I used to think that the logic behind "they were never saved to begin with" put most Christians, for all practical purposes, in the same camp. After all, they have to worry about falling away because scripture is chock full of warnings about it and they are very capable of seeing that. Catholics have to worry about falling away for the same reasons. We come about it from different angles but the worry facing the average Christian about his walk is the same.

There is a difference though ...

The problem comes when trying to identify the person we are certain is saved. OSAS Christians are certain THEY are saved and I am sure there are folks who walk around their church they are sure are saved. Yep, that guy talks the talk and walks the walk. I can see it and his life is like mine. By grace, we are saved and we can be certain about it.

I knew a guy who talked the talk. He had gotten out of prison. He had been out 5 years, was married and "had his life together" as folks would stay. He walked the walk too. One night after bible study he went out and tried to brutally rape a woman with presumable intent to kill. He will spend the rest of his life in jail. I guess he didn't know Jesus, but he fooled me. How do I know I am not fooling me? After all, he talked the perfect game. His life for those years out of jail was exemplary. They were even taping a video with him as an example of how the prison ministry he was involved in changes lives. HE UNDERSTOOD and he fell anyway ... and hard.

The question then, for the OSAS person is, how do you know you aren't just like that? How are you absolutely certain you aren't one of the ones who isn't REALLY saved in the first place? If you are sure you are then Paul's warnings about falling away must be for those who aren't saved, but are on the edge somewhere; those who believe some of it, but haven't had "that" experience that gives them certain knowledge. Those warnings must be for those of us who sit in front of a fast moving train at a RR crossing knowing deep down that we likely wouldn't hit the gas but yet intensely fear the capacity we have to do something so irrevocably stupid. After all, we know we can hit the gas. That capacity in our will scares the daylights out of us. We know we can fall and that is why we are afraid. We want to be certain but we cannot be.

I think that fear is normal and it is that fear that makes the Catholic position more palatable and logically coherant.

I blogged some of this earlier, but I re-post it here with some additions and minor changes since it essentially completes one of the segments of the conversion story I started this blog to document :).

My wife and I were travelling full steam towards an entrance into Holy Mother Church when our train was violently derailed by learning of incorrupt saints. At first we were horrified to think that people actually kept deceased saints on display for centuries. The fact that they were incorrupt seemed almost a sign that something was wrong ... really wrong. Research of this led us into the realm of relics. This seemed even worse. Martyrs were divided up into pieces and sent around to the various churches for the purpose of veneration. Why was this? Why did it seem so foreign and wrong to this Protestant American?

First, I should explain my reservation. Dead people creep me out. There is something seemingly dirty about death that I really think is at the root of what bothers us about this. Most people rather avoid passing by a casket at a wake. We prefer to distance ourselves as far as possible from the deceasesd seemingly for fear that we too might catch whatever it is that killed the person lying in the casket. Second, the flesh seems so much lesser than the spirit that the idea of degrading it to the point of it being worthless is a very common idea amongst particularly Protestants. Essentially, it is a corrupt mindset about the body and more significantly, about the physical.

What careened this hurdle into the recesses of my past?

First off relics and veneration of such was a historically observable fact of early Christianity. From the time of Polycarp we can see that the Church has kept remains and other items owned by or used by martyrs and Holy men and women of the Church. An excerpt from the Martyrdom of Polycarp (156 AD) best illustrates this principle:

Accordingly, we afterwards took up his bones, as being more precious than the most exquisite jewels, and more purified than gold, and deposited them in a fitting place, whither, being gathered together, as opportunity is allowed us, with joy and rejoicing, the Lord shall grant us to celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom, both in memory of those who have already finished their course, and for the exercising and preparation of those yet to walk in their steps.(Source)

Since the historical continuity of doctrine was one of the primary reasons that I felt I must become Catholic, this early indication of such carried great weight with me.

Second was the fact that there were clear indications in scripture of God using items, like bones, garments and even shadows to affect persons in a very real way. (1)

2 Kings 13:20-21: “So Elisha died, and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. 21 And as a man was being buried, lo, a marauding band was seen and the man was cast into the grave of Elisha; and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood on his feet.”

Acts 5:15-16: “. . . they even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and pallets, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them. 16 The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed.”

Acts 19:11-12: “And God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, 12 so that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.” (cf. Mt 9:20-22)

Third, I came to recognize the false dichotomy that I had maintained between spirit and matter. This was even more intriguing from my standpoint because I had managed to conquer this objection in my study on the sacraments. Earlier, I posted about my lifelong affirmation of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. To me this naturally follows from the Incarnation. The same holds with baptism. What I wanted to do with relics was say that God couldn't do what Catholics claimed He could do with relics, especially in the case of the incorrputables. What this required of me was a total conversion to the idea of sacrament. I had to get over the idea that there is some kind of division between matter and spirit. I think this is a problem that exists in Americans as a whole. Europeans are not so squeamish about the dead, I think, because they have deeper Catholic roots. The division of matter and spirit is not a new idea though. It seems every major heresy from the dawn of time made the basic assumption that matter was evil and that the spirit was good and that none shall the two meet. The Incarnation is the single biggest indication that there is fault with that idea. To further find fault, from a Christian perspective, one only need look at Genesis. To summarize:

God created and it was GOOD.

Further understanding of what evil is, as taught by the Church, reveals even more clearly this truth. "Evil is the privation (or absence) of good." (paraphrase from Augustine) Nothing created by God is in and of itself evil. Few Protestants would disagree, yet the dichotomy exists in the minds of so many ... It did with me.

