Check out my latest on CatholicDaily - YouTube Evangelists

Also, I am likely going to take a break. My son is two months old and it has proven difficult to get to my computer for anything other than work. I expect that will last another month or two.

I added the post Stopping a heritage of sexual sin to the Catholic Dads blog

Gents. I would like to get some input from other Catholic dads -- especially the dads of boys.

Many of us come from checkered backgrounds. There is a reason that there are many ministries to deal with sexual sin aimed at men. Satan attacks us very strongly in this manner and very little of what comes to us in the form of regular mass media assists us in any direction except TOWARDS sin. In my own life I was most affected by the air of relativism that was permeated throughout my public school education. By the grace of God, I came around, but not without injury that I wish I had avoided altogether. More ...

Yours truly has an article up at CatholicDaily.org

Getting more out of St. Blogs

The editor added a few links to the end of my article that I have found of great use. As a matter of fact I am strongly considering changing to Google reader because there are so many fantastic features available.

I have a test block on the right titled "..." (scroll WAY down) which are the most recent posts from my favorite blogs. It is ordered strangely right now because I just added all of my favorites to Google Reader via the OPML export from Bloglines. I MAY remove my Bloglines blogroll and replace it with that. That way it will be constantly changing but my favorite bloggers will remain there. Its a fresh blogroll.

Anyway, time has been limited recently. I will perform some more blog maintenance in the next few days including adding Catholic Dads in its rightful place of honor in the Connecting block.

So shoot me ... I found a new toy ... Google reader is in

If you are a Firefox user please, do yourself a favor ... install ALL of the following

Greasemonkey - you should already have this right?
Stylish

With Stylish you can clean up Weather Underground. Go to the page and right click on the stylish icon. Follow the directions. You'll be glad you did.

Google Reader Theme - Download and follow the instructions (requires Stylish)

If you use Gmail - Mailto Compose In GMail (requires Greasemonkey)

Some in this country would come unhinged at this voters guide -- issued by bishops, not Catholic Answers mind you

'Ten Commandments' for voters issued by Church

1. Promote and defend Life conception up to natural death. You shall not have false values that degrade the dignity of life and the welfare of the family, the basic unit of society.

2. You shall not compromise your pro-life and pro-family principles in your dialogue with and in selecting candidates. You shall not bow down to immoral, corrupt and inept candidates and vote them to office. Our life, our family and our country are too precious to be entrusted to such people.

3. You shall not take your vote in vain. You shall not sell it for a price or for money. You shall not vote without scrutinizing the candidate's track record both in public and private life.

4. You shall not vote for candidates that are in favor of legalizing absolute divorce and are themselves not faithful to their own marriage and family.

5. You shall not vote for candidates that are for legalization of euthanasia or mercy killing and are not caring for the older persons and the sick.

6. You shall not vote for candidates that are for legalization of abortion and any form of abortifacients. You shall not vote for candidates that advocate for reproductive rights and support contraceptive use and sterilization as a means for population control.

7. You shall not vote for candidates that promote sex education that is focused on contraceptive use and emphasize "safe sex' rather than moral values and developing virtues.

8. You shall not vote for candidates that advocate same-sex unions and the legalization of same-sex marriage in the guise of anti-discrimination.

9. You shall not vote candidates that sell our country's future to foreign and elite interest, concerned with their vested interest to the destruction of our environment and natural resources, and disregard the plight of the poor.

10. You shall not vote for candidates that are corrupt, steal from the government, that are insensitive to our people's demand and opinion; that are undemocratic, unjust and unpatriotic in their governance and programs. True development is the upliftment of the lives of the least of our brethren and the enjoyment of justice, freedom and peace.

A small experiment

Every once in a while B16 says something and there is a trickle of articles immediately following. They aren't negative, they are simply relaying what he said. Eventually this turns into a barrage of articles and editorials slamming him.

Since I saw this trickle last night, I wanted to mention it:

'Science too narrow to explain creation' - Pope

Pope Benedict, elaborating his views on evolution for the first time as Pontiff, says science has narrowed the way life's origins are understood and Christians should take a broader approach to the question.

The Pope also says the Darwinist theory of evolution is not completely provable because mutations over hundreds of thousands of years cannot be reproduced in a laboratory.

But Benedict, whose remarks were published today in Germany in the book Schoepfung und Evolution , praised scientific progress and did not endorse creationist or "intelligent design" views about life's origins.

Lets see if it turns into a media circus claiming that the Catholic Church is opposed to science. My guess? .... get ready for the Galileo parade "proving" the Church hates science ...

“A really cool church”

“It is plausible that the all-male priesthood has caused some Catholic women to convert to the Episcopal Church to be ordained”

Cool, hip, modern, "relevant" (at least their definition) or true?

