Praying for Peace

Courtesy of patheos.com

I'm sure you've noticed that the world is a wreck. By all accounts things are spiraling out of control, with hatred and violence on the rise. Whether it's racialized violence in the US, vitriolic anger expressed towards the elder population in the UK over the #Brexit vote, or the continued genocide against Christians in the middle east, the world is steadily growing darker.

For Christians of all denominations the answer is to pray for peace. Yes, we must work for peace in the world through whatever means is appropriate but our work must be built on a foundation of solid prayer. Our prayer life is the foundation for everything we do in life. If we are not people of prayer than our work is in vain.

The Christian recognizes that we are people of prayer. In the Bible Jesus is seen beginning or ending important things in prayer. A great example of this is both the difficult teaching of the Last Supper and at the start of the Lord's Passion in the Garden. If we are to live Christ-like lives then prayer is an every day activity, and it should be our first course of action when the world turns to darkness.

The secular world mocks us for our prayers. My Facebook feed was filled with mockery of Christians who offered prayers after the tragedy in Orlando. That mockery quickly turned to blaming Christians for standing on belief and principal against the secularizing of our society. Our belief is our greatest way to stand up against evil forces in the world, and for this the secular world mocks us because they are afraid. They fear what belief means. They fear that we are right. If they didn't then their mockery wouldn't be rooted in anger

Non-believers want us to doubt the existence of God. We must never give into this temptation, for it is rooted in despair. Archbishop Fulton Sheen describes this best:

“The evil in the world must not make me doubt the existence of God. There could be no evil if there were no God. Before there can be a hole in a uniform, there must be a uniform; before there is death, there must be life; before there is error, there must be truth; before there is a crime, there must be liberty and law; before there is a war, there must be peace; before there is a devil, there must be a God, rebellion against whom made the devil.” 

Peace is rooted in God and His holy presence in society. Our secular society has created the violence it now despairs over by eliminating God from the public square. Prayer, in private and in public (in a manner that is not rooted in vanity) is our best way to bring God back into the public square. As Christians we are commanded to be brave people of prayer. In light of the tragedies in Dallas, Orlando, and the ongoing tragedies in the Middle East I challenge you as a Christian to prayerfully ask God for what we as Christians should do and advocate for to address the root causes of tragedy. Be open to what He tells you. It just might change your life.

Gender Ideology is a War Against Creation

One of the issues that lead me into the Catholic Church was the Left's hatred of the natural order. When I was a progressive wannabe-activist I was very uncomfortable with the entire issue of "transgender" rights. I intuitively understood the real issue: that there is no such thing as a 'transgender' person, just people in deep need of mental health assistance. For the Left, to believe such things is heresy, as science is merely a social construct and is fluid, just like gender. 


Bishop Henry of Alberta, Canada, has rightly labeled the move by the New Democratic government to push gender ideology on students of that province as totalitarian."“The issues are not just about bathrooms, plumbing and urination, parental rights, safety of children, how people feel, GSAs [gay-straight alliances] and an imperfect Bill 10. What is at stake is the very order of creation.” Gender ideology is an attack on the order of creation itself because we can see at the most fundamental level evidence for a logic to creation. Everything is ordered. We see it in the structure of cells, the uncompromising nature of the laws of physics that make life on Earth possible but almost impossible anywhere else and, most importantly, we see it in the DNA of every human being. Our DNA determines our gender or sex (a false distinction if ever there was one) and no personal feelings will ever change that.

The Left has determined that liberty means ordering creation unto ourselves. To bend the world to fit our own perception. This is an expression of the ultimate logic of what Pope Benedict XVI called 'The Dictatorship of Relativism.' According to this view, EVERYTHING is relative, including science and the order of creation. This despite the fact that if modern medicine were to treat gender as fluid then the practice of medicine would not be able to function properly. 

Pope Francis, in a rare moment of absolute clarity, denounced 'gender ideology' as 'demonic.' "The Pope has received backlash from the LGBT lobby for criticizing “an academic perspective that sees gender identities as a spectrum rather than as binaries.” Basing himself on Biblical theology, the Pope has declared that God creates people as “male and female,” rather than an ever expanding spectrum of contrived pseudo-sexual genders." From the womb we are either male or female.

The word conception is revealing. At the moment of conception a human being is conceived. Conceived. Conceived. Man is an idea that is conceived in the mind of God, which is expressed in the womb of our mothers. God has total knowledge of who we are at the moment we are created. He knows our potential better than we likely ever could. While we are free to make choices about any number of ideas, choosing our gender defies both science and the natural order. Pope Francis called gender ideology demonic because at its core the movement rejects this concept entirely. Only I know myself and can change myself into anything I want, is the logic of the regressive Left. Gender ideology further separates man from God by denying the essential nature that God gave unto man.


Before God's wrath comes upon people he first allows them to go mad. In the story of King Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Daniel we see the king erect a false idol for worship. Three Hebrews refused to worship and were cast into the fiery furnace as punishment, only to be protected by  God because of their faith. Later the king, after releasing them and having a change of heart, had a dream of a giant tree that puzzled him. Daniel, one of the three Hebrews, explained that his dream symbolized the king's pride and foretold of the fall of his nation and many nations thereafter due to his immense pride. Not long thereafter the king went mad, living like an animal for a period of seven years. Today, our culture and societies are going mad in the same way. Our immense pride, coupled with prosperity even in times of economic struggle have wrought a collective insanity that threatens not only the order of creation but our own social stability.

Gender ideology is a war against reality. St. Thomas Aquinas and those who built on his work long after his death would, in the early 20th century, refute gender ideology before it was conceived in the minds of the cultural Marxists. Perception begins in the mind, and never leaves the mind. It fails to grasp the only certainty we have: reality, the ordered creation. The ability to identify people based on sex is a primal, natural and normative function of reason. As man is a creature of reason gender ideology is not only unreasonable but functionally a rejection of reason.

Book Review: Lord of the World

When a book is recommended by both Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Pope Francis it's worth considering. When that book is a 1984-esque scifi novel, well, I was intrigued. I'm not normally one to take book reviews from public figures too seriously but when two very, very different popes make a book recommendation it's worth heading.

The book? Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson, which tells the tale of a world gone fully secular. Protestantism is dead, Catholicism largely irrelevant to the public sphere, and Islam reduced to a handful of true believers. Secular humanism and all of the evils that are inevitable with it (loss of human dignity chief among them) reigns supreme. Into this environment a charismatic leader with an almost supernatural ability to charm people rises. Only the few Catholics in society oppose him, leading to the Church being driven underground. This novel is an end-times piece, a sort of Catholic Left Behind without any of the non-scriptural 'rapture' stuff that end-timers believe in for some reason.

