Roll of Not Fitting

Being Catholic means we are to side with the downfallen, the ostrasized, the minimized, the marginizalized, the poor, the weak, any and all of those who cannot speak for themselves.  It also means, we should expect a cost.   

The cost has been coming.  

From the youngest of ages, I've always wanted to "fit in." and honestly, never felt I did.   

As an adult for a time, I "fit in" with the Catholic media to which I aspired, I wrote for places I wanted to be part of, and felt like one of the cool kids.   However, recent decisions have indicated, I need to be okay with being not even part of the B-team.   These past sixteen years, I've written for multiple Catholic pubications, even spoken on many.  I've been a big fan of Catholic media, supporting it with my time, my talent, my treasure, and many of the names became surrogate friends, affirming for me values I held dear.  

However, the media keeps warping, and to my heart, no longer speaks with a humble heart, but with an authoritative insistence, about what should be one's priority, and what is permissible to be ignored.  Tribalism has crept into the land of the Catholic media. I feel it in the earth, I smell it in the air, and there is a darkness when it comes to how we treat each other, when we disagree, and a dark joy people have when they can tear down another.   It's part of what prompted planning a conference to help form a Catholic media community.  

No amount of telling myself, "I'm a small fry" and pushing it away won't make a difference lets me ignore the reality, the media Mother Angelica made, isn't what it was, or at the moment, what she hoped.  It's become something less than Catholic, because it isn't universal anymore, it's exclusive.  It ignores what it does not like, silences those who try to break it open, and champions people and positions that are not in keeping with the teachings of the Church in favor of what is in keeping with holding onto power.   It dismisses the Pope and idolizes the president.

Last time I checked, disagreeing with the teaching of the Church, and taking on and/or dismissing the pope made one something other than Catholic.  It hurts to let go because I wanted to belong, but more than that, I want the network to be what it says it aspires to be.  It still has hints and reminders and moments, but it, like all of us is fallen.  It's just that, it seems to not know that anymore. 

I heard my brain saying, "Sherry, what are you doing?" "Sherry, don't be stupid." and "Sherry, you have a conference and a book coming out and...and, and..."  and "Why not wait?" 

However, GK Chesterton talked about being a person of faith being like a fish that must swim upstream...which would mean, always fighting the current, being pulled against what is easy, and what is faster.  

This year, a friend of mine and her colleagues were let go from their radio program, "Morning Glory," because she spoke up against the evils of racism when the world was willing to listen. She spoke from the heart because the nation had seen with their own eyes, the rotten fruit of silence --Abery's death, George Floyd's death, Breonna Taylor... the list unfortunately goes on.   

There are lots of voices that argued, the discontent at these people's death was funded by George Soros and Anitifta, but Gloria they couldn't silence with such a claim. She wasn't left of center, she was and is Catholic.  She wasn't willing to refuse to speak against an evil.  She wasn't willing to be safe by being silent.  She suffered for the Gospel by losing affiliates and eventually lost her job because she swam upstream against the current, against the whispers of what was prudent and safe and protected.   She didn't stand by the charcoal fire and warm herself and seek not to be noticed.  She let herself be used by God as a voice, which doesn't mean success in the eyes of the world as much as we might wish it did.  

When you are willing to lose for love, you're willing to love.  She did.   

Back to now...some people who are Catholic were dismissive of her dismissal, saying she shouldn't have spoken about such things and all I could think is, "Catholicism is supposed to be a happy religion. Let's not bicker and argue over who killed who."  and "but for Wales?" Safety was Wales and silence, security with the promise of accolades and appearances and approval.  Sanctity meant risk, disapproval, and being shouted down by those who didn't like hearing anything unpleasant or unsettling.  

The Gospel of Tranquility where we are all just one big happy fleet, vs. the actual Gospel, where we embrace the cross and know, we will get more than splinters.  

