Christmas in a Galaxy Not So Far Away


Earlier, one of our younger brothers asked me if I had an article to publish for the blog, because he noticed that I wrote several articles this week.  I told him that none of my current articles were Christmas material, to which the young brother asked me for permission to read my articles and determine for himself if any were good Christmas material.  Just a few minutes ago, he approached me and said, “You’re right, none of these articles is Christmas material.”

I was very touched by his interest in publishing a Christmas article written by me, given the fact that he is a much better writer than I am and a lot smarter, he can probably write a better article.

Suddenly, the thought hit me, “There is a dimension of Christmas that is rarely mentioned.”  During the Christmas season, we write beautiful cards and letters wishing our loved ones a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, whatever the custom in your family may be.  We inject adrenaline into the household with shopping, travel plans or preparations to welcome friends and loved ones for the holidays.

When we go to Church, be it Midnight Mass or on Christmas Day, we hear beautiful sermons about the birth of Jesus, God’s love for humanity and how Christmas sets the stage for the Cross.  Let’s not forget that Jesus was a child born with a price on his head.  The Holy Family did not travel to Egypt to visit the great pyramids.  The Egyptians and the Canaanites were not the best of neighbors.

Mary and Joseph pick up and go to Egypt out of love for their son.  They wanted to protect him from Herod’s insecurities, which would have concluded in murdering the child along with the rest of the innocents at the time.

The more that I thought about these points and the fact that the young brother was so interested in publishing one of my articles, rather than using a piece of his own exemplary writing, spoke to me about the undercurrent of Christmas.  It is the undercurrent of Christmas that truly counts.  That undercurrent is love.

Just as an undercurrent draws in everything that gets close, so too does the love that is born at Christmas.   Brother wanted to publish one of my articles, not because I’m the best writer in the world.  We all know that’s not true.  He wanted to publish one of my articles because of love.  He loves his superior and his brother.  He rejoices when others learn from his superior’s writings and when they praise what they read.

In a simple request, Brother taught me that the Christmas spirit is truly the Love of God breaking into human history and radiating through every century, every culture and every human being to this day.  Christmas is not simply a happy holiday, it’s a celebration of generous love.  We keep Christmas alive not only when we give gifts, welcome guests or visit others.  Those are just starters.  Once the gifts are unwrapped and the greetings are over, what’s there besides food?

There is the love of God that has broken into our lives and is here to stay.  God’s love is not a feeling, but a living being whom the Father calls “Son.”  The Son of God wants to show all men that they are loved, not just give them a warm Christmas hug and a gift.  He wants to gaze into the eyes of our neighbor, through our eyes and say, “There is something special about you that I believe must be shared with the rest of the world.”

This faith in the giftedness of the brother is the highest expression of love on this side of Heaven.  It makes the birth of Christ closer to home, not as a story of long long ago in another galaxy far far away, as they say in Star Wars.  No, the birth of Christ is God saying to man, “You are special and I will prove it, by sharing in your humanity and lifting you up to my divinity.”

Brother’s request for an article was a subtle message that told me, “You’re special to me.”  This is the true message that the eternal Word of God says to mankind on Christmas morning.

Br. Jay

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Published in: on December 21, 2016 at 12:23 PM  Comments (1)  

Is A Peaceful Christmas Possible This Year?


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Peace begins in the family

Normally, I prefer not to comment on the politics around me.  I’m not indifferent to right and wrong.  I’m indifferent to people who like to argue instead of engaging in a dialogue that arrives at some constructive conclusion.  I’m afraid that this Christmas is being marred by so much hatred that it would be irresponsible for any Franciscan not to say something and continue to refer to himself as a man of peace.

On the national front, we have hate speech, conspiracy theories and a great deal of anger concerning the results of the elections.  The fact is that no matter who won the election, there is no way that we would not be facing an uphill battle against sin and oppression of the voiceless, be they the preborn person or the immigrant and many others.  We do not achieve peace by exacerbating conflict, by throwing fuel into the fire.

