Always Advent

I came across this excellent book at my local public library, on the “new books” shelf:

The Catholicism Answer Book by Rev. John Trigilio Jr., PhD and Rev. Kenneth Brighenti, PhD (2007, Sourcebooks Inc.)

Straight-up, no-nonsense, get in/get out question & answer format. I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but it passes all the tests for good, Catholic books: orthodox, faithful answers to the hot button questions about sexual morality (contraception, homosexuality, fornication), life issues (abortion, capital punishment, cloning, embryonic stem cell research), clergy (male priesthood, priestly celibacy), history (the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Da Vinci Code) and the Bible (questions of creation, reading the Bible correctly). And so on.

Best place for this book? On your coffee table, bedside, or the reading rack in your bathroom. Highly recommended.

The authors also wrote Catholicism for Dummies.

See yesterday’s entry:

Lenten Change-Up: Fast From All Media

I had an idea for a little Lenten change-up, something to take the focus off food: a complete media fast, perhaps once a week if possible, or one afternoon or evening per week.

no movies
no TV
no video games
no computer
no email
no internet
no chat or instant messaging
no radio
no CDs
no newspaper
no magazines
no books
no phone
no texting

In other words, no “canned” input of any kind.

If you want music, you must play it yourself or go to a concert and hear it live.
If you want games, you must get out the cards or a board game and play with actual people.
If you want written words, you must write them.
If you want conversation, you must conduct it face-to-face with a live human being.

Isaiah 58:6 says “This, rather, is the fasting that I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke.”

Do you feel unjustly bound by your email inbox? Oppressed by the constant barrage of noise from the various screens and speakers throughout your house? Crushed under a yoke of unread newspapers, magazines, books?

I don’t have cable or satellite TV and I only get one broadcast channel on my set; I don’t have a video game system; I don’t own a cell phone; I don’t even know how to do internet chat. In other words, I live a pretty quiet life already with regards to media, but even I often feel overwhelmed by input.

I’m already “fasting” from radio/music in the car during my daily commute, but I’m going to try this one night a week, at least, for the rest of Lent. I can tell you already that the hardest part for me will be “no books.” But the written word, good as it is, is a form of input that, if never silenced, has the power to drown out the voice of God. In his book, The Rhythm of Life, Matthew Kelly writes, “You can learn more in an hour of silence than in a year from books.”

A positive list of what you CAN do during a media fast:

write letters to elderly relatives who don’t have email
go for a walk
light a fire and sit with people and drink wine and talk
play a board game
bake bread
pray the Rosary
pray in silence without the aid (crutch?) of a text of any kind
you get the idea

Related stuff elsewhere on the internet:

Tim Ferriss: Experiments in Lifestyle Design — “Low-Information Diet & Selective Ignorance”

Leo Babauta: Zen Habits — “Peaceful Simplicity: How to Live a Life of Contentment”

Merlin Mann: 43 Folders — “Inbox Zero”

I just got back from a lovely confirmation ceremony at my parish, at which our dear bishop exhorted the newly confirmed with the above phrase: “Confirmation is not the same as graduation.” I thought this was excellent. Too many Catholics’ education in the faith comes to a screeching halt within minutes of shedding their red, fire-retardant confirmation gowns. Hopefully, the souls wearing the gowns aren’t Fire-retardant…

Father Corapi has a great line in one of his talks in which he suggests that the charismatic renewal in the church wouldn’t have been necessary if the sacrament of confirmation was doing what it was meant to do. Why is it that the laying on of hands and anointing by the bishop no longer results in powerful phenomena as in the days of the early church?

Perhaps it’s because they didn’t administer sacraments to people until they were truly converted. In modern times, one could argue that many people who receive the sacraments are not converted at all. They receive Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Matrimony for cultural reasons and not because they and their families actually believe this stuff.