I am working on a book of mediations on the words of the Doctors of the Church, and over and over again, they emphasize, we only love God as much as we love our neighbors. Saint Teresa of Avila said, "We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reason for thinking so; but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbor or not. Be sure that, in proportion as you advance in fraternal charity, you are increasing your love of God…” (St. Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church, Interior Castle, Fifth Mansion, Chapter 3).    When I quoted her to someone who felt my friend shouldn't have been bringing up racism, here is what he said:

The great Doctor doesn't say that advance in love of neighbor causes increase in love of God. And you are talking about Moral Certitude vs. Absolute Certitude which is a Theological distinction which applies to levels of Knowledge that a soul can have with respect to their relationship with God. This has no bearing on the reality that Love of God precedes and enables Love of Neighbor. There is a reason why Love of God is the First Great Commandment, and love of Neighbor the 2nd. God alone is Infinite Love, not human beings. Ergo, only to the extent that one has God, is united to God, particiaptes in His Divine Nature, is a soul capable of authentically love his/her neighbor. Man on his own can't advance in Love or love neighbor more. He must 1st possess the increase in Divine Love and Then, be capable of Loving others more with this acquired growth in Charity.

And: 

 "God did the dividing for us when He made 2 Distinct Commandments. You can't give what you don't have, and you can only give as much as you have. Only to the extent that one participates in the Divine Nature - do they possess Divine Love. And, you can only give Divine Love if you have it, and as much of it as you have. If you are St. Mother Teresa, you can love neighbors very much, BEACUSE you have LOTS of God. Love of God comes 1st - then Love of Neighbor. God ordained it this way quite explicitly in Scripture."

To me, that treats the gift, the grace of love like a finite source when we know love is infinite.  It presumes that we cannot somehow all love our neighbors, because some of us do not have enough ourselves to give out. 

I am not sure how I am not loving God if I love my neighbor. I am certain I'm not loving God if I don't love my neighbor.  I know we do not love God if we cannot see Him in the suffering face of our neighbor, in the suffering face of our enemies, in the suffering faces of strangers, in the suffering faces of suffering.  Further, we do not love God if we think we do not owe Lazarus at the gate, our gifts, our time, our talents, our treasure, our friendship.  We do not love God if we think we must somehow splice or divide our love of God from our love of neighbor, or that in loving one, we fail to love the other.  I do not cease to love my husband to the extent I love my children. I do not cease to love God to the extent I love those He made for love, and commanded me as part of my vocation to serve.  I love God only to the extent I love those He made for love and commanded me as part of my vocation to serve.  God is love, ergo whenever I show love, I am revealing the God who is love to others.  That is the mission of every soul.   The more we seek to reveal God, the more God will through us, reveal Himself.  

I also know, whatsoever I do to any of my brothers, I do unto God. 

This year, I prayed for friends, so God spent the year illustrating to me how to be a better one.  Being a better one means not staying silent, not being safe.  So, I am giving up that spot on the B-team.  Catholicism has to grate to make us grateful for our Savior. Catholicism must demand something of our spirit, of who we are, because love is always based on sacrifice.   

Goodbye EWTN.  I will miss what you were and wait in joyful hope that you may one day become again so I can return.    

What Reveals and Reflects God's Image

The tearing down of statues of Saint Junipero Serra in California, and the advocation of the destruction of other renditions of Christ and Mary that reflect Western European and White American skin tone isn’t so much about how Christ has been depicted, as it is about how Christians have (both past and present) failed to reflect Christ’s deep love for their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. What people of goodwill want destroyed is not the art or the icons or the images, but the attitudes, presumptions and mythology that have been allowed to persist both overtly and covertly.

On a conscious and unconscious level, news of atrocities, of brutality, of relentless cyclical poverty and violence inflicted on people of color, has been ignored as a matter of national policy. Tragedy after tragedy ho-hummed by the majority to the point, a person in a position of authority (the policeman), could know he was being filmed, and keep his knee on George Floyd’s neck despite cries from others and from George Floyd himself for mercy. Black lives need to matter to the nation, to everyone. Evidence over history has proven, they do not.

This is not an advocation for the removal of statues, art, icons or stain glass windows, it is a reflection on all the people, lives and history we’ve not preserved. We ought to be more dismayed at the smashed lives, the pulled down humans, and the paintings we’ve rendered as a society of our fellow human beings and of ourselves.

Christ came to us, he took fleshy form, he endured the reality of our reality, of a body and a skin and all that comes with being a person, bleeding, sweating, needing so much more than food, so much more than merely shelter. He came so we might know God, and when we depict him in a creshe or on the cross, we are attempting to convey that fleshy reality, to show the connection between God and man that Christ is.