We achieve peace first and foremost through prayer.  A man or woman who prays cultivates interior silence.  He who cultivates interior silence opens an interior space where he can hear his brothers and sisters.  The soul has many chambers.  There is also another chamber where we find true Wisdom.  In there, as well, one must be silent to hear the Word.  It is the living Word that gives us the peace that the world cannot give, but that we can share with the world.

This is discernment through contemplation.  It leads to answers that are appropriate for today’s concerns.  Without proper discernment and contemplation, we run the risk of providing our own answers to the problems of today.  So far, our answers have not taken us very far along the road to peace, interior and social peace.

There are Catholics who believe that they must provoke the Pope and the bishops until they bend or explode.  Whether the Pope and the bishops bend to a certain point of view or they lash out in anger and frustration, the fact remains that the Church does not win.  I’m not referring to the Mystical Body.  The Mystical Body is holy.  The Bride of Christ cannot be seduced to compromise with culture or to erupt in anger after being insulted and pushed around.

Those of us who make up the Body of Christ have not risen above our mortal nature.  Shouting insults at the pope and bishops, calling the pope a heretic and a Communist leaves greater scars in the minds and hearts of the faithful who read the blogosphere and listen to the podcasterium of our time.  Others who are not Catholic are looking at us and wondering, why in the world would they believe that we have the fullness of Truth, when we fail to give witness to charity, respect and humility.  Where is the prize to be won by such aggressive behavior?

There are many serious questions on the table that we pray the Holy Father will address, for the sake of clarity.  I believe that he is not a heretic and that it is not his intention to mislead the faithful and distort the faith.  We hope and pray that he shed some light on the questions on the table.

It is equally important that the faithful: lay, clergy and religious, not take it upon ourselves to speak out as if we were a newly instituted magisterium.  That’s giving in to the devil’s temptation to sow the seeds that divide rather than unite.

With terrorism surrounding us and taking innocent lives, is it necessary for Catholics and Americans to raise the level of anxiety with so much rhetoric that solves nothing and provokes every sin against virtue?

Published in: on December 16, 2016 at 2:46 AM  Leave a Comment  

“In God We Trust” Really?


I’ve been trying to keep up with news and thoughts by and about Catholics on Facebook.  However, I’m starting to feel somewhat disappointed.  It is naive to believe
St_Setonthat one is going to find much that is worthwhile on Facebook; but occasionally one runs into another person who thinks with clarity and shares his or her thoughts in such a way that encourages us to rise to higher moral ground and to a more intense life of virtue and prayer.

Having said this, I must confess that it has been a great disappointment to find the many priests and consecrated religious who post on Facebook talk about every social and civil ill, encourage people to rise in protest, at times denounce those who do evil, but something is obviously lacking from their posts.  God, Jesus, the Immaculate, prayer, the perfection of charity and atonement for one’s sins and those who don’t do penance.  These are never mentioned.

A good example of this gap in “Catholic” posts is found in discussions on discrimination and racism.  Since the US elections several Catholic bloggers have taken to the Internet to denounce racial discrimination and other forms of discrimination, be due to religion, sex, sexual orientation or gender-dysphoria.   They have denounced politicians, Church hierarchy, business men and women, and other members of society for behaviors that are often cruel and unnecessary, or at times for failing to speak up for the voiceless.

Another important area of life in which we find protesting, finger pointing and even name calling is in religion.  We have politicized religion to such an extent that we now speak of fellow believers using popular political jargon:  liberals and conservatives or novus ordo and traditionalists.

Here too, the language is very often offensive.  At times, it offends because it is vulgar and sometimes it offends because words are used to assassinate someone’s character.  They don’t simply describe an immoral behavior or a statement that contradicts absolute truth.  These are words that encourage hatred.

It is important for all of us to be aware of injustices, abuses and disregard for God and man.  When priests and consecrated religious brothers or sisters write only about the evils and don’t mention what the Scriptures, Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium have to say about these things, we fail our people.  People have a right to expect clergy and religious to refer to faith to enlighten human life.  We don’t become priests or religious to be social workers or activists.  Ordination and consecrated life are not essential to the work of an activist.  Conviction is what matters.

