St. Joseph’s Vanguard And Our Lady’s Train

At first, we were under the impression that we would foster a baby for a year. Then, we learned that a year is the longest time possible to foster, and actually, 6 months is usually more common.

Most recently, however, we talked with two foster moms who care for babies and both said that their usual amount of time with a baby is 2 weeks; 4 months was the longest a baby had ever stayed with one of the mothers. Yikes! I’m not sure if I can handle a 2-week stay. That doesn’t seem like quite long enough–no time to establish a routine or catch my breath or normalize a sleep schedule.

There’s so much uncertainty with this process. Devin and I know of two different couples who both were able to foster two babies a piece and adopt all of them. On the other hand, we’ve met one family who fostered babies for a year with the hope of adopting and was unable. I’m not really comfortable with the not-knowing but that may just be what Our Lord wants for me. Dear Hannah and Elizabeth, please pray for me.

Yesterday, I was reminded that people are good. We had a little break during our 6-hour Behavior and Crisis Management class and were chatting with our fellow participants. I asked the woman next to me the reason for her interest in foster care; she explained that she and her husband have already chosen the profile of a 7-year old boy on the TARE gallery whom they were interested in adopting. “But,” she said, “I’d really like to adopt enough boys for a whole baseball team” Her husband grinned and rolled his eyes. The woman to my left, Jennifer, who is currently adopting a sibling group, 3 and 5 years old, agreed; “I want to adopt, like, 15 children, and sometimes I make my husband nervous.” We met her husband on Thursday at our Psychotropic Meds class, and I don’t think he’s that nervous–he’s clearly smitten with their adoptive children. Many of our other classmates shared their sentiments, and we all laughed.

It was refreshing to see such goodness. We were talking about children as a source of joy, not as burdens or bothers. And, the gusto was contagious, making us all a little breathless as we contemplated opening our homes to many many children. Just as negativity and fear can spread, so does love, igniting nearby hearts and wreathing faces in smiles. Laughter seemed to bubble up inside of us at the audacity of generosity. Absolutely lovely.

…unscrupulous persons will commit evil actions.

In Guatemala, which has thankfully begun investigations to overhaul their adoption system, people have been abducting babies to put them up for adoption.

Why?  From the article:

Before the reform, foreign couples, mostly from the U.S., paid up to $30,000 to adopt children.

The previous system was so quick and hassle-free it became the second-largest source of foreign babies to U.S. couples after China.

$30,000 for a baby, while 4,000 are aborted everyday here in our country, and it leads to kidnapping in poor countries like Guatemala.  I don’t have a magic solution, but surely we can see that something is wrong with this situation.

It’s tough to find clothing that is feminine, fashionable, and modest, and I was delighted yesterday to stumble upon the website for Shabby Apple clothing. It’s featured in the newly published Eliza magazine, which, from what I understand is an initiative of young women who are members of LDS. They did a great job with the magazine; it’s hip, chic, and features really cute clothing.

Check it out and consider subscribing. And, thanks, Mormon sisters, for helping to promote good fashion sense in such a spectacular Audrey Hepburn way.

I’ve been reading the Getting Started manual for Regnum Christi over the past several months and wanted to share some things I read recently in Module #10, which discusses a central trait of Regnum Christi: Love for the Church and the Pope:

Regnum Christi is not its own thing.  And it doesn’t do its own thing.  Regnum Christi is a battalion of dedicated, enthusiastic apostles within and for the Church.  It does the Church’s thing: it spreads the Kingdom of Christ.

God inspired the Movement’s charism (a Christ-centered spirituality and an effective apostolic action) for the same reason that he inspires every new charism: to help renew and build up the Church….The redemption that Christ won at so high a price reaches the world through the Church.  It doesn’t reach the world through Regnum Christi or any other ecclesial movement, except in so far as they are rooted in the Church; it reaches the world through the testimony and the sacraments of the Church.

The chapter continues with catechesis about Christ establishing his Church, St. Peter’s primacy and apostolic succession, then explains how we as Regnum Christi members live out our love and dedication to the Church and the Pope: “The Pope is the Vicar of Christ, the visible head of the Church on earth, so then–if we want to serve the Church–we need to be always in step with the Pope, neither ahead nor behind, but always right beside him.”

The excellent National Catholic Register has an exclusive response that Fr. Neuhaus made to Doug Kmiec, who is publicly supporting Sen. Obama and claiming Catholics can support the senator.

Here is a good passage from the beginning:

Mr. Kmiec argues that we can’t rank abortion as greater evil or a more pressing social and legal concern than racism because they are both intrinsic evils. But Mr. Kmiec has misunderstood the meaning of the term intrinsic evil, and the nature of our political moment.

That two actions are both intrinsically evil tells us nothing about the relative gravity of each action. Telling a lie is intrinsically evil. So is rape. They are not equally grave. Except for instances such as perjury or libel, lying is not a crime.

Racism is an attitude that may lead to acts we call racist. But nobody pertinent to our political life today advocates racism or racist acts. The intentional killing of a member of the human family — which is what happens in every abortion — is the most pressing social justice question of our time. Mr. Kmiec’s candidate advocates an unlimited right to abortion.

The question is that of justice for unborn children. When one candidate supports the unlimited abortion license and another wants the abortion question returned to the states, it is disingenuous to suggest that they are equally pro-choice. And to say that the first candidate’s position is closer to a Catholic understanding of subsidiarity is, I am sorry to say, risible. Catholic teaching and the mandate of justice is that all members of the human family, born and unborn, be protected in law. To deny that protection is a grave injustice.

Buy the Register to get the full story.

Pack it up, pack it in, let Pope Benedict and World Youth Day begin!

Isn’t it newsworthy when hundreds of thousands of young people from all over the world convene in Australia to celebrate and grow in their faith, led by an 80-year old theologian from Germany?

Apparently not, because none of the major news sites I watch each day even had a blip on it–maybe they’re waiting for BXVI (that’s “B-Sixteen” for Benedict the sixteenth) to make his appearance.

