I spoke with a friend yesterday, and she got to telling me about this new book for Catholic singles, and how it's really affecting and powerful. Based solely on her recommendation, I'm going to get a copy, a) because I trust her that much, but b) because it sounds really intriguing, even though I haven't been single for 15 years.
Published by CatholicMatch.com, a Catholic online dating service, The Catholic Playbook: Lenten Reflections for Singles features 40 daily meditations for Lent written by the website’s members. In their stories, these singles reportedly examine the occasionally humorous frustrations and even rewards of unmarried life as refracted through the prism of this penitential season. Evidently, while it's often challenging and even sobering, each unique story ultimately has the same theme, which is hope.
I think the book's worth supporting because there is just this amazing dearth of great books for single Catholics. We want and need this book to be successful. Now, granted, there are some very good reasons that parish and dioceses almost exclusively focus their pastoral resources toward families and their formation.
That said, the United States has 27 million single Catholics. Isn't it about time someone got on the ball and got something for these folks to use? Huzzah, CatholicMatch.com, huzzah, indeed (FYI: Huzzah's like "Hip-hip-hooray").
Another thing, with declining marriage rates, it's not like the number of Catholic singles is going to shrink, you know? So the Church needs fresh, effective resources to minister to this important and growing demographic. Growing demographic. Huh. It's a tragically underserved group.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
A look at the Hermit Kingdom and the death of Kim Jong Il
Here is the first in the series of articles Catholic World Report is running on North Korea. CWR is an utterly fab magazine, and it's worth checking out their many great articles. But read the one on North Korea first. It's really interesting.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
O Lord, I worry so!
A lady who I consider dear and have known since we were both in 7th grade asked yesterday, “How do I stop worrying?”
It got me to thinking, and because all the world, of course, is just pining, practically dying to know the thoughts of lil’ ol’ moi, here’s what I came up with:
It got me to thinking, and because all the world, of course, is just pining, practically dying to know the thoughts of lil’ ol’ moi, here’s what I came up with:
The amount of we worry is directly commensurate/proportionate (however you want to put it) to our adherence to God’s will.
That is the more we adhere our minds to the idea that anything that happens to us is either part of His active will—i.e., He means for us to experience this—or His passive will—i.e, He doesn’t necessarily want us to happen to us but will allow it for some greater good—and that “He has us in His loving hands regardless, so take heart,” then the less we will worry.
Another way of putting it is this: The more we think the prayer says, “Thy kingdom come and my will be done,” the more we want control, to be in charge, to not “let go and let God,” the more we will worry.
Getting to a point where we don’t worry doesn’t happen without prayer, but it does happen, and it can make a world of difference.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
That stupid tree!
On Facebook the other day, I posted this picture ...
An old high school chum commented on it, essentially asking:
"Why did God place the tree right there? If He's God, He should have known what they would do, so why not place it on some other continent?"
It's a good question, and one I imagine others asking. Here's my argument in response. If you can add, challenge, or detract from it, please, by all means. I'm eager to learn what people think.
Well, if you know God's reason for creating the earth and all that's in it, especially us, it's pretty simple. What do we give God? When you were married, you gave her certain things she didn't have and vice versa. I know that's the case with Karyn and me, and I'm sure with the Jacobys and the Malamocos, as well. But what do we give to God He didn't already have? Nothing.
So why did He create us? Out of love. To share in His happiness, His joy, peace, and love for ever, especially the love, out of which all the other things are born. Think of any time you were in love, especially at first. Wasn't it just so joyful? I know it was for me. I was walking on clouds.
But by its very definition, love requires sacrifice. For love of her baby, a woman will not only undergo tremendous pain in labor to deliver it, but during the pregnancy, if she's sick, she might even refuse necessary medical treatment if it would either harm or mean losing the child. Your mom, did she love changing your diapers or telling you or one of your siblings the same thing over and over again? No, but she did it because she loved you and wanted what was best for you. Your dad, did he love his job? Maybe, but most dads don't. Why did he do it? So he could provide for your mom and you three kids because that's what was best for you. Someone rushes into a burning building to save another human, whether they're related to them or not. That's love. A priest runs about a live battlefield to comfort and give Viaticum to the dying.
