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5 Years of The Catholic Bard

5 Years of The Catholic Bard

Last updated on: May 10, 2025 at 7:00 am by Mark Wilson

5 Years of The Catholic Bard 2025-05-09T21:53:53-05:00 Mark Wilson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I’ve always liked writing.

When I was young my mother would write down stories for me as I dictated to her the words that flowed out of my young mind.

June 30th, 1977: Mark will not let me alone. He wants me to write about him so he can know what he did when he was small. He wants to be sure I put in that Laurie stepped on his toe. He wants also to have me put in about his “ Sean & Marky” comic books that he makes. He gets the ideas and dictates his ideas to me each night so I can draw them .He calls them Our “Drawing Lessons”. But I have to do all the drawing.- Louise Wilson

I continued to write stories, poems, essays and other things through the years. I wrote for my own personal pleasure plus, I’ve contributed submissions to student publications, papers for schoolwork and I helped my wife publish a few e-books. Overall my writing has always been up and down in terms of flow and I never really ventured into the professional realm of publication. I always stayed safely within the boundaries of my own personal computer.

Then one day 5 years ago the then editor of Patheos Catholic, Rebecca Bratten Weiss, decided to give me a chance and entered me into the roster of bloggers at this subsection of the overall greater Patheos platform. The Catholic Bard launched on Mother’s Day and now at post 754 at age 54, I’ve hit a milestone doing my thing and writing the Catholic Bard now for 1/2 a decade. It just so happens that in 1908 Mother’s Day was observed for the first time in the United States, in Grafton, West Virginia.

It would best at this time to acknowledge all mothers especially my mother Louise Wilson who was a great mom, my mother in-law Kathy Nealon who continues to be a good mom to both Kristin and I, and Mother Mary who is a good mom to all God’s children.

Timewise I’ve been writing the blog as long as original trajectory as the original Star Trek 5 Years mission. It’s also two days since the first american pope Leo XIV took the the throne of St. Peter in the jubilee year. It’s an historic moment in my life and the universal church.

In the time I’ve been at Patheos I’ve explored strange new writings turning out blog post after blog post week after week. This is the first constant consistent flow of writing that I have ever produced. This is the most motivated I’ve ever been to continually produce new material for the larger world to see. It’s a dream come true to write professionally and a goal I continue to strive to achieve.

I named the blog post The Catholic Bard, because that is what my co-writer Kristin Wilson, a.k.a. my wife, the Carmelite, wanted to name it. And in the beginning she contributed a lot to our site.

SEIZURES, HISTORY AND BELIEVE

How about a history lesson on Epilepsy and/or Seizures?

What does Epilepsy have to do with religion?

Seizures are recorded in India 4500-1500 B.C. as a loss of consciousness. The ancient Babylonians knew there were different kinds of seizures and recoded them on tablets around the year 2000 B.C. They saw these seizures as a punishment for sinners. As far as we know, the Babylonians were the first to link spiritually, and God, or gods, and even evil spirits to seizures.

Hippocrates, in the 5th century B.C. used the word “selenazetai” referring to people who had seizures, as it was believed then that a moon god named Selene caused the seizures based on the phases of the moon. The term was Latin and it came to mean lunatic or “moonstruck” when translated into English. Hippocrates however, was the first to recognize it as a brain disorder and not a punishment from God. He called it the “great disease” and thus the term “big bad”, or “grand mal seizure” came to be, though it is being used less and less in society today. A generalized tonic-clonic seizure is the proper terminology.

Epilepsy, and seizures being seen as a dysfunction of the brain and not a spiritual problem did not take root until the 18th and 19th centuries. Pope Pius IX (who was in office from 1846-1878) had Epilepsy. It is also believed that St. Theresa of Avila suffered from temporal lobe Epilepsy. Saint Valentine besides being the patron saint of lovers and beekeepers is also the patron saint of people with Epilepsy. –FAITH IN MY BRAIN | Kristin Wilson

Now, Kristin only writes once in a blue moon. I do most of the writing. Had I known she was going to lose interest I would have named the blog

Joking With Immortals.

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (1942)

Because this is a Catholic blog, I naturally write about Catholic topics. This consists of catechetics, theology, saints and church news. Being Catholic is the core of my identity. Writing is a lifelong passion that I believe that I have been given talent to do. So I naturally combine them together in what is more than hobby and not quite a job and is partly vocational.

The church is always changing and growing in the understanding of the deposit of faith handed on by Jesus to the apostles and then to all his successors. Each new generation of Catholics has to grapple with unchanging truth applied to their own time and place. Vatican 2 through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit took that guidance and helped craft documents that would help the modern church deal with the modern world.

While truth doesn’t change, times, situations, and circumstances do change. How we apply and live out the Catholic faith is not the same as it was 100, 1000 or even 2000 years ago. Our life is different and calls for a different approach and emphasis, while still practicing the same unchanging faith. The core of the faith never changes, only our understanding and application of it changes.

Catholic Thought Since Vatican 2 | Mark Wilson

Besides Catholic content I also write about history, movies, books, writing, fun and interesting and things that immortals engage in. Sometimes I might bring up politics or other current related topics. I share public domain literature because it is free to use and I want to share the treasures of writing of the past with my readers. I look at all topics with the eyes of faith because God made the world good and

Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. – Philippians 4:8 New International Version

I like to share those types of things in my writing. I want to give others something positive to think about, ponder, reflect, wonder, be amused, laugh and possibly change their hear and mind into loving God or neighbor more. I want to start a conversation with others and talk about life, love and other mysteries. I want to share the wonderful thoughts of other writers that are deep and profound.

The diversity of thought within Catholic teaching, like variety within the strictures of sonnets, is one of its most beautiful features. It is nevertheless important to listen, as much as we can, to a broad chorus of Catholic thinkers. I have found great consolation in the fact that someone holier and smarter than myself has likely asked my questions already; my job is to find them and to listen, and then to make as many people as possible read block quotations about it.
Sharon Kabel , OSB vs. UFO: Stanley Jaki and the Theology of Aliens (June 16, 2021)- OnePeterFive

I hope to continue writing it for several more years. I hope to expand my writing and get better at it. I would also like to attract more readers. Whether you are reading this for the first time or the 100th time, I want to invite you to sign up and receive new blog posts FREE and directly delivered into your email box. I especially encourage this to my personal friends and family who have known me for years.

ALSO please submit thoughts and comments about what you have read and help me start a conversation. I’ve had some good comments over the years on some posts. It’s a joy to writers to discuss the topics and the writings that we have crafted and created.

I’ve been writing the Catholic Bard for 5 years so far and will continue to write as long as am I am able to.

Thanks for reading and I look forward to starting a conversation with you all.

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