I encourage clergy and religious who post on Facebook and in blogs to remember that faith enlightens reason.  Reason enlightened by faith strengthens convictions.  Christ did not come into the world to lead men into a godless revolution.  His followers were to be guided by their faith.  Their faith shed light on the rightness and wrongness around them.  Then they denounced what was wrong and defended what was right.  But they always proclaimed the faith that enlightened them.  Many were martyred for doing so, but there were more converts than martyrs.

Let us look at the world, including the Church, through the eyes of faith.  Let faith help us see what is good and what is evil.  Let faith supply the courage to fight for good and against evil.  Most importantly, never forget to share the faith that drives us, lest others see us as simple social activists or worse.

We who are priests or consecrated men and women have committed our lives to living according to the faith.  The Church has charged us with the duty to proclaim the perfection of charity and the Kingdom of God.  The first step in serving God is to find Him.  The search for God is the search for truth.  We must begin by discerning what God has called each of us to do and how God wants us to go about it.  For priests and religious, the call is not a call to godless social work or godless political activism.

We must never give up and never surrender our awareness of God’s presence in human affairs.  Going into battle for purely human reasons or as some say, for the sake of justice alone, is not the Gospel.  Christ exemplifies true justice.  The exercise of evangelical justice leads man back to the Father.  Christian justice and renewal is built on faith and preached with courage.  There is nothing courageous in insulting another person or group of people.  There is no hope when God is not part of the discussion for justice.

Published in: on December 5, 2016 at 3:55 AM  Comments (2)  

SPARE ME THE LITURGICAL GEOMETRY LESSON


People have been trying to impress upon me and others too, that the “new” form of the mass is horizontal whereas the traditional Latin mass is vertical.  I’ve given this a great deal of thought.  From the perspective of language (not Latin, but words) the traditional Latin mass orients the person’s focus toward the transcendent.  There is no mistake about this.

But there is another mistake, which is to say that the current form of the mass fails to orient us toward the transcendent.

There are two ways to “touch” the transcendent.  One can reach up, or that which is transcendent can reach down to man.  Whether man reaches up or God reaches down, the vertical dimension of worship and Catholic spirituality has never been abrogated.  Rather, the action can be uplifting or incarnational.

I think that it would be fair to say that today’s form of the mass, if and when it’s celebrated as per the General Instructions for the Roman Missal (GIRM), has a very dynamic vertical dimension, because it places the focus on God breaking into human history:  the Incarnation.

Everything begins with man reaching out to God asking for forgiveness, during the penitential rite.  This rite is found in both extraordinary and ordinary forms of the Roman rite.  Next, we move to sacred Scripture.  In the ordinary form of the mass, the scriptures are proclaimed in the language of the people.  In the TLM, Latin is usual.  For those who understand Latin or have a missal with the translation, following the proclamation of the scriptures is not a hardship.

Here is where the weakness of both those who love the extraordinary form and those who love the ordinary form of the mass is most visible.  Unfortunately, catechesis in  the Latin Church has been very weak in the area of Sacred Scripture.  To say that many of the religious education books published in the United States could have just as well been produced by Disney Enterprises would not be much of an overstatement.  They fail to convey  the fact that God speaks and we must listen and then respond.

For many Catholics, traditionalists and other, the proclamation of the Sacred Scripture is like story time in elementary school.  Our priests and deacons add to the reduction of the proclamation, because they often fail to mention that what we are about to hear and what we have heard is God’s voice, not the lector’s or the clergyman’s.  Those people are conduits through which God wants to speak to His people.  The vertical quality of the Word of God is obscured by a lack of appreciation on the part of the congregation, poor delivery from those who read it, and very often sermons or homilies that sound more like motivational talks than Divine messages from God to man.

Those who see and hear the voice of God in the proclamation of the Scriptures are definitely praying, because prayer is simply lifting one’s mind and heart to God.  We don’t have to do more.  God does the rest.  During the proclamation of the Scriptures and the homily God calls out to man, as he called out to Adam in the garden, to Abraham, Samuel, and Moses, and to the apostles.  He communicates His love for man and repeats His promise to be save us.