The common thread connecting these examples is that there's no self-interest there. None of this is about "ME." It's about the other. Because what is love? It's not a feeling (although it can involve feelings, like a cake can involve frosting or filling). It's actively willing the good, the true good, for the object of that love.
But if I put a six-shooter to your head and ask, "Do you love me?" and you out of fear don't answer, because the answer's no. And then I lock the firing hammer and ask you again, and this time you say, "Yes," because you know if you say, "No," you'll die, do you really love me, just because you said it?
When I ask you if you love me, if I'm sincerely wanting your love, then I want your answer to be sincere. Therefore, I'm going to give you the freedom to choose the answer that you know is true.
Now Genesis doesn't state these things explicitly, but Adam and Eve lived in God's love. This is why they had been created: to receive His love and to love Him in return. So if God had given them no conditions, no sacrifices to make, how could they have known whether they did or didn't love God? How could they have made the choice to say, "I'm not going to do XYZ because I love God."
It's like a spouse who says, "This person of the opposite sex in front of me is ready, willing, and able. Part of me is, too, but I love my beloved so much, I won't do that. I won't eat of that forbidden fruit."
The tree being both right there and verboten, John, wasn't about the tree. It was about the people who had access to it. And really, it was less of a tree and more of a floating question: Do you love Me, especially enough to not do this one thing -- this one little, measely thing I ask you not to do? Look at this place, Adam and Eve. It has everything you could possibly ever really need or want. It's yours for the taking. Just don't do that one thing, OK? So do you love Me enough to respect what I'm asking of you? Do you trust Me? Those two questions run throughout the Bible, especially the trust one. And it's why people in Scripture (and we) often fell (fall) into sin: Lack of trust in the promises of God.
That's getting a little off topic. In any event, it's the same question God asks us today. Do you love Me? What does Jesus Christ say are the two greatest commandments? "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” This sums up all the 10 Commandments. Concerning the second, do you will the good for yourself, or do you purposefully do things that will destroy or even kill you? Most people would say they will the good for themselves. Great, Jesus is saying, do that to others, too. But first love God above anything else, no matter what the cost, because look at what it cost our first parents.
That's why the tree was there: To help them trust in God's promises and to help know what love was all about. And they blew it. And if you look at the punishments each received, they're directly related to teaching us to love, each according to the distinctiveness of the two sexes.
So sorry for the very long reply, but that's the answer to your first two responses. And the reason is that this response is so long is that I respect your intelligence enough -- trust me, I know how formidable it is -- to not give you a sustained and thorough argument.
An old high school chum commented on it, essentially asking:
"Why did God place the tree right there? If He's God, He should have known what they would do, so why not place it on some other continent?"
It's a good question, and one I imagine others asking. Here's my argument in response. If you can add, challenge, or detract from it, please, by all means. I'm eager to learn what people think.
Well, if you know God's reason for creating the earth and all that's in it, especially us, it's pretty simple. What do we give God? When you were married, you gave her certain things she didn't have and vice versa. I know that's the case with Karyn and me, and I'm sure with the Jacobys and the Malamocos, as well. But what do we give to God He didn't already have? Nothing.
So why did He create us? Out of love. To share in His happiness, His joy, peace, and love for ever, especially the love, out of which all the other things are born. Think of any time you were in love, especially at first. Wasn't it just so joyful? I know it was for me. I was walking on clouds.
But by its very definition, love requires sacrifice. For love of her baby, a woman will not only undergo tremendous pain in labor to deliver it, but during the pregnancy, if she's sick, she might even refuse necessary medical treatment if it would either harm or mean losing the child. Your mom, did she love changing your diapers or telling you or one of your siblings the same thing over and over again? No, but she did it because she loved you and wanted what was best for you. Your dad, did he love his job? Maybe, but most dads don't. Why did he do it? So he could provide for your mom and you three kids because that's what was best for you. Someone rushes into a burning building to save another human, whether they're related to them or not. That's love. A priest runs about a live battlefield to comfort and give Viaticum to the dying.
The common thread connecting these examples is that there's no self-interest there. None of this is about "ME." It's about the other. Because what is love? It's not a feeling (although it can involve feelings, like a cake can involve frosting or filling). It's actively willing the good, the true good, for the object of that love.