What the Protestant convert has to struggle through is understanding the purpose of these "things" Catholics have. Statues, rosaries, relics, stained glass. All of them are things we can use as aids to piety. We do not worship them because they can do nothing for us and they themselves have no power.

But God can work through them. That is the lesson I had to learn ...

The final realization about the incorruptables was that this falls perfectly in line with the idea of the resurrection of the body which is something we recite in the Nicene Creed every Sunday. Death was defeated by Christ and in that it took that we can rest assured that this is a power that Satan does not have. That is why it is most assuredly of God that these things happen. Why did God choose to give us these type miracles? That is beyond the scope of this little brain of mine ... but there they are.

In order to force myself to write about something Catholic in the next day or two, I thought I would go ahead and put a post in place for it. This is in the form of late night ... I am tired, style, rambling ...

I have been thinking about common gateways that lead people into the Church based on conversion stories that I have read. Some of these one liners are related. I am brainstorming ... or braindrizzling more like it ...

Collapse of pillar of Protestant belief, usually sola scriptura
Authority
Biblical synergy .. it all made so much more sense read from the Catholic viewpoint
Moral teachings, especially related to sexuality and marriage
Real Presence
Historicity of the faith
Indescribable sympathy for the Church due to the unusual amount of outright hatred you witness spilled forth towards it.

Generally, a pursuit of truth and a HIGH expectation on what it is and that it can be found precedes all of this. All of the above were parts of my conversion.

For some folks it is ONE thing or ONE moment. For others, like me it was a struggle. This SEEMS true ... but is it? You spend years looking for ways to avoid a seemingly inevitable conversion but eventually your objections are answered. They ALWAYS are ... Its a happy moment to realize it is going to happen though.

My question centers around what FIRST gets one looking at the Catholic faith.

For me it was the moral teachings, particularly contraception and the history of that teaching within Protestantism and the unbelievable willingness by most people I talked to who simply avoid looking into the question. To me, getting married begged the question. Most people just assume it is answered ...

Anyway ... tired .... still Catholic. Bye

My wife and I made FIVE GLORIOUS YEARS on Friday June 17th, 2005. I never would have thought that I would be blessed with the wonderful marriage that I am in. My wife is perfect for met. She is nothing that I expected and EVERYTHING that I wanted and needed. God is truly wonderful. I always dreamed of being married as a child but the assumptions I made about what a "real" marriage would be like included minor to moderate levels of chaos and a distinct level of eggshell walking that "everyone knows" is just part of it. Prior to getting married I think 3 out of every 4 married couples told us how awful marriage was. The only ones who didn't were the older couples working on their 30th, 40th or 50th years of marriages. They had it right. Marriage takes hard work and it ONLY works if you work at it. If YOU sacrifice to make it work well, it will. I know that now. If anything my expectations were WAY too low about what marriage would be. I feel like we were married yesterday ...

Add three beautiful and active children to the mix and you have the blurr that is my life the past five years. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Personal notes

Work: I managed to get out of a fix at work. Work goes like this.

Task 1. High priority, needs immediate attention.
Task 2. High priority, needs immediate attention.
Task 3. High priority, needs immediate attention.
Not enough time to do it even if I worked 24 hours a day ... this is typical in corporate America

One of those tasks got pushed back until Friday but it ideally needed to be done two or three days earlier in order to meet a tight deadline and the glacial pace of getting work done in a massive corporate environment. I am used to small company life. We get things done when they need to be done. In mega-corp world, there is documentation that has to be in order, processes that have to be followed to the letter, scores of contacts that must be made to coordinate masses of folks being in the same place at the same time to open access to this resource or that ... all just to do one 15 minute task. Anyway, we were debugging a database that is used in Holland. I do not have direct access to it. It has to be fixed by Sunday night (Monday morning in Holland). My only quick access to the database is via calling someone who types in commands with me dictating on the phone. She gives me feedback either verbally or via email. Information is difficult to analyze that way. That is a hassle of a way to support something but it is what we have to work with for now. Fortunately we "accidentally received" a recent export of the problem database and I managed to get a look at it this morning and discover the problem in no time. Normally a request like that takes days so I didn't even bother. We didn't even request it but it sure came in handy. It just showed up with some other export information that we asked for eons ago. Last night when I went to sleep I was wondering what kind of hate mail I was going to be getting from a DBA that was going to get pulled away from his family to load an complete export of a database I know worked. I wouldn't be doing all the hard work. The DBA would ... Fortunately, because I had this miracle data, I was able to send out a quick fix to the problem without inconveniencing too many folks. There was much rejoicing.

House:

Still isn't sold. We are still living in an apartment. Too much typing to explain how that happened. I love having access to a pool. It will be on my list of things to look for in a new house ... provided paying rent and a house note doesn't kill us financially first. Prayers welcome in this area. St. Joseph, pray for us!!!

Reading:

It is taking me forever to read anything these days.

Still, I am forever working on Salvation Is from the Jews by Roy Schoeman
Just bought and started a book with a most controversial title: How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Dr. Thomas E. Woods Jr.

The book seems to be a well researched counter to the idea that the Catholic Church HINDERED progress of all sorts throughout the centuries. In fact, it argues quite the opposite. It also spends time tearing down some of the clear prejudices about the Church that exist in the minds of most Americans raised on mild a diet of latent anti-Catholic bias. The most obvious example that I can think of is the rampant belief that millions were killed at the hands of the Catholic Church during the Inquisition. Reality is far from it and recent scholarship has pretty much vindiacted the Catholic Church from the gaudy claims of the Black Legend. I look forward to reading it.