But God also communicates the conditions necessary for salvation.  He reveals to man the moral law that we must observe to be saved.  He offers the means to reconcile, if we violate that law.  He also reveals the consequences for those who violate the moral law and do not repent.

It is during this message that says, “I AM your God and you are my people,” that the soul is intimately tuned in to the voice of God.  But the soul must have a springboard to make the leap from here, into the Word of God.   The springboard for the soul is not an object, but awareness.  We must be aware that it is God who is speaking and that we are commanded to listen carefully.  This is not story time, history class, catechism class or motivational speech to improve your fortune and acquire a younger and better looking wife.  This is the literal voice of God that becomes Incarnate in the Word.  This Word will be offered to the Father in an unbloody sacrifice under the appearance of bread and wine.  Then again, God responds by offering us the Word as spiritual nourishment in Holy Communion.

The horizontal dimension of faith plays an important part in the ordinary form of the mass.  We come to God as a people to fulfill the two Commandments that God gives us, “Love God above all things and love your neighbor as yourself.”   To understand that we relate to each other, not by how we interact at mass, but because of who we ARE, the People of God, and to convert our manners so that everything we do and say reflects God rather than us, adds the horizontal dimension necessary to complete the cross.  This is called ecclesial consciousness.

The ordinary form of the mass provides us with the means to touch and be touched by the Transcendent who speaks directly to us through the Scriptures.  The Word that is proclaimed in the Scripture points our attention to the sacrifice on the altar, which is the life of the Word Himself laid down for our Redemption.  But the Word does not remain in the grave.  It rises and reveals himself to us, glorious and triumphant at every elevation of the sacred host.  He invites us to eat and drink His body and blood under the appearance of bread and wine.  Such great wonder and mystery becomes visible to those who are familiar with the Sacred Scripture, who have an ecclesial consciousness and who attend mass  to present themselves to God, not to fulfill an obligation or to experience the warmth and friendliness of parish life.  Parish life that nurtures the soul is that life which begins with the acknowledgement that the Word has become flesh and is speaking to us.  This is not a replay or a reading of some historical event.  This is reality, more real than the pains of a woman in labor.

 

Br. Jay

Published in: on October 25, 2016 at 10:26 PM  Leave a Comment  

Prophets and Prophecies


St. Francis of Assisi died on the evening of October 3, 1226; that is, 790 years ago.  Nonetheless, he remains very much alive in the Church and the world today.

This little man from a small town in the Umbrian region of Italy achieved what Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Mark Anthony, Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Bonaparte, and George Washington never achieved.  On the day of his death, he left behind a family of men and women, today known as Franciscans.  On that memorable evening of October 3rd 1226, there were more than 5,000 friars, 200 cloistered nuns, and more than 1,000 secular men and women who formed the family of St. Francis or the Franciscan Family.

WP_20140825_081Today, we are about one million around the world.  No one really knows how many groups of Franciscans there are in the world.  The family grew so much that it was impossible to keep it under one superior general and to govern everyone with the same expectations.  Diversity in cultures, languages, political conditions and even geography made it necessary to breakdown into smaller communities that could be more easily governed and who were more cohesive.

This does not mean that the mind and rule of St. Francis were abandoned in order to accommodate to time and place.  It means that the mind, rule and heart of Francis emulated the mind, commandments and heart of Jesus, making room for men and women from every part of the world.  So, his little family of 11 Italian brothers from Umbria grew into an international family that has survived 800 years of changes,st maximilian kolbepolitical persecutions, Church politics, poverty, wars, disease, misunderstanding, rejection, martyrdom, even heresy.

This should make us think about the Church.  Christ promised Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against him.  He promised to be with us until the end of time, through thick and thin.  Yet, many catastrophic minds believe that the Church is falling apart, the great tribulation is coming and the world is going to hell in a hand basket.

