucker & Me (Harvey) - RIDING THE WILD MATTRESS               I was a planned Cesarean birth. The doctor gave my mother a choice of several dates for delivery, and she picked the seventeenth. This was because her birthday was on the seventeenth, albeit in a different month. This was part of an inordinate role the number seventeen played in our family.                      I was brought home as a baby to our residence in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park. I only lived there until I was two years old, but it was always referred to as the Hermosa Vista House, in reference to the name of the street. The street number was 417, thus continuing an odd streak of the number seventeen in our family residences. After that house, we lived in the city of Alhambra, with a street address of 1717. The next home we moved to the address was simply 17. Ultimately, the family settled in another town, where the house numbers were 1728. That’s an awful lot of seventeens for one fam

  Today's guest post from Dr. Dennis Ortman continues the theme he started last week on dying and living. Journey through Death “Unless the grain of wheat dies, it remains just a grain of wheat.” --Jesus of Nazareth   Pope Benedict XVI, the retired pope, recently died. One of his caregivers reported his last dying words: “Lord, I love you.” He was echoing the last words of Jesus on the cross: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Mahatma Gandhi, called the “Great Soul,” was assassinated. His last words were a cry to God: “Ram, Ram, Ram!” The last thought of these men before they died was not of all the loved ones they left behind, but of God, who was their constant companion throughout their lives. They faced death with a tranquil spirit. Socrates, the epitome of wisdom, faced his death with a similar calmness. He was condemned to die on a charge of corrupting the youth of Athens. His friends tried to convince him not to take that fatal drink. Socrates responded