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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E Letter #153, Discerning the Church’s Truth for Ourselves

For most things we can accept the truth directly from the Church, but when the Church seems uncertain or presents doctrine from a secondary source perspective, dramatically incongruent with primary sources; then we are obliged as part of our baptism to seek out the truth for ourselves.

One I was compelled to take on was woman’s priesthood, which the Church has denied for centuries.

The primary source of Galatians appears to allow it for we “are all one in Christ Jesus.”

“3: [26] For you are all the children of God by faith, in Christ Jesus. [27] For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ. [28] There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. [29] And if you be Christ’s, then are you the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the promise.”

I wrote a book with this as the central issue, Women in the Church, St. Catherine of Siena, Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, & Criminal Reformation, in which I write in the Preface:

For this book, a quote from Groppe (2009) frames the over-arching theme:

“In a culture that systematically denigrates, commodifies, and violates women’s bodies in advertising, film, and pornography, it is imperative that the church bear public and symbolic witness to the mystery that women and men alike can serve as an icon of Wisdom made flesh.” (p. 171) Groppe, E. (2009).

Women and the persona of Christ: Ordination in the Roman Catholic Church. In Abraham, S. & Procario-Foley, E. (Eds.) Frontiers in Catholic feminist theology: Shoulder to shoulder. (pp. 153-171), Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Another was capital punishment, which the Church allowed for centuries but recently has moved to disallow.

Here the primary source is clear: “Genesis 9: [6] Whosoever shall shed man’s blood, his blood shall be shed: for man was made to the image of God.”

I also wrote a book about this, Capital Punishment & Catholic Social Teaching:

A Tradition of Support, where I write in the Prologue:

This book is a defense of the scriptural and traditional Catholic position of support for capital punishment—as expressed in the two universal catechisms, the Catechism of the Council of Trent, published by Pope Pius V in 1566, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published by Pope John Paul II in 1997 (Second Edition)—in response to calls for its abolition.

Based on tradition, calls for abolition are premature, though the call has generated a renewed focus on not only the magisterial history of this most ancient of teachings, but also its theological resonance within the expression of that teaching by the Fathers of the Church—ancient and modern—who most deeply reflected on it.

Capital punishment as a way of protecting the innocent, is one of the central issues in the social teaching of the Church, but the ambiguity about it—particularly in the United States—over the past several decades, after two millennia of certainty, places the credibility of the teaching itself at risk; and that negatively impacts the Church’s social teaching as an effective tool for criminal transformation, further risking the immortal souls of those who are lost and whose being found partially relies on the constancy of the teaching of the Catholic Church, on eternally walking the eternal talk. (pp. 9-10)

I love our Church and try to stay on the path I learned from studying the works of St. Josemaria Escriva: “With Peter to Christ through Mary.”

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David H. Lukenbill, President, The Lampstand Foundation