As far as I can tell true is always the most relevant and as a Catholic true is as the Church has ALWAYS taught. I may be dense but I really have a hard time understanding how JP2 didn't put the nail in the coffin of the womens ordination debate when he clearly stated that the Church does not have the authority to do so and the teaching is binding on the faithful.

HE IS RISEN INDEED and WELCOME HOME!!! Approximately 150,000 people (estimate**) entered the Catholic Church this Easter in the United States. -- **I have seen estimates as high as 200,000

On that note .... Occasionally I hear this --

"I've never heard of anyone converting to Catholicism, only the other way around"

Well .... here are a few:

Bobby Jindal (Louisiana congressman, candidate for governor), Robert Novak (conservative columnist and television commentator), Senator Sam Brownback (candidate for President), Jeb Bush (former governor of Florida, brother of George W Bush), Dorothy Day (social activist), Thomas Merton (writer), Malcolm Muggeridge (British journalist, author, satirist, media personality), Ronald Knox (Oxford movement) Dave Brubeck (jazz musician), Sir Alec Guinness (actor most known for his Obi Wan Kenobi role in Star Wars), Clare Boothe Luce (editor, playwright, politician, journalist, and diplomat), John Howard Griffin (of "Black Like Me" fame), John Henry Newman (Anglican, founder of Oxford Movement), Edith Stein (philosopher, a Carmelite nun, martyr), G. K. Chesterton (writer), Elizabeth Ann Seton (), Gary Cooper (actor), Walker Percy (writer), Oscar Wilde (playwright, novelist, poet, and short story writer), John Wayne (actor), Evelyn Waugh (British writer), Graham Greene (English novelist, playwright, short story writer, travel writer and critic), Edith Sitwell (British poet and critic), Alex Jones (Pentacostal pastor converted and took many of his congregants with him into the Church), Scott Hahn (),
J. Budziszewski (Evangelical thinker, philosophy professor at UT-Austin), Norma McCorvey (Roe from Roe v Wade, current pro-life activist), Israel Zolli - (Chief Rabbi of Rome during the Second World War)

Now you have.

In reading about some of these, particularly the political ones, people seem to think that folks have nefarious reasons for converting.

Blosser has an excellent Notable Catholic Converts pages that includes most of these and many more.

FEMININE MISTAKE

This new book, The Feminine Mistake by Lesley Bennett takes a hard look at the price at-home moms make when they drop out of the working world. Most of the points she mentioned on her appearance on The Today Show were expected. She makes the claim that while men are raised to expect to have to take care of themselves, too many women still expect Prince Charming to come and take care of them. The reality of today's society is quite different.

???? I didn't meet too many women like this back in my college days. So I have a question. What about women who prepare their entire lives for a career and end up in a position where they CHOOSE to stay at home? If anything I think it can be argued that some SAHMs struggle early because being what they feel they should have been all along goes against everything they were taught these days about being a woman.

For the person who hit this blog looking for the question "Who is Ggoose" on Google: Could be me ... could be.

A recent opportunity has caused me to take stock of this blog and everything I write on it. I have noticed what my focus tends to be and collected some of what I consider my best work to be linked in this post.

Without much delay ...

Apologetics related -- or a defense of certain viewpoints of mine
Why do so many Catholics not know their faith?
The End of Halloween?
The end times: Theys a comin'
Charismatics and His Church: problems and praises
and of course
My Conversion Story -- or whats done of it.

Marriage, Family and Catholic Life
True love ... happily ever after
Taming your desires in order to achieve contentment
NFP, the place of sex in marriage and the role of sacrificing husbands
ABC and the division of sex from marriage
A crush: How it consumes us and why it is different from the love that makes a marriage work
On Being Single ... from a married guy
Depression, families and lack of community support

Design, Art, Music
The loss of art in the Church
Aggressive tones and some ramblings on the electronic scene
So What’s Wrong with Rock Music? (updated)
Why modern design generally doesn't work in the Catholic Church

Blogging
Seven Habits (of effective bloggers)

... and this one is just fun to look at
French Impressionists: Cathedrals

Fr. McBrien defends the institutional church

Do Episcopalians really find it insulting that a "conservative" Catholic might recommend to a "liberal" Catholic to become Episcopalian? After all isn't it "Catholic Light" as I heard so many times when I was swimming the other way across the Tiber?

I am not sure, as a Catholic convert from the Episcopal Church that I would find that opposite all that offensive.

Thinking back ....

Episcopalian taunter: "If you cannot abide by the flexibility of practice found in the Episcopal Church, then why not leave and become a Roman Catholic? You'll have doctrinal and moral teachings and regulations to satisfy even the hungriest of you."
Me: WOW great idea!!!