Why was this book heavily recommended by Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI and Pope Francis? If you read Lord of the World you'll see why pretty quickly. While the author gets a lot of his predictions about the future wrong (Telegraphs and typewriters in the mid-21st century?!) the meat of the story revolves around what St. John Paul II called the Culture of Death. Key features of the culture include rampant boredom, self-centeredness, and easily available euthanasia. One wonders if the author chose not to touch the issues of sexuality and abortion due to his own religious convictions and sense of propriety.

Regardless, euthanasia is a central and looming issue in the story. Instead of paramedics the emergency responders provide euthanasia. Depression, which runs rampant in the culture, can be cured with legally sanctioned suicide. If this seems far fetched consider that in 2013 the Dutch euthanized 650 newborn babies. Not abortions but the killing of newborn babies,sanctioned by the state and accepted by a population so numbed to the basic requirements of humanity because they have largely turned their backs on the faith.

That is the direction our culture is heading in, if Islam doesn't conquer the west first. Lord of the World details the rise of the anti-Christ amidst this cesspool of indifference, coming from the world of politics. He has no faith but in Humanity and institutes worship of idols to restore a sense of purpose in the population. He is seductive, mysterious, magnetic...and American. The author is British, which may explain that touch, though we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that America couldn't produce such a figure.

Written in 1907 Lord of the World  is a startling book that is still relevant today for any Christian with a taste for science fiction. I recommend it highly, giving it 4/5 stars. My only complaint is that there are parts of the book written in Latin (having to do with the Mass) and, given that I am unfamiliar with the Tridentine Mass, don't understand Latin. Call that the failings of being a convert. The book can be purchased cheaply from Amazon through the link on the sidebar if interested.

Musings on the Dignity of Work

Few people enjoy looking for a job. It's one of the most depressing bits of drudgery we can find ourselves involved, regardless of whether or not we're employed while we look. I'm presently seeking a new job despite having two part time jobs at the moment. Instead of another part time job or one one that pays like one I'm seeking a full time job. Yeah, me and everyone else it seems. It's an open secret that the economy is in a pretty rough place at the moment, with economic growth stagnant and job creation middling along at a snails pace.

Catholic Social Teaching formally teaches that the economy must serve people first. The Bishops and the Magisterium have a lot to say on this subject but in the end it all boils down to the radical idea that all things in life must place human beings and their liberty to pursue family and God first. We are not cogs in a machine, regardless of what the corporate capitalists or socialist will say. Man has a purpose, which is to know and love God in this life so we may be perfected and join him in the next.

They say you can't run an economy on the pursuit of God. Perhaps not, but it seems you can't run an economy based on pursuing nothing but profits either. There are those that say that work is the pure purpose of man and that we were made for work. CST teaches the opposite: that work was made for man. We are perfected in work. Work is almost sacramental in nature. How do we know this? The Bible begins with God working. In all things we are to emulate God. Our missions as Christians is to become Christ-like, to be Christ in the world. One means we have is work. Thus we work, either for ourselves or others, and put our all into the work we do, which when it is right-ordered perfects us. Work brings us closer to God.

This of course means that we have duties in the work we do. Christians shouldn't engage in work that separates us from God, work that is sinful in nature. I'd be suspicious of Christian abortionists or Christian strippers or any having any other job whose work by its very nature is offensive to God and violates His commandments. This is doubly true for Christians in political work. Can a Christian work for a socialist? I doubt it, given the history of hostility towards the faith by socialist governments, even the supposedly democratic ones.

Funny enough the formal teaching of the Church relies on property ownership being widespread. Employers are encouraged to share ownership of the organization with employees. Individually we should be owning land or shops or whatever other 'means of production' is available to us. The idea is to be both economically independent and interdependent -- that is, we must recognize that through work we build the Church through greater brotherhood with our neighbors. That's the rub: work brings us together. As in everything in Catholic Social Teaching and in the faith more broadly, it's about relationships. So pray that I find work as I continue looking and applying. I'm not being super picky, other than avoiding problematic jobs.

Our Duties At the Start of This General Election

The advent of another general election season is upon Americans as the presidential primary season draws to a close. Given that the two major party candidates are historically unpopular, many voters, especially Christians, are expressing hostility to both candidates. Not liking either candidate is understandable. What isn't understandable is refusing to vote in the general election.

The Magisterium of the Church formally teaches that the typical Catholic in a country with free and fair elections has a responsibility to vote. This duty to vote is based on the teaching of Our Blessed Lord to spread the Gospel. Spreading the Gospel includes being witness in the electoral system by using the message of the Lord when we vote. There is no separation of Church and State in this regard, at least not in the way the secular world expects. We are not to leave our values at home when we vote. We are expected to bring Christ's love to the world. Yet, when we speak of love we forget that Christ's love included His speaking difficult truths to those whom He spoke. This can, and does include subjects that mark Christians as being intolerant (in the 'logic' of the secular world). The secular world, and we ourselves, often confuse Christ's love and tolerance He preached with blind acceptance of problems.

So where does that leave us in this general election? Periodically the US Bishops release Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, a sort of guide for principled Catholic voting. It's not a partisan document, rather it's meant to inform the conscience of prospective voters. The US Bishops are Apostolic men and thus these words bear weight for any Catholic who claims to be faithful to the Church. Lately I've seen a lot of chatter online about how priest X in diocese Y says no faithful Catholic can vote for Candidate Z. With respect to the priesthood, these are the opinions of individual priests. They may or may not be correct. Rather, the tenor and tone of their statement when compared to that of the Bishops is a better guide. The Bishops make no overt claims about any candidate in the elections. Rather, certain principles emerge that help form our voting conscience. These principles are the core of Catholic Social Teaching: The Dignity of the Human Person, Subsidiarity, Solidarity, and the Common Good (or charity). In addition, certain issues are non-starters for any candidate, that is, traditional marriage, abortion, and euthanasia.

I'm not going to define each of those concepts, as that is the stuff of philosophy and political theory. Indeed, I'm doing just that in my doctoral dissertation and the length required to do those concepts justice isn't appropriate for a short blog post. Suffice it to say those principles combined with those issues that cannot be compromised are meant to be our starting points in voting. In my life this has made voting harder, not easier, because no candidate falls in line with those concepts perfectly. So what are we to do? We do the best we can. In the current election are choices come down to a candidate who passionately supports late term abortion, gay 'marriage,' and other issues that embrace those non-starters. Their opponent is a brash person who has changed their opinion on all manner of topics and uses harsh and crass language to describe cultural outsiders. So the task isn't easy, but we have no excuse to not vote. Pray, fast and then vote. That may be the only options you have. And remember: Christ expressed his love of those who didn't love him by pointing out difficult and unpopular truths. Surely they thought He was hateful or crossing the line. We cannot project our internal sinful response to words or positions taken by candidates onto those candidates by dehumanizing them, by turning them into hateful demagogues. That is the way of the world. It is not the way of Christ.