Being human, we make God in our own image, but in doing so, we enter into the mystery of how Christ is more and yet fully us whether we know it or not. When we look at a cultural image of the crucified Jesus, we know it is Jesus by the cross and the nails, and the crown of thorns. When we see the incarnation in the stable, we know it is Jesus by the presence of Mary and Joseph, by the meagerness of his estate, and by the star and the angels. When we see Jesus in the Eucharist, we know Him in the breaking (a violence) of the bread, and we know Him by partaking in His feast of pouring out His blood.

The question remains for each of us, is if we can see Christ in the Eucharist, and know Him to be there in the bread that still looks like bread and the wine that still looks like wine, how is it, we have managed as Catholics, to not fully see Christ in those around us made in God’s image, whose wounds remain open and bleeding?

Statues can be recast, and glass, reformed into new images. Humans, though each, a mosaic of experiences and yet each a complete unique whole work of beautiful art, cannot be replaced. The lives destroyed by racism, the souls we injure and/or ignore, they are not lost to God, though we lose ourselves in committing the sin, we lose so much by not seeing those around us as our brothers and sisters in Christ. Each of us is worth a world of sparrows, as Saint Junipero might remind us, and thus is to be welcomed and allowed a home in our hearts and in our Church. Our faith demands it.

If you’re angry about the statues, remember the art is only important in calling us to sainthood, while the history is important in reminding us we’re not yet so holy. Even if in anger, all the statues and art are removed, Christ remains before us in the fleshy faces of everyone, and in the Eucharist. It is not the outside statues of stone we need to take down; it’s our own hearts that were hard enough to not see Christ in others.

Our use of icons to remind us of the fleshy flesh of our saints and the God we love, is not there to champion us, but to challenge us to go and wash the feet, feed the hungry, visit the prisoners, to care for the sick and bury the dead. The saints live, and work with us and through us now, or want to, and they would remind us, the statues aren’t where the sacred lies, the statues remind us to live sacred lives.

Go Trick-or-Treat or Watch Baseball People...

Blessed Mother, pray for us. Holy Mary, pray for us.  Mother of Christ, pray for us. Mary, House of Gold, pray for us.  Mystical Rose, pray for us. Seat of Wisdom, pray for us. Refuge of Sinners, pray for us, Morning Star, pray for us. The litany for the Blessed Virgin Mary became part of how we come to know and love Jesus’ mother in 1587, though it feels to us as if it has always been.

People at the time and even now, probably struggle with some of the names. They provoke, they push, and they invite us into contemplation. It seems, we have as many titles for her, as we have peoples who love her.

I have my favorites, including “Mary, Undoer of Knots,” when I’m feeling overtaxed. Honoring Mary as Queen of the Americas came much later, in 1957, but she has many more names, all of them inviting us to discover how she is Mother to all of us.  The names we’ve given to Our Lady, have come from us, all of us across all of time, and across many cultures, including the name, Our Lady of the Amazon.

You may remember that kerfuffle from last week with the Synod or you may (like most people) have other things to do like watch baseball, prepare for Halloween, eat, pay bills and work. Someone decided it was a good idea to throw the statue gifted to the Pope into the river. Someone else thought it a good idea to document the taking of the statue and throwing it into the river. Some praised this as brave. Others thought it theft. Some thought it the equivalent of the cleansing of the temple, likening the taker of the statue to Saint Boniface and his attempt to disentangle heretical beliefs and practices from Christianity, and others, the act akin to nailing the 99 thesis on the Church door. Bottom line, it's a tad on the crazy side to ascribe to the motives and actions symbolic equivalent of either sainthood or schismatic. It was not idol worshiping or pagan worshiping, to place a gift in the church.  There were no pagans worshiping the statue.  Even if people hold a mass and the statue is present, if they are participating in a mass, the statue is merely present, it is not being given glory or mistaken for anything other than what it is, a statue.  If we need clarity, look to the reality of the gift and the giver.