There just seems something telling about the idea that it is an insult in one direction and not the other. Anyone care to explain why?

---

NOTE, I would NEVER recommend leaving the Catholic Church for any reason so you will not hear these words coming out of my mouth no matter how I might privately feel someone should derive that conclusion from what they believe. Now if bishops ....

On Google:

An entry on this blog returns #5 on a search for "Catholic Church Easter Vigil" behind two WikiPedia entries, a Catholic.com page and two CatholicCulture.org pages ... that puts me in high profile company for a Catholic topic ...

The same entry is:
#10 for "Catholic Easter Vigil" and
#14 for "Easter Vigil"

Keep in mind my "influence" .... My blog is lightly visited (about 15 visits a day and MOSTLY from search engine hits) and I perform no work to get traffic through this blog. I have a handful of dedicated readers and the rest is drive by stops yet I still get traffic on focused topics. If you are looking to drive traffic through your website that sells stuff I recommend starting a blog with focused topics especially if you know what you are talking about. With blog searches and topic specific websites like CatholicBlogs.com you are going to get the right kind of traffic.

NEWS FLASH: Church teachings remain the same ... AGAIN

Shared communion ban with non-Catholics reaffirmed - Not gonna change folks ... Learn what it means to be "in communion" with the Church.
Pope tells lawmakers to vote with church - Something about non-negotiable items like abortion, gay marriage etc. Didn't some liberal Catholic groups get bent out of shape when Catholic Answers produced a voters guide using similar *cough* identical *cough* terms?
Pope refuses to relax stance on remarried faithful - that is divorced Catholics who remarry still cannot receive communion.

A couple of interesting items over on HMS ...

Greg Popcak is having a private email discussion with Fr. Morris, the Fox News commentator who responded in his column to Sean Hannity's smackdown of HLI President Fr. Euteneuer over Hannity's vocal support of contraception.Its a good read but I linked it mostly for this cool quote from St. Jean Vianney

Do not try to please everybody. Try to please God , the angels, and the saints. These are your public. If you are afraid of other people's opinion, you should not have become Christian.

Pamela Pilch posted a few interesting blurbs regarding doctors and how birth is treated elsewhere in the world AND homebirth in Texas.

Church pews head to New Orleans - Closed parish donates to Katrina victims

One word: Awesome!

Judge: Woman Burned By Candle Can Sue Archdiocese

Just FYI ...

catholic church mmbership

Number NINE baby for misspelling membership ...

I have been indexed high for various phrases including "chruch" as well. Also I was near the top at one point on "excuses to avoid the in-laws" although my ranking has slipped tremendously since apparently legitimate scholarly research has developed in that field.

Why I Became a Catholic referenced by Amy Welborn

In a nutshell, through a long period of study and reflection I simply became convinced that the Catholic Church really was founded by Jesus, grown from a small mustard seed into a mighty tree, as he promised it would. In studying Catholic doctrine, which formerly I had been told was “man-made” and had nothing to do with scripture, I found that it is actually more consistent with scripture than the Evangelical theology I had studied before. In fact, it is completely consistent with scripture – I still cannot find a single contradiction, when studied and understood at depth. And I have been a studious Catholic for nearly 10 years, and am now earning a master’s degree in theology.

In coming to the conclusion that the Catholic Church really was founded by Jesus himself, in person, I also realized that if I am truly serious about following him regardless of the cost, and really take everything the bible says seriously, like the parts about being one Body and not getting caught up in division and controversy (which is endless in the Protestant world, in my experience), then I must become a Catholic. My ancestors left Catholicism either by choice or by compulsion during the English Reformation (I don’t know which); regardless, I needed to reverse the break and come back into union with the original Church.

Wyoming church limits lesbian pair

This story has been increasingly appearing on Google News searches involving the Catholic Church which typically indicates it is picking up steam in some circles ...

From another article on the matter

“It’s surprising that it’s so specific and personal and being done through this letter,” Vader remarked, adding that the Church’s action “sends a big fat message to gay people.”

I am guessing the implication is that the Catholic Church hates gays right?

Seriously, how is this a news story? "Catholics shocked when Church continues to teach as it has for centuries and -- *gasp* -- ACTS upon it" .... Consider also that we have a priest on Fox News that would give Sean Hannity the same sanction and MOST people aren't outraged about it. Everyone knows the Church teaches against artificial contraception yet few people think that Catholic Church hates the majority of people in the US for using artificial contraception. However, when a priest in the Church comes out in a consistent manner against homosexual acts then it is clearly because the Church hates gays ... How does that follow? While the acts are obviously different they have some similarities and it can be said that they could be condemned for a common reason. They are both sexual acts that render the procreative aspect null. Both are condemned by the Church. Things I sadly have done in the past are condemned by the Church. If you were to follow the "hates gays" line of reasoning then the Church hates all of us.