However, even though Sen. McCain doesn’t use email (how uncool, right d00d?), Pope Benedict has already sent a text message to the throng of young Catholics filling up Australia! (”Young friend, God and his people expect much from u because u have within you the Fathers supreme gift: the Spirit of Jesus - BXVI.”)

“Up until now, no one in the United States has dared to promote the maxim that everything is legitimized in the interests of society, an impious maxim which seems to have been invented in an age of liberty simply to justify every future tyrant.” (Democracy in America, de Toqueville, 1840)

I like this guy. He sees the danger in the false notion so frequently referenced by scientists these days that, because we have the capacity to do something, we ought to do that thing so as to gain knowledge and better ourselves. I heard that notion professed at the Capitol often by scientists who were asking for funding for embryo-destructive research, and it’s dangerous dangerous dangerous. Because, if we should do everything we can for the sake of scientific research, then every American becomes a potential research subject, if they don’t have the wealth or physical age or intelligence to protect them. And, then, science does become a tyrant, subjecting everything in its path to dominance.

Democracy in America, published in 1840:

“America is still the country in the world where the Christian religion has retained the greatest real power over people’s souls and nothing better shows how useful and natural religion is to man, since the country where it exerts the greatest sway is also the most enlightened and free. [Americans] believe religion necessary for the maintenance of republican institutions…they so completely identify the spirit of Christianity with freedom in their minds, and this is not one of those sterile ideas bequeathed by the past to the present nor one which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live. I have seen Americans coming together to dispatch priests to the new states in the West in order to found schools and churches. Their fear is that religion might disappear in the depths of the forest and that the people growing up there might be less fitted for freedom than the society they had left.”

This conviction regarding the necessary link between Christianity and freedom makes sense. Christianity is the only religion which teaches equality between every person and promotes respect for individual conscience. Freedom is safe when citizens follow the teachings of a God who tells them that they cannot treat other citizens in certain ways because those other citizens are made in God’s image; in Christianity, certain rights are completely protected–the right to life, the right to seek Truth, the right to educate one’s family without coercion, and so forth–and citizens are free, therefore, from the tyranny of government upon their persons. But, when the ideas of a nation and its government are not influenced by Christian principles, no one is safe. The government decides which rights belong to persons and families and can take them away if it wishes.

I’m not sure what factor is responsible for the change in our country from the notion that Christianity is necessary for freedom to the notion that Christianity threatens freedom and must be silenced from the public square. But, I don’t like it.

The Church of England has approved women bishops.

I have great respect for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and this was sad to read:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who urged generous provision for opponents [those against women's ordination as bishops], sat with his head in his hands as a proposal for “super bishops” for objectors to women bishops was defeated.

I received in the mail today a letter with no return address, postmarked from Austin, containing a Christian tract (a small pamphlet) entitled, “The Terrors of Hell”, by William C. Nichols.

The above link takes you to Mr. Nichols’ site, I believe, that contains the tract’s contents. I don’t know who sent me this tract, nor why they didn’t want me to know who they were, but I conjecture that they are an Evangelical Protestant who found my blog and wanted to help me see that my faith is in vain, being a Roman Catholic, and that I needed to become a true Christian so I can be saved and avoid Hell.

I think that this person has very good intentions, and I thank them for caring about the salvation of my soul. I care about theirs, too, and have said a prayer for them. I would like to make a blog post about this incident, however, as I think it provides a good opportunity to discuss the critical questions that every Christian should ask themselves concerning their faith.

From Mr. Nichols’ tract:

Why should we be so concerned about hell? Why should we spend time reading about hell? There are several reasons why it is profitable to do so:

1) Hearing about the terrors of hell may shock your conscience and awaken you out of your false security.

2) Hearing about hell helps to deter men from committing sin. Both the godly and the ungodly are persuaded not to sin as much when they are regularly reminded of the terrors of hell.

3) Hearing about the terrors of hell may help to awaken those among us who may think they are saved because they believe in Christ or the facts of the gospel, but who are not really saved and are on their way to hell, but don’t know it.

I believe in Hell. I also think that fear of Hell, while not the most perfect reason to turn to God and love Him, is a good reason to turn to God, so I think that reasons 1 and 2 are true.

Reason 3, however, is different, and I want to focus on it in this post.

The reason listed indicates that there are people who think they are saved but really are not (a dangerous situation to be sure). Why do they think they are saved? Because they believe in Christ or in the gospel.

Clearly, Mr. Nichols uses the word “believe” here to mean something different than the meaning of the word from the Bible. Belief here indicates intellectual recognition or understanding without that understanding translating into a change of life or actions (i.e. the person’s will is not altered to change sinful behavior), rather than belief being a person intellectually understanding the faith and putting it into practice through their will, receiving God’s grace to do so.

I will return to this idea that someone thinks he is saved because he believes in Christ but really doesn’t later.

First, a later passage from the tract:

One of the greatest preachers that ever lived, Jonathan Edwards, wrote, “The glory of God is the greatest good; it is that which is the chief end of creation; it is of greater importance than anything else. But this is one way wherein God will glorify Himself, as in the eternal destruction of ungodly men He will glorify His justice. Therein He will appear as a just governor of the world. The vindictive justice of God will appear strict, exact, awful, and terrible, and therefore glorious.”

Jonathan Edwards was a Protestant minister who believed in Calvinistic teachings. I read his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” as an atheist my junior year in high school as part of our required reading.

The first question that strikes me here is: Why should I believe Jonathan Edwards? What authority does he have to say what is true and false with regard to God, the Christian faith, sin, Hell, etc.?

I am not objecting to the contents of the specific passage quoted above, as there is truth in it, but more generally to the fact that Mr. Nichols decided to use Jonathan Edwards’ writings as authoritative.