Having looked at the art, it is a naked mother, identified by the giver as the Blessed Mother, being full of grace, holding our Lord, the egg of the Church.  The literal representation of The Blessed Mother cradling the unborn Christ should not scandalize us. She’s been willing to allow herself to be seen as others would see her so that they might come to know her son.   How she looked in Fatima, is not how she revealed herself at Guadalupe.

The scandal of the incarnation is just that, the tangible reality of Mary gave birth. She wasn’t wearing a long jewel blue polished taffeta cape when she labored in the cave while the angels above sang and announced “Joy to the World and Peace to Her People on Earth.”  She probably sweat. Her most precious beautiful perfect son, our savior did something far more scandalous.

He became flesh. He became man.  He allowed to be born. He allowed himself to be naked, to be cold, to be hungry. We believe we are from the moment of conception on…so depicting Christ unborn, this should not shock.  He scandalously allowed himself to grow up, and to endure that hard long process of growing.  He allowed Himself to be betrayed, abandoned, beaten, to be spit upon, to be mocked, stripped, to be abused, to be hurt. He allowed Himself to be exposed, as we are exposed in all our nakedness, in every moment of our lives so that we might know God’s infinite love and mercy.

Just in case we still don’t get it, Jesus reveals himself as the resurrection.  We will receive new bodies in the end, because our bodies are themselves, gifts God intends for us. He gives us the promise and the assurance of Mary’s Assumption.  We will not be pure spirit. We will not be ethereal, we will exist in substance and reality at the great wedding feast. 

Our Church is the Body of Christ, and we scandalize and scourge it more by our seemingly endless desire to explain why someone else is unworthy of being part of it, than by any art we create to honor Mary or a culture or our Church.  The Church is bigger than cultural art, bad art, inappropriate art and even fantastic art.  Stealing the gift and attempting to destroy it because one does not like it, is not a Catholic response to either the problem being articulated (concerns about the Pope and the Church itself), or to the art itself.  It is at best, the same as a sibling not liking the art work given to a parent by another sibling and throwing it away while proclaiming, “I cleaned up for you Mom.” The paintings in the Sistine Chapel, and the statues like Moses and David, reveal Greco-Roman sensibilities of the beauty of the human body, pagan sensibilities reoriented toward the creation of sacred art.

We are always struggling with the hard reality of being a universal and to the end of time Church, living through the present, reaching out to all people.   The pagans of old, Paul understood yearned for the Divine, as indicated by the temple to the Unknown God.   Imagine what we would have lost, if early Christians in a position to do so, had smashed the temples and the art that came before in a moment of fear over the possibility of the faith being diluted by contamination with other cultures.   This is the hallmark of Catholicism.  Catholic means universal.  Catholic invites all in, it is not in the business (or should not be), of casting out.   The nature of our faith, is scandalous to the world, like the incarnation.  We are to invite everyone to the table, and to discover all the ways in which God really breaks through our real lives, both Catholic and non, to reveal His real love to us.

Immaculate Conception, Singular vessel of devotion, Notre Dame Our Lady, pray for us and we envoke your protection, from our own foolishness, from good, bad and indifferent art, and from rash harsh judgment of each other in all things including, how we are to live out our faith loving others as we are to love your Son. 

Over at the Register today

What I wrote the other day, the National Catholic Register picked up for publication.  I'm very touched. 

On another note, I do want to remind everyone, you can watch Bishop Barron's series, Catholicism for free at the link embedded. It's a reminder to all of us, why we stay, because being Catholic is so much more than the exercises and prayers and obligations, it is all of that as manifestations of what we believe, and in who we believe, not the belief itself. 

The Fruit We Should Be Serving...

Early in his papacy, Pope Francis proclaimed the Year of Mercy from December 8^th, 2015 to November 16,2016.  I’m wondering if he’d consider a Year of Mercy Part Two, because I’m not sure the first one took.

First, a confession.  I am a terrible sport in games.  I struggle with getting irritated when I play poorly, which makes me play even more poorly.  I get rattled, and I forget in those moments, I'm playing to play, not to win.  It is a source of constant frustration to me even if I'm swallowing it, because it robs me of the pleasure I sought from spending time with my family playing. I've prayed, confessed, wrestled with this most of my adult life.  I've read articles, I've tried to remain detached, and I've considered simply not playing to avoid temptation.  Instead, I've opted to have my family remind me over and over again when that particular demon flares up, "You're playing to play."  in one way or another.  Sometimes it involves stepping on my foot under the table.  I consider such steps, a good corrective mercy by them, which I deserve. 