In the Gospel there’s an episode where the people of a certain town lacked faith to such an extent that Jesus could not work any miracles there. I guess if a minister of the church confers one of the sacraments upon someone who doesn’t really believe, that sacrament and its graces could be pretty much nullified by that person’s lack of faith or lack of conversion. Yet, by faith, we believe that the Sacraments do what the Church promises. It’s a great mystery…

Pray for all the newly confirmed, the soon-to-be confirmed, and for those who were confirmed many years ago. May God fan into flame the gifts of the Holy Spirit within our hearts and grant us the gift of unshakable faith and true conversion to the Lord!

A small child had this conversation with her mother:

“Mommy, I didn’t know Mary was a monk.”

“A monk? I don’t think so.”

“Then why do we call her a monk?”

“We don’t call her a monk.”

“Yes, we do, in the Hail Mary when we pray the Rosary.”

“We do?”

“Yes. And why does she swim?”

“She swims?”

“Mom! In the Rosary, we say, ‘Blessed are you, a monk swimmin,’ and blessed is the fruit o’ thy womb.”

I thought this one was pretty funny. Right up there with “Howard be thy name.”

…because even prime time television, no matter how innocuous, inevitably contains some crude sexual innuendo. The Oscars tonight, for example. Not five minutes into the program, host Jon Stewart made a joke about the Hollywood writers’ strike:

“Aren’t we all glad it’s over?” (Applause applause.)

“And now, welcome to the make-up sex.” (Laughter laughter.)

Except from me. Six children under 11 and two over 14 were in the room. Can’t those people make jokes about anything else?

Sigh. So I can’t even take my kids over to my mom’s house to watch the Oscars without something objectionable on the TV. I give up. We stayed long enough to see which movie won best animated feature, though. (It was Ratatouille.)

“It is a very fine thing to feel ashamed of oneself when one realizes one’s own imperfections and misery, but the feeling must not drag on lest one lose heart. It is necessary to raise the heart to God with a holy confidence, founded not in our strength but in God. We indeed change, but God never does; He always remains equally good and merciful toward us, whether we are weak and imperfect or perfect and strong. I always say that our misery is the throne of God’s mercy, and so we must realize that the greater our misery, the greater should be our confidence in Him.”
(St. Francis de Sales, Spiritual Discourses II; O. VI, p. 22

“During the course of the day, recall as often as possible that you are in God’s presence. Consider what God does and what you are doing. You will see His eyes turned toward you and constantly fixed on you with incomparable love. Then you will say to Him, “O God, why do I not look always at You, just as You always look at me? Why do You think so often of me, O Lord, and why do I think so seldom of You?” Where are we, O my soul? God is our true place, and where are we?”

(St. Francis de Sales, INT. Part II, Ch. 12; O. III, p. 92)

Gabrielle at Contemplative Haven has a good quote from Thomas Merton:

Today, before the seventh and eighth stations of the Cross, I was terribly conscious that I was only saying words. The Lord permits our indifference before the Stations of the Cross so that we may realize that at best we are still indifferent to His sacrifice, and can’t be anything but indifferent. We cannot suffer His pains, unless He lets us do so in a miracle – we can suffer our own indifference to His pains. To realize that God is dying and that we are indifferent is to stand on the edge of an inconceivable agony.

http://gabrielle.stblogs.com/2008/02/18/monday-morning-with- merton-inconceivable/

“True Contentment is NOT when we have everything we want, but when we WANT everything we have.” – unknown

Just a reprint today: an excellent editorial from the National Catholic Register last year. Enjoy!

Six Myths of Atheism
http://ncregister.com/site/article/7279

Six Myths of Atheism

BY THE EDITORS
November 18-24, 2007 Issue | Posted 11/13/07 at 1:28 PM

In one respect, it’s good that Golden Compass, a book by a prominent atheist children’s author, is being made into a movie. It could lead to a wider discussion of atheism. It is easy to be a quiet atheist — but much harder to remain an atheist when you actually have to explain your position. Here are a few common myths about atheism that discussion can help dispel.