The tract begins its conclusion, which returns us to the first point:

Do not think that simply because you go to church, or believe in God, or believe intellectually in the truths of Christianity that you will escape hell. The majority of those who regularly attend churches every week, all over the world, will go to hell…

You who profess to be Christians, but do not read your Bible much and pray little: how shall you escape the damnation of hell? You who are not especially bothered by little sins or troubled by the vain and filthy thoughts which you have: are you ready to go to hell? You who think the kingdom of God consists in a verbal profession of Christ or intellectually believing that Jesus died for your sins, but who are not concerned with living a holy, godly life and give little or no thought to God during the week: are you prepared to endure the torments of hell, day and night, forever and ever?

You had better be, because if these things are true of you, you are headed straight for hell, unless you repent. Do not delude yourself! Christianity does not consist in words, or pious statements, or mere intellectual belief, but in a new heart and a new life dedicated to not sinning and living for the glory of God.

From these passages, it is clearly seen that the “belief” that leads a person to Hell is not belief but rather an intellectual understanding only that does not affect our will (actions).

A problem with these statements is that being a Christian does involve professing our beliefs verbally and believing that Jesus died for my sins: Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Also, in Matthew 10:32,33, Jesus says that every man who acknowledges Him before men, Jesus will acknowledge before the Father.

Notice that when St. Paul uses the word “believe” here he means belief that translates into action, into a change in life, rather than the false belief that this tract condemns.

The tract says Christianity “does not consist in words”–well, as we have seen, this statement is a bit inaccurate; it would be better to say that Christianity “does not consist in words only.”

This tract reminds me of my days as an Evangelical Protestant and the paradoxical lack of security I felt about my salvation even while believing in “eternal security” or “once saved, always saved”. The problem is this: You think you are saved because you believe in Christ and in the gospel and are seeking to follow Him in your life everyday, but, you still commit sins, sometimes the same sins over and over again. Are you really saved? Or do you only think that you are saved, as this tract points out again and again?

If you still commit sins, you must not be a real Christian; you must not really believe in Christ, otherwise you would not sin anymore; when you repented for the umpteenth time of that particular sin that plagues you, was your repentance genuine; was it real, or are you truly still unconverted and therefore on your way to Hell?

When you base your salvation off of whether or not you “think” you are saved, it is a hopeless cause. We must instead turn to objective criteria by which we can determine whether or not we are in a state of grace, that is, in a state whereby if we died at that moment, we would have confidence of receiving Christ’s mercy and being welcomed into Heaven.

What is this objective criteria? It involves two things: 1) Knowing which actions are morally right (good) and which are morally wrong (evil), and 2) Knowing that if we commit an evil action and repent of it, we are forgiven by God, even if we commit that evil action for the 27,325th time.

The first criterion is important because if we don’t know what actions God has declared are good versus those He has condemned as evil, we will very likely commit evil actions and offend God, risking our souls’ salvation.

The second is equally important because we need to know whether we are in a state of friendship with God or not. If we are not, when we die He will look at us and sadly declare that He never knew us. Yes, we can tell God we don’t want Him in our lives anymore and, through a mortal sin, expel Him from our souls; He will not force Himself on us and stay within us when we misuse our freedom and tell Him to get lost.

In the Catholic Church, the faith of which was passed on from Christ to the apostles and down to us, we believe that Christ instituted the sacrament of Confession, where we can confess our sins to God through His priest and, from the priest acting in persona Christi, hear in audible words that Christ has forgiven us of our sins.

Why not just ask God for forgiveness directly and avoid going to His priest? Well, you certainly should ask God directly for forgiveness when you sin and become repentant of it, but also, as soon as possible find a priest to hear your confession because this is the way that Christ established it, and for good reason, too, as you know that you are forgiven and don’t have to live with the fear that you didn’t “really” repent but only thought you did and therefore are still under God’s wrath.

To the person who sent me this tract, I thank you again. I challenge you and my dear readers to ask themselves why they believe that Jonathan Edwards is authoritative, or John Calvin, or Martin Luther, or Max Lucado, or the Left Behind series authors.

And if you feel uncertain of whether you are really forgiven for your sins, know that Christ does not want you to be: He both does not want you to have a false sense of security that once you are “saved” you can commit any sin and not lose your salvation, nor does He want you to be uncertain when you repent of your sins that you are forgiven for them, which is one reason He established the sacrament of Confession.

“Congress was assembled in Independence Hall, at Philadelphia, when the Declaration was adopted…on the morning of the day of its adoption, the venerable bell man ascended to the steeple, and a little boy was placed at the door of the Hall to give him notice when the vote should be concluded. The old man waited long at his post, say ‘They will never do it, they will never do it.’ Suddenly, a loud shout came up from below, and there stood the blue-eyed boy, clapping his hands and shouting, ‘Ring! Ring!!’ Grasping the iron tongue of the bell, backward and forward he hurled it a hundred times, proclaiming, ‘Liberty to the land and to the inhabitants thereof.”

(The Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, BJ Lossing, 1848)

Happy and blessed 4th of July to you!

What a great country we live in; for all of its problems, it is great in countless ways, and I am grateful to God for the United States of America.

I’ve been reading Original Intent, by David Barton, and I am on the chapter where he describes the “misleading metaphor” of the “separation of Church and State”.

We all know this phrase, and I think if you asked most people, they would say it means that religious symbols and arguments have no place in State institutions or State-sponsored events.  This understanding is prevalent due in large part to the success of groups like the ACLU, and it is gravely erroneous.

The result is that the ACLU has succeeded in erasing markers of religious history and influence from hundreds if not thousands of State objects with their wrong arguments, based around the deliberate misinterpretation of the “separation of Church and State”.

So what does it mean?  Who said it, and when, and to whom, and in what context?

President Thomas Jefferson said it in an exchange of letters with the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut.  The Baptists were happy Jefferson was elected President because there were groups in the U.S. pushing for a State-sponsored Christian denomination, in particular the Episcopalians and Congregationalists, and these groups interpreted the First Amendment as aiding their arguments for a national denomination.

