It Really Does Matter

Wow, it has been a month and a half since I have blogged.  I do have a podcast in process, but I’m not sure when I will get it finished.  Time has just been hard to find.

About a month ago, Yana and I closed on a new house.  We’ve had a lot of work to do to get through closing in less than 30 days from when we got our contract.  This is the first house I’ve owned.  We have been steadily moving, and we are very thankful for a lot of people who have helped us.  Right now, the move is almost done.

As for the baby, well, we are expecting him any time.  He’s going to be a pretty big guy right off the bat.  Everything we have heard from the doctors has indicated that he is making great progress.

Oh, I did get my new iMac that I had been wanting.  It’s one fast computer with a gorgeous screen.  As soon as I got it, I installed Mac OS X Lion on it since it didn’t come preinstalled.  The installation went without a problem, and Lion is a lot of fun to use.  I think the gesture thing is a gimmick that won’t really be used for long, but there’s plenty more to the OS.  Unlike a lot of reviewers, I like LaunchPad.  If I can get around to it, I’ll write more on this later.

I’ll be sure to let everyone know when the little guy is born.  After that, we’ll see how often I make it to this blog.

As Cnet commemorated the fourth anniversary of the iPhone, I bought one.  Cnet reminded me why I didn’t want an iPhone when it first came out.  It was hideously expensive even with a contract, and it wasn’t 3G.  At the time, I didn’t want something that was all touch screen.  Having the iPod and my cell phone together just meant that the device would be guzzling batteries.  It just didn’t seem worth it to me.  Besides, I had Pocket Quicken on my Treo, and I didn’t want to give it up.

Fast forward to 2010.  I bought a Motorola Droid (and reviewed it here and here).  As you can see from my reviews, I was quite impressed with it.  The iPhone wasn’t available for Verizon, and I still wasn’t that interested anyway.  As for Pocket Quicken, in what I would consider to be one of the worst software decisions ever, Intuit terminated Landware’s license for Pocket Quicken.  I have since switched to iBank on my Mac.  I was ready for a more modern smartphone.

So, why did I switch to the iPhone?  The first reason is that the performance of my Droid has deteriorated as I have updated it.  It has slowed to a crawl.   The sales rep at Verizon said that this was happening to a lot of Android phones that were sold in the last year.  Some features that I really liked have been taken away with updates to the operating system.  For example, I have a Vonage phone that e-mails me my voice mail.  I used to be able to open the voice mails within the e-mail program, but now I can’t.  On the iPhone, however, I can.  The e-mail program started giving me notifications of new e-mails when there were none.  That got old!

The iPhone just seems to work so much better.  It is fast and responsive, and even the touch screen responds better.  I’m much better with a touch screen than I used to be, so I don’t mind not having a physical keyboard.  The apps that I have tried in both flavors seem to be much better on iPhone.  Facebook allows me to see who “likes” a given status.  The barcode reader app seems to have less trouble reading the bar codes.  I’m having a lot of fun with this.

Right now, you can find truckloads of articles and blog posts offering commentary on the recent news about Fr. Corapi, a priest who was once known as a great defender of orthodox Catholic teaching.  He has announced that he is leaving active ministry as a priest but will minister under another title.  Other people have written far too much about his situation, and I’m not going to pretend that I can add much to the discussion.  Besides, there are a few people who accept the possibility that the whole thing may be a hack job.  It’s not out of the question to me because the video doesn’t show him actually speaking, and the audio doesn’t sound quite right to me.

The more troubling part to me is that he isn’t the first on-fire, orthodox priest to do this.  Over the last few years I’ve seen a number of priests who appeared to be holy, orthodox, and happy priests leave their ministry.  Some just picked up and left; others were caught in scandal.  It has left me wondering what is going on.

I have to remind myself that there are a lot still standing, and they really need our prayers.  They have an indelible mark on their souls and a target on their backs, as Fr. Z explains very well. Perseverance to the end in service to Christ is difficult for any of us.  All of us who wish to attain eternal salvation much support each other and especially our priests.  There are just so many traps set by the enemy for all of us that I can’t name all of them in this post.  We can easily grow tired of fighting the good fight, especially in today’s world.  Our priests are often on the front end of this battle, and their perseverance is often what brings the salvation of many.

This weekend, the news has come out that Dr. Jack Kevorkian has died.  We know full well that he was a man who did much to bring about the Culture of Death.  It would be easy to be glad that he is gone, but be careful.  The same goes for any man who has done great evil.  One who comes to mind for me now is George Tiller.