Myth: Atheists are more logical than believers.

A myth that is kin to this one is the myth that believers are more logical than atheists. In fact, the reasons people become believers or become atheists are rarely reducible to logic. Rather, a number of experiences, observations and emotional states together push someone toward belief or unbelief. The idea that there is an almighty God is terrifying to many people. Rather than be in the power of such a being, they flee him. Others, perhaps, have been so wounded by believers that they reject their beliefs and not just their behavior. Logic is brought in to comfort the atheist with rationalizations. On the other hand, the way we come to believe in God isn’t through a syllogism, either. It’s through a personal encounter with Christ, or with one of his proxies: beauty, truth and goodness.

Myth: The burden of proof is on the religious.

Atheists often say that the default position of mankind should be lack of belief, since there is “no proof” of God’s existence. Others say agnosticism should be the default position of mankind: We should start out by saying “We’re not sure,” and work from there. Anthony Flew, the prominent atheist who recently converted to a position of belief in “the God of Aristotle” said that the default position of mankind should be belief, since, after all, the universe and its complicated laws exists, and you have to deny the obvious to say that there is no creator. Flew saw three irrefutable proofs that there must be a god in the laws of nature, life with its singular organization and the existence of the universe.

Myth: Science makes God obsolete.

There is a widespread assumption that somehow the progress of science has challenged, or will challenge, the reasons that previous generations had for believing in God. But why should it? Imagine if human beings were the size of microbes and lived on a tuna noodle casserole instead of our current size on the earth. Imagine we became so scientifically advanced, we identified all the different constituent parts of the casserole we lived on, and even started to explore the vast kitchen outside the casserole. It would be ridiculous for us to claim that, since we know the ingredients so well, there must not have been a cook.

Myth: Science is a reliable guide for us.

In fact, if you look at the history of science, you don’t see the history of an infallible learning method slowly but surely widening our understanding of the universe. Science is an excellent instrument for fact-finding, but one that has been wrong about fundamental things at every point in its history. Theories of spontaneous generation seemed entirely reasonable at the dawn of science. Paul Ehrlich’s theories expecting mass famine due to overpopulation seemed plausible at the beginning of the 1970s. What theories of today will prove just as false? Scientific knowledge at any stage of its history is merely tentative, and new discoveries are continually refining or discarding previous theories.

Myth: Religion and science are incompatible.

Often, fans of this myth will cite Galileo as proof that religion and science are opponents in a contest that often appears to be a death match. The Galileo incident is actually a good example of the real relationship between science and religion. Search for Galileo at Catholic.com, to learn how the incident is widely misunderstood. Galileo’s theory that the earth travels around the sun and not vice versa was not unique to Galileo. Others held it, and the Church didn’t suppress the idea. Instead, Galileo’s personal animus toward the Pope forced the two into a showdown. The moral of the story? Real religion and honest science are certainly compatible: Religious people and scientists, however, sometimes fail to be.

Myth: Religion has led to violent intolerance.

Undoubtedly, far too many religious people have been violent and intolerant. But if you look at the facts about such notorious incidents as the Inquisition and the witch hunts (look them up at Catholic.com), you’ll find that the crimes of the Church have been greatly exaggerated. Meanwhile, atheist communists in the 20th century killed more people than the Church was ever even accused of killing. Killed were some 65 million (and counting) in China; 20 million in the Soviet Union, 2 million (and counting) in North Korea, 2 million in Cambodia, 1.7 million in Africa, 1.5 million in Afghanistan, 1 million in Vietnam, 1 million in communist Eastern Europe and 150,000 in Latin America.

Catholics should be aware of the threats to faith posed by movies like The Golden Compass, but we shouldn’t be afraid of them. The Church has faced far fiercer and cleverer opponents for more than 2,000 years, and we’re still here to tell the tale.

How are we able to come out ahead so consistently? That’s easy. It’s because there really is a God.