The Baptists, and Thomas Jefferson, did not want a State-sponsored denomination because, among other things, it would indicate that the God-given, inalienable right to free exercise of religion was really a right that depended on the government’s whim.

And Thomas Jefferson and the other founders intended the First Amendment exactly to oppose a State-sponsored denomination and prevent the government from meddling in the religious practice of its people.

Thomas Jefferson in his letter to the Danbury Baptists:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.  I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association assurances of my high respect and esteem. [emphasis mine]

Jefferson affirms that religious liberties were inalienable, God-given rights, and that the wall of separation between Church and State was “not to limit religious activities in public; rather, they were to limit the power of the government to prohibit or interfere with those expressions.”

Isn’t it interesting that groups like the ACLU have twisted this phrase to suit their own atheistic agenda?  We must educate ourselves and turn back the tide to reestablish the true foundations of our nation and the freedoms we possess at the labor, sweat, blood, and tears of our forefathers.

Lord, please bless our country and every person in it!

Christ says: “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”

I’ve been thinking about this truth recently, having once lived in slavery to my own disordered passions and desires.

Also, I recently posted about the head of the Ugandan AIDS committee begging the Western liberal powers to stop exporting their messages of promiscuity and condoms to Uganda, where those messages of “freedom” to have sex when you want with whom you want have stopped the positive progress made against HIV infections and begun increasing them again.

Here is the tragic irony: Planned Parenthood and their cohorts have the mistaken notion that sexual “freedom” means promiscuity: Have sex with whomever you desire and “protect” yourself from the twin diseases of STDs and pregnancy with condoms and birth control or when that fails, abortion.

But this is not freedom; rather, it is slavery, for when you tell someone that they cannot control themselves, cannot control their sexual desires, and they take that message to heart, you are telling them that their disordered desires control them, and thus, they are slaves to those desires rather than being the master of them.

True freedom is the ability to control your desires and passions, correcting through intellect and will the disordered temptations that will always come, and growing in the opposite virtues of chastity, fortitude, and love.

Christ words to us:

So Jesus said (to them), “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.” Because he spoke this way, many came to believe in him.

Jesus then said to those Jews who believed in him, “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How can you say, ‘You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. A slave does not remain in a household forever, but a son always remains. So if a son frees you, then you will truly be free.

So said Senator Obama in his Father’s Day speech. And I totally agree, both on this point and on his broader message that Black fathers who have abandoned their parental responsibilities need to truly be fathers to their children.

But if fatherhood begins at conception, doesn’t that mean that the baby’s life begins at conception? Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council made a video asking this same question:

Fides et Ratio: Faith and Reason.

Don’t be impressed that I know Latin because I don’t; however, the Latin I do know is from the fact that the encyclicals and letters of the Popes have Latin titles. Fides et Ratio is an excellent one where Pope John Paul II explored the relationship between faith and reason in religion, philosophy, and society.

This post is in response to the recent flap between Dr. James Dobson, a prominent Evangelical, and Senator Obama, where Dr. Dobson criticized Senator Obama’s remarks about the Bible and how Christian faith should or should not affect the laws of our country.

A few years ago Sen. Obama spoke to a liberal Christian group, referenced some Old Testament Hebrew laws (don’t eat shellfish, etc.) to make the point that using the Bible to guide law-making doesn’t make sense. He also pointed out that even if we were all Christians, would we teach Dr. Dobson’s Christianity or Al Sharpton’s in schools?

He said that religious persons must frame their arguments in ways accessible to all people. That is very true! However, that doesn’t mean that arguments involving faith and theology should be excluded from the discussion.

Most of Senator Obama’s characterizations here are straw-man arguments. Dr. Dobson rightly critiqued him for making these statements, but the reasoning he gave for why Sen. Obama’s arguments are wrong were not the best ones.

No one is talking about teaching the Christian faith in public schools (that’s one straw-man). Further, the Christian faith and its theology have developed over the centuries in the Church: Senator Obama would do well to pick up a Catechism of the Catholic Church and read the moral law spelled out clearly; he won’t see anything about shellfish; he will see that slavery is condemned, and then he should ask himself how it was that a religion came to such reasonable moral teachings.

He will also see how faith and reason both have parts to play, for example, from Fides et Ratio (52):

If the Magisterium has spoken out more frequently since the middle of the last century, it is because in that period not a few Catholics felt it their duty to counter various streams of modern thought with a philosophy of their own. At this point, the Magisterium of the Church was obliged to be vigilant lest these philosophies developed in ways which were themselves erroneous and negative.

The censures were delivered even-handedly: on the one hand, fideism (59) and radical traditionalism,(60) for their distrust of reason’s natural capacities, and, on the other, rationalism (61) and ontologism (62) because they attributed to natural reason a knowledge which only the light of faith could confer.

The positive elements of this debate were assembled in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, in which for the first time an Ecumenical Council—in this case, the First Vatican Council—pronounced solemnly on the relationship between reason and faith. The teaching contained in this document strongly and positively marked the philosophical research of many believers and remains today a standard reference-point for correct and coherent Christian thinking in this regard.

Pope John Paul Ii denounces fideism, adherence to a faith without engaging one’s God-given reasoning ability. We see modern examples of fideism in radical Muslims who murder innocent people and themselves for the promise of an eternity of carnal pleasure in Heaven (no doubt many have this motivation and others (hatred, money, etc.), but I think this promise is a big part of their actions).

At the same time, rationalism is condemned as well, attempting to rely on reason alone to discern the truth of all things.

JPII continued:

Against all forms of rationalism, then, there was a need to affirm the distinction between the mysteries of faith and the findings of philosophy, and the transcendence and precedence of the mysteries of faith over the findings of philosophy.

Against the temptations of fideism, however, it was necessary to stress the unity of truth and thus the positive contribution which rational knowledge can and must make to faith’s knowledge: “Even if faith is superior to reason there can never be a true divergence between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals the mysteries and bestows the gift of faith has also placed in the human spirit the light of reason. This God could not deny himself, nor could the truth ever contradict the truth”.(65)

I would love to hear an intelligent discussion between Senator Obama and Dr. Dobson (or maybe George Weigel or Archbishop Burke or Chaput) on the topic of faith and reason.

