The Catholic Vote was Heard!

Unfortunately, it was the wrong voice that was speaking.  If Catholics had voted in accordance with Church teachings, not Church orders, but by its teachings, our president would not have been re-elected.  First, let me go over Catholics today and then I will cover those issues that caused the President to win.
 
Today, we have a lot of "cafeteria Catholics".  Those are the Catholics who pick and choose those things about Catholicism that they like and can live with.  They are the people who like to say they are Catholic, but find that being a true Catholic is a lot of work.  These are the Catholics who voted for the President.  A true Catholic, following the Church's teachings should NOT have voted for President Obama.  Here are just a couple of reasons why:

Abortion:  Abortion is an intrinsic evil as taught by the Catholic Church.  No matter how you slice it, abortion is wrong.  To vote for someone or be involved with an abortion makes you an associate of that evil.  President Obama is the most Pro-Abortion president we have ever had.  Four times he voted against a law that would protect a baby born from a botched abortion.  He supports abortion on demand throughout the duration of a pregnancy as well as the procedure known as Partial Birth Abortion. You cannot be Catholic and pro-abortion.  To say you are is a lie...and a stance you will have to defend on judgement day.

Religious Freedom:  The HHS Mandate that the Obama administration is pushing onto religious organizations is NOT a Catholic issue, it is a Christian issue, a religious issue.  We constantly hear about the Separation of Church and State...when people want religion to stay out of abortion laws, etc.  But when Government wants to tell a religious organization that they MUST provide a service to someone that goes against their beliefs and conscience, we see no issue?  This is not about birth control and access to pills and abortion.  It is about the government telling religions what the will do...or else.  Honestly, I see it also as a thinly veiled attack on the Catholic Church specifically by the President, who is no fan of the Church.

Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide:  This has become a new thing in our country.  Massachusetts called it "Death with Dignity" on their ballot.  The culture of death that the Democratic Party tends to espouse is a moral affront to everything the Catholic Church teaches.  Pro-Life is not just about abortion.  The Church teaches that life is sacred from conception to NATURAL death.  So, take out Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide, and the death penalty in all but severe cases.  The point at which we start deciding who will live and who will die based on age, health, legal matters...is scary.  In Europe there has been a suggestion that people should be able to "post-birth abort" their child who may have gotten sick, have a health issue, or is just a financial burden; up to one year after it was born.  Is that a route we want our country to follow?  Have we become that morally sick?

Same-Sex Marriage:  This really should be a no-brainer, but we are seeing more and more Catholics treating this issue as if it is no big deal.  It completely goes against the natural order and God's law.  The Church does not hate homosexuals.  Quite the contrary.  We are told to be compassionate and not to judge.  We are also told that homosexual acts are wrong.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church is quite clear on the Church's position.

There are other issues that makes our current President a wrong vote for Catholics, but these are the big ones that were prominent in this election.  It is not easy being Catholic.  We have a lot of rules to follow and many of them are not easy.  A former priest at my home parish once answered a question about why the Church doesn't change and modernize to attract more people by saying, "It is not God who needs to change for us, but we who need to change for God".  I believe that is what Jesus told us during his time on Earth and yet, here we are 2012 years later trying to tell Him he is wrong.

So if you say you are a Catholic, BE a Catholic.  Let your actions, your words, and your vote show your Catholicity.  When we say we are Catholic and fail to act as our church teaches, we confuse those who aren't Catholic and present a false position for our Church.  Like I said, it is really hard being a Catholic, but I am proud to say I am one!

For Better...and For Worse

I recently had a discussion about marriage with a coworker and remembered my promise to cover that topic in my "evangelization" of the Catholic Church.  Unfortunately, divorce is part of the discussion as well.  If only divorces were not so common.

Our discussion had started over the topic of annulments and why they were important for Catholics and why we were the only church who really cared about them.  The start of the conversation thus began with us discussing marriage as a Sacrament, a bond entered into with the blessing of God.  It is not a simple civil contract like you get when the Justice of  the Peace marries you.  You are professing, in front of God and your witnesses that you will take your spouse forever.  No conditions, no escape clauses...forever!!  In the Catholic Church, a marriage is considered a covenant between the husband and wife, much like the covenants God made with His people. 

"But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Therefore now they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder" (Mark 10:6-9). In other words, man has no right to break the covenant.  Marriage is the religious and legal bond uniting husband and wife for mutual help and assistance, for the begetting and rearing of children, and, after the fall of our first parents, for the regulation of the sexual instinct in accordance with the dictates of reason.