But if I put a six-shooter to your head and ask, "Do you love me?" and you out of fear don't answer, because the answer's no. And then I lock the firing hammer and ask you again, and this time you say, "Yes," because you know if you say, "No," you'll die, do you really love me, just because you said it?
When I ask you if you love me, if I'm sincerely wanting your love, then I want your answer to be sincere. Therefore, I'm going to give you the freedom to choose the answer that you know is true.
Now Genesis doesn't state these things explicitly, but Adam and Eve lived in God's love. This is why they had been created: to receive His love and to love Him in return. So if God had given them no conditions, no sacrifices to make, how could they have known whether they did or didn't love God? How could they have made the choice to say, "I'm not going to do XYZ because I love God."
It's like a spouse who says, "This person of the opposite sex in front of me is ready, willing, and able. Part of me is, too, but I love my beloved so much, I won't do that. I won't eat of that forbidden fruit."
The tree being both right there and verboten, John, wasn't about the tree. It was about the people who had access to it. And really, it was less of a tree and more of a floating question: Do you love Me, especially enough to not do this one thing -- this one little, measely thing I ask you not to do? Look at this place, Adam and Eve. It has everything you could possibly ever really need or want. It's yours for the taking. Just don't do that one thing, OK? So do you love Me enough to respect what I'm asking of you? Do you trust Me? Those two questions run throughout the Bible, especially the trust one. And it's why people in Scripture (and we) often fell (fall) into sin: Lack of trust in the promises of God.
That's getting a little off topic. In any event, it's the same question God asks us today. Do you love Me? What does Jesus Christ say are the two greatest commandments? "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.” This sums up all the 10 Commandments. Concerning the second, do you will the good for yourself, or do you purposefully do things that will destroy or even kill you? Most people would say they will the good for themselves. Great, Jesus is saying, do that to others, too. But first love God above anything else, no matter what the cost, because look at what it cost our first parents.
That's why the tree was there: To help them trust in God's promises and to help know what love was all about. And they blew it. And if you look at the punishments each received, they're directly related to teaching us to love, each according to the distinctiveness of the two sexes.
So sorry for the very long reply, but that's the answer to your first two responses. And the reason is that this response is so long is that I respect your intelligence enough -- trust me, I know how formidable it is -- to not give you a sustained and thorough argument.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
A post-St. Valentine's Day thought for all my very few readers
As a post-St. Valentine's Day thought, I read this passage this morning from Chesterton's novel, Manalive. I just loved it and wanted to share with you:
"Imprudent marriages! roared Michael. "And pray where in earth or heaven are there any prudent marriages? Might as well talk about prudent suicides.... You never know a husband until you marry him. Unhappy! Of course you'll be unhappy! Who the devil are you that you shouldn't be unhappy like the mother that bore you? Disappointed? Of course we'll be disappointed! I, for one, don't expect till I die to be so good a man as I am at this minute, for just now I'm 50,000' high, a tower with all the trumpets shouting."
"You see all this," said Rosamund, with a grand sincerity in her solid face, "and do you really want to marry me?"
"My darling, what else is there to do?" reasoned the Irishman. "What other occupation is there for an active man on this earth, except to marry you? What's the alternative to marriage, barring sleep? It's not liberty, Rosamund. Unless you marry God, as our nuns do in Ireland, you must marry Man; that is Me. The only third thing is to marry yourself--to live with yourself--yourself, yourself, yourself--the only companion that is never satisfied--and never satisfactory."
"Michael," said Miss Hunt, in a very soft voice, "if you won't talk so much, I'll marry you."
Friday, February 10, 2012
Good news, only sorta bad news
Thank you to this Baptist pastor for doing the right thing and pledging to go to jail rather than comply with an illicit law. The contention that law is no law if it is immoral or goes against God's laws is a long standing one, as we see from St. Augustine (“an unjust law is no law at all”) and St. Thomas Aquinas (“Human law is law only by virtue of its accordance with right reason; and thus it is manifest [i.e., evident, obvious, clear to anyone who can see] that it flows from the eternal law. And in so far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust law; in such case it is no law at all, but rather a species of violence.").
However, I only wish the first person to have said it would have been one of the bishops, archbishops, or, better yet, a cardinal. Still, it's been said. And in a way, the heartening thing is that it wasn't said by a Catholic. Rather, it was said by someone outside our fold. That shows this argument is getting legs. Maybe that's what helped seal the deal for the Obama Administration.