In every age God sends us prophets and prophecies foreshadowing his redemptive work for mankind. The Franciscan family has survived and prospered, despite many setbacks.  By the standards of some of these extremists’ minds, Franciscans contemplationshould have been wiped out during the Protestant Reformation, maybe the Reign of Terror, Nazism, Communism, or the Americanist Heresy.  The fact is that the Franciscan family is alive and growing.

Like every family, it grows old and tired in some places and dies out, only to sprout with vigorous new shoots in other cities and countries.  The gates of hell have never prevailed against the Franciscan family.

Maybe, October 4th, as we celebrate the Solemnity of Our Holy Father Saint Francis, we would do well to meditate on prophecy.  St. Francis and his WP_20140819_035descendants are not just another group in the Church.  We are a prophetic statement for believers and unbelievers alike.  We foreshadow the triumph of Christ the King over all the odds and a new springtime for the Church.

The Franciscans of Life wish all of our friends, a Blessed Feast of St. Francis.

caravaggio_st_francis_in_ecstasy

Published in: on October 1, 2016 at 3:18 PM  Comments (1)  

The Surpassing Invisible Beauty of Truth


When we observe works of art, in particular sacred art, we are necessarily brought out of ourselves into a new perspective.

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Yet we often hear the claim that modern art is disconnected from beauty and, by extension, is unable to communicate the beauty of holiness. Pope Benedict XVI explained this as follows:

“We are experiencing not just a crisis of sacred art, but a crisis of art in general of unprecedented proportions. It is a symptom of the crisis of man’s very existence. The immense growth in man’s mastery of the material world has left him blind to the question of life’s meaning that transcend the material world.”

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Modern man defies the transcendent

Unfortunately, many have ran with similar statements too quickly and too far, arriving to claim that modern art is “ugly” and that modern sacred art is nothing but “secular (profane) artworks embedded in sacred spaces”.

Consequences of iconoclastic mindset

The iconoclastic mindset

Others, connecting many more dots than what prudence dictates, have claimed that modern art is ugly because modern souls belong to a global society falling into apostasy. At the extreme end of the spectrum we find the histrionic-schismatic mindset of those who claim that “the ugly images found in Novus Ordo churches are the final offense of the devil, an outrage that sums up all lesser offenses because it represents his goal of obliterating the image of the holy ones in the Church”.

Sadly, the proponents of these and similar statements are indeed upholding a tradition, but not the tradition of Catholic sacred art. They are, in a sense, the modern version of the ones who raised up their scandalized voices to the work of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. Their claim? Michelangelo’s work was too modern.

Paul Barolsky, a  specialist in Italian Renaissance art, explains that contemporary critics of “the first modern artist” accused the Last Judgment of being disconnected from the norms of classical form and violating religious decorum.

Last_Judgment_Sistine_Chapel

However, “The images are not photographs…their whole point is to lead us beyond what can be apprehended at the merely material level to awaken new senses in us, and to teach us a new kind of seeing, which perceives the Invisible in the visible. The sacredness of the image consists precisely in the fact that it comes from an interior vision and thus leads us to such an interior vision. It must be a fruit of contemplation. Art is always a gift. Inspiration is not something one can choose for oneself. It has to be received. Before all things, it requires the gift of a new kind of seeing”.

Many modern art forms, even within sacred art, accomplish this wonderfully even though they may depart from more traditional artistic styles. They are not “modernist”, nor do they belong to that school that religious illustrator Matthew Alderman has called “the Other Modern”.

The Franciscans of Life are patronizing the work of a local artist whom we believe is a representative of the above, and we will feature his artwork for sale on a dedicated section of our website http://www.franciscansoflife.org The proceeds will go towards the education of our student brothers. This young artist specializes in concept illustration, book covers, and fictional fantasy. He has displayed remarkable talent in the production of sacred art using traditional and digital mediums.

Artwork in the community room at our mother house.

Artwork in the community room at our mother house.