So even should a man and woman divorce, they are still considered married in the eyes of the Church and cannot, therefore, participate fully in the Sacraments if they were to remarry without an annulment.  If a couple simply divorces and does not remarry, there is no harm done as far as the Sacraments go.  Years ago, divorce was considered a great sin.  That belief has changed, however.

Marriage, in the eyes of the Church, is meant to bring a man and a woman together to become one and to bear children.  That does not mean that if the marriage produces no children it is not blessed, but the idea is to bear children.  This is one of the reasons the Church defends marriage between a man and a woman so vehemently.  Contraception and fertility treatments where an outside party is needed to become pregnant are not in line with the teachings of the Catholic Church.  Medicinal treatments or fertility drugs are acceptable as they are meant to assist the couple without there being an unnatural action necessary to conceive.  Contraception is covered in an earlier blog.

So what happens when a marriage ends in a divorce?  What if the couple did everything they could to make it work but just couldn't do it.  Why is it necessary to get an annulment and what is an annulment anyway?

Quite simply, an annulment is a process a couple must go through in order to be allowed to remarry in the Catholic Church and be able to participate fully in the Sacraments.  It involves showing that at the time of the wedding, a sacred bond was not made.  Therefore, the Church states the marriage annulled and wiped from the books.  An annulment does not mean that the Church makes null something that was valid. An annulment in the Catholic Church_more properly called a decree of nullity_is a declaration that there was not a true marriage from the beginning, even though it may have had all the outward appearances of being one.

Many people find this annulment business a bunch of foolishness and completely unnecessary.  However, when you look at it, you see the beauty and the genius behind an annulment.  The Church puts such a value on marriage that they do not recognize divorce as an easy way to get out of a marriage.  The Church expects a couple to do everything they can to make it work.  With these purposes in mind, the Church requires prenuptial instructions, investigation of freedom and intention, publication of bands, and marriage before a priest.

The annulment process can be a healing process as well.  It requires a couple to look back over the marriage and tell the story from beginning to end.  If done honestly, a couple will be able to identify shortcomings and faults, not only for their spouse, but for themselves.  Often times, revealing things about themselves that they did not realize.

If all marriages were treated with the level of importance and respect as the Church does, the divorce rate would be much lower.  Unfortunately, society treats marriages as a contract that is easily broken.  Add to this the now acceptable practice of having children out of wedlock, same sex marriages, and the killing of the unborn, you can see how the sanctity of marriage and the importance of the family is in danger.  When we allow our values to be attacked and derided by society and we do not stand by them, the domino affect on our lives is devastating.  The family is the linchpin that holds society together and marriage is the cotter pin.  If we continue to allow marriage and the family to be attacked and weakened, we dare not be surprised when our society has problems.

Those Idol Worshipping Catholics!

What do you say when a non-Catholic accuses you of worshipping idols and false gods?  Do you look at the person wondering where they get that strange idea?  The accusation may be that we, as Catholics, worship dead saints or Mary since we have statues all over our churches.  Yes, Catholic churches are adorned with some very beautiful statues and artwork, but are they there for worship?

The simple answer is...absolutely not.  In the early Church, most people couldn't read, at least not until the Church began educating the masses.  How do you tell the stories of the Church if the people cannot read?  One way is to use pictures and statues to fill the void of story tellers.

 If a grandmother is going into the church with her grandchild during Christmas, what is the easiest way to show that child the story of Jesus' birth?  Go over to the manger and show the people, who they are, how they got to Bethlehem and why.  Is this a form of idolatry or a method of teaching a child about the Son of God?  I bet you will find this form of "idol worship" in many Protestant homes too.



St Michael the Archangel,
Defend us in Battle



By placing this very famous statue in a church, are we encouraged to worship St. Michael, the Archangel?  We are shown how he is the angel who leads God's angelic army and that he will protect us.  We have a prayer to him, not to worship him, but to ask him for protection from the devil.

And what better way to decorate a church than with beautiful stained glass windows that bring the Saints to life and remind us of those who went before us in the Church and are models to live by?  Pictures of saints are no different than putting a poster of your favorite sports hero on the wall, except in the vast majority of cases, the saint is a much better role model.

These forms of art are nothing more than just that, art.  They allow us to remember stories or people from the Bible.  They may show the patron saint of a church.  My particular parish (St Joseph Catholic Church) has this statue out front of it. 



St. Joseph, Builder



It shows St. Joseph as a carpenter, showing Jesus a wooden boat.  We do not worship Joseph just because we have a statue of him.  We do honor him for the role he played in raising Jesus.  This statue makes it easy to tell a young child about Joseph and his role in Jesus' life and in our Church.

