Purify Your Bride

A few days ago Pope Benedict delivered a reflection on Humanae Vitae. I saw the story on CNN and I wanted to get to see what he actually said without the MSM spin. It took a while but Amy Welborn posted the translation today. Interesting comments.
He certainly confirms the link between Humanae Vitae and [...]

This was the reading at mass this morning. I found it quite interesting. When you look at it, it is about worship. As a protestant I always missed that. There is an assumption that how you worship is unimportant. What matters is what your heart is like. So we would always jump to the conclusion [...]

The Ascension is one of the hard things to understand. It involves the removal from earth of the best evidence for the resurrection. That is the body of the risen Lord. Why just give people 40 days to see Him? Why not just go to the temple and show everyone? Why not let Jesus hang [...]

I saw the movie Juno on Saturday. It was entertaining. Very crude but quite clever. Even though this movie has been hailed as a beckon of light for the culture of life I was struck by how lost it seemed. There was one running joke about teens being sexually active. The thing was she could not imagine [...]

Preach the Gospel; when necessary, use words.
Has there ever been a saying more disastrous for the church than that one? St Francis of Assisi is often claimed to have said it but there is never a citation. There is a good reason. It is not in any of his writings. There is no evidence he [...]

Fr Dwight has a great post on the church militant. One thing I would quibble with him on is where this idea of the pursuit of happiness comes from. He blames it on America. Americans do like that phrase but I hardly think they invented the idea of pursuing happiness. It has been around for [...]

What I hate most about Christmas is not the materialism. Sure we need to be on guard against excess and trying to find our happiness in stuff. I think secular people are probably almost as aware of this danger. Christians should be less likely to fall into this problem but if they are it is [...]

One of the main critiques we hear about Catholic sexual morality is that it is unrealistic. We even hear that from protestants. Our teachings on priestly celibacy, masturbation, and contraception are labeled too difficult. God gave us powerful hormones and does not want us to be fighting them all the time. The first problem you [...]

One of the chief complaints about the Catholic church is that they hate sex. This is one of those charges that anyone who defends the Catholic church has refuted time and time again. But you can see where it comes from. Someone considering coming into the Catholic church, who has learned their sexual behaviour from [...]

I popped over to Rebecca’s blog called Catholic In Film School. She has an interesting post there on not dating until you are ready to get married. This is one of those thing that seems so obvious when you sit down and think about it but people rarely live it out. I know when I [...]

Some old notes on sex and marriage from my Life Teen days.

Why
Spiritual Reasons
Your body is not yours to give.  You belong body and soul to God.  Disobedience always causes separation from God, especially in such an important area of life.  If you don’t live what you believe you will either change your lifestyle or change [...]

31“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep [...]

Some in my comment boxes brought up Mother Teresa’s alleged failure to evangelize. I was writing a response there and decided to move it up here: 
Mother Teresa did not try and convert people. She converted many but that was not her aim. She just wanted to show them God’s love. She realized that many would respond to [...]

When you send a bunch of children outside to play it is a good idea to have a fence. If you don’t you need clear boundaries and consequences when those boundaries are crossed. Otherwise you will have some children run off too far and bad things can happen. But not all of them run off too [...]

Lots of talk about Mother Teresa these days. It is amazing how many people are just totally confused by it. I guess we all need a reminder that suffering and doubt are not just things we go through because we are somehow defective. They are part of what the Christianwalk is meant to be. They [...]