Signs On Our Heads

The second part of my series on surviving secular college is up and and can be read here. The topic is the need for a good Newman Center, though I suppose one could include the presence of an orthodox campus ministry in this as well. Have a look and, as always, if you like what you see here or there follow me!

In the Mass, when the Gospel is about to be proclaimed by the priest or deacon we make the sign of the cross on our foreheads, over our lips  and over our hearts. We do this to as a sign of the inward prayer in our hearts. In doing so we ask that the Gospel always be in our minds, on our lips, and in our hearts. Any Catholic is familiar with this concept but it does bear repeating occasionally because these things we do in the Mass can feel like rote repetitions with no real purpose if we fail to remind ourselves of their meaning from time to time.

But this shouldn't be the only use of this sign of the cross. The sign of the cross can be a powerful blessing upon ourselves or a subtle request for assistance in times of struggle. Have you had bizarre thoughts burst into your head? Be they sexual, judgmental, or just drifting off into la-la land, making the same sign of the cross on your head as done during the Gospel Acclamation can be a powerful way to restore mental order. This is due in large part to this being a moment of prayer.

Turning to prayer in these moments of weakness can be our most powerful response to moments of weakness. We're told often to turn to prayer when faced with mortal sin but obviously this is easier said than done. When the mind wanders into troubling areas such as sexual fantasies, dwelling on personal slights, or anything that reflects the pride that resides in virtually all of our hearts, turning to prayer can be hard if we are in a public setting. How do you make the normal sign of the cross while riding a bus or sitting in a restaurant or in a meeting at work?

This is why I turn to the sign from the Gospel Acclamation. The sign of the cross has been my most power weapon, when even a micro prayer is included, in keeping my mind clear of debris and spiritual landmines. We must always turn our minds and hearts in prayer to Christ when we are faced with the near occasion of sin, even when it's the hardest thing in the world to do. The sign from the Gospel Acclamation is a subtle way of doing so when you wish to be discrete and silent in your prayerful appeals to the Lord for help.

Is there any support in Scripture for doing this? We see the faithful in both the Old and New Testaments has bearing signs on their foreheads marking them as the elect (Exodus 17:9-14 and Revelation 7:3; 9:4; 14:1). We also know that in the early Church the sign of the cross was commonplace. Tertullian writes "In all our travels and movements, in all our coming in and going out, in putting on our shoes, at the bath, at the table, in lighting our candles, in lying down, in sitting down, whatever employment occupies us, we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross" (De corona, 30). This sign reminds us of the Holy Trinity, that doctrine of doctrines that separates Christians from other Abrahamic faiths, and invokes the Trinity to be with us in prayer. When turning in appeal to prayer for overcoming dangerous situations the sign of the cross, either the full sign or the Acclamation sign, can be a powerful weapon for overcoming temptation.

Catholics and Earth Day

The environment and our relationship with it has become one of the recurring and dominant topics of our societal discourse in the last decade. Few topics have their own holiday but the environment certainly does: Earth day. The day dates back to the birth of the contemporary environmental movement in 1970. According to the Earth Day network the purpose of the day was to have a “national teach-in on the environment” that mobilizes the people and politicians of the world to respond to the environmental crisis.

The day and the environmental movement have deeply pagan ideas at the core of the movement, including anthropomorphism of the Earth. By this I mean the idea that Earth is our 'mother,' most evident in the concept of Gaia the pagan Earth Goddess. Many Christians, myself included, have difficulty accepting the motives of the environmental movement due to the overt pagan nature of the movement. It, like the modern 'social justice' movement, bears all the hallmarks of a religion. There are creeds, a formal magisterium, and heretics. Now there's a call for an Inquisition, not like the one in history but the distorted vision of an Inquisition taught in our secular Protestant schools.

You may think from all of this that I deny human caused climate change. I don't, actually. I'm in the early stages of writing a doctoral dissertation on Catholic Social Teaching as it relates to sustainable development. As it happens I tend to agree that the evidence points to the climate changing and that we, collectively, need to continue to investigate the causes as well as the claims that the data is being distorted purposefully by the scientific community. True scientific skepticism requires no less.

What duty do Christians have to the environment? Like everything else in our faith, the duty of Catholics is one of relationship.We are called to have a relationship with God, right? Genesis tells us that we were given the Earth to till, work, and keep. In Laudato Si, Pope Francis reiterates what John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI both taught, that we were given the Earth as stewards. Stewardship has long been a concept in Catholic Social Teaching, taught traditionally as our individual and collective responsibility towards our brother and sister.

Stewardship of creation is hard for some to grasp so I'll use a metaphor. Suppose your father restored a classic car by hand. The car meant a lot to him, going so far as to call the car the most beautiful he had seen. On your 16th birthday, after getting your license, he gives you the keys to car to drive to school, work, and on dates. How would you treat the car? In theory you'd treat the car with respect because you know how much work your father put into building the car and how much he loved it. You'd know that the car was given to you as a sign of your maturity, at least in theory. Of course, being a 16 year old sinner you'd likely drive the car less-than carefully, and likely would do damage to it.

That's the situation we are faced with. We've taken creation, which we are to be stewards of, and abused it, going beyond tilling and keeping the Earth and instead have decided, in the words of Pope Francis, that the Earth that God declared to be 'good' was not 'good enough' and have polluted the place in the name of greed and selfishness. That'd be a bit like taking your dad's classic car and putting a hideous, ugly plastic neon green spoiler on it and dumping fuel additives that add power but damage the engine to better facilitate drag racing.

The way we treat the Earth should reflect our attitudes towards God and towards one another. This is a concept too complex for a short blog post but the essence of this is this: we are commanded to love one another and to love God. Our love of God should extend to those things he has entrusted to our care, whether its creation or our brothers and sisters who are at vulnerable. Just as abortion is a condemnation of our love for one another, so too are acidic seas, industrial run off that kills streams, and forest management practices that both leave forests more prone to wildfires and leave local populations unemployed.  We are to treat creation with respect not because creation is a god or goddess of some kind but because they are the property of God entrusted to us. So on this Earth day reflect on both the disordered way the secular world celebrates creation and our own attitudes towards the Earth and our relationship to God. Everything should come back to that relationship. That's part of the joy of Catholicism: everything is about relationships. Let's act like it.

Bored?

First, a quick announcement: I've started blogging over at Catholic365. My first couple of pieces there will be about choosing a secular college wisely, so go have a look. I should be posting there about once each week and have no intention of letting this outlet go by the wayside. 