So next time you are accused of worshipping false gods because, as a Catholic, we have statues and pictures in our churches and homes, simply explain to the person the benefits of those items and how they offer us a method of teaching and being reminded of our rich faith.  The key is, educate, do not get defensive.



 

Contraception...the True Teaching

Lately, contraception has been forefront in the news.  Not only because of the Health and Human Services Mandate, backed by President Obama; but also because it has taken a front seat in the Republican Presidential Candidates' debates.

The Catholic Church has once again been under fire as being against women's health care, anti-choice, and stuck in the dark ages.  Feminist organizations have attacked it for its hard stance against contraception and abortion, and have questioned how a bunch of old men can sit there and make decisions for women.

The truth is, it isn't those "old men" making the decisions.  In order to understand that statement you need to be able to accept that the Church is following teachings from Jesus Christ since the time he created the Church.  The Church stands by it's teaching that nothing should stand in the way of the possibility of having a child every time the husband and wife have sexual relations.  The reason God made us male and female was so that the parts went together and life is created.  If you try to use the same parts, no baby can be had.  I heard a statistic once that said that if all the people alive today were homosexual, in three generations mankind would vanish from the face of the earth.

As time has gone by, I have heard an even better way to explain why contraception should not be used.  When a man and woman marry, they commit to each other 100%.  In sickness and in health, richer and poorer, etc., but 100% nonetheless.  If you now use contraception, you are no longer giving yourself to each other 100%.  You are now keeping a part of yourself away from your spouse.  What most of secular society fails to realize is that the Catholic Church places a very high honor on the sacrament of Marriage.  It is not just a contract, something we conveniently do so that we can share medical costs or get tax breaks.  That is what a civil union is for.  Marriage is two people becoming one...forever.  You cannot become one, share in each other in the richest of ways, if you have placed a barrier between you.

I will cover marriage and divorce in another blog...it deserves much more time than this.

So what about all the arguments for contraception?  You know, the rather weak excuses given to allow promiscuity between unmarried couples...and selfishness between married couples.  This statement is a bit judgemental, but often the truth hurts.  The pill and other devices have allowed unmarried people to have carefree sex with little fear of repercussions.  It has caused a huge drop in morality in our society.  We now see an increase in premarital sex, infidelity, and numerous other issues.  Married couples place their wants and desires ahead of what God intended marriage to be, the avenue for procreation.  Natural Family Planning can do the same for a married couple as the pill can, with almost the same effectiveness.

One last reason the Church has against the use of contraception is that most of the methods out there today, other than a condom, are abortifacient.  That is, when they do their job, a baby is aborted.  To accept this, you must first agree with the Church's teaching that life begins at conception.  By the way, science has, in the past couple of years, come to agreement with what the Church has taught all along.  That being said, as soon as the egg is fertilized, a new life begins.  The pill, keeps that fertilized egg from implanting in the woman and aborts it.  If it does implant, it starves for lack of nourishment caused by the pill and aborts.  The IUD, sponge, and other methods like those, have much the same effect.  They either stop and kill the sperm, or keep the fertilized egg from implanting.  Basically, every time these methods work as designed, a baby is aborted.  Don't believe me?  Do some research.

The usual defense against what I just wrote is that it is just a clump of cells, it isn't a baby until it implants in the woman.  And then, it is still able to be aborted because it is only a fetus...the term baby seems to make it harder to abort.  Personally, every time I have heard a woman say she is pregnant, she says she is having a baby, not a fetus.

Contraception is not a positive tool in a marriage.  It divides and separates what is supposed to be a union created by God in which his intent for a marriage can be carried out.

It's Not About the Easter Bunny!



Deny yourself and take on more

 Even though I had planned a series of blogs on misconceptions about the Catholic Church, today is special, so I had to write a little bit about Lent.

This is one of my favorite times in the Church calendar.  It is a season that helps us to focus on the upcoming celebration even more than Advent does for Christmas.

As a child, this was not such a favorite time.  Our family gave up popcorn, soda, and candy.  Inevitably, one of my friends at school would offer me some candy and I would either turn it down or take it home and save it until Easter.  We also went to Mass every day of the week.  This part I did not mind so much because I was able to be the Altar Server, which I loved.  I didn't care so much, however, for the Stations of the Cross because it was longer and I had to walk along the Stations with the priest while I held the cross.  I gained a new appreciation for my walk when we had a priest in my high school years who could not walk the Stations himself.  He told me that someone had to walk the Stations or we would not receive the Indulgences.  Now I had a purpose.