St. John Paul II reminds us that modern artists are, just like artists of all ages, men passionately dedicated to the search for new “epiphanies” of beauty, admiring the work of their inspiration, sensing in it some echo of the mystery of creation. While acknowledging that in the modern era a new kind of humanism marked by the absence of and opposition to God has gradually asserted itself, the Church has not ceased to nurture great appreciation for the value of art, even beyond its typical religious expressions…for even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice to the universal desire for redemption.

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Pentecost

The pontiff reaffirms that just as the Church needs art to make perceptible and attractive the world of the invisible without emptying the message itself of its transcendent value and its aura of mystery, art also needs the Church for the great source of inspiration offered by the religious theme. This partnership has been a source of mutual spiritual enrichment and has led to a greater understanding of man, and to an opening of the human soul to the sense of the eternal.

Pope Francis, in his encyclical Laudato Si, reminds us that we must be able to look even beyond the traditional means of the craft:

Julian_Corpus_Christi

Corpus Christi

“Technoscience, when well directed, can also produce art and enable men…to leap into the world of beauty. Valuable works of art no make use of new technologies. So, in the beauty intended by the one who uses new technical instruments and in the contemplation of such beauty, a quantum leap occurs, resulting in a fulfillment which is uniquely human.”

It is therefore our hope that we will look at all expressions of modern art, and particularly at sacred art, with a renewed understanding of man’s quest for the beyond. There is much to be appreciated, as long as we are capable of casting aside prejudices and overly zealous attitudes.

Art indeed “goes beyond the search of the necessities of life…it expresses practical wisdom, uniting knowledge and skill, to give form to the truth of reality in a language accessible to sight, [and] sacred art is true and beautiful when it evokes and glorifies ….the surpassing invisible beauty of truth and love”.

These words come from a relatively recent book, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but reflect a wisdom that is timeless. We find it echoed by the same Michelangelo, who affirmed that “every beauty which is seen here by persons resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come”.

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St Joseph and Christ in the Workshop

 

Published in: on May 30, 2016 at 2:48 PM  Leave a Comment  

No Bikes Allowed In Heaven


I realize that it’s a little late to write Mother’s Day messages.  In my case, it may be a little late to write a eulogy for my mom who died 15 years ago.  Nonetheless, there is something that I would like to share with all of you who are parents and those who will be parents.

When a parent approaches the Lord for the final judgement, the most important question that he must face is whether or not he fulfilled his duty as a Christian and passed on the faith to his children.

Passing on the faith is more involved than sending kids to weekly CCD and putting them through the drills for First Confession, First Holy Communion and Confirmation.  The sacraments are not graduation ceremonies.  The sacraments are part of a journey.  This is where my mother comes into my spiritual picture.FLAMES

Whatever her faults, were many things that my mom did well.  But the one thing that she did with outstanding fidelity, love, courage and concern was to hand down the faith.  From the moment we were born we were incorporated into the faith community.  I say incorporated to mean that we didn’t just get dragged down to the church to be baptized or the temple to be blessed and “Goodbye”.  There was much more.  Faith was part of our domestic culture.

I remember that the first picture book that I ever read was the story of Moses.  From there, I read every other story in the bible.  Faith was part of our recreation, because bedtime reading was a ritual and a fun time for me.

Religious symbols were present in every room in our house.  I was taught to pay attention to them.  I remember my mother insisting that I bow my head each time I passed a crucifix that was in the entry foyer.  Bowing to the crucifix and altar in church were not new to me.

Morning, evening and night prayers were part of our family schedule.  We prayed before going to school.  When I was older, I prayed the Holy Rosary with my mom every day at 7PM.  I have no idea why it had to be at 7PM.  I can tell you this.  I have no idea what wasrosary on TV at 7PM.  That was time for evening prayer.  Then there were night prayers that were said at bedtime.  The very first prayer that I learned to say was the Lord’s Prayer.  Because I grew up in a bilingual home, my mother made sure that I could pray it in two languages.  After that, other prayers were added, including prayers at the table.