Bowling:

I am bowling in a no-tap league, which for the non-bowlers stopping by means that if I get nine pins on the first shot, it counts as a strike. That’s it. If I get nine in two shots, it is still nine. I had to get a ball drilled and so with virtually no research and an undisclosed amount of cash I settled on the now discontinued Ebonite V2 Clean.



For the fashion conscious it violates all social norms: purple/blue ball, green finger inserts, white thumb insert. Then again, we are talking about bowling. One gaze down a few lanes of bowler’s shoes and butterfly collars will give one the distinct hint that fashion is not a high priority. I'm with it ...

My average after 6 games is 228.3. I have the highest average in the league but I am thinking that I wouldn't have higher than a 180 average without the no-tap advantage. I am also expecting reality to set in sooner or later. I am struggling with spares but I am not shooting at very many. The good news is that a high percentage of my strikes are legitimate and not of the 9-pin variety. For having not bowled seriously in five years, I must admit being pleased as punch that I haven't forgotten how to bowl. I did not expect to come out of the gate shooting 180's in practice and averaging near 230 in a no-tap league. Like I said, reality will overwhelm me at some point and I will have to work back up to the 190 average I used to carry with much patience.

Weather:

There was ANOTHER tornado down here on Friday. It was sighted at I-10 and 74 which is south of Baton Rouge in Prairieville. There were no injuries but it was blamed for an accident that happened on the Interstate at the time it crossed the road. My keen web search skills turned up ZERO fancy pictures of the twister.

Speaking of skills



Fathers Day is tomorrow ... woo hoo!!!

Response to Sex and divorce ... I should have qualified at least the words "partially" with my cause being a modern day extension of the root cause. Call it the surface cause ...

The basic gist of my point is that with contraception came, likely, the final blow ... the division of sex from marriage. The temptation to be as we are today has always existed. There is, after all, nothing new under the sun. The technological advances in "family planning" have made it easy to not get caught. The risk of getting pregnant is reduced significantly. It used to be that before you had sex with someone the question "Do I want to have children with this person" had to come to mind. That thought alone would deter the actions of most sane single men. With ABC, there is no need to give that thought much weight. After all, we have "protection" these days and giving in is seen as part of the normal exuberance of youth and as you say, forgiven.

While adultery is still considered grave by most, I would say that is not the case for pre-marital sex. Cohabitation is almost universal now and with that near certainty that sex is occurring (**1). I can off hand cite that 21/23 couples were living together at our EE. The numbers suggest the stigma of pre-marital sex is nonexistant ... in fact, quite the opposite for all the virgins out there who have been hassled for their most Holy state by their friends.

In the logic of the "single" sexually satisfied man, for what purpose is marriage other than to make him responsible to the wife and accountable to a legal system that might rob him blind in the almost likely situation of a future divorce? I have seen that argument made on more than one occasion.

I highly recommend reading Contraception: Why Not? by Janet Smith and also get a copy of Humanae Vitae. I note specifically what Paul VI predicted would happen with the ready availibility of contraception. Section 17 Consequences of Artificial Methods

Responsible men can become more deeply convinced of the truth of the doctrine laid down by the Church on this issue if they reflect on the consequences of methods and plans for artificial birth control. Let them first consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings—and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation—need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law. Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.

**1: "It is estimated that 60% to 80% of the couples coming to be married are cohabiting." -- from USCCB - Marriage Preparation and Cohabiting Couples

Doing the rounds following up on todays storm reports ...

image removed

And found the following article from the Hammond WI reports (all 6/11 reports):
Tornado Touchdown In Hammond which includes a short video clip and a pretty good slide show showing viewer photos taken of the tornado. The picture is from the slideshow.

We had some excitement here yesterday

459
WFUS54 KLIX 092339
TORLIX
LAC033-047-100015-
/O.NEW.KLIX.TO.W.0062.050609T2337Z-050610T0015Z/

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
TORNADO WARNING
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
637 PM CDT THU JUN 9 2005

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN NEW ORLEANS HAS ISSUED A

* TORNADO WARNING FOR...
EAST BATON ROUGE PARISH IN SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA
THIS INCLUDES THE CITIES OF...BATON ROUGE
IBERVILLE PARISH IN SOUTHEAST LOUISIANA

* UNTIL 715 PM CDT

* AT 634 PM CDT...LAW ENFORCEMENT SPOTTED A TORNADO 11 MILES SOUTH
OF BATON ROUGE...OR ABOUT 7 MILES WEST OF GONZALES...MOVING
NORTH AT 15 MPH.

IF YOU ARE CAUGHT OUTSIDE...SEEK SHELTER IN A NEARBY REINFORCED
BUILDING. AS A LAST RESORT...SEEK SHELTER IN A CULVERT...DITCH OR LOW
SPOT AND COVER YOUR HEAD WITH YOUR HANDS.

IF IN MOBILE HOMES OR VEHICLES...EVACUATE THEM AND GET INSIDE A
SUBSTANTIAL SHELTER. IF NO SHELTER IS AVAILABLE...LIE FLAT IN THE
NEAREST DITCH OR OTHER LOW SPOT AND COVER YOUR HEAD WITH YOUR HANDS.

LAT...LON 3029 9121 3028 9105 3039 9099 3048 9100
3050 9117



Click on image for a larger version

My sister lives in St. Gabriel and she could not get back to her home because of downed power lines until after midnight. My neice was home by herself and it scared her out of her wits but she is fine as is the rest of the family. Priase be to God!!! This morning my sister emailed me and said that a home was moved 8 feet and destroyed. My guess is, without seeing the damage, that it will come in around F1 to F2 damage. (revised based on media accounts of damage) ... We should pray for the victims of storms yesterday as I know there was a number of tornadoes in Kansas, Texas and Wisconsin yesterday. Not to mention hail and high wind damage.