Now that that's out of the way.....[insert awkward segue].....today's topic: boredom. We live in a culture that is increasingly bored. People seek to fill the meaningless vacuum of their lives with increasingly shocking fare in order to alleviate the sense of purposelessness that permeates everything in the secular world. The problem is this: boredom is a sign that there is a widespread problem in society. No good Christian should be bored, for GK Chesterton states in his usual blunt manner why we shouldn't be bored at all:

“A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’ … Perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but he never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.” (Chesterton, Orthodoxy, pg 41). 

Boredom is a sign of purposelessness. No Christian should live without purpose. We should find wonder in everything, for the hand of the Creator is evident in everything in the world. Yet we live in a bored culture. We live in times where scientific knowledge is expanding and providing insights into the mystery of creation and the seemingly boundless nature of creation....yet people are bored. We live in times where people can communicate with others from around the world, in cultures vastly different yet oddly familiar to us, yet people are bored.

Elsewhere, Chesterton tells us that we've lost our sense of awe. Perhaps it's the consequence of the constant stream of information we're subject to now. Maybe it's the increasingly shocking nature of music, movies and media that thrive on more and more excess, leaving the population jaded. Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis have long recommended Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World, a dystopian end-times novel written in 1907 that has a sign of the end of days being rampant boredom. I just bought a copy and will write and post a review here. Personally I love dystopian fiction (1984 and Brave New World are favorites of mine) so I'm definitely looking forward to reading this.  I haven't any idea if boredom is a sign of something as spiritually apocalyptic as Hugh's thesis but I definitely believe it to be a sign of spiritual famine. Boredom and a love of Christ shouldn't go together. No Christian has reason to be perpetually bored. 

Navigating an Ignorant Secular Society

Have you ever noticed that the secular world makes astonishing assumptions about our Catholic faith? Secularists often will say really strange things about Catholics and Catholicism and then react in shock when you correct them. I'm going to run down a few of the basic weird statements made by secularists that I've encountered, starting with this recent story:

The Tab reports that students mistook the white habit of a Dominican priest for thewhite hood of a Klansman. Yes, supposedly educated young people couldn't tell the difference between one of the most iconic clergy garbs and the outfits of an American terrorist organization. This is what our culture has come to despite the default-clergy in Hollywood films being a Catholic priest. Students were in such an uproar about this 'armed Klansman' walking around campus (armed with his rosary beads, which they thought was a whip) that some tweeted at campus safety.

The idea that college students cannot tell the difference between a priest and a Klansman is telling. The Dominican Order is one of the most important religious orders in the Church, boasting major saints like St. Dominic and St. Thomas Aquinas, yet the image of the Dominican friar is one that can't be distinguished from a KKK terrorist. Why is that?

The answer is relatively simple: deep ignorance of Catholicism in a country whose religious roots are Protestantism, especially Calvinism. The beliefs of these Protestant offshoots of orthodox Christianity are what many Americans assume when they think about Christians of any stripe. Here are a few examples that illustrates my point:

• Many secularists assume that all Christians take the Bible literally. Genesis, Jonah, all of it is taken literally. Why do they assume this? Because guys like Ken Ham clearly and loudly proclaim that the Bible is to be taken literally on every page . Yet when Catholics point out that interpretation of Scripture should be done with a much more nuanced position, that some books are to be taken literally while others understood as epics, legends, or parables that contain critical and Spirit-inspired truth, we are accused of using a recent invention to pick and choose what we want to believe in the Bible. This despite evidence that the Church Fathers (those Christians of the Catholic Church in the 1st-8^th centuries) interpreted the Bible that way. The Catechism describes Biblical Interpretation this way: “According to ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: The literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of the Scripture in the Church” (CCC 115). In other words, some parts are to be taken literally, others not. All are to be taken as Spirit-inspired, with critical meaning and lessons and truth held therein. Some stories are more profound when understood allegorically. Jesus Christ used allegory and parables himself in his sacred ministry.
• Another fine example is the assumption that all Christians have a deep anti-science bias, despite the fact that science has never disproven a Christian dogma. The fact is, the Catholic Church affirms science. St. Thomas Aquinas famously declared that Christians should not reject the findings of science because to do so gives ammunition to anti-Christians everywhere. Today the Church employs a fair number of scientists in various positions, many of whom are also ordained priests. See the Vatican Observatory in Arizona as one such example.....or priests like George Mendel and George LeMaitre, two of the most important scientists in the modern era. The fact that both men are priests is ignored by history because it shows an inconvenient truth: that the Christianity and Science are not only compatible but that modern science wouldn't exist without the Church. 

Yes, that's Fr. LeMaitre on the left, next to Albert Einstein.
Fr. LeMaitre discovered the Big Bang theory.

Those are the two that come most readily to mind. Please, if other misconceptions based on ignorance come to mind put them in the comments or tweet them at me. For now it's sufficient to say that we as Catholics have failed spectacularly in reaching out to our peers. I live on and study at a college campus in one of the most secular cities in the US...that just happens to have deep Catholic roots. Yet ignorance of the Church here in Portland is enormous. Our campus ministry does what it can to invite students to learn more but ultimately it isn't up to priests and those in religious life to reach out to the culture. It's up to us to do it. I've failed in the past to do this. What have you done? We have a lot of misconceptions to fend off. What will you do?

Joy in the Easter Season

The secular culture loves to remind us that Christmas is a season of joy. Obviously this is a correct sentiment, for the birth of the Lord is a joyous occasion. Yet the truly joyous season is Easter. It's why Easter is a season for Catholics and Orthodox Christians while Protestants treat Easter like a 'festival.' In Easter we celebrate Christ's victory over death all the way until Pentecost.  This celebration hints at our Lord's coming final victory over a world that worships death.

Why do so many of us forget to live the life of joy, especially in this season? For many of us Easter comes in on Easter Sunday and then is quickly forgotten when Monday morning comes. We're reminded of it when we go to Mass the following several Sundays but we largely fail to internalize the joy of the season. Why? In my own life I'll be the first to admit that remembering that God loves me every day (not just on Sundays) is hard. That failure impacts my life through the joy, or lack thereof, that I experience.

On Facebook this morning I saw a friend post that they've decided to make an Easter resolution. Catholics typically make a Lenten sacrifice or resolution but she decided to make an Easter resolution. Why? Because as Mother Theresa said,“Peace begins with a smile,” which my friend posted. We are the vehicles for peace and joy in the world. The world cannot know the peace and joy of the love of Christ unless we are bringers of that joy in the world. “We are ambassadors for Christ” (2 Cor 5:20) St Paul tells us in Scripture.

That's easy enough but it starts with internalizing that joy ourselves. We cannot share the love of Christ and the joy of His resurrection without first feeling it ourselves. The only way that I understand how to internalize this joy and share it with others is through having an effective Lent. The Lenten season is meant to bring us closer to Christ through sacrifice and greater time spent in prayer. I don't think I had a particularly effective Lent myself, which I acknowledge as a tragedy. I suspect that I'm not alone in this either. So how do you spread that joy without having had a good Lent?