So back to the issue that's bugging me today. 

Why hasn’t the New Evangelization worked?  

There’s loads of energy being spent on radio, online, newspapers, television, on evangelization and what isn’t being seen, is the building of community.  There are lots (Thank God) of individual conversions taking place, giving witness, but there isn’t a sense of a community being formed by all this work.  Our nation feels fractured and broken as never before, both inside and outside of the Church, which left me with a nagging question.

Why hasn’t the New Evangelization worked?  

People are writing. People are reading. People are praying. There are email chains of novenas and podcasts on scripture, blogs, videos, great lectures on the catechism, all at our fingertips. Where is the fruit? 

People are doing all these things and while there are moments, there is not a collective weight, a visible sign to the outside world of this internal reality of being the Body of Christ. In the same way, we all know there’s all this energy directed at serving the poor, providing for material needs in countless places, through soup kitchens and pantry programs, through shelters and job training and all the very good good things provided through the Church and her charities because people believe in the teachings of the Church, however, there is not a joy manifested to the world, only more need.   

In the same way, there are thousands of Catholic schools that provide education in both the academic and spiritual realm.  The community, on both a macro and micro level which should be the Body of Christ however, remains somehow, not fully engaged. 

Online, it's easy to stumble into places where people fight over what the Pope says, what the Pope means, and whether to follow him or fight him is the correct manifestation of living the faith.  Those same people cry out for the excommunication of those who disagree. 

There are fiefdoms within parishes, cliques, serious schisms between those who favor one ministry over another, and out and out hostility over issues both discreet (what type of music is played) and profound, (actual arguments about doctrine) which keep all of us from being Brothers and Sisters in Christ.  The fights in the parishes, online, and throughout the nation seem to go on without end, and with all the time, a dark joy from their perpetual spitting and spinning. The spirit of the age is distrust, deny, dismiss, and destroy, the very opposite of what Christ calls all of us to as individuals and as His body.  

My thoughts I thought perhaps too dark, so I turned to the scripture for the mass of the day.  On July 23, 2018 and the readings involved Micah, Chapter 6, Psalm 50 and from the Gospel, Matthew Chapter 12, versus 38-42 where Jesus says to the scribes and Pharisees, “An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the Prophet….”  

That didn’t help.

We know what doesn’t work; excessive focus on doctrine, excessive focus on service, excessive focus on art work, group projects, group prayer, individual prayer, one way, a thousand ways, ground up, top down, systemic scaffolding of instruction, everything we’ve tried. Despite all wanting theoretically to achieve the same thing through different means, we keep stepping on each other's toes. 

The only answer to the angry spirit of the age, is to be asking each other, to please step on our toes when we take too much of a lead.  The answer to my problem, humility. The answer to the bigger problem, is the same thing.  Offer Mercy.  Ask Forgiveness.  No quid pro quo.   Offer mercy everywhere there is anger.  Ask for forgiveness whether it is given or not.  These are the salves that will lead us to salvation.  They are the fruit we should be offering if we want the coming age to be one of something other than a nation of angry islands, all screaming for someone else to be punished.   

Elizabeth Scalia wrote at Word on Fire about The Anti-Christ Arriving in a World Without Mercy," and showed a picture of a wolf.  If we want a world not peopled by wolves, we must fight the Anti-Christ with the one thing the Devil cannot abide, love; love manifested in acts of mercy, and sublimation of ourselves.  

The early prophets all preached essentially the same thing, (however unwillingly at times), as the early apostles.  “Repent and believe.”   We must do the same thing.   It’s both a universal and individual call. 

Christ tells us, over and over again He is the way, the truth and the light. Come to Him ourselves, and invite others.

The question I think for many, is how do we do this?  How do we know we are doing it?  How do we know if we are engaged in true acts of service, true acts of generosity, truly doing little things with great love? 

Answer: If we stop trying to win.  If we stop trying to take credit.  If we stop trying to prove we’re right, or better, or more worthy or smarter or more informed or more whatever, and simply serve. Or, as I told my children to remind me, play to play. 