It’s one thing to be glad that they cannot do their evil deeds anymore.  However, to actually desire or rejoice their demise is quite another.  To desire their damnation is even worse.  There is a point at which we can desire the justice of God, but often the line between that and desiring their damnation is a very fine one that is difficult to walk.  It would be very dangerous for our souls to end up on the wrong side of that line.

Simply put, we know that God would much rather have had their repentance.  Can you imagine what a powerful witness either Kevorkian or Tiller would have been had they repented?  Let’s not forget that the rejoicing in Heaven would have been tremendous.

Even now, we can still hope and pray, as I always do men like these die, that they repented at the last minute.  You and I may never have done anything like what these men did, but we are sinners.  By hoping in the mercy of God for them, we realize that we, too, are in need of his mercy.  If they did repent because of our prayers, they could become a powerful intercessor for us. By being merciful, we have hope of receiving God’s mercy.

File this one in the “I wish I had this a long time ago” category.  I got an e-mail from Ascension Press, whose works I really like, about a new book named Disorientation.  It’s about the “-isms” (ideologies) that college students are bombarded with from the very beginning.  The site itself is worth seeing even if you don’t plan to buy the book because it gives a short description of each “-ism.”  Even though I’m twelve years past college and my son isn’t born yet, I just might go for a copy of this book.

Several years ago, I can remember someone saying that the best defense against false teaching is to know the true Catholic faith.  Well, this has a lot of truth to it.  Still, I do believe that it sharpens ones knowledge of the faith to learn about ideas that are opposed to it and what is wrong with those ideas.  This is why books like this provide great resources that I wish I had just before I entered college.

I’ve made it to the tenth episode of the podcast.

You can download it here.

Since I haven’t covered anything fun for a little while, I thought I’d talk about . . . well . . . another sort of conversion I experienced in 2006.  Then, I get serious.  I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of hearing about how “oppressive” or “heavy-handed” the Church is when someone who spreads false teaching is disciplined.  There are three recent well-known cases that I dive into and show how these adjectives are not warranted.  One of them is the removal of Bishop William Morris from his diocese in Australia.  His case had actually drawn on for year.

Read about it here.

The story includes a video of how people are “shocked” and “angered.”  Would that people be so “shocked” and “angered” because false teaching is being presented in the name of the Church!

This week, I got the news that a new letter of instruction was released on the celebration of the Mass in the Extraordinary Form from the Ecclesia Dei commission and approved by Pope Benedict.  This came as kind of a clarification on Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict’s letter authorizing wider use of the rite.  In both texts, the Holy Father is asking for wider availability of the older form for those who request it.

When Summorum Pontificum was published in 2007, it generated a variety of reactions.  Bishop Burbidge of Raleigh, NC welcomed it.  Meanwhile, in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, a strange list of “norms” was published regarding its use that seem to defeat the purpose of the Holy Father’s decree.  In fact, what I’ve read about this past week’s new letter seem to have been written to specifically counter what they are saying in Cincinnati.

Here’s my question:  Why are there people so afraid of allowing the celebration of the Extraordinary Form?  Pope Benedict is only asking for it to be made available for those who desire it.  What is the problem that a bishop or an office of worship in a diocese would need to set up such barriers?

Well, there is one legitimate concern.  Some people who favor the old rite do so because they don’t respect the validity of the Ordinary Form of the Mass.  This is a form of dissent against the Church that cannot be supported.  The new instruction addresses this by saying that groups such as these should not be accommodated.  The purpose of Summorum Pontificum was to promote reconciliation, not schism.

Do people (whether laity, priests, or the local bishop) worry that priests, especially younger ones, will just up and decide that they aren’t going to offer the Ordinary Form anymore?  This is highly unlikely.  The greater availability of the Extraordinary Form is for people who request it.  If there is not a group of people requesting it, it’s difficult to imagine priests eager to impose it on them.  Are people going to want the Extraordinary Form in such numbers that priests everywhere will be compelled to offer it?  I doubt this.  Too many people (out of ignorance, mostly) believe that the Extraordinary Form is a relic of the Dark Ages.

Do people have some problem with the Extraordinary Form? If so, what?  It had been the only form of the Roman Rite for centuries, and it is a very beautiful rite.  Whenever I have been, I see people who truly want to be at Mass and give worship to God.  So, I ask (please feel free to comment), what are we afraid of?