That said, am on deadline so don't have to read about the putative compromise that was announced this morning. However, CBS news reported it's based on the policy in effect at DePaul University in Chicago. Hearing that, I groaned. Have you ever been there? Have you ever heard or read what some of their philosophy and theology professors say? Judging by what I've read, I can confidently say several are heretics (or at least what they say about a subject is often totally in opposition to what the Magisterium teaches and what the Catechism says). These teach modernism, which Pope St. Pius X says, what's the quote? "The synthesis of all heresies"? "The mother of all heresies"? One of the two. Anyway, you get the picture. This means that people sending their children there are paying big bucks to have their children taught and likely infected with beliefs that are not designed to help them grow in holiness. They're the very modernist teachings that caused the implosion in teh Catholic Church since 1965.
Furthermore, quotes I've read from their administrators and about what they've allowed at a supposedly a Catholic university don't make me confident that they crafted a compromise with the state of Illinois that held the line on authentic, traditional Church teaching. Again, I haven't read the terms, so I don't know. I hope I'm pleasantly proven wrong. Nothing would make me happier.
Please, please, please Lord, do not let the bishops cave on this. Please. I think these secularists/atheists have shown their true colors too many times. Don't let them be like the frog or fox in the story where the snake asks for a ride on his back across a river he couldn't otherwise traverse. No way, says the fox/frog, you'll bite me, and I'll die. Nooooooo, says the snake, I promise. How do I know I can believe you? I don't think I can, he replies. The snake soothingly reassures him he has nothing to fear. Eventually, the fox/frog agrees and just as they've crossed over and are emerging from the water, the snake bites him. As fox/frog lays their dying, he asks the snake, Why did you do that? I thought you promised. I can't help it, says the snake. It's in my nature, and he left his helper there to breath his last.
So it is with these people. Give them an inch, and they will ultimately find a way to take a mile. We can't let them. By God's grace and our work, we won't.
However, I only wish the first person to have said it would have been one of the bishops, archbishops, or, better yet, a cardinal. Still, it's been said. And in a way, the heartening thing is that it wasn't said by a Catholic. Rather, it was said by someone outside our fold. That shows this argument is getting legs. Maybe that's what helped seal the deal for the Obama Administration.
That said, am on deadline so don't have to read about the putative compromise that was announced this morning. However, CBS news reported it's based on the policy in effect at DePaul University in Chicago. Hearing that, I groaned. Have you ever been there? Have you ever heard or read what some of their philosophy and theology professors say? Judging by what I've read, I can confidently say several are heretics (or at least what they say about a subject is often totally in opposition to what the Magisterium teaches and what the Catechism says). These teach modernism, which Pope St. Pius X says, what's the quote? "The synthesis of all heresies"? "The mother of all heresies"? One of the two. Anyway, you get the picture. This means that people sending their children there are paying big bucks to have their children taught and likely infected with beliefs that are not designed to help them grow in holiness. They're the very modernist teachings that caused the implosion in teh Catholic Church since 1965.
Furthermore, quotes I've read from their administrators and about what they've allowed at a supposedly a Catholic university don't make me confident that they crafted a compromise with the state of Illinois that held the line on authentic, traditional Church teaching. Again, I haven't read the terms, so I don't know. I hope I'm pleasantly proven wrong. Nothing would make me happier.
Please, please, please Lord, do not let the bishops cave on this. Please. I think these secularists/atheists have shown their true colors too many times. Don't let them be like the frog or fox in the story where the snake asks for a ride on his back across a river he couldn't otherwise traverse. No way, says the fox/frog, you'll bite me, and I'll die. Nooooooo, says the snake, I promise. How do I know I can believe you? I don't think I can, he replies. The snake soothingly reassures him he has nothing to fear. Eventually, the fox/frog agrees and just as they've crossed over and are emerging from the water, the snake bites him. As fox/frog lays their dying, he asks the snake, Why did you do that? I thought you promised. I can't help it, says the snake. It's in my nature, and he left his helper there to breath his last.
So it is with these people. Give them an inch, and they will ultimately find a way to take a mile. We can't let them. By God's grace and our work, we won't.
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