This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

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Lampstand E-Letter,

This is a really great book and adds to your existing social teaching library with updated and corrected texts.

A Reader in Catholic Social Teaching, published in 2017—edited and prefaced by Peter A Kwasniewski, Ph.D.—brings together all of the important documents from the Holy Fathers from 1864 to the present; which have been corrected by fixing typographic errors, bad citations, missing phrases, and shoddy translations.

Here is an excerpt from the Preface:

“This collection of major documentary sources for the social doctrine of the Catholic Church has been in the works for many years. Its remote origins go back to the academic year 1993-1994, when I had the opportunity to participate in extracurricular seminars at Thomas Aquinas College on many of the documents included here, which gave me a first unforgettable experience of the grandeur, critical force, coherence, and fertile adaptability of Catholic social teaching (CST). The collection has evolved over many years of teaching, culminating in a set of readings used for a senior theology course at Wyoming Catholic College, “Life in Christ,” which begins with fundamental moral theology, moves into marriage and family as natural and supernatural reality of the moral order, and then devotes the lion’s share to political and economic matters. Experience has shown that this complex approach significantly enriches the conversation about social ethics and the reign of Christ in the world. To be most complete, one would need to included discussion of the priesthood and consecrated life, but as any collection must have its limits, this book does not contain any ex professo treatment of these.

“If one wishes to become more than superficially acquainted with CST, there is simply no substitute for reading the original documents of the popes, who from Leo XIII onwards are the real masters in this area of moral theology. Their ideas, terminology, critiques, and counsels have left a permanent mark not only on Catholic thinking, as is to be expected, but perhaps more surprising on a wide variety of secular schools of thought and political institutions. There is always a need—especially now in the third millennium, when such deep shadows loom across the modern world—to return ad fonts, to drink from these pure papal streams, and not to allow mountains of secondary literature, most of it superficial or agenda-driven or both, to stand between us and the wisdom of the Church’s magisterium.” (p. i)

As I wrote in my first book, The Criminal’s Search for God: Criminal Transformation, Catholic Social Teaching, Deep Knowledge Leadership, and Communal Reentry:

“I began my study with the concept of social justice, which I had some familiarity with through my years of working in the nonprofit sector but I had never delved into the deeper discussion of its implications and historical development.

“I learned that social justice is one of the central concepts in Catholic social teaching and eventually found my way to the source documents, the papal encyclicals. The Catholic Church is a hierarchical structure, and when we have confusion or uncertainty about the interpretation of Christ’s teaching, we ultimately need to rely on the Magisterium, that body of teaching composed of the papal encyclicals, church tradition and scriptural study.

“The papal encyclicals are difficult but deeply rewarding reading. I developed a habit of studying only five pages at a time, after having downloaded the documents from the Vatican website to my computer as a Word document, so that I could make notes and highlight as I read.

“One of the tenets of the faith I grew up in was that Christ would return once everyone had been exposed to the Christian doctrine.

“I felt at the time and more so later in life, that surely Christ would be returning soon, as who hadn’t heard the Christian truth? The answer to that question shocked me—as I soon learned studying Catholicism— that many had not heard the Christian truth, including me, for the fullness of Christian truth is Catholic.

“I had been studying all of the religions of the world when right in front of me was the true and only church Christ founded.

“For me conversion was primarily an intellectual progression through the social teaching and by the time my wife and I entered the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults—the year-long process of study that precedes baptism—I was certain I had found what I had been seeking for so long.” (pp. 39-40)

A Reader in Catholic Social Teaching is an excellent addition to your library, but don’t forget the must-have foundation of your Catholic Social Teaching library; Christian Social Witness: The Catholic Tradition from Genesis to Centesimus Annus, the magnificent two-volume work by Rodger Charles, S. J.