However, that discussion will probably never happen. Why not? Well, we as Americans like sound bites, and quick repartees, catchy slogans, and short, funny remarks. Also, I am not sure that Senator Obama has the philosophical education to discuss this matter, in spite of obtaining a political science degree from Columbia and a law degree from Harvard. Unfortunately, I think the education he received did not contain much on the natural law, which is the law written on every human heart, nor on how faith and reason complement each other perfectly.

Dr. Dobson also didn’t engage Senator Obama on the grounds of faith and reason, explaining how the two can and should be used in conjunction to discern the truth and make wise judgments. Instead, he attacked Obama’s understanding of Christian theology and the Bible.

Even though Dr. Dobson is correct in criticizing Obama’s vague and erroneous references to the Bible, which show his beliefs are against the Christian faith taught by the apostles and transmitted faithfully in the Church, it would be much better if he brought up the arguments against Obama’s positions on the family, abortion, same-sex unions, and stem-cell research based on the natural law.

Fortunately, there is an resurgence in the number of schools teaching Thomistic philosophy (i.e. based on St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, etc.), bringing back the “Great Books” programs, where classics are read and discussed, and also people in churches and schools are discovering the philosophy of Pope John Paul II and his developments on the personalistic norm, as well as his brilliant writings (Fides et Ratio, Veritatis Splendor, and so on).

When persons of faith are well formed in these important teachings, they become dynamos creating a more human, more just society. Let us pray that our country’s leaders, of all political parties, will learn these principles.

I caught a Catholic news release today saying that Archbishop O’Brien of Baltimore was “restricting” the work of the Legionaries of Christ in his archdiocese.

That sounded alarming, so I read the article and realized that it was a somewhat sensationalized article title. The archbishop simply asked the Legionaries to keep him informed of their activities and to only give spiritual direction to young men over 18 years old.

For those who don’t know, the Legionaries of Christ are an institution of pontifical right within the Catholic Church, in more common terms, a Catholic religious community of priests and brothers, similar to the Franciscans or the Benedictines or the Carmelites, though of course each of those communities have different charisms (spiritualities and ways of living the faith).

Katie and I are members of the lay ecclesial movement of the Legionaries, called Regnum Christi. There are some 65,000 Regnum Christi members world-wide.

Back to the article, the interesting thing about it is that the Legionary priests and Regnum Christi members here in Austin keep our bishop informed of what we are doing and ask his permission for priests to come and celebrate Mass or give spiritual direction, etc., and have been for years.

Also, we bring all the apostolates we want to start to the pastor of our parish for approval, and our apostolates are based out of the parish. This Fall, I hope to lead a FAMILIA team of men who will meet at our parish and study the Church’s teachings on work; I posted a month or two ago about the enthusiastic support I was given from our parish leadership for this apostolate, which was a blessing.

All of this is to say that to dispel rumors, fear, uncertainty, and doubts, it is best to play with your cards face up. I have no secrets but just want to strengthen the faith of my brothers and sisters in the Church, many of whom do not know their faith well and have a weak relationship with Jesus.

My parish’s pastor, when Katie and I asked him to meet with us for spiritual direction, told us that his schedule was so booked that it would be very difficult for him to do, even just one time. However, when we told him we were in Regnum Christi, he encouraged us whole-heartedly to go to the Legionary priests for spiritual direction.

I wrote sometime back that I would make blog posts about my experience in Regnum Christi; I plan to continue to do so whenever articles like this pop up, or I have some particular story to share.

May Christ’s Kingdom Come!

Okay, so it’s time to make the official announcement that I am preparing to apply to UT this winter for a graduate degree in Government, God willing. I’ll talk more about it later, but I say this to explain why I am spending my mornings reading de Toqueville’s classic, “Democracy in America”, published 1840.

Alexis de Toqueville must have been a brilliant man. I have consistently been impressed with his insight into our culture and system of government, as well as his grasp of our weaknesses. These weaknesses are few, and it is evident from his writing that he profoundly admires the political genius which makes the United States great.

With that said, I read this yesterday and was amazed by his foresight. He saw then that the strength of our civil society rested, among other things, upon our homogeneous national identity, writing:

“To ensure the long life of a confederation, a uniformity of civilization is no less necessary than a uniformity of needs in the diverse peoples forming it…In the United States, one fact which admirably supports the existence of the federal government is that the different states have roughly similar interests, common origins and language as well as the same level of civilization, all of which almost always produce an easy mutual agreement.”

Americans in 1840 were all generally Christian, educated (at least minimally), and of European descent. So, when we read the Constitution’s words ensuring a separation of Church and State, we all knew that meant the government would not restrict the free exercise of religion; but, it doesn’t mean that anymore. And, when we read the beautiful words about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, we all knew that meant life for all the innocent, in the womb or in the hospice bed; but, it doesn’t mean that anymore.

Because, times have changed, and we don’t share the same homogeneity of ideas. We have the “culture wars” now and political polemics. We have same-sex “marriage” legalized by the courts in California, despite 60% of the population voting otherwise, while Texas refuses to recognize such a marriage. We have the US Supreme Court upholding the federal law banning partial-birth abortion, and the state of Virginia passing a law allowing the abortion practice. It’s a political mess.

What does de Toqueville say happens when conflict ensues between the states or between the federal and state jurisdiction? It’s definitely not good.

However, in view of the fact that I am a member of Regnum Christi, one of whose charisms is proactive hope, I can’t end on that gloomy note. There is hope, so much of it. The homeschooling movement, the (now) simple majority of young people who are pro-life, the holy Pope who leads the Church and holy priests who serve us. Let’s keep calling our legislators and praying for those in authority. Let’s keep working. TKC!

And is hitting Britain and Canada hard.

In Britain, Catholic Charities adoption service has to close down after 120 years of good work because they refuse to place children with homosexual people.