My mother taught us Judeo-Christian morality without proselytizing and without nagging.  I would come home and tell her about something I saw at school or on the street.  My mother would stop to listen.  If the action was good, she explained how I should imitate it, because it pleased God.  If the action was bad, she explained the importance of avoiding it, because it was a sin and sin could land you in hell.  My mom was not afraid of words like “sin” and “hell”.  Despite her use of those terms, I don’t suffer from PTSD.  If anything, I suffer from a guilty conscience when I mess up.

Not to drag this on too long, which I already have, when I was about 11 we had a fire that destroyed a good portion of our home.  It took several months to rebuild, paint and do whatever else they do when they rescue a house.  How would I know?  I was only 11.

I’ll never forget standing outside at 3:00 AM on a very cold March morning, in my PJs and a blanket, watching flames come out of one of the upstairs windows.  When the fire was finally out, I asked my mother, “What are we going to do?”  My mom was very quiet for a moment.  Then she said, “I have no idea.  Let’s not worry about that now.  Let’s find a warm place to sleep.  God always has a plan and he will tell us what to do when the time is right.”  This was a belief that she instilled in us from childhood.  “God has a plan.”  And “Only God knows.”  We were always assured that Providence was taking care of us.

Like any good Judeo-Christian, we worshipped every weekend and on holy days as well.  There was  no such thing as sleeping in and not going to Church until you were old enough to pay your own bills.

The best thing that I learned from my mother was love of God and love of neighbor.  I saw my mom take in kids whose parents could not care for them and they would live with us until the parents were ready to take them home.  One child lived with us about three months.  I saw my mother stop inside the church on her way home to visit the Blessed Sacrament.

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I was not asked if I wanted to come in.  I just naturally followed and knelt in front of the tabernacle.  There was no doubt that Christ lived in that little box.  There was no excuse for driving or walking by the church and not stopping to say hello to its sovereign resident.

Remembering these things, I believe that at the moment of her death, whatever faults my mother had were outshined by her perseveration when it came to handing down the faith to her children.  This is the first and most important vocation of parenting.

The roof over the head, the food on the table, the school tuition, and medical bills were all covered.  But as my mother once said, “Giving your kids the material things they need won’t get them to heaven.  No bikes allowed in heaven.  You have to give more.”

Published in: on May 10, 2016 at 2:35 PM  Comments (1)  

Three Peas in a Pod we’re not – Scott Eric Alt, Robert Spaemann and I – Maybe two


To better understand this comment, I would refer you to the excellent post by Scott Eric Alt on Interacting With the Spaemann Interview on Amoris Laetitia ,

three peasNow my two cents.

I’m having a problem with the Professor Spaemann’s answers and those of others of the same way of thinking.  It is not impossible for anyone to disagree with something in an Apostolic Exhortation.  This much is true.  They are written to offer some guidance, not to teach.  One can always disagree with the guidance that is offered.  Before I continue, allow me to say that we can and often do teach through the guidance that we offer.  Anyone who’s a parent knows exactly what I mean, but back to the professor.

I never trust these reports.  It is often the case that the gaps between what the subject said and the reporter wrote are as numerous as the craters on the moon.  For the sake of this discussion, let’s give the interviewer the benefit of the doubt and accept that he is reporting without too much editing.

It is my opinion that the Professor’s responses are not helpful on two fronts.

First:  They present a dark side of the exhortation, but the speaker fails to give you observable results from past experiences that prove the existence of such a dark side.  Philosophy works with and based on systems.  I could not find that system that the professor uses to arrive at his conclusions.  Therefore, I can only assume that the systems are not reported, which does not allow those of us who know some philosophy to question the methodology leading to his conclusions.  The other possibility is that he is not using systematic thinking, but it projecting his predictions based on subjectivity (gut feeling).

Second:  I caution people to be careful with those who claim to love the Church and to have been a consultant to this pope and a friend to that one.  This can be and probably is true.  Sometimes, these relationships can obscure one’s sense of duty.  Even though the Professor was an advisor to St. John Paul II and a friend to Benedict XVI, as a faithful Catholic philosopher, his first allegiance is to the Church, not the individual popes.  Therefore, I would expect him to use his skills and his intimate experience with these two giants to help his audience see the points of contact and continuity between AL and tradition.  In no way does this detract from his right to use his intellect to say, “This can be said more clearly,” or “This raises this question that we need to submit to someone in authority to respond.” 

