Questions/topics that keep me up at night wondering

Recently at of of our young adult meetings the person in Charge of Adult formation asked what topics would be useful to have speakers come in and give discussions on. I have been thinking about this the last couple weeks and I have assembled a list of the topics that keep me up nights wondering. Many of these things are what I would think of as the practical paradoxes of our Faith. I hope one day I can meet a person who I can pray with and who can help me discern through these types of issues and other issues that emerge as time goes on. 

1.    1.  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin – Why the last few Popes have praised his work, but the Church has issued a formal monitum.  Is there a path for rehabilitation and what is it?

1. 2   Hildegard von Bingen – A new Doctor of the Church. 
   3.       A big picture view of how Theological Research is conducted today vs. How it was conducted in the past.  How do you train the next generation of Theologians. 
   4.       Taking the novel work of one Theologian and drawing guidance from the Holy Spirit on learning to separate the wheat from the chafe.
   5.       Immigration
   6.      Universal Health Care and the Lack of Catholic Suggestions for a path forward.
   7.      Synthetic Biology, Transhumanism, Conscious Evolution and the Omega Point 
   8.      Global Security, Nuclear Weapons and Nonproliferation, a post Cold War world, policies of the players worldwide, and the path forward. 
   9.      The  Neocatechumenal Way – What is it?  Where is it going?
   10.  Lessons learned from the Legion of Christ situation. 
   11.  Sleep Paralysis and other Psychological Disorder Related to Spirituality
   12.  Prudence:  Catholic Politicians and guidance on the role of compromise in a heterogeneous society
   13.  The Leadership Conference of Women Religious – The perspective from the Bishops.  How did we get to where we are and where are we going. 
   14.  Misguided spiritual practices of the Saints deemed best avoided going forward. 
   15.  The philosophies of Anthony De Mellow and Richard Rohr.  Why the Church tolerates these types of ideas?
   16.  Embryo Adoption and Artificial Wombs.  The problems created by IVF, dealing with them, and relevant emerging technologies that will present moral problems of their own. 
   17.  Extroversion and Conscientiousness – Personality traits for success and the widening wage gap.  How does an individual’s personality affect social justice issues?
   18.  The evolving role of women in the Church
   19.  Psychopathy – a moral singularity?  A Catholic perspective on salvation for those born without the benefit of a conscience. 
   20.  What new light does behavioral genetics and personality research shed on the Catholic understanding of human nature.
   21.  How do we learn to be strong in the face of the temptation of corruption, lies and thievery?
   22.  What insights do breakthroughs in information theory, complexity theory, computer science and mathematics shed on the nature of God and the universe? 
   23.  A unified Faith, developing personal Harmony between Social Justice, and Dogma. 
   24.  How does the random measurement matrix in compressed sensing relate to the nature of God and the world.  How can so much information be extracted from madness? 
   25.  Cognitive Biases and Faith.'
2. 26  - Induced Pluripotent Stem cells.

The other day my boss was talking to me after I returned from a Catholic conference that occurred over the weekend.  He asked me what we did at these conferences.  He wanted to know if we discussed the emerging issues facing the Catholic Church.  Unfortunately I had to tell him no.  Generally all we talk about is things that are mostly very well understood.  At least for on the order of decades.  This was disappointing in a way for me since when we go to engineering and science conferences we do discuss recently emerging issues.  Unfortunately my opinion is that it is very rare to find a person who is secure enough in their Faith that they can question it, probe it, and be playful with it, while at the same time rigorously maintaining the constraints that are imposed by it.  I think we could learn a lesson from theoretical physicists because they are very comfortable doing a similar thing with the nature world.  Why so few people can do it with the supernatural world is a bit of a disappointment to me.  I am not sure I have ever met a person capable of doing this outside my Aunt who is a nun.  My Mom to a lesser extent can in a way do something similar but she does it in a more emotional way as opposed to an intellectual way.  I want to point out too, it is clearly very easy to think up very "progressive" ideas that clearly contradict the teachings of the Church.  There is no great feat of the intellect or morals here.  That is about on par with a person coming up with a perpetual motion machine.  There is no rigour, just wishful thinking.