Then again I think you would be missing out on some key points of the Catholic faith if you thought that ...

Pope Ignores Protests to Restore Latin Mass -- See article here

This caught my eye the other day but I haven't been following the hubbub so I didn't comment on it. Fortunately others have commented .... This in particular struck me:

Catholic publishers in Rome are preparing new editions of the Latin missal

If true it ought to be interesting to say the least.

A Convert's Manifesto

What has been very instructive for me in the almost 2 years of being a Catholic - and a blogger - was to see how easy it is to go wrong, to become fanatical on the left or the right, how to , as John Paul II. said, to think that a piece of the pie is the whole pie. Another common mistake is to think that if one is against something liberal it has to mean being for something conservative, or vice versa.

The search for the perfect church eventually ends in the "church of me" - once the Catholic Church isn't "perfect" enough, one might go Orthodox, or SSPX, heck then SSPX might not seem "perfect" enough anymore and one joins SSPV etc...in the end one'd be ordaining oneself. Community of saints: Population 1

So, as an exhortation to myself and everyone - keep a close watch, but don't use a microscope. And, to adapt a corny saying, be the change you want to see in the Church.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I found myself early on after my conversion so angry about the things that were wrong that I lost sight of the reason I converted in the first place. It has taken a while for me to realize that the Church I converted to is a hospital for the sick... it is for the sinner and for the to-be saint. Eventually you find your niche. Eventually you see that Church history has seen a swinging pendulum correcting conservative and liberal excesses to pinpoint the truth somewhere in the middle. You also come to realize that the Church solves problems in eras not weeks.

See My own struggles with the people in the pew next to me especially the "dynamic unique to Catholicism"

Found this interesting link on HMS

A Right for Moms and Babies

I am curious ... are there women out there getting arrested for breastfeeding in public? In these United States?

What widgets do you hate?

The ones that ask me to buy stuff ... especially stuff that happens to be contrary to the faith. Also pages with actual songs are irritating. Playlists I like ...

Tradition and Traditionalism: The Theological Critique

Good discussion going on at Holy Whapping ... A little over my head (I, lest anyone get confused, am NOT a philosophy major) but interesting still.

The Catholic truth / teaching that "did it" for you

Depends on what time frame you are referring to. Its unchanging teaching on contraception opened me in a way that really set the stage for my eventual conversion. In the end though, its teaching on authority AND the historical ability to demonstrate it with 2000 years of rock solid unchangable truth is what did it. I will drag up some old posts or elaborate in the near future ...

Former advocate for female priests now explains Vatican's stance

"The tradition is traced to the will of Christ, not to decisions made by the church," Butler said last night at St. Joseph's Seminary, where she has taught for four years.

The church's teachings must be better explained, she said, because many Catholics see the all-male priesthood as a symbol of patriarchal power and sexism, and many more who stay silent are probably befuddled.

That is why the pope said quite firmly...

... I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful."

--Pope John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, May 22, 1994

Venice (FL) bishop forbids VOTF meeting

Espicopal spine alert ...

I was watching the teli last night and there was a million dollar cars auction show. I got rare chills from seeing a car I had never seen before. After that I was convinced I had found one of the most beautiful cars ever made ... it is a beauty. See for yourself.



If you look around the net long enough you will find this car on many "10 most beautiful cars ever" lists. Of course its auction price places it well out of the means of most of its admirers. A cool three million plus it will set you back ... and of course with only 16 made you are looking at few opportunities to snag one of these beauts.

At least there are photographs and car shows eh?

From Mark Shea ... Good news!

The DC archdiocese and Baltimore archdiocese have hit us up recently for donations. Why? Their seminaries are bursting at the seams.

GERMAN BISHOP'S REMARKS ON AT-HOME MOTHERHOOD AND DAYCARE CONTROVERSIAL
CONDOMS NOT WORKING IN BOTSWANA - IMPORTANT!

I wonder how many years before the wisdom of the ages thwarts so called modern ideas. If only they knew that society has been there and done that ... over and over and over again.

The Catholic Church is the only thing which saves a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.

--G. K. CHESTERTON

Leave it to the Ninth Circuit ....

NINTH CIRCUIT DECLARES RIGHT OF GOVERNMENT TO CENSOR THE TERMS "NATURAL FAMILY," "MARRIAGE" & "FAMILY VALUES"

The court concluded that municipalities have a right to literally dictate what form an employee's speech may take, even if it is in regard to controversial public issues. Shockingly, the court concluded that the interest of Christian employees in speaking out on the issue of marriage is "vanishingly small" and that the "administrative" interests of a city are more important than speech rights.