The Lampstand FoundationCreating tools for grassroots organizations developed and managed by transformed criminals who serve the community from a deep knowledge leadership model. It takes a reformed criminal to reform criminals. |
|||
|
|
||
Organizational OverviewOur Mission: Transforming the repentant criminal, suffering from his distance from God, into a deep knowledge leader who can teach other criminals the path to redemption through the Catholic Church. Our Core BeliefsSuffering transformed builds souls. Just as the muscle tissue tearing that leads to greater physical growth resulting from body building, suffering is soul tearing which, through redemption, allows soul growth. 1) Deep knowledge leadership--college educated, transformed criminals, professionally trained to manage criminal transformative organizations-- will dramatically improve criminal transformation. 2) Catholic social thought forms the intellectual and spiritual foundation of criminal transformation. 3) Grassroots criminal transformation organizations need ongoing access to capacity building services. 4) Business and professional leadership, working to create community social capital through the transformation of criminals, will benefit from gaining knowledge about Catholic social thought. Our ProgramLampstand's direct teaching work is supplemented by grassroots leadership resources, monthly e-letter, quarterly newsletter, annual policy primer research report, periodic monographs, and books from Chulu Press (a Lampstand imprint) published every winter. We want to facilitate the development - from among the 30% of reentering criminals who do not return to prison - of reformed professional criminals whose personal transformation, education, and reconciliation or conversion to Catholicism has led them to want to help others, and inspire these potential leaders to seek graduate degrees, professional organizational training, learning in Catholic social teaching, and assume a leadership role in the community helping other criminals transform their lives. It is because of their culturally determinant influence and status within the carceral/criminal world, that the professional criminal who has transformed his life, is able to have authentic access to other penitential criminals, which is absolutely vital to attaining any substantial and sustainable success in criminal reformation. "Dom Chautard, a French Cisterian abbot, shows in the Soul of the Apostolate that the essence of every apostolic work undertaken for our Lord is the interior life of grace within the individual apostle's soul-a life that is fed by prayer and conformity to the will of God. The reason the apostle's interior life is "The soul of the apostolate," he explains, stems from the very nature of God, which is Goodness itself, and which overflows in His Will to communicate Himself to others." (Tan Books) * * * * * * * "Criminals & the Church "96) From the very beginning, criminals played a major role in the Church--the good thief Dismas being an early example--and another was the transformed criminal who became pope, St. Callistus (died 222). His experience-based decree selection caused a severe political break in the Church, but restored its heart of mercy and redemption, when he decreed forgiveness for major sinners after confession and penance, against the wishes of many early Christians." (David H. Lukenbill (2008) Carceral World, Communal City, p. 87) |
|||
|
"To those who are searching for a new and authentic theory and praxis of liberation, the Church offers not only her social doctrine and, in general, her teaching about the human person redeeemed in Christ, but also her concrete commitment and material assistance in the struggle against marginalization and suffering." (Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus) |
|||