I just posted my latest podcast episode.

Download it here.

This podcast is primarily a tribute to now Blessed John Paul II and what his work meant for me.  The more I think about it, the more things I think about that I could have said.  Oh well, this isn’t meant to be comprehensive, and my episodes are brief.

Alleluia!  He is risen!  I wish a most Blessed and Happy Easter to all of my family, friends, and anyone who is reading this.

As we were getting up this morning, my wife reminded me that this Easter marks twenty years since I became Catholic.  I was baptized on the Easter Vigil in 1991 as a sophomore in high school.  Somehow, this had slipped my mind.  Good thing I have a wife!  This is one blogging occasion that I don’t want to miss!

Truly, I am thankful that God has led me to the Catholic Church.  It has become so much of who I am that I cannot imagine being anything else.  Nothing compares to being able to be fed, sometimes daily, with none other than the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, whose resurrection we celebrate this day.

This doesn’t mean that it was always easy, nor have I always felt the way that I do now.  When I was in college and pharmacy school in Mississippi, I was jealous of the Protestants.  They seemed to be happy in their faith.  At the time, I knew of few Catholics whose love for Jesus Christ was so visible.  Campus ministry wasn’t too helpful either.  I tried to accept what I was being taught, but something didn’t seem quite right.  It probably didn’t help that I was also somewhat anti-intellectual at the time.  Well, actually, that may have been the grace of God at the time as I might have fallen for who knows what.

However, something sustained me.   To explain this, I need to go back to the time before I became Catholic.  When I was about three or four, I have a vague memory of being in church and watching someone put something in my aunt’s mouth.  I remember thinking “I want one of those.”  This never left me, and I would later come to know just what it was that I wanted.  It was nothing less than the Holy Eucharist, God himself, and I believed in it!  While I was preparing to enter the Church, I longed to receive him.  During the last few weeks before the Easter Vigil, I was really counting down the days, tired of watching people receive what I so badly wanted but could not yet receive.  The thought that I would get to join the Church the night before Easter Sunday really appealed to me.  It was one less day I had to wait to receive him.

It was that total self-gift that God has given us in the Eucharist that sustained me during years of kind of “wandering in the dessert.”  I was always at Sunday Mass.  No matter what others had to offer, I knew that only in the Catholic Church was I receiving Jesus himself in the Eucharist.  Despite sensing that something wasn’t really right (though I couldn’t put my finger on it), I wasn’t leaving the Church.

Shortly after graduation from pharmacy school, I reached the stage where I learned that the things that didn’t seem right really weren’t right.  In many cases, this wasn’t really the fault of those involved.  However, now I was being fed with the authentic faith.  I came back to my practice of praying before the Blessed Sacrament that I had kind of fallen away from.  The result was a transformation that would still be a difficult road, but now I realized I had a purpose.  The things I discovered about the faith shortly after graduating from pharmacy school started me a path of falling in love with the Church all over again.  It became clear that there were many people who were near my age may never have had a chance to know what I had learned.   I figured out what had been bugging me.  I wanted to do something about it.

What would I do?  This would take years to fully develop.  The seeds were actually planted while I was in pharmacy school.  There were web sites being put out by people defending the teachings of the Church.  I had rarely seen people defend the teachings, and I must admit that I didn’t like them at first.  Still, I had my own web page and did some of the same stuff.  Later, when I was working and had money, I would buy some Catholic teachings on tape.  God was telling me that I could do this on a local level.  So, I began recording RCIA talks into my computer and making CDs (later MP3s).  A couple of years later, I joined an RCIA where I was allowed to give some talks, which I also recorded.  God was using my desire to teach, my media hobby, and my geekiness for his own purpose.

Things have continued to change.  I am learning more about the faith, and especially about liturgy.  Yana and I will have our first-born son this September.  I am going to be working in my own domestic church. Don’t get me wrong; I never want to stop working however I can in evangelization and the use of new media.  I don’t think God called me to it just to take it away completely, especially since I still have the desire.  However, I do know that my ultimate responsibility will be for the souls of those whom God has entrusted directly to Yana and me.  I thank God for all he has given me these past twenty years and pray for his continued help for me and my family.

My latest podcast, and the last in my Lenten series, is now posted.

Get it here.

This one is pretty brief.  I didn’t have nearly as much to say on almsgiving.  I did throw in some thoughts on how easy it would have been for Jesus to come down from the cross at the beginning.

Enjoy!