Put God first, trust God.  Put Christ first.  Trust Christ. Spend time with Christ, and Christ will order each of our souls so that eventually willingly, we will put ourselves last, so more people can encounter Christ.

I'm going to go ask my kids if they want to play a game with me.      

What I Really Think...

Today is the March for Our Lives.  Two months ago, was the March for Life.  Both have merit.  Both marches reveal a desire for a society which is better than what is quick, what is easy, and what is merely legal.  Both draw in people of good will, who want  help create a society where the idea of hurting people, of killing people as a means of escape, or revenge, or because we're fed up, tired, or have no hope, is unthinkable.

However, it's very easy to get blinded to good within one march or the other, because it runs counter to one's politics.

We all get caught up in passion for fighting those evils we see ignored. It's human. It's natural. It's ordinary. As Catholics, we're not called to limit ourselves to the first instinct. We're to willfully engage the world and allow grace to work through us to reveal Christ. However, to be a disciple of Christ  is to be a person of service, a servant to all and to be like the Son of God and have no political home. It means we must resist the temptation of the world to engage in tribalism, a favorite means of the Devil to prevent us from being who God would will us to be.

Those who tend to vote Republican, favor restrictions on the liberty to abort. We'd even support an outright ban because we know all abortion ends a human life and damages the souls of many. Those who tend to vote Democrat, favor restrictions on the liberty to bear arms. We'd even support an outright ban on some forms of ammunitions and armaments because we know shootings by people of other people can end human lives and damage the souls of many.

We want a waiting period on buying guns so that people don't take actions they'll regret. We want a waiting period on acquiring abortion for the very same reason. Restricting liberty to act on impulse is something we need, if only to help prevent countless lives from enduring deep regret later. We want restrictions on younger people purchasing fire arms because their judgement is subject to the reality of their age, experience, peer pressure and emotions. We also want the responsible adults in their lives to be involved in the matter. We want restrictions on younger people seeking abortion because their judgement is also subject ot the reality of their age, experience, peer pressure and emotions. We also want the responsible adults in their lives to be involved in the matter.

The right want restrictions on abortion because it kills people. The left want restrictions on guns for the very same reason, because they kill people. There are protected rights in the Constitution and in law regarding both matters. If we want to be fully Pro-life, we should be both and in both circumstances because we want a safer, kinder, better society that protects all human life.

Those who March for Life and brave the cold, should march with those in the March for Our Lives, because we're really pro-life and vis-versa.  This is a great time to be a witness, and to act to bring both hands of the body of Christ together. We should be a seamless garment of love to those who suffer from pain, from tragedy, from poverty, from want. We have great opportunity to be a disciples of mercy to those forgotten, ignored or marginalized in every walk of life and show that being a follower of Christ always means loving more than what the law or politics or popular opinion allows or prefers.

If we're pro-life, it means we want people to have access to medicine and medical care, so they can stay healthy or get better, so they can care for their unborn and born children. To be pro-life, we need good medical care for those who are elderly, and the sick, so they won't feel pressured to accept euthanasia as an alternative to being cared for in their later years. To be pro-life, we hold that "Thou shalt not kill," and know that includes even mere anger against our neighbor. Being Pro-life means standing against violence, against any by any. To be pro-life, we must care for the poor and the immigrant, the stranger and the lost. To be pro-life, we have to care for the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless, the dying, the imprisonned, the sick, the weak, the powerless, the hopeless, the ignorant, the abandoned and the unpleasant. We are all called, we are all chosen, and we are all here to care for the all with all that we have and all that we are.

It's not an easy task, because it requires we take action again and again and again and again. It's not going to be viewed by everyone as anything but symbolic, (but what others see is not relevant, it is what God knows about our hearts and our actions, that matters). We have to cease to be Republicans or Democrats, right and left and be Catholic Disciples in all things, if we would be anything in the Kingdom of God. Time to all poor ungrateful servants (meaning all of us) get to work.

I have a piece over at the National Catholic Register

I have a piece over at the Register, discussing the Pope's words and our obligation to them.