In Canada, people are being fined, threatened, and have had their right to free speech taken away by Canadian bureaucrats simply by saying that sexual acts with people of the same sex are morally wrong. (More here also).

These attacks on marriage and the family are coming to our shores, too, unless we stop them. Senator Obama, if elected, will advance them further at every opportunity. Senator McCain and the Republican party will fight against them.

Remember, anything that has to do with a person’s sexuality and how they act in regards to it is a moral behavior. Moral behaviors are not intrinsic traits like whether a person is black or white, Honduran or Italian, or even male or female, but rather are behaviors that can be controlled by the person.

Inertia is the thing from Newtonian physics that makes it a good idea to wear your seat belt when the car is moving.

There is a human inertia as well that resists a person when he is considering conversion, say, to Christianity, or more specifically, to the Catholic faith.

I became convinced that the Catholic Church’s claims to God-given authority were true, yet I remember literally weeping when I contemplated the betrayal that my Evangelical friends would feel if I decided to convert and had to tell them. And I had been an Evangelical for less than one year.

How much more difficult is it, then, for a person who has spent their entire life in a particular ecclesial community to convert to Catholicism?

For me, it was a little bit easier for two reasons: Firstly, I had recently had a radical conversion from atheism to Christianity and so had already been through the ringer once, so to speak, and secondly, my temperament is melancholic, which means I tend to value principles and justice over people concerns (”will I hurt my friend’s feelings” is less important than “this person needs to know the truth”).

But when you combine the fact that some people have never had such a radical conversion, and that their temperaments are phlegmatic or sanguine, and that their community of family, friends, and associates are often strongly tied to their ecclesial community, you can begin to understand how difficult it can be to even consider converting.

I want to stress that last difficulty especially. Can you imagine the difficulty of conversion if you faced being ostracized by your family and your friends? Can you imagine the difficulty if your entire country was a state-mandated religion (Islam, for example), and indeed, even the country’s laws forbade conversion with the death penalty?

These are extreme examples, yet people have converted from religions whose communities led to them being ostracized from everyone they once held dear; I admire their courage and desire for the truth.

This human inertia, if you will, is impossible to overcome but by God’s grace. Fortunately, Christ does want every person to know the truth of Him and of who they are, as well as the moral truths that He teaches, so His help is never lacking to one who asks it.

Jesus said, “He who seeks, shall find,” and “my followers must worship me in spirit and in truth”. If you are struggling to embrace the truth that you have found, examine the reasons for your reluctance: are they of a human nature? Ask God to help you overcome them, and He will.

I’m not one of them.

Neither is Archbishop Chaput of Denver, Colorado. But the newly minted group who named themselves “Roman Catholic for Obama” saw fit to selectively quote him in their promotional literature.

He responded in a charitable and clear way:

In the years after the [President Jimmy] Carter loss, I began to notice that very few of the people, including Catholics, who claimed to be “personally opposed” to abortion really did anything about it. Nor did they intend to. For most, their personal opposition was little more than pious hand-wringing and a convenient excuse—exactly as it is today. In fact, I can’t name any pro-choice Catholic politician who has been active, in a sustained public way, in trying to discourage abortion and to protect unborn human life—not one. Some talk about it, and some may mean well, but there’s very little action. In the United States in 2008, abortion is an acceptable form of homicide. And it will remain that way until Catholics force their political parties and elected officials to act differently.

Emphasis mine.

Archbishop Chaput quotes from their website:

[Catholics for Obama:] “After faithful thought and prayer, we have arrived at the conclusion that Senator Obama is the candidate whose views are most compatible with the Catholic outlook, and we will vote for him because of that—and because of his other outstanding qualities—despite our disagreements with him in specific areas. “

[Chaput again:] I’m familiar with this reasoning. It sounds a lot like me thirty years ago. And thirty years later, we still have about a million abortions a year. Maybe Roman Catholics for Obama will do a better job at influencing their candidate….

Changing the views of “pro-choice” candidates takes a lot more than verbal gymnastics, good alibis, and pious talk about “personal opposition” to killing unborn children. I’m sure Roman Catholics for Obama know that, and I wish them good luck. They’ll need it.

This past Easter, during my self-imposed moratorium on (constructively) critical posts, Senator Obama made the comment that he didn’t want his daughters to be punished with a baby if they had sex and got pregnant.

Horrible isn’t it? But I once looked at children in the exact same way and feared few things more than fathering a child and that child “ruining my life”. That is exactly how I thought about it: It would “ruin” my life.

Why? Because I had plans, big ones, to make a great impact on the human race, solving scientific challenges and propelling our species across the solar system and the galaxy. I was going to do this and that and become a great man, and having a child would mess all that up because I would have to pay for the child’s care and upbringing and “it” would take up all my time and ruin my plans.

I wouldn’t mind having a few children, one day, when I was ready to do so and had everything all lined up. So I can understand how Senator Obama thinks about children and the possibility of his daughters having one someday, out of wedlock and unwanted.

Children are a punishment because they ruin your life if you get pregnant (or get your girlfriend pregnant) when you don’t want one.

What is the common thread through all these statements: They are all me-focused. It’s all about me and what I want and what I am going to do. But when another person, a little baby, defenseless, comes into being through my actions, suddenly it’s not all about me because this baby is a person who has the right to live and to live long enough to decide for themselves what they want to do.

But with legal abortion, I can decide that that child, that other person, dies, and do so with legal impunity, though the emotional, spiritual, and sometimes physical scars that it leaves are deep and ugly.

Faithful Catholics believe that the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit to teach all truth, that she cannot err in matters of faith and morals. I assented to this belief with all my heart when I entered the Catholic Church as a convert 7 years ago as all converts do.

The Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, teaches that abortion is always morally wrong, a grave evil. Senator Obama supports every form of abortion through all stages of the baby’s life in the womb, and even outside the womb if the baby manages to survive.

His belief directly contradicts the teaching of the Church and therefore of Christ.