My old standby is confession and adoration. Yes, turn to the sacraments and prayer. It's cliché but ultimately we cannot come to know Christ without spending time with Him and restoring our relationship to Him in confession. Reading Scripture, a little a day, is essential as well. Again, I said this is cliché sounding but cliches have power because they have essential truths built into them. The sacraments have had staying power over the last 2000 years because they are a direct line to God and as such are our best bet to come to know God directly.

Finally, something more simple may work too. My friend pledged to smile at 5 people every day through Easter. Why? A simple smile from a stranger can brighten a person's day. A smile from a stranger can be one of those intangible things that happens to someone that changes the course of the day for them, so please don't be afraid to smile a little.  

This Week in the Pro-Life Movement:

Yeah, it could be that bad.....

It's been a while since I've done an update on recent happenings in the political world that impact the pro-life movement. I'll try to be better about it in the future. To that end, the following are the three main stories this week in all-things pro-life:

The state of Indiana passed House Bill 1337, which has been deemed 'controversial.' The bill bans abortions sought because the unborn child has Downs Syndrome. I guess controversy is generated whenever the Eugenics-agenda of the anti-life movement is thwarted. Some fun examples that illustrate the degeneracy in some quarters of the abortion movement, such as from Jezebel  (that home of radical intersectional feminist propaganda): “Any other disability is a broad spectrum that might force a woman to bring a baby to term who won't survive long past birth, potentially in great suffering, even if the pregnancy is high risk for the mother." This is obvious code for those being born with birth defects shouldn't be born. This from the same crowd who tells us not to use certain words that might denigrate those born with defects.

Pro-life leaders have said that this bill protects the lives of the most unwanted members of society. According to Life News Indiana Right to Life President and CEO Mike Fichter expressed firm support: “We are truly thankful for the passage of this historic legislation by the Indiana House and applaud the new civil rights protections this bill creates for unborn children, as well as the new provisions this bill establishes for the humane final disposition of aborted babies,' Fichter said.

Salon implied that the passage of this bill was part of a larger conspiracy by virtue of the country being distracted by the Donald Trump show . This is an odd claim given that Salon is part of the Leftist Social Justice Warrior Media Industrial Complex. Activists SHOULD be able to promote various efforts at the same time, though often this isn't the case. I suppose we should all watch to see if the governor of Indiana sends Donald Trump a box of chocolates as a thank-you.

Other 'draconian' bills that protect unborn children are catching fire in Florida, Texas and Oklahoma. In Texas, abortions are down 14% since the passage of recent laws that lead to the closure of several clinics. Of course the anti-life groups call this a tragedy, because more babies being born is apparently a great and unforgivable social evil.

Finally, President Obama announced his nomination to the Supreme Court, a pick that will likely be ignored by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Judge Merrick Garland is generally being received well outside of conservative circles, especially for his strong anti-life voting record. The White House blog. sings his praises (as any official propaganda outlet will). Curiously, Cecil Richards, America's Abortionist-in-Chief, was present at the White House on the day of the announcement. No doubt the President was reassuring Ms. Richards that the abortion industry would be well-protected and invincible once his nominee replaces the late and staunchly pro-life Justice Antonin Scalia.

Likely I'll do a piece soon about the consequences of the coming election for the pro-life movement. It's almost a given that the fall contest will be between the ever popular and totally honest Hilary Clinton and the peaceful and overtly Christian Donald J Trump. Both candidates have large swaths of the voting population who refuse to vote for them from within their own respective parties. Yet what many pro-life voters who express this opinion fail to understand is that if the Supreme Court vacancy remains unfilled after the election, and if Mrs Clinton is elected, then the Supreme Court will be lost for potentially a generation. Abortion will remain legal, condemning potentially another 50 million babies to death.

Donald Trump and the Catholic Vote

If you're connected to the Catholic political social media pages you've no doubt noticed the veritable blitz being waged by Catholic Vote and other organizations against Trump's Catholic voting block of supporters. Most notably is the openletter written by Robert P George and George Weigel calling for Catholics to not support Trump in the race for the White House. To quote the letter:

“Donald Trump is manifestly unfit to be president of the United States. His campaign has already driven our politics down to new levels of vulgarity. His appeals to racial and ethnic fears and prejudice are offensive to any genuinely Catholic sensibility. He promised to order U.S. military personnel to torture terrorist suspects and to kill terrorists’ families — actions condemned by the Church and policies that would bring shame upon our country. And there is nothing in his campaign or his previous record that gives us grounds for confidence that he genuinely shares our commitments to the right to life, to religious freedom and the rights of conscience, to rebuilding the marriage culture, or to subsidiarity and the principle of limited constitutional government.”

Those are heavy charges. And, to be truthful, they are true. Trump has said all of these things. He has indeed said that he wants to ban Muslims, that illegal immigrants are rapists, and that terrorists' families are fair game in foreign policy. These stances are troubling for anyone with a conscience. So why are Catholics and other Christians supporting Trump?

Donald Trump gets a lot of support from those who reject the culture of political correctness that is being forcefully promoted by the Obama Administration, Hollywood, and the Democratic candidates for president. Trump speaks in a way that resonates with everyday working people. His language, while brash, is seductive in that it perfectly channels the anger that right-thinking Americans have towards the Democratic cultural Marxist candidates and those who want to engage in censorship. It appears that Trump speaks his mind and says what he means. Clearly he doesn't care about hurting anyone's feelings, and that's a good thing given the madness of the Obama administration and the continuation that Clinton or Sanders administration would represent.

Yet Christians shouldn't be supporting someone like Trump because Trump ostracizes other human beings. He dehumanizes human beings for his own political gain. Sanders does this as well but he does it along class lines, which is why he gets away with doing so. Trump unabashedly does this along racial and ethnic lines. If you're reading this and are Catholic consult your Catechism and you'll understand why this is a problem.

So what are Christians of conscience supposed to do given that both Clinton and Sanders support late term abortion, censorship and the increasingly crazy domination by Leftists of the mechanisms of cultural education (Hollywood, schools, etc)? If the elections continue as they appear they will then Trump is highly likely to be the GOP nominee, and Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. For now, Weigel and George call for Catholics to not support Trump in the primaries, which seems simple enough but it doesn't address the underlying issue: why are Catholics identifying with Trump at all?