With a tropical storm headed our direction we may not be out of the woods yet. The storm season is officially in full swing here.

Was Karol Wojtyla the Greatest Mass Murderer of the 20th Century?Take these quotes for example

Nicholas Kristof, of the New York Times, says that the Vatican's rejection of condoms has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, making it one of "its most tragic mistakes in the first two millennia of its history" (1). The influential New Statesman, in London, ran a cover story shortly after the Pope's death claiming that he "probably contributed more to the continental spread of [AIDS] than the trucking industry and prostitution combined" (2).



Rosemary Neill, of The Australian, in Sydney, opined that the intransigent Vatican "will eventually be accused of crimes against humanity" (3). Polly Toynbee, of the UK's Guardian newspaper -- who clearly had something quite vile for breakfast that morning -- compared JP2 to Lenin: "they both put extreme ideology before human life and happiness, at unimaginable human cost" (4). Even doctors chimed in. The world's leading medical journal, The Lancet, accused an ignorant and rigid Pope of presenting "insuperable obstacles to the prevention of disease" (5).

The author then goes on to point out how absurd these positions are. I think it is safe to say that there is much self flagellating going on in the media about how irresponsible the Vatican policy is but the article looks at reality. First one only need compare what has happened in Uganda to Botswana. In Uganda, an irresponsibly advocated abstinence campaign resulted in a 66% drop in AIDS cases. In Botswana a responsibly executed condom push resulted in a doubling of AIDS cases. The problem these folks have with the Catholic position on sexuality has very little to do with facts. Their problem is with the sexual teachings of the Church because it requires they give up the sex first mentality that they have come to enjoy. I pray at some point our society realizes that the path it has taken has been most damaging to generations of people. I am a firm believer that our current divorce woes can be blamed on the mentality we as a nation have adopted towards sex. I would be willing to guess that in Western countries sex likely happens more outside of marriage than in. It has become a recreational activity in the minds of almost everyone; a "right" so to speak. How dare the curmudgeons at the Vatican suggest that one of our most basic rights (food, water, housing, sex) be infringed upon by mud age fanatical beliefs?

Oh except that there is that little problem with the reality of how those mud age beliefs have actually saved lives.

Discussion on DCF

I posted this comment on Amy Welborns blog - The American Church

Did anyone else notice that Catholics do not make up a majority in Church attendance anywhere? The highest is 46.3%

The numbers come up a little differently when you ask folks what they "claim" as their religion regardless of attendance. There are places in south Louisiana where the population is certainly over 50% Catholic and likely WELL over 50%.

I have a theory ... will expound later.

See Jimmy Akin on the subject of Catholic population

I made the following statements yesterday in a conversation with my wife. "When in a relationship with another person you have to realize that your actions affect them. When looking at a choice of actions you then have to ask yourself 'Which action requires me to sacrifice and which allows me to be selfish'"

In a round about way all I was saying was Luke 9:23

Then he said to all, "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."

Almost every interaction in life with others requires the choice to be selfish or to sacrifice. For example, at work I have flex hours which means I can show up at some strange hour in the morning and leave at some strange hour sometime in the afternoon or evening. If I wanted to sleep in every morning, I could get to work at 10am and it wouldn't be a problem. However, this snowballs quickly when I realize that I have to miss dinner in order to fit the appropriate amount of work in during the day. Also, our customers get to work between 7 and 8 am. It is in their best interest that I be at work during a time frame conducive to them contacting me. Do I like getting up? Not really. I am still a teenager in there somewhere. I would sleep til noon if I wanted to be utterly selfish about it. Do I like fighting through traffic with the rest of the working world? Not really. Driving to work at 5am or 10am is much better because there is virtually no traffic. Do I like, for all practical purposes, giving up my flex-hours benefit? No but I am thankful I have the option when my family really needs me. The simple sacrifice of being where people expect me, when they expect me makes the lives of all of my co-workers and clients that much easier. The right choice to make is sacrifice even if the sacrifice doesn't seem all that big.

Christ asks us to take the radical step of following Him and that means down the path of His Passion as well. Take up your cross and follow Him, even in the little things.

Still in blogging lite mode ...

Catholics Negatively Influencing Family Planning - Witola

Witola said the natural family planning required full participation from both partners and was not ideal, as evidenced by the many children in the district.

"The Catholic Church here has a large following, and because of its influence, people are not using family planning pills," he said.

I love reading AllAfrica.com. There are lots of Catholics in Africa who BELIEVE the Church for all of the right reasons. What really gets me is the part I have in bold above ... as if this is a BAD thing?!?! I doubt I am the only one who has a hard time feeling sorry for folks who see the pitter patter of little feet as a real problem.

The Catholic Church will be rejuvenated by Catholic parents raising large numbers of faithful Catholics, especially in a world whose view is so diametrically opposed as to make it difficult on those parents to do so. I lift a glass to these parents and rejoice in encouraging them to be fruitful and multiply ...

Like Mother Theresa said ... "Saying there are too many children is like saying there are too many flowers"

Apple Announces Switch to Intel Chips

I have to know what you think....

I love stories like this
Couple Celebrates 80th Wedding Anniversary
but not like this
Bail condition bars bride from altar - this is an incredibly strange story.

Renounce your mmbership in SMMMHDH by learning how to Make Your Own Bad Church Music
Lord, we just, we just thank you for this food - a criticism of extemporanous prayer that actually tends to be exactly the same every time it is said.