In doing so, one is faithful to the Church, does not throw the current pope under the bus, is not sucked into the typical Church politics of “conservative vs liberals”, and helps people see the good in the exhortation while encouraging them to ask questions respectfully and with trust in the integrity of the person answering.

Published in: on April 30, 2016 at 1:01 PM  Leave a Comment  

BA Degree for Sale (Bachelor of Abortion)


not_disposableThere was a recent event at one of the major Catholic universities in the United States that hosted as the ‘only speaker’ the national director of Planned Parenthood.  Someone said that the invitation was made by a student organization with the organization’s money.  This is probably true.  Why would anyone lie about it?

The question is not who issues the invitation, the question is to whom and for what can student organizations in Catholic colleges and universities issue invitations?  The idea that those who run our Catholic colleges and universities have little or no authority to veto such decisions raises another question.  Who’s running our Catholic colleges and universities?

If a school, of any level, is run like a good business, it surely has a business plan, company policies that protect the interest of the business.  Of course, every good business man or woman knows that the best interest of the business is to produce the product that is offers.  In Ex Corde, Pope St. John Paul II, reminds us that

“It is the honor and responsibility of a Catholic University to consecraJOHNPAUL-BABYte itself without reserve to the cause of truth. This is its way of serving at one and the same time both the dignity of man and the
good of the Church.”

This begs the question, “What truth does Planned Parenthood bring to the halls of Catholic academia?”  The very notion that students should be exposed to the arguments for abortion and contraception, as they are exposed to the arguments for natural family planning and the right to be born is ludicrous in the extreme.

A child in school goes through fire drills several times a year; but never through the actual flames.  Why?  Because the idea is to teach the children safety before they are ever exposed to flames, not after.

How many of our college age students have never been exposed to the pro-abortion and pro-contraception ideology that they need to bring in a “prestigious” proselytizer against the right to be born?

lighthouses-lighthouse-looking-wide-open-sea-horizon-cloudThey would be better served by an influential evangelist who proclaims the Gospel of Life without compromise.  After all, don’t we send out young to Catholic colleges and universities to learn the truth or has parenting succumbed to the god of money?  Do parents send their youth to college to learn how to make money or to serve society and save their souls?

Published in: on April 29, 2016 at 5:56 PM  Leave a Comment  

70 x 7 = ?


During the last few months we have been bombarded with all kinds of news about people’s personal sins, much of which is none of our business.  We have also seen an increase of attacks on the Holy Father, mostly by Catholics, to our shame.  He is attacked becafingerpointinguse he was not clear on “this” or because he does not say “that”, which we believe, he should say.  Some people have gone as far as to declare that his soul is lost and needs to be saved by “us”.  We make all kinds of statements about the sins of others.  Rarely do we blog or post about our own sins.

Where am I going with this?  It’s very simple.  When we are baptized our parents and sponsors are asked to respond on our behalf, “Do you believe what the Catholic Church teaches?”  We renew this profession several times during the year during different liturgical celebrations

As I was growing up, one of the beliefs that I was taught was very Catholic was God’s forgiveness and mercy.  God forgives and once he absolves, he does not hold on to the memory of our sins.

“Do not be angry beyond measure, Lord; do not remember our sins forever,” (Is 64:9).  The prophet reminds us that God DOES NOT remember our sins forever.  In plain English, He doesn’t hold a grudge against sinners.

This begs the question, why can’t Catholics “Be perfect, therefore, as [our] heavenly Father is perfect,” (Matt 5:48).

How many times do we whine, complain and criticize another person for being a sinner, before we realize that it’s time to drop it and move on?  Maybe we need a clicker to help us remember the number of times that we must forgive those who trespass as we want to be forgiven when we trespass the Law of God.

“Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’  Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven.” (Matt 18: 21-22)

PopeFrancisConfession

Published in: on April 23, 2016 at 5:57 PM  Leave a Comment  
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