One commentor on the posting of the article on National Review's site offers that American Catholics have failed to distinguish support for freedom from support for capitalism and the cult of money that is connected to capitalism. To quote the commentor: “By not distancing ourselves from Capitalism, we have not effectively distanced ourselves from Marxism. We are Clintonians in spite of ourselves: It’s the economy, stupid. And then we try to dress this in Catholic garb, forgetting that we have exchanged Catholicism for a neo-Pelagianism which leads finally to the worst sort of spiritual frustration, as the present Pope has affirmed with great spiritual insight.” Capitalism relies on consumerism, and consumerism relies on the lust for material goods that the Church has condemned since at least Rerum Novarum was published in 1891. This is the stuff of Americanism, which is a condemned heresy, yet I suspect that it is the driving force for Trump's support among American Catholics.

I realize that I haven't addressed why Catholics support Trump. Aside from Trump's stated opposition to the social ills that the Democrats gleefully embrace, one does wonder why Catholics support Trump instead of Marco Rubio (a Catholic who opposes these same ills) or Cruz (who also opposes those social ills). I suspect support for Trump among Catholics is because Trump is a bully. American Catholics are tired of being bullied by Leftists who tell us that if we oppose gay marriage then our business and property-interests are forfeit, that if we oppose abortion then we want to oppress and enslave women, and that if we support freedom of religion in real practice then we are authoritarians. In short, American Catholics have been bullied and Donald Trump represents someone who will bully those who bully us back. It's the only reason I can understand and it is very unsettling. This is the motivation of fascist revolutionaries supporting the ugliest of dictators around the world, and Trump certainly has some things in common with them though I'd not call Trump a fascist.

For the record I don't have a candidate in the American election. I'm, for the moment, a registered Independent and live in a closed-primary state. I have some time to re-register as a Republican if I want to vote in my state's primary against Trump. Sanders concerns me as much as Trump does so I may re-register as a Democrat to vote against him. I do believe that Trump has a better chance of becoming president than the statisticians are suggesting given Mrs. Clinton's corruption charges and her track record of dishonesty. It is a sad state of affairs when a reality show demagogue has a real chance of becoming the President of the United States. It certainly doesn't say positive things about the health of the American republic. 

Lent and Self Sacrifice

Lent begins the our walk with Christ towards the Crucifixion and resurrection. The season should be a time spent reflecting on what separates us from Christ. The common practice of 'giving something up' for Lent hints at this, as the things we love often take our minds away from the Lord. Yet many think Lent is a trial when it should actually help focus us on the Cross. Despite the blood shed on the Cross our focus often gets lost on the road to Easter. Why?

It should be obvious that Easter is about sacrifice. Our Lord reminds us of this when he tells the Apostles “No one can have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends “ (John 15:13), yet we often overlook this despite Catholic theology revolving around self sacrifice. Sacrifice is the foundation of marriage, lies at the root of subsidiarity and solidarity, and underscores our relationship with God. We are to die to ourselves in all things. What does this mean in Lent?

The First Commandment is to love God above all things. We are not to worship false gods. Seems simple right? Most people don't have an idol to Ganesh in their homes, nor do they carve images to worship as God as described in the Old Testament. Idolatry goes far beyond that. If you don't pray in lieu of doing something else then a good case can be made that you love that thing more than God. Did you skip Mass to watch the Super Bowl? If you did then you love football more than God. See how this works?

Sacrifice in our relationship with God means examining ourselves to see what it is that we do that separates us from God. This can include finally addressing sinful addictions like pornography, compulsive gambling, alcoholism, drug use or any number of issues. It can also mean looking at the technically non-sinful things we like and examining our relationship with those things. If our love for them is a barrier to our relationship with God then sacrifice is called for.

It's a nice thought, isn't it? On a certain level we understand that, given how many people give up Facebook, chocolate, coffee, or whatever small luxuries during Lent. I myself gave time: more time in prayer before a tabernacle or Eucharist. Yet the sense that I have is that we can all do something more fundamental. We can all live in the spirit of Lent.

Mother Teresa understood best that Lent is about love: "Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor... Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting." The Christian life is supposed to be about living as another Christ in the world. The spirit of Lent is to focus our lives in that image as we march towards Good Friday and Easter.

Love is the great command of the Lord. Love, or the lack thereof, defines our relationships with each other, with God, and with those whom Christ commanded us to minister to. Yet our love is so frequently disordered by an inward focus that it is impossible to fully love like Christ without reordering our lives and love through a total surrender to Christ. Living in the spirit of Lent requires a total surrender. My own Lenten sacrifice feels inadequate to the challenge. Does yours?

Standing in the Face of Evil

By now you've no doubt heard about the passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Few figures in American politics today have earned as much revile as the late Justice, especially on the social issues that he openly and proudly used his faith convictions and strict Constitutionalism as his guide. Scalia was the kind of judge that didn't care what partisans thought of his decisions. He made enemies in both political parties frequently and didn't seem bothered by angry words hurled his way. Frequently I disagreed with his decisions, especially his support of Citizens United. But he was a man of principles, even if those principles didn't always agree with the fashions and political trends of the day.

When Osama Bin Laden died the political Left didn't celebrate other than the implications for President Obama's re-election. Some conservatives did but the sense was that a dark chapter in American history had come to an end. The response seemed measured.

I found out about Antonin Scalia's passing through my Facebook feed. Friends of mine were cheering for his death, including friends that I had until then held in high regard. The behavior can only be described a ghoulish, especially among many supposed Christians. The response to his death was the starkest reminder of why I thank Christ I became Catholic and left the religion of progressivism behind. It is an immoral system that enables the celebration of the death of those whom we disagree with because it is an absolutist political ideology that places the needs of the collective above everything else.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Progressives cheered when businesses were shuttered when those businesses stood on Christian principles and refused to participate in same sex 'marriages' even though Muslim businesses refused to do the same and were NEVER held accountable. Progressives have a particular hatred of Christianity above other religions, which says volumes about the source of its ideology. I am more convinced now than ever before that no Christian can be a progressive. To do so is to hold two contradictory positions.

The political implications cannot be ignored. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already implied that no nominee of President Obama's is going to move forward. I wonder about the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor, who have also implied that they will be forced to cease providing hospice care if they are forced to provide contraceptives against the religious convictions. These are the things progressives cheer: tyranny in support of the collective.

The darkness of my past political convictions are clear to me now. I'd like to think that I wouldn't have cheered for the death of Scalia but frankly I can't be sure. Now I am disgusted with many of my supposed friends and associates, with whom I doubt I can even look at without turning away. The passing of a human life should lead to a moment of silence. The standard used to be that even the political opponents of a public figure who died would sing their praises. Obviously those days are behind us now.

God help America.

Ash Wednesday, Lent, and the Rosary

As we begin this Lenten journey into the desert it is worth noting that today, Ash Wednesday, also is the Glorious Mysteries on the holy Rosary. Our Lenten journey begins on the day we pray for what we journey through the a desert of fasting for: the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ. There is nothing more appropriate than to start Lent praying the Rosary as it reminds us what we journey towards, namely the Resurrection. This is pretty elementary for a lot of Catholics but it bears exploring.

