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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The Lampstand Foundation E-Letter:

Teaching in Conversion

Converting criminals from a criminal/carceral world view to a Catholic communal one is essentially an act of teaching, and this excerpt from an article I’m reading is appropriate.

Here it is:

“Now, the act of teaching is properly unveiled out of this original belonging together of the teacher and the object in what Ulrich calls the “we-space” (Wir-Raum) of personal freedom (“I-Thou-We”), in which the concrete Thou, as the other that faces me, now explicitly steps forth as student. At this point, Ulrich both accompanies Thomas and goes beyond him at the same time: The student is not only presupposed as a natural being with a specific capacity for knowledge, who—in analogy to health—presents himself as one “to be treated” in an external sense; instead, the true teacher not only presupposes the nature of the student and his or her native intellectual capacities, but also presupposes the student as concrete, historical, unique, and personal freedom—in other words, the genuine teacher presupposes the student as a Thou, and for that very reason as personal self-relation (in the sense that he or she is an “I who am given to myself”). This opening up toward the Thou at the same time enables the teacher not only to direct the student in a merely “external” sense, so that the student can at the same time go on to find his way into the movement of knowing on his own, in an “interior,” which is to say, “natural,” sense. Instead, according to Ulrich, the good teacher is also the one who affirms the student not simply “in accordance with his nature,” but also as a whole person. And the teacher does this by communicating himself along with the content that he is teaching, but in such a way that, on the one hand, the teacher disappears behind the matter he is presenting. In other words, he becomes transparent in his self-expression so that the matter itself is able to shine forth of its own accord. And, on the other hand, he also communicates himself to the student in such a way that, in the act of teaching, he directs himself in what he teaches entirely to the particular student. Indeed, he does so in such a way that he not only allows the matter itself to shine forth in itself, but he also transforms the thing that he knows, the matter that he explains, into a gift that is communicated to the student. The true teacher gives this gift to the recipient in a manner that enables and empowers the student at the same time to enter into his own ability-to-understand. In other words, the teacher, as one who freely gives, does not only give some thing, but through his engagement he at the same time gives himself, and he thus, in his giving, reinforces and brings to perfection the act of receiving. The teacher, as Ulrich understands him, does not simply remain an external, and thus in scholastic terms an “artificial,” support of the student’s own capacity to learn on his own, but he enters so fully into the place of the other, into his “interior” space, that he is able to awaken this other into his own ability-to-understand.” (pp.17-18)

Stefan Oster. (2019). Freely to Give: Ferdinand Ulrich as Teacher and Spiritual Father. Communio: International Catholic Review. (pp.11-26) Volume XLVI, Number 1, Spring 2019.

A marvelous excerpt from a great journal!

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David H. Lukenbill, President, The Lampstand Foundation

Post Office Box 254794   Sacramento, CA 95865-4794

Website: https://davidhlukenbill.wordpress.com/

Blog: www.cathliceye.wordpress.com

E-Mail: Dlukenbill@msn.com

With Peter to Christ through Mary