My Catholic Life

Wrote a guest blog for the Vericast Network http://www.vericast.net/blog/2014/06/05/spiritual-rules-engagment-bearing-fruit/

  Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build. Unless the Lord guard the city, in vain does the guard keep watch Ps 127:1 I don’t follow all of the Catholic bloggers. There are far too many. I am connected to a handful of bloggers, and through that connection am, at times, aware of when a blogger brouhaha has commenced. Usually what happens is that the Pope does something for which he is sharply and immediately criticized by one group, then vehemently defended by another. The comboxes and Facebook comments start to explode. Then it is on like Donkey Kong in a Catholic Cage fight of epic proportion.   Such was the case this past week and boom went the word warriors. Look, I get it. I am a writer, albeit a writer of none renown, my blogs only get like 30 views. But still a writer. We love words and we know how to use them. One of our most satisfying relationships is with our thesaurus. Which is why, by the way, another writer cannot say to me that they w...

Do you ever feel like the world has gone off its meds and is just listening to the voices in its head? A pro-abortion blogger writes that abortion is a moral high ground, a sacred gift and assisting God. Another woman films her abortion to show everybody that it’s not so bad. Another article promoted abortion as a solution for infant mortality rates. Basically, kill them before they die to avoid the grief caused by their natural deaths. The UN was trying to force the Catholic Church to change its doctrines by saying that those doctrines constitute or promote torture.   Harvard students thought that a Black Mass was a harmless cultural event.   A child friendly statue of Satan has been commissioned with the intention of getting it erected in front of the state house in Oklahoma City. Campus police remove students, who were peacefully promoting marriage as between a man and a woman, from the campus of… Notre Dame.   It seems that is acceptable to give children, as...

  “ Woe to the world because of things that cause sin! Such things must come, but woe to the one through whom they come!” Matt 18:7 Some of you may not follow the Catholic internet media or follow the blogs. One of the big stories over the past week is that a student group from Harvard University was to host a Black Mass “reenactment” performed by the members of the Satanic Temple this past Monday.   I suppose that to write about it the following Wednesday makes me a Johnny come lately, a couple of days late and a couple of dollars short. Then to ask what we are going to do about it after we have already done it just seems ridiculous. Well, all I can say is wait for it, because there is relevance for us as Catholics even after the fact. We may have successfully come against that Black Mass, but I think that we are being called to something beyond a particular event. We are being called to a continuing task. It seems to me that there is some significance in the fact that...

I spend a little time on my blog, now and then, defending the Pope. Me and the Pope are pretty tight. There have been rumors out there of the Pope calling people up on the phone. The most recent one being that he called a woman to tell her that she could receive communion despite a second marriage issue. People are rockin’ and rollin’ about that one. I’ll ask him about it the next time he calls me. The Pope calls me all of the time. We just shoot the breeze. Sometimes he asks for my opinion on doctrine and dogma and stuff like that. Mostly I just tell him “Holy Father, keep your chin up. There are people on your side. Dude, we’re watching your six, we got your back” This past Friday was my birthday. I was born in 1958. That is the same year that Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, Pope John XXIII was elected. There are some people who say that there weren’t any more real Popes after 1958. Others say that there have been Popes but that they have all been heretics or if not heretics they haven’...

  Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Who doesn’t like Star Trek? Admit it, you know you do. The cheesy little series that could. With only 79 original episodes it managed to spawn a cult following, several spin-off series, about a dozen films and even a language. The original series debuted in 1966, ran through 1969 and for almost 50 years the franchise has attracted fans of every generation. It sort of defies logic. Fascinating. Along with the many voyages of the Starship Enterprise and crew, boldly going where no man has gone before, is the interesting personal journey of Mr. Spock. Half Vulcan and half human, Spock denies his human side in favor of the Vulcan. The Vulcan side is all logic all of the time, dependent on empirical evidence, science and the logical response. As time goes on he bring...

I like music. I am sure that if you have read some of my other blogs, you might have picked up on that. I’ve got the music in me. I heat up, I cool down, I’ve got words in my head so I say them. Music lifts me up, it often calms me, it inspires me. Many of my memories are underscored with certain songs. As you can tell by how I write, I can often find a spiritual meaning in even a rock and roll song. The trouble is that I don’t sing very well. Children cry and dogs howl, it isn’t pretty. I do sing when I am by myself…who doesn’t. I even got a speeding ticket once because I was so into singing the song on the radio that I forgot to watch my lead foot. I would love to be able to sing for people, especially praise music and I would see it as such a wonderful gift to be able to praise God in song in a beautiful voice. It would also be nice to be able to write songs. But this is not my gift. Many years ago I went to a concert of a popular contemporary Christian singer. The music was...