We Are Always a Broken People But We're Called to be Better

I  hoped the election, (whichever way it went), once over, would allow people to go back to being able to speak to each other online and in reality the way we would want to be spoken to; with civility, a presumption of good faith, humor and mindfulness.  If the past week is any indicator, things will get progressively harder.  

On Mondays, I visit with Mark Shea on his podcast radio program.  I've spent part of the morning reading the horrid comments thrown his way for daring to point out, that Alt Right as a group, is a sickness which all people of good will, and all people who call themselves Christians, let alone Catholics, must oppose.  After reading it, and seeing so many broken souls pound their brokeness as truth, my first thought was, "I should have spent the morning exercising," it would have been healthier and more pleasant, however much I don't like doing it.

But what I didn't like, was the reality I kept hearing, "Bring us Barabbas!" and "We have no king but Caesar," and the conviction, I did too.

Since I tend to vote Republican, I know I must stand and say, "I'm sorry.  This is not what I stand for, or want to have in this country or in this world.  The bigotry and racism and anti-semetic thinking I've seen in the Comment box from Alt Right, and articulated by those who pretend it isn't there allowing other people to do the same, this is always, everytime and everywhere and in every soul, wrong."  I'm sorry such thinking exists.  I know Archbishop Sheen said it is a scandal to be scadalized by sin.  I guess I'm not shocked, but deeply saddened to discover yet again, we hold hearts of darkness, we are so very broken, we so deserve the crucifixion we've not been given.  I can change that word we to I, and know it still holds.

I cannot speak for anyone other than myself, but I failed, because I did not let myself think this was anything more than a fringe, and I also know, I couldn't have voted for the alternative.  What I should have done, was somehow spoken sooner, spoken louder, only, I didn't honestly think he'd win. So I didn't think it would matter. However a sharpness has pierced my heart ever since the election.  I know I did not willingly peer into everything,  and because I could see some evil, I did not want to see other evils. I thought, this is not a fight I want, so I didn't enter deeply.  But the Gospel this week kept convicting me.  "You are lukewarm, so I spit you out of my mouth."  I always find those words of Jesus to grate.   They convict me of wanting to be liked more than to speak truth, of wanting not to make waves, of wanting not to speak up because who wants that pain?

So I'm here to day, to begin again and to invite all people who are of good hearts, who want a world that echoes more clearly, the kingdom to come, to do the same.  Alt Right, supporters of Alt Right, I stand with and claim kinship with whosoever you've decided shouldn't have protection, and I will fight for, whosoever you've decided shouldn't have protection, even if I disagree as a person, with said people I'm going to fight for.

I can't fix what's happened.  I can only go forward saying from now until I die and beyond, we are one race with many creeds and opinions.  We are always and everywhere and in all things, our brother's keeper.    It seems stupid to have to say, because it seems obvious, but since some do not believe that the infinite value of each human (because they are human) supercedes nationality, capacity and everything else, I will say it here.

 Even though I've voted Republican, even though I'm a pro-lifer, those things are components and not the whole of who I am, though if I stay silent, they will become so.  As a Catholic, I cannot stand by while people's dignity and rights are trampled, or families are destroyed and stay what I hope when I die, defines me.  I am a person who seeks, who hopes, one day she'll make the right choice when given the option, and say, I want Jesus, rather than Barabbas.

They, whoever the they is that you don't like, like you, are my brothers and sisters, and I want each of you at the wedding feast.  I want all ten of my children to come for Thanksgiving even though they can't, and I want that all the more in the life to come.   I know we will be judged by how we treat each and all, and when we cut off one, the one we've cut off, is ourselves.   I also know, just as I don't always get along with my own family, so also I do not always get along with my extended family, but all are still all, my family.  I love and need them all including you.   So Alt Right, while I am a small time blogger with a small time platform and only a teaching assistant, I will tell you, you, like all of us, are a broken people, and you need to see, that you are hurting yourselves by your hatred.

Hate always warps the person who hates, not the people hated.


So I would invite you to do better, and challenge myself to do the same; to stop picking and trumpeting Barabbas.   Today, instead of posting that outrage, pick a friend in your list with whom, you do not see eye to eye, and invite them for coffee or pizza or whathave you if you're nearby, to visit, and if not, look to see something they hold which you too, can hold dear, and be a bridge to greater deeper truer friendships on Facebook and in the world.    If you do this, you will no longer be Alt Right, you will be alright, and becoming truly right, would help right what is broken and wrong in this world.