BTW, I bought a bowling ball yesterday. Today I will go see if I still remember how to bowl.

Finally, it looks like there is a good chance for a significant tornado outbreak today. People in these areas, please heed local warnings.


Now, I want you to notice how on they were with the tornado predictions.

I am going to be blogging less frequently. The main website that we host is starting to get some traffic and there are some things that need to be done to get it into tip top shape.

Please help us out by visitiing the site and telling everyone you know about it.

Below is a picture of St. Athanasius. Along with St. John Chrysostom, St. Athanasius is a doctor of the Church and one of my favorite saints.

I love any guy called the Father of Orthodoxy.

Anyway, both of these saints are prominently featured on WWW.EARLYCHURCHFATHERS.COM which is the host site that my blog operates on.

I take no shame in plugging the site. I represents a great deal of work from myself and many friends of mine. I collected many of these quotes during my journey back into the Catholic Church and the tireless work of others has added to and brought the site to where it is today. (For kicks, if you want to see what it used to look like click here)

Initially, I wanted a simple chart to refute the many nonsense dates I heard about when Catholic teachings were "invented". I think the main page does a very good job at demonstrating this. The remainder of the site simply collects further evidence to support the claim in subsequent years usually leading up to the end of the patristic age. I think it is useful and an exciting look into the historical teachings of the Church. I hope you enjoy it as well.

"LOVE" AND "TOLERANCE": TWO WORDS THAT OFTEN CONFLICT WITH AUTHENTIC CATHOLIC TEACHING

For example, the love and tolerance clergy and most of the liturgical rebels of the 1970's spread a false saying which was often seen on colorful church banners that "Jesus Loves You Just the Way You Are." That's not true. Our Lord Jesus Christ is Saviour and Redeemer. He isn't Big Bird or Barney the Dinosaur!!! Although He loves us, He loves us in such a way that He hates our sins and wants us to come out of our current sinful inclination and enter into a life of holiness and humility so that we may enter Eternal Life.

Home schooling? Some resources for math ... and summer fun
French Catholic woman plans ‘illicit’ ordination
The Myth of Free Sex and Our Responsibility

both contraception and abortion are requirements of a culture that preaches “free love,” since they are necessary to get away from the realities of the sexual act (it is so powerful that it can produce the fruit of love – a child shared by two people).

Two Great Conversion Stories
Clinton Catholics lament the loss of city's historic churches
End Nears for Latin Mass at Boston Church
No Room For Dissent?
Catholics split on embryo adoption

“Yes, the Church is Alive!” Path to Rome 2005, London, England

I saved the most positive looking article for last because it looks like the rest, save the homeschooling article, might put me in a bad mood ... must ... remember ... "the gates of hell will not prevail"

I have had a couple of ideas in the past that I would like to see come to fruition.

The first idea is a blog on contemporary issues "from" the Early Church fathers.

For example, when something in the news happens related to abortion, St. John Chrysostom can chime in with the following

Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit? where there are many efforts at abortion? where there is murder before the birth? for even the harlot thou dost not let continue a mere harlot, but makest her a murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to a something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but prevent its being born. Why then dost thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with His laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do, so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine. Hence too come idolatries, since many, with a view to become acceptable, devise incantations, and libations, and love-potions, and countless other plans. Yet still after such great unseemliness, after slaughters, after idolatries, the thing seems to many to belong to things indifferent, aye, and to many that have wives too. Whence the mingle (forutos) of mischief is the greater. For sorceries are applied not to the womb that is prostituted, but to the injured wife, and there are plottings without number, and invocations of devils, and necromancies, and daily wars, and truceless fightings, and home-cherished jealousies.

The writer for each Father needs to know the writings of the author well enough to fill in the blanks with what the Father might further conclude were he alive today.

The second idea is a web wide apologetics index based on the Catholic Evidence Training Outlines. Essentially I would like to get a group of lay apologists to research the topics and even write essays where information is thoroughly lacking. For external links, I would want the apologists who have access to the index to RATE and REVIEW the link to determine whether the content is sufficient to handle the question (read through the link I provided to see what I mean by questions ...) ... The index would be public. Everyone could read it. However, I would want to screen those who had access to add and rate things. I wouldn't exactly want folks who are against the Church teaching on contraception rating and reviewing articles supporting that Church teaching.

Finally, I am really starting to see the need for a group of Catholic I.T. professionals that are networked. There are tons of resources that SHOULD be available online which are not. For example, there are numerous ECF writings that are not accessible online. Ideally I would like to have all translations recommended by Jurgens available online (where the copyright would allow such) ... that would make the job of linking to important yet somewhat obscure ECF writings online possible. Also, I personally have access to many of Cardinal Newmans letters at the university library. Those should also be online as I gather they would offer a wealth of wonderous Catholic snippets.

Anyway, if any of you like my ideas or have any desire to take any of them and run with it ... contact me. I figure it wouldn't hurt to at least get the ideas in to more heads than just mine.

From the how far is too far files: I hear young people ask the "how far is too far" question a lot yet I never hear any adults given them a straight shooting answer. Here is what I wrote about it on DCF

OK, I am going to sound like a total prude here, but I think this is something that should wait for a very long time, like the wedding. The physical aspect of marraige is the ICING on the cake. I know the temptation to lick the bowl, or swash your finger in the icing is pretty high, but lets get things straight, we all know that waiting to eat the completed cake is preferable to any alternative.