Archbishop Chaput finishing the out-of-context quote that this group took from him:

But [Catholics who support pro-choice candidates] also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it. What is a “proportionate” reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It’s the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life—which we most certainly will. If we’re confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed.

I remember going to elementary school with my older sister, and she told us one day that one of her classmates had sickle cell anemia, a genetic disorder that causes severe pain and shortens the person’s life by decades.  There was no cure for it at that time.

Today, things are changing; just last week, the Texas legislature, which is not in session currently, held a special hearing to learn more about adult stem cell successes, including one boy born with sickle cell anemia who was cured by the adult stem cells from his little brother’s umbilical cord!

“It was told to me that point blank that this disease is not curable. There’s nothing you can do but give him medication every day for the rest of his life,” his mother Darlene Davis said.

But when Joseph was 2 years old, his little brother, Isaac, was born. And, along with a new playmate came a new hope.

The blood inside Isaac’s umbilical cord had adult stem cells that doctors transplanted to Joseph.

Only weeks later, Joseph was healed.

Researchers call it a miracle cure with no controversy involved.

Texas Alliance for Life (including my wonderful wife) lobbied hard last session for Texas to fund an umbilical cord blood bank, and they succeeded convincing the legislators, who earmarked $5 million to the program.  However, much, much more can be done:

Texas already funds research for the cells. Just last year, it approved the creation of the Texas Cord Blood Bank that accepts donations, but survivors of transplants say more could be done. Experts say many hospitals do not collect the donations yet. Fewer than 10 actually participate.

On Wednesday speaker, Tom Craddick ordered an Interim Charge hearing. The hearing began for the Texas House Appropriations Subcommittee on Adult Stem Cell Research at 10 a.m. It is the first hearing to call for a House Interim report on the support of adult stem cell research and treatments.

Adult stem cells are often seen as a safer alternative to embryonic stem cells because the cells are taken from the blood of a living person. The cells have also shown to be more effective in medical research.

The last sentence is a big understatement, to say the least: Adult stem cells are being used in over 70 different treatments, of which sickle cell anemia is just one, and this is with still a small number of hospitals participating!  Embryonic stem cells, on the other hand, in addition to killing an innocent human being, have resulted in zero treatments, as in none, nowhere, helping not even one person.

The little boy and his parents speak:

“I was born with sickle cell anemia, but now I’m cured because my younger brother Isaac saved my life with his cord blood. I don’t have to go to the hospital or take shots. I can do what any other 8-year-old can do, and I’m very happy about that,” said Joseph Davis, II.

Davis’ donation came from his younger brother’s umbilical cord.

“Today, my son is standing here, standing here today, healed from sickle cell disease. I can’t tell everybody to get on this behind me right now but I know from last year to looking at this year, it’s happening. People are getting to know about adult stem cell, umbilical cord blood. This is why I love what I do, I don’t want to see this blessing for myself, I want to see the blessing for everybody,” said Darlene Davis, mother of adult stem cell recipient.

KVUE news has the video of the family talking about being cured.

Those words are part of the Creed, but both Catholics and (some) Protestants speak them and profess them to be true.  They are called the four marks of the Church.  So what do they mean then to each group?

That is the question that Bryan Cross just posted about on his blog, and he answered it much better than I could have!

Excerpt (on the Holy mark):

Sanctum:
The Catholic understanding of the holiness of the Church is that the Church is actually holy. This does not mean that her members on earth have perfect holiness, or that they all have the same degree of holiness, or even that the majority are exceptionally holy; in fact we are all still sinners. Nor does it mean that in their good deeds pagans and heretics can never outshine Catholics. But it does mean that the Church stands apart from the world in her godly practice and sanctification; she testifies by the manner of her life and witness to the righteousness of God, the dignity of human life, the goodness of creation, the future judgment and the life of the world to come. Her members on earth have a “real though imperfect” holiness (CCC 825), especially insofar as they receive the life of Christ through the means of grace in the sacraments. Moreover, the canonized saints are examples to us of the sanctifying transformative power of the Holy Spirit working in and through the Church. Through the continuous use of the sacraments and prayer, we are truly and actually transformed into virtuous people.

The common Reformed conception of holiness by contrast, is formalized and de-materialized. According to this conception, our holiness is essentially something imputed to us, a legal declaration in which Christ’s righteousness is credited to our account, covering us from God’s wrath, but not transforming us into persons to whom God could honestly say, “Well done good and faithful servant.” All our deeds are as filthy rags. So the Church and the believer are treated by God *as if* holy, as if as holy as Christ, but not transformed so as to be actually holy. (I have explained all this in more detail here. To qualify, I’m speaking of the common contemporary Reformed conception of the gospel, not Calvin’s own position.)

I remember one service (when I went to the Southern Baptist Convention community where I was baptized) and the pastor described our holiness in almost these exact words, the key ones being “imputed” or “declared”.

Everyone in the congregation had their bibles open and were taking notes, as is normal, and all of them listened and took that in, but at this time I had begun considering whether the church I was at was the closest to “true Christianity”, and I thought, “how do I know that what he is saying is really true?” because I had learned by this time that “infused” versus “imputed” righteousness was something debated between Catholics and Protestants and was a key difference.

The entire post is well-worth reading; in short, the Reformed (Protestant) understanding of the four marks of the Church is formalized and de-materialized while the Catholic understanding of the marks is sacramental and visible.  For example, Catholics claim that there really are successors of the apostles, the Bishops, and that their succession can be really traced through all the beautiful and ugly history of the world and of the Church to Christ himself and the 12 he chose.

Or, the Gospel of Barack Obama, by Mark Shea.

This article is over-the-top, but amazingly, the most over-the-top quotes are real ones from real people who are putting Obama on the level of the divine. Excerpts:

Gary Hart: “He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians . . . [he is] the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century.”

Eve Konstantine: “Barack Obama is our collective representation of our purest hopes, our highest visions and our deepest knowings . . . He’s our product out of the all-knowing quantum field of intelligence.”