The first mystery is the Resurrection. After three days of mourning Christ unexpectedly returns from the dead. Our journey through Lent is of course a reflection on the Passion but it is also a journey towards our own rebirth in Christ by sacrificing what separates us from Him or by sacrificing inconsequential things that we love so that we may unite our loss and discomfort to His suffering. Our journey through Lent is first and foremost about loving Christ more and renewing our love for Him.

The second mystery is the Ascension. How do we ascend into heaven? Prayer and fasting. Through praying more and fasting we unite our minds, hearts, and souls with God. Our prayers should always be in thanksgiving, especially in Lent. Our journey towards Easter should be a time of reflection and thanks for the things that God has given us, including the crosses God saw fit for us to carry.

The coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is the birth of the Church. Lest we forget, not long after Easter we celebrate the beginning of the revolution that Christ launched through Peter, Paul, and the Apostles. Our Lenten journey has a purpose beyond our own sanctification. We are to be salt and light in the world, bringing the light of Christ to others. Lent should be motivating us to evangelize those we love and to bring Christ to the darkest corners of society. In short, Lent should be about building up our courage to bring a world spiraling into madness the only antidote that can save it: the Gospel.

The fourth and fifth mysteries are for Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She can lead us to Christ if we let her. She and the saints constantly pray for our salvation and for the spread of the Gospel. Yet many Catholics feel uncomfortable praying the Rosary, probably because much of the west has been influenced by heretical Protestant ideas. If you aren't in the habit of praying the Rosary daily, try it daily during Lent. I guarantee that you will be enriched spiritually by the experience.

Finally, Lent should be a time of joy. Our Lord returns in 43 days! Easter is the biggest festival in the Church, and for good reason! We celebrate the triumph of life over death! In today's Gospel Jesus tells us not to let our sufferings from fasting show on our faces. Fasting can unite us to Christ, which itself is an occasion for joy. Let joy rule this season so that when Easter arrives we can enter into a season of Eucharistic ecstasy.  

NARAL Goes Crazy

Onviously his wife is reading him some of NARAL's tweets.

If you watched the Super Bowl you might have noticed a funny commercial for Doritos featuring a baby in the womb. The commercial was the typical cute and funny ad the chip company runs during the game every year, with one twist that has left many people either smiling or inhumanly angry: it featured an unborn baby being depicted as a baby and not as a clump of cells. Brace yourselves for the pro-abortion whining.

NARAL Pro-Choice America tweeted rage against Doritos depicting an unborn baby as being alive. In fact, the reaction of the pro-abortion special interest group was to go full Social Justice Warrior and point out every thought-control-denying microaggression that 'triggered' their feelings. Abortion activists took to Twitter to express their outrage that unborn babies dared be depicted as actual babies.

The hashtag #notbuyingit was employed by NARAL to kick off their bizarre Tweet-fest, which included gems like “#NotBuyingIt - that @Doritos ad using #antichoice tactic of humanizing fetuses & sexist tropes of dads as clueless & moms as uptight. #SB50.” Note the use of a telling euphemism: 'humanizing fetuses,' which seems like a redundancy to anyone who hasn't fully embraced the doublethink required to support abortion to the extent NARAL advocates do.

Keep in mind that these are the same people who fight against laws requiring mothers to be shown ultrasounds of their babies before having an abortion. Calling them 'forced ultrasounds,' NARAL rejects showing women pictures of their baby because they know fully well that once people realize that a fetus is in fact a human baby they will side with life the vast majority of the time. NARAL cites the liberty, saying that in America we shouldn't make anyone go through a forced medical procedure against their will, while at the same time advocating that others be forced to pay for medical procedures against theirs.

The real reason NARAL went full SJW on this and other ads is because NARAL and their advocates know fully well that if people see that an unborn baby is in fact human they will turn against abortion. Ironically, when fighting against 'forced ultrasounds' NARAL believes a woman should only have the information she wants when having an abortion, which is fascinating given that abortions are medicallydangerous procedures . Doctors are required to tell patients of the risks of other procedures but not abortion. It's almost as if the abortion industry doesn't care about the health of women.

The real agenda of these groups became clear when NARAL Tweeted that fans watching the game should use birth control. Is voluntary parenting something NARAL is against? Or are they so elitist that they think football fans shouldn't breed? It's probably that every pregnancy is seen as a potential service sale, and every pregnant woman seen as a likely client. It's ghoulish but should we expect less of a group that lobbies for legalizing late term abortions?

This Week In the News

This may be a recurring feature here on the Complicated Catholic: a wrap up in faith-related news. I'll do it regularly if it seems appropriate. I write two blogs, am looking for a better job, and have a doctoral dissertation process to continue, so I don't know if I can dedicate that kind of time to updating this space regularly enough to make a weekly wrap-up of the news work, but we shall see.

I had hoped to make this entry on something other than abortion but it has been a big week in the news for the baby-killing business and those who oppose it, so this may just be a bit of a wrap up on that topic instead. Full disclosure: I don't believe abortion to be the only issue Christians should vote on, but it is significant and should act as a barrier to supporting pro-abortion candidates under most circumstances. I suppose that supporting a pro-abortion candidates would be acceptable if their opponents were likely to cause the third world war or engage in atrocities or something that might in some way negate their stance on abortion but I don't want to bother speculating on that because nothing comes to mind that negates the gravity of the over 300,000 babies killed by 'doctors' in the US 'legally' today.

Given that it is an election year, here's a handy pdf spreadsheet of every presidential candidate and their stated position on abortion. Call me cynical but I do believe that more than statements should be considered when thinking about voting on this issue. Action matters...and the Republican Party at the national level has been AWFUL on this issue. One needs only to look at the total control of the national government they had from 2001-2007 and the lack of action on this issue. If abortion is as important to you as I suspect it is then you should hold politicians accountable for their (in)action. Pro-abortion voters absolutely do.

Soon, WholeWoman’s Health v. Cole will be heard by the US Supreme Court (along with the Little Sisters of the Poor case, this year will be big for morality in the Court). The case revolves around the logical requirement that anyone who performs an abortion should be a competent enough doctor that they have admittance with nearby hospitals. Pro-abortionists don't support this requirement because, as it turns out, hospitals tend to be sticklers for that whole 'do no harm' principle of medicine, with most reserving abortion as an emergency-only procedure.

In my home state of Oregon, the new president for Oregon Right to Life (Harmony Daws), was fired from day job after being ordered to remain silent at work about political views. She was also barred from sharing her faith with her coworkers for any reason. Daws complied but was fired days later without warning. Keep an eye out for her business that she plans to open, and maybe send her a congratulations or even a small donation to Oregon Right to Life .

In other news, United Airlines has gone full Social Justice Warrior by censoring internet access on flights, including Live Action News for being inappropriate to view in-flight . Yes, a pro-life website has been equated with pornography or, more likely, hate speech. This is the world we live in, where mainstream political speech is considered hate speech. From my old pre-conversion life in the political left my gut reaction is to do a personal boycott of United Airlines: fly another carrier if you possibly can. Spending your money with a group that hostile to life and that is in bed with baby-killers helps support those industries.

Finally, on an upside, pro-life website LifeSiteNews founders have been awarded top pro-life award for unlocking the power of the internet in the cause of justice for vulnerable children. The service these news organizations provide, along with television outlets like EWTN, enable the pro-life and faith movements to do real work of communicating with truth to the world and making information available that counters the culture of death. What we need though are bloggers and Youtubers who represent the pro-life side and do so with wide support. There are plenty of pro-life blogs but there is room for more so start one! Or, even better, start a Youtube channel and find a creative way to bring the fight to the medium presently dominated by disgruntled atheists who object to the dominance of the latest incarnation of Marxism in our culture: feminism.

Abortion Politics, or Why I Hate This Election Year

This looks bad for both Clinton and Trump to be honest.

With March for Life going on in several locations across the United States in memorial of 43 years of legal killing of children, the unpleasant topic of abortion should be addressed. It's also an election year in the US and these two issues intersect in ways that cannot be ignored. On the right the choice Americans will likely have is Donald Trump, who said he was pro-choice before doing a complete 180 and declaring himself pro-lifeduring the 2012 primary cycle. Call me cynical but I fully believe that he declared himself pro-life to score points with evangelical protestants. It didn't work for him in 2012 but it seems to have made a difference for him in 2016.

On the Left the Democrats are likely to choose Hilary Clinton despite the weird meme being promoted that Bernie Sanders has anything but a remote chance of getting thenomination . Clinton proudly touts her feminism and has made the idiotic error of being public seen with confirmed pedophile Lena Dunham in order to tout her feminist credentials. Little needs to be said about Clinton's stance on the continuation of the policy that has allowed nearly 59,000,000 babies to be killed by their mothers and hired killers with medical credentials. Clinton would promote the status quo on this issue and on many others not relevant to the discussion at hand.

The choice will likely be between a potential liar in Trump and the status quo in Clinton. How does one proceed? I'm a registered non-affiliated voter in my state, at least for the time being. There are plenty of Catholic voices out there telling me I have a moral duty to vote Republican, which is on its face as absurd as the concept of a pro-choice Catholic. Do I trust a potential liar, vote for the status quo (taking Trump's other issues into context) or vote for a third party candidate?

Let's take the issue a step further. At the national level the GOP has little to no credibility on the abortion issue due to their having controlling Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House from 2001-2007 and took no major initiative on abortion. Recently Speaker Ryan took defunding Planned Parenthood off the table as a weapon as a potential government shutdown loomed. At the state level the Republicans have done more to save lives but the national election is the subject at hand. I'd mention the Democratic party but why bother?

Finally, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in their document 'Forming Consciences for FaithfulCitizenship' advises Catholic voters that abortion is a critical issue but that it isn't the only issue that we should vote on. Fair enough. Other issues loom large for me, including the environment, government spying, maintaining a liberated internet, government spending and debt, rational care for the poor, ISIS, energy, the list goes on and on. And, despite my own feelings to the contrary, every good political quiz I take puts me on the center-Left despite my own pro-life and 'hawkish' attitudes of late. I don'tidentify with the Left, as anyone who reads my other blog will attest. I most identify as a moderate and will likely cast a vote for a candidate who makes me sick to my stomach in the fall. Given who I expect to win the parties respective nominations I'd say contracting voting-induced-stomach-flu is likely.

Who Are You? A Matter of Identity

January 15 2016

This past Sunday's Gospel reading challenges us as Christians. Who are we? Elsewhere, Christ tells us that we are to be salt and light in the world, yet the basic challenge is relatively easy to see: we are to be whom God created us to be. Seems easy enough but that begs a lot of questions, including how are we to know who God wants us to be?

The classic answer to that question is that we can know what God wants of us through reflective prayer, frequenting the sacraments (especially confession), and studying Scripture. But truly finding God's purpose for us requires us to go even deeper, if that is possible. Our purpose is to be like Christ and live as such in the world. That is a fundamentally daunting task in a world that is increasingly secular and in some quarters violent to Christians. While being a Christianis becoming increasingly dangerous  this doesn't reduce the responsibility each Christian has to live the Gospel and be like Christ in a dark world. If the first generations of Christians went singing hymns to the Roman lions then Christians today can withstand abuses as well.

What does this mean in practice? Are we to hide away from the popular culture and write off fashionable cultural trends? Hardly. Christians have a duty to understand the culture, what is popular in the culture, and be knowledgeable about the passing things of the day because the role of every individual orthodox Christian is to be a subversive presence in the world. That is to be Christ-like. Jesus did not come to the world to reinforce power structures, destructive cultural practices, or to hide away from the world and those practices. Christ came to save souls and to institute a new order that would give humanity a fighting chance against the tide of darkness.

This is evident in how our Lord dined with tax collectors, the unclean masses, and his befriending of prostitutes. Christ let the Pharisees and Sadducees separate themselves from God and did not identify themselves with them, though there were individual Pharisees and Sadducees counted among his followers. His presence in the world sent shock waves wherever He went. Christ may have been a peace maker but He was also probably the largest disruptive force socially that the Roman-occupied Israel had seen in quite some time. If anything this fed into why He was crucified.

Some high profile Catholic commentators understand this. Bishop Barron is an obvious example, with his highly successful Youtube ministry. By merely understanding the culture and offering insight that from a Catholic perspective you will be a disruptive force. Most likely you won't be affected the way Christ was, nor will you disrupt society in a major way, but on an individual level you will show people a view they are not familiar with. This can be jarring, which is the point. Representing Christ in the world requires that people be shocked out of their comfort zones, of course done peacefully and respectfully. This may be the hardest part what I'm suggesting, as it is very easy to be tempted to slide into a self-righteousness that reeks of pride; to do so is not to be Christ-like in the least.

To be Christ-like means to be the version of us that God knows we are capable of becoming. This isn't an abstract idea in the least. It means, in short, to become a saint. While it's certainly not abstract it is not easy. This is why prayer and the sacraments are so essential to the life of every Catholic. Without the sacraments we are left to survive with our own strength, which can be precarious at best. Frequenting the sacraments is the best strategy to being true to both God and ourselves; through the faithful reception of the sacraments we find our best chances of becoming Christ in the world.