Besides, I think we are treading on thin ground here, as we all know that kissing leads to other things and there is little doubt that it gets you physically aroused. My understnading of 'openness' to life is that once the process has begun, we should give ourselves totally to our spouse. That isn't fully possible until you are married. Don't even take the risk at being in a compromising situation where the area is gray. Besides, you certainly shouldn't be considering how well someone kisses as a factor in choosing a spouse. .

All of it can wait and in my opinon, that is the optimal way to do it. Give yourself TOTALLY to your spouse and only your spouse.

I wrote this over a year ago and after hacking and various other things should have caused it to fall away into the abyss of old forum posts, there it was preserved in its original state. It caused a mild stir ... it is pretty radical after all. Now you have read it too and I still stand by it.

MSN Money - Raising your quarter-million dollar baby

OK, this may be a perfectly innocent article but what it seems like it is telling me is that I had better watch out because having any more kids is gonna cost me. After all, we can't have that now can we? The bottom line IS, after all, the most important thing in our lives ... right? This is the kind of information people use to justify using birth control for convenience by claiming that their sacrifice would be just too demanding.

Uhhh, yeah ... demanding is an understatement and I wouldn't trade it for all the money in the world.

I also have some problems with their insisting there is no scaling. That isnt what I see on a daily basis. At a minimum, housing and food go down on a per child basis with more. My parents rasied 6 kids in a 1200 sq. ft. home. You don't have to double the size of your home from 1500 to 3000 sq. ft just because you have a second child. The same scaling affects affording private schools because of multi-child discounts. When you have a child, you sacrifice to afford them. Most people think not being able to afford that Lexus is too much of a sacrifice for their kids. I see it all the time with parents who care more about their stuff than their kids. The keeping up with the Joneses mentality at "first birthday" parties is unreal. Some of the best and most lavish parties I have ever been to were for one year olds. Sell the car and give your child another sibling. "The greatest gift you can give your child is another sibling" JP II ... he is right you know?

I have had 1,2 and 3 kids and I know they are not costing me $1200/mo EACH. I would be paying housing, about 70% of food etc even without them. Another thing, their idea of large family is 3 kids ... my idea is 15. When you get above 2, you get economy of scale savings making their cost per go down. For example, we dont buy many new clothes for Gabe and we buy used kids clothes for all of them. Kids are certainly a sacrifice and my comfort level is inconsequential when it comes to affording them. If they come, I have noticed, you adapt and find a way to joyfully afford them. People are wimps to think that children are a problem because they cost money. When you choose parenthood you choose sacrifice, even with one child. I sold my gear and hardly buy things for myself any more. Its WAY worth it.

EENS = Extra ecclesia nulla salus = There is no salvation outside the Church

In my experience with discussions on EENS this is what I typically see:

Most people fly off the handle ... Some want to damn everyone to hell and others want to open the door wide to indifferentism. Everyone walks away hurt and worse, confused about what the Church teaches.

The extreme ends of both positions can be dangerous precipices to wander near and most of the various positions that people hold are within the realm of speculation allowed to be held by the Church, which is why we get wide variance in belief and mostly hurt feelings when talking about them.

The best best simplistic formulation I have seen is as follows (note, this is not official teaching but an agreed upon summary by a group of Catholics debating the matter):

Catholics are required to hold that only members of the Catholic Church will be saved. Catholics are required to hold that a form of membership in the Catholic Church is membership through baptism, whether by by water, blood, or desire. Catholics are required to hold that only God's mercy allows salvation and that no human being can know with infallible certainty whether or not God has extended that mercy to any particular human being unless a particular human being has been properly canonized. Catholics may speculate that baptism by blood or desire can be obtained by those who have no explicit knowledge of the Church, and such individuals may include those who have an utterly distorted knowledge of the Church.

For Catholics we need to understand this. Most Catholics hold a viewpoint that is quite merciful but to say that is the definitive teaching of the Church is going a bit far. The same holds true for those holding to a near Feeneyite position on the matter. There is a key issue that must not be overlooked. It is erroneous for us say that it is not important to be Catholic and that is where the problems arise in formulations of EENS which try to include more than the teachings of the Church allow. For example, what I PERSONALLY believe about the scope of the invincibly ignorant has no bearing on reality. It is not my opinion on the matter that counts.

As Catholics, we need to explain what the Church teaches in ITS OWN TERMS, leaving in all of the vague qualities that exist in them because within that vagueness is a very uncomfortable hard-line that not many of us really like to talk about but cannot exclude.... yet. I understand the point of traditionalists who want to hold to a strict teaching on the matter. It would be tragic of us to give people false hope. There is a true Church and we can know which one it is. At a minimum we must implore our friends to diligently seek the truth. Sacred Scripture promises that those who seek will find. It is vital that urgency never be lost in discussions on EENS. The dogma states clearly that there is no salvation outside the church. We shouldn't spend so much time on what seem like technicalities to wish all of our seperated brethren end up in the Church when the more certain route is active acceptance of the truth of Catholicism and nothing less.

It is also important that it be made clear that the mercy of God is what we are trusting here. We should present the faith, unhindered by our opinions and commit ourselves and our seperated brethren to the mercy of God.

It wasn't that I was bored. I built something similar to an arch for my son and I had a vision. It isn't pretty because I only have 1200 blocks so there is a green wall, a yellow wall, a blue wall etc. I will try to take some pictures of it and post it at some point.

Now that I think about it, the diocese of Oakland should have hired me. I could have designed a traditional looking church using "modern" loooking modules that resemble Legos. I am sure it would have been a hit with the modernist crowd and I could have fit in all of those nice structures that those of us who are more traditional tend to like.