There are many more–it’s worth reading the full account linked to above–but the last one I will mention is by none other than Oprah Winfrey:

“We’re here to evolve to a higher plane . . . he is an evolved leader . . . [he] has an ear for eloquence and a Tongue dipped in the Unvarnished Truth.”

I thought is was the fundamentalist religious right that was fanatical and irrational. At least however those of us who deify someone only deify God Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, rather than a fellow creature, human and frail.

So what would Senator Obama, the Defender of Truth and Justice in the Galaxy, bring if he were elected?

1. Two Supreme Court Justices who consider abortion a right and over one hundred activist liberal judges appointed to Federal courts.

2. Federally funded embryonic stem cell research, cloning, and animal-human “chimera” research. (Remember, these horrific experiments create and then destroy human beings; also, there have been zero treatments from embryonic stem cells, while 70+ treatments using adult stem cells helping thousands of people every year).

3. Federally funded abortion on demand, throughout all nine months of pregnancy.

4. Abortion in military hospitals and the reinstatement and probable increase of millions of dollars to fund abortion and sterilization overseas.

5. Regulatory attacks on pro-life doctors, nurses, clinics, and non-profit groups.

6. The repeal of conscience clause exceptions for doctors and pharmacists who don’t want to give out abortifacient drugs that kill babies in their mothers’ wombs.

7. The “Freedom of Choice Act”, a federal statute mandating abortion on demand in every state.

8. The end of abstinence education in favor of “you can’t control yourself, use a condom and the pill” education, euphemized as “comprehensive sex ed”.

9. The end of the highly successful ABc program in Africa that stresses Abstinence, Be faithful to your spouse, and only if you refuse to act responsibly by doing those things, use a condom.

10. The endorsement of same-sex unions, ostensibly stopping short of marriage, but as we have seen in California, same-sex “marriage” would be coming from his judicial appointees in the coming years everywhere.

(-National Catholic Register, May 18, 2008 edition, plus my additions)

This must be some of the “Unvarnished Truth” that Oprah Winfrey spoke of that Obama is immersed in.

People long for healing and hope, but these things are only found in Jesus Christ, not in Barack Obama.

How is it that I never knew this before?

I heard it recently and looked it up: Sure enough, the first man to formulate a scientific heliocentric cosmology (yes, before Galileo) was Nicolaus Copernicus, a Catholic priest.

For more on the truth of the Galileo-Catholic Church controversy, see here.

The predominant understanding of this situation in popular culture is quite off base (see my back-and-forth with someone on the New York Times Papal Discussion blog recently: search within the page for the word “Galileo”).

Bryan Cross at Principium Unitatis (such a cool name), whose blog is dedicated to restoring Christian unity, made another excellent post about all the “denominations” within Christianity, specifically asking the question: Are these splits branches within the Church or are they schisms?

The genius of this post is his critique of a “denominational diagram” created by another group which attempts to show at a coarse granularity where each denomination broke off from.

The problem with this diagram is that it shows that there is no trunk left on the tree of Christianity!  It has all “branched” into different “denominations” such that there is no one true trunk that preserves the fullness of Christ’s teachings.

However, at the bottom of the diagram, there is a trunk, up until the great schism of 1054.  So Bryan created a diagram for the first 1000 years of Christianity, and notice it looks much different:

It’s different because the trunk is intact, the Catholic Church, and the “branches” are all of the schisms caused by different heresies that people proposed as truth throughout the first Christian millennium.

No one calls the Nestorians or Montanists “denominations” but rather recognizes their break from Christ’s Church and their subsequent fall into error.

So why then do we call all the schisms of the most recent 600 years “branches” or “denominations” instead of “schisms”?

Bryan asks the tough questions:

This raises serious questions about the veracity of Diagram 1. If all those sects of the first millennium were separations from the Church (and Diagram 1 clearly assumes that to be the case, since it shows the Church to be visibly *one* just prior to 1054), then why should we think that at some point (either following 1054 or after some point in the 16th century) there is no continuing ‘trunk’, and that therefore these second millennium divisions are all equally authentic ‘branchings within’ the Church? What is it that makes separations of the first millennium *schisms* and *heresies*, but makes separations of the second millennium mere *branchings within* the Church? Whose determination about whether something is a mere “branch of the Church” or a “schism from the Church” is authoritative? Is it for each person to decide for himself? If so, then if the Ebionites were to construct a diagram of the Church they could begin the branching in 63 AD, and call themselves an authentic branch of the Church.

It looks like the person who made Diagram 1 simply decided that all the divisions of the first millennium were “separations from the Church”, while the divisions of the second millennium were “separations within the Church”. But on what basis did he or she make this decision? On the basis of some shared “mere Christianity” of the second millennium? Why then couldn’t the extension of “mere Christianity” include all these sects of the first millennium? Who gets to determine the extension of “mere Christianity”? How is it not arbitrary that, for example, the Baptists, are thought to be included within “mere Christianity” while the Monophysites are not? The Pentecostals are, but the Montanists are not? And so on. The answer cannot be “Well the Baptists and Pentecostals share my general interpretation of Scripture”, because any Monophysite could say the same thing about fellow Monophysites. It is naive to assume that heretics and schismatics don’t appeal to Scripture to justify their positions: see here and here. What counts as “mere Christianity” therefore cannot be based on what people defend using Scripture. Unless the Protestant wishes to allow “mere Christianity” to extend to all these divisions of the first millennium, he will need some non-arbitrary, non-stipulative way of limiting the extension of “mere Christianity” to what Protestants have in common with Catholics and Orthodox. But it seems to me that that is precisely what he does not have.

I haven’t seen anyone comment on his post; these are the hard questions that for me, only found an answer by believing that Christ established a visible Church and preserved her miraculously by his grace from teaching error.

Cardinal Rode (I think it is pronounced Row-DAY), the Prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life celebrated Mass for the Legionaries in Rome a few months ago and was greatly encouraging in his homily.

Cardinal Rode began: