Praying and Running

The other day, I read a facebook friend's status that said in part "I had Christianity forced on me". I have been contemplating these words since and these are my thoughts that resulted. The Christian faith is about hope and joy. When it is understood, there is no need to force it on anyone. With the faith, you are talking about a love so strong that countless people throughout history have been willing to peacefully give up their lives in witness to it. This type of response cannot be forced. I do not claim that Christians never try to force the faith on people. However, there is no teaching in the faith that would lead someone to do this. Rather, it is quite the opposite. If we read the Gospels we will learn that Christ never forced Himself on anyone. He said what he had to say or did what he had to do and moved on. The people around him were free to believe and follow or not. As an example see John 6:66-68 . Many of His disciples leave Him because they cannot accep...

I was saddened to read this morning that Ann Rice quit being a Christian. Hers was a pretty powerful reconversion story on the surface anyway. As for myself, I read and enjoyed the Vampire Chronicles  in an earlier life. At some point I realized the inherent danger in immersing myself in those fictional worlds and gave it up.Whatever the case, I had at least some connection to Ann through her writing. When Ann publicly told of her reconversion, like many Christians, it was uplifting for me. So for her to un-convert saddens me and her reasoning makes it all the more hard to swallow. I won't restate what she said. Instead you can read that here . In the end it looks like Ann quit being a Christian because she couldn't make it fit her liberal ideology. I have long considered myself a political conservative. However, the more I allow my faith to take over and guide my life, the more I see how political ideology can pollute true faith in God. Christianity is far older than anyth...

Rationalization and justification. I see the peril in approaching life like this. It seems that we can rationalize and justify just about anything in this day and age. I have actually seen an abortion provider call the work they do sacred, you can read it  here. It is my fear that many, many souls will rationalize and justify themselves straight to Hell. When I think about or talk about the many sources that have helped me to develop my faith and reasoning I will most assuredly site Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Arinze, our pastor at St. Joan of Arc, Fr. Ted. I would also site various writers both traditional and new media, for instance G.K. Chesterton and American Papist , Thomas Peters. Catholic Answers of course is a source that is always available, 24/7 and their podcast of the radio  show Catholic Answers live has really helped me to develop a deep understanding of the faith. But someone who doesn't get enough credit is my Mom. As I think back on it, my mom is respons...

During my college career, I learned among other things, that if I took it upon myself to teach the subject I was studying, I would reach a deeper level of understanding of that subject. The teaching could involve other real people or just other people in my head. It really didn't matter, I just needed to approach it from the angle of the expert. For those of you that know me, you know to some degree or another that I have had a "conversion" back to Catholicism. Born a Catholic, the "conversion" back was necessary because I lacked a fundamental understanding of the religion. In order to grow in my knowledge of the faith I have taken to explaining and defending Christianity and Catholicism. To some degree this has been just in my head and to some degree in various public outlets. Today, I was looking for arguments supporting atheism in order that I might rebut them. My only experience with atheism to date is the argument "you can't prove God exists,...

I've been reflecting on the book of Judges lately. One recurring theme from this book is that in those times there was no king and every man did what he thought best. This seems to lead directly to the other theme which was that man kept falling into depravity and causing a divide between Israel and God. I love looking at the Old Testament through the lens of Christ and the Church. I see this as a clear foreshadowing of the Papacy and the moral authority of the Magisterium of the Church. The connotation being that we need one clear leader to guide us in matters of faith and morals and not every person running around deciding what they think is best. I wonder if any of my Catholic friends have made this connection as well and I wonder how my protestant friends interpret this.

What can stories about a bunch of people a long time ago mean to my life? I have heard this and similar sentiments too often about the Scriptures. God wants to reveal things about himself to you through the Bible. I will tell you from my own experience, once I really got into it I could start to see how the stories applied to me. I first noticed this when I had been reading the books of history. The day that it first struck me I was smack dab in the middle of 1 Samuel. A recurring theme throughout the Old Testament is that people who put their faith and trust in God are able to accomplish things that are otherwise impossible. Whether it is a woman well passed child baring age that was barren her whole life becoming pregnant, a foreigner who is in prison being elevated to the administrator of an entire country, or a few men defeating an entire battalion of a superior enemy. These are just a few examples; the Old Testament is full of stories which fit this theme. The following is how...

Being concerned with the pro-life movement as I am and following news related to it I have heard some disturbing propositions posed by some critics of the pro-life stance. Actually two disturb me most. The first is that the pro-life mentality does not respect a woman's rights. That is so wrong, but I am not going to deal with that now, maybe later if I feel like it. But just to clarify, while the pro-life movement gets most of it's press with regards to abortion, it's much more than that. We value all life form conception to natural death so that includes among other things standing firm against euthanasia, assisted suicide, and any other way the culture of death would seek to invade our society. However even more disturbing than the "woman's rights" lie is the supposition that Christian's are afraid of or somehow find death distasteful. Nothing could be further than the truth. While we must acknowledge that there are different stages of maturity for a...