After months of reading articles about the declining Church and what we, as Catholics, can do to save it, a dose of humor on the matter ...
Fredericksburg.com - Catholics, stay with me and I'll tell you how to grow your church

FRIENDS of the papist persuasion, I'm delighted to present the latest installment of this newspaper's Continuing Lecture Series, "How to Save the Church of Rome." With a heritage of 20 centuries and more than a billion adherents worldwide, Roman Catholicism, it's plain to see, is hanging by a thread. We, your fellow Christians, are happy to ride to the rescue.

Excerpts from Music: ramblings

I don't know when it happened, but sometime in the 90's, electronic music began to be harsh. People wanted buzzing, somewhat violent noises; they wanted their synthesisers to scream, instead of sing. Notes flew in like knives, and the whirl of machinery turned not strong, and not even quite sinister, but razor-sharp; blood was never far, and it might be your own. Voices were not enhanced but distorted and mangled; the faces behind the music were no longer strong or happy, but mean and even bestial; they worked for the expressions of harpies, and sang for chromium-plated blades.

To a degree I have to wonder if this is an overreaction to the feminization of men in our culture. First off, men dominate electronic music. Men, as a whole, tend to like things offering a strong and manly image because it is in their nature to act that image. For decades our generation of men have listened to many giving voice to the lie that men are taught this strong nature. Instead of handing us footballs and G.I. Joe, we are supposed to kick back and EZ-Bake with the girls down the street. Men are not taught maleness. It is a gift from God and it needs to be nurtured, practiced and perfected in the image of Christ. In the disco days and immediately following, you had men who were willing to create songs that were beautiful, but many of them were devoid of the final touch that makes music most appealing to men. The songs were effeminized. Without God and without a strong male culture in electronic music, the experiments of most were doomed to obscurity because it wasn't there yet.

Clearly some men saw the manliness missing from the disco era and they strove to find it. Unfortunately there is a corrupt and false imitation of the manliness that I am talking about, and I think that is what you are seeing in the music you are calling harsh.

The easiest way to accomplish the false image of strong manliness is through simplistic but overtly aggressive rhythm, dirty or even unabashedly ugly sounds and dull yet driving and repetitive compositional structures designed solely to arouse animal angst. It seems the part but it is quite the opposite. The music is offensive to every aspect of the well-formed sense of beauty. It is ugly. It is intellectually shallow. It is disturbingly aggressive, with lyrical content focused on things of a perverse sexual nature and often times including elements of violence either physical or, at a minimum, towards the truth. That is why it bothers you. It offends every element in you that is perfected in Christ and it offends the desires in your heart for the things He has yet to perfect in you. It offends the Truth.

For the Christian, the well formed male artist can manifest this latent desire of men into songs with powerful rhythms, complex melodies and intricate logical composition and combine them with lyrical content promoting strong values like physical sacrifice and perseverance. Men are drawn to those qualities because they imitate Christ. Some of what you listen to embodies that to a degree because, as all are impressed with the natural law in our hearts, even secular artists have access to much of this by default. This typically shows up most clearly in instrumentation as opposed to lyrics, which is why I have trained myself to listen to lyrics last. (not always a good thing) -- Good instrumentation combined with content in conflict with the Truth doesn't give us enough because its focus is all-wrong.

There are many things which people associate with my little corner of music that I detest. Disco has homosexuality and effeminacy, electronica has the smarmy, oiled Euro-trash, and now this horror of evil lurking in every mix I hear. And how can I tell people that I make electronic dance music, when the words conjure visions of dark rooms with flashing lights and the incessant thump-thump-thump of the overwrought four-on-the-floor, punctuated with the sounds of the devil's own drilling machinery? Who in their right mind would want to be part of that? It is a roller-coaster gone insane: it is insane.

Insane it is. I went to a couple of raves before they had really hit this side of the Atlantic. It was fun. All of the people there were about the music. It reinforced my errant view of what it is about for most people. You had radio DJ's like myself and club DJ's and most of them were not "scene" people. They were music people. They suffered from the same naive affliction that I had. Several years later I went to a show in Gainesville Florida. In the past I would spend time in a club and be utterly shocked when people seeming to have a good time divided into warring factions competing in a violent brawl. I tossed those evidences aside as the exception and not the norm. I figured they didn't care for the music like I did. I was looking for God in the music. I was looking for good and that is all I wanted to see. The ones who didn't care for the music were there to notch their next one-night stand. They assumed I was there for the same reason -- and every guy there was a threat to arouse this deep territorial animalist urge boiling within. My problem was that I refused to see evil when it was guiding me by the hand, urging me to take the plunge. My whole world came crashing down because the reality of the "scene" surrounding so much of what I enjoyed became abundantly clear. I saw first hand that it was about promiscuous sex, alcohol, drug abuse and violence. I saw more that night than I cared to see in 100 lifetimes. I was standing in hell and one bow to temptation may have hauled my soul down as a permanent fixture in it. Grace got me through that night with nothing more than a damaged vision of mankind and a bad hangover. My vision of "the scene" that was so intimately tied to "the music" was shattered in a giant heap of reality. Satan was there and I wanted no part of that.

I found it in the headphones: through them I saw a world of intense joy, even in intense sadness; a world in which I could be alive, and could be myself; this is Art, the gift of music, which God made for man. All the facade is stripped away; all the half-truths and compromises gone; and what remains is Reality, and a glimpse of the face of God. Those people who think they see only evil in this genre have not heard or understood the true manifestation of it. The music I love is the good and unpolluted thing, and they have heard only its perversion. And I do not apologise for being attracted to the good. And if any credit is due me at all, it is only for having wanted to follow God. Praise Him, and follow Him too.