As I got older, Lent became a time that was not so much what I was giving up, but what I could do extra.  I tried to read the Bible more, or do a daily Rosary.  Although this was, in my opinion, a good way to follow the Lenten path, it didn't seem like enough.  I justified not giving up anything because I really didn't eat much of the things I was giving up.  This year, I decided to make a significant change.

Lent is meant to be a time of reflection and preparation for Easter.  I shared what Lent was and meant to my family with a reporter.  I learned a lot about the history of Lent.  It is not as much a Biblically based season as it is traditional.  The Church, in it's earliest years, used this time to prepare converts to the faith.  As the years went by, more and more of the Church's members took on the penitential aspect of the season for themselves.  I am thankful that we no longer follow the complete removal of meat from our diets during Lent.  That, to me, would be just too much!  "Fat Tuesday" was originally a way for people, along with neighbors, to get rid of all their meat, dairy, and other food stuffs that had to be refridgerated over the Lenten season.

As I was saying, this year I wanted a significant change.  Along with our family dropping the soda, popcorn, and candy, I also chose a few other things to deny myself.  They are not drastic, but I think they will cause me to think of the season I am in as I make a choice to follow my plan.  As always, I have also chosen to spend more time with God, whether it be in reading the Bible, other religious writings, or in prayer.  I am hoping that this year, Lent can be that nudge I need to make a life-change.  As one of my favorite writers, Matthew Kelley says, "Our lives change, when our habits change".

We Are Called, But Can We Follow?

As Catholic Christians we are called to evangelize, to spread the Good News.  Admittedly, Catholics are not as good at this as our Protestant brethren.  We tend to be uncomfortable about discussing our faith with others, we don't go door-to-door sharing our message of God's love.  You also don't see too many Catholic programs on mainstream television, they are usually broadcast on the Eternal World Television Network (EWTN) or The Catholic Channel on satellite radio.  Why do you think we have such a tough time sharing our Faith? 

I believe the answer is twofold.  First, we have become poorly catechized as a church.  We, as Catholics, know less about our Church and what/why it teaches what it does ,than most atheists.  This leads to and intertwines with, the second.  That is, we find ourselves often defending our Church and what it teaches and believes from an onslaught of secularist thinking and false understandings by other churches and peoples.  I would like to discuss some of the major issues in society today that seem to be the hardest for people to understand, and difficult for most Catholics to explain because they just don't know. 

Over the next couple of blogs, I will lay down an explanation for these, to the average Protestant, as I have had them explained to me and learned through my own continued education in the Faith.  The topics will offer my best understanding on them, and what I go by when I explain to others.  They are:  contraception, Mary's place in the church, Confession, marriage (maybe mixed with contraception)/divorce, statues (idolatry), and the three parts of where our beliefs come from; The Majesterium, the Bible, and tradition.

Mary

Many Protestants misunderstand the position of honor the Catholic Church gives to Mary, the Mother of God.  They falsely believe that Catholics worship Mary and place her on an equal footing with God.  This is absolutely not true.  Yes, there is a prayer called The Hail Mary which we say a lot, especially if you say the Rosary regularly.  There is an important line in this prayer which, by the way, is taken from the Bible (Luke 1:42).  It says, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners...".  Note the request for prayers.  We are not praying to her as we would to God, we are asking her to intercede for us.  Now the arrow flies, that we don't need to have her pray for us, or the saints for that matter.  We can pray right to God!  Absolutely, you sure can.  But I pose this question then.  If there is no need to go to others, then why do people ask for "travel mercies", or please pray that my father gets better, or ask us to pray for them for any number of reasons?  If Jesus will listen to anyone, wouldn't he listen to his own mother?  We Catholics call on what we call, The Communion of Saints to help us in times of need.  That is why you will hear Catholics pray to saints for different reasons...asking for their help.

Here is a simple example that shows how our request for intercession from Mary works.  I had discontinued my son's allowance due to a lack of work performed.  After a while, he went to my wife to see if she would talk to me about getting his allowance back.  Why didn't he just go to me?  Why ask her?  He thought maybe she could sway me a little bit better than he could.  He needed her to intercede for him.

Mary is given the honor due her by her position in life.  As the Mother of God, she deserves to be revered and honored, not worshipped.  If a Catholic never said a Hail Mary his entire life...it would be OK.  It doesn't make him a bad Catholic.  Mary is given the honor we should all give to our mother's.

Next time I will take a look at statues and art and the misconceptions behind the Church's use of them.