Despite my vision of the scene being shattered I knew that I loved the music for all of the right reasons. I preferred instrumentals because they shielded me from the Godless lyrics that accompanied so much of electronic music. I always dreamed that one day there would be a Christian electronic artist. The first one I heard disappointed me to all ends. It was simply samples of the album “Frequencies” by LFO with over-dubbing of mumbled Sacred Scripture and extemporaneous prayer. The musical innovation was LFO. The samples were virtually entire songs. Why would I go for the imitation, even spiced up with the Truth when deep down the music itself was such a blatant rip as to be a total lie? The two were simply not compatible.

I have experienced nearly physical pain at masses with bad music. This means that going to mass at all is a struggle for me, since nearly all of them have bad music; the last mass I attended with good music was a midnight Christmas mass three years ago. I have refrained from communion more than once for the pain and rage in my soul at the musicians who blindly and stupidly wreck the moment for me. God forgive them: for they know not what they do. But this is my weakness: and it is nevertheless objectively not good. It is a bad weakness, for were I a saint, I could make a sacrifice of praise at all times, even when assailed by the typical music of modern masses here in America

I see you joined the club man. Camp tunes do not induce right and reverent worship. God deserves the best. You know that and I know that. It shouldn't be such a secret.

And I praise Him, therefore: I praise Him! To God be all the glory! Soli Deo gloria!

Please make sure to read Letter of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to Artists, 1999

Pope Clement VIII on coffee

Believing it was the drink of the devil, invented by Satan for the Moslem infidels as a substitute for the wine they were forbidden to drink, Catholic priests attacked it and forbade its consumption.

Since wine in the Western Christian world was sanctified by Christ and used in Holy Communion, coffee must then be of the anti-Christ.

It wasn't until the late 1500's that Pope Clement VIII settled the dispute. He asked that the brew be brought before him. Intrigued by its powerful aroma, he sipped the coffee and found it to be delicious. The Pope blessed it on the spot, saying, "Coffee is so delicious it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it." With the Pope's blessing, imports of coffee to Italy and the Western world came flooding in, paving the way for the first western coffee houses.

This is the calling of the Catholic electronic musician: "It would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it" ... we must baptize it in the name of the Lord.

Fr. Al Kimel on Pontifications has been posting some excellent reading on conversion by G. K. Chesterton:
“Finding the Catholic Church”
“A religion that is right where we are wrong”
“If the Church be not Christ it probably is Antichrist”
“Paganism was the largest thing in the world and Christianity was larger”

The Curt Jester: The Cafeteria is now Open!
Christianity is on the rise in Africa - We knew that and it is the reason why what Americans see as "the Church" has little in common with the reality of the present day Catholic Church. I have a feeling, if any of us were to attend mass in Africa, we would be pleased with the orthodoxy, excited by the vibrant zeal and shamed at how our culture has allowed itself to be infested with the fungus of indifference and secularism. The medicine in our country is Christ. The cure can be seen in Africa.

The Curt Jester: A divide
"Abortions rising under Bush? Not true," says FactCheck.Org
Ratzinger on the Modern Mind via Insight Scoop
Episcopal Church leaders praise new stem cell research bill via ut unum sint

This is more about what has been happening over the last few days ...



We watched the documentary Word Wars last night. I like to play Scrabble. I am nowhere near in the class of people who are generally members of the National SCRABBLE® Association and last night I found out why I will never be super great at SCRABBLE®. I am OK with that ...

Work has been super busy although things are calming down and there is a three day weekend coming up so plan to see more of the things I want to mention on my blog in the next few days. Here are some items I plan to blog on soon.

1. The Cost of Kids
2. EENS: our opinions vs. what the Church teaches ... and why those outside the Church need to know ONLY what the Church teaches and not our opinions.
3. I want to respond to a music post from Nothing in Particular
4. Blogging around blogging around dah daaahh Blogging around Blogging around dah daaaahh ... Another "must reads" post
5. Arkanoid
6. ECF blog idea

Michael, you will get a kick out of this -- I was driving to work yesterday and at a red light I reached back behind my seat looking for some change and managed to find a CD. It was 808 State - Don Solaris. It has been in my CD player ever since and will likely stay there for several more days.

Why liberal Catholics think authority is "repressive" - Philip Blosser

Once again, why must the Church seem opposed to "open debate," "balance," and "free thinking"? Simple: because Church teaching condemns what is opposed to its teaching--including homosexuality, contraception, abortion, as well as the dissent and confusion promoted by the liberal editorial bias of Reese in a publication ostensibly representing a religious order of the Church. Since the Church stands for something (orthodoxy and orthopraxy), it can't help opposing something (whatever is opposed to orthodoxy and orthopraxy).

Would it make sense for Orthodox Judaism to promote Buddhism? Would it make sense for the Unitarian Universalist Association to promite belief in the divinity of Christ? Would it make sense for the Japanese Shinto religion to promote the Muslim belief in the Prophet Mohammed? Of course not. Neither does it make sense to expect the Catholic Church to promote views inimical to her own traditional doctrines. Granted, what self-styled liberal Catholics want is to promote a revisionist re-interpretation of what "Catholicism" means. But of course they should hardly be surprised, then, when the Church resists their efforts to denature her teaching.

I will touch on this later. I think there are a few other things that must be mentioned, first and foremost that many liberal Catholics do not believe the Church is a divine institution. It would be hard to dissent from the teachings of Christ if you really believed they were said teachings.