The alternative, is death and no place at the wedding feast and all who make it to the feast, would wish it otherwise.

So Are the Rest of Us too Tepid? Or is it Just Me?

This past week, several friends in the Catholic blogosphere lost their spots as featured regular columnists at a national paper I sometimes write for and respect.  However, as the third person fell, I had to wonder, why are they being dismissed?  All three live their Catholicism, one is an intellectual, one is a humorist, and the third, an evangelist/mother.  All three had an edge to their writing, such that sometimes, it cut, meaning it spoke to the heart and challenged.  

I loved all three for their ability to be so fearless.   As someone who sometimes struggles with writing everything I think for fear of injuring people, I admire their tenacity, their willingness to speak and be unafraid.

However, with the third firing, it brings the question, are the rest of us (and I will mean primarily me) being too tepid in our witnessing to the faith online?  Am I avoiding the harder issues, the ones that rankle the soul because they demand I think and wrestle with convictions and find courage?  You know, the biggies like politics, marriage, abortion, social justice, Pope Francis, right and left wing thinking in the Church, birth control, priesthood, the true nature of the Eucharist, the real consequence of prayer, all that stuff.   Am I too comfortable being a comfortable Catholic blogger?   Ought I to do more and if so, what?

The coward me answers, I have such a small corner of the internet.  It's a happy perky mostly Chocolate coated candy bar type of experience.  Such musings may be sweet and easy to consume, but they don't have as much nutrition as the three authors I admired.   My writings have peanuts by comparison.  It will hold you over, but it's never enough to make a meal.  Why mess things up?

Because we aren't called to a neat and tidy life. As I told my mom the other day, if there's a hard road, I find it and take it.   She'll love reading that in my blog. Loving me as a child and as an adult must be the equivalent of a roller coaster experience where you keep thinking, have we had enough fun yet?

I go back to my original creed in writing.  Truth has to lace everything, even charity, if it is to be true charity, just as charity has to lace every truth, so it may be received.  However, it will mean I must not be afraid to use both charity and truth in equal parts.  What is it I'm supposed to write?  I know relevancy in writing is determined by the willingness to bleed on the page, to think about those things that matter, and to risk something beyond approval.  Answer: ask the Holy Spirit to lead on, and follow.

I hate that I've answered my own question, but it's the lesson I keep learning.  Study more, get back to work and buckle up.

****and then, real life interferes giving me the perfect Chocolate moment...my teenager is pretending to be an elephant and tormenting my five year old by snorting imaginary boogers in her hair.   Sometimes, humor is healing. Sometimes it reveals how far we have to go even on the everyday issues before we can get to the big ones.

There Isn't a Home

In the arena of America politics, there isn't a home where as a Catholic, I can feel comfortable.  I know good earnest noble intelligent caring people across the political spectrum. I know some who say, here is your home, because you oppose this...insert issue A. They are correct, I oppose issue A. It is insufficient reason. I know others who say come over here, it is obvious you don't belong over there. We have issue B and C.  It doesn't matter. If my faith is the determinative factor on voting and not ideology, then neither party deserves my support.  I cannot reject half of my values to affirm one, or ignore that one for the same reason.  I can't.  Not if I want to hold true to any of my faith.  Not one pinch of incense for either false god.

Neither candidate should hold power. Neither is a good decision, only a negative decision. Whether for Trump or Hillary, I can't give my assent without being tarred by the muck each candidate has chosen to embrace.  I cannot support either candidate if giving such support results in having to pretend corrupt isn't corrupt, evil isn't evil, incompetent isn't incompetent, and ignorant isn't ignorant. To support either is to somehow contort one's values and shoehorn them into the slipper for either R or D.  For me, neither shoe fits.

These candidates are real people with serious character flaws. I concede, one of these two damaged souls will win but not with my help. Today, I reject both parties and their proposed candidates.  I have never not voted, but I don't think in good faith I can assent to either ever. To me, they are both Barabbas. They are both something other than good, and the position of President is something that ought not to be given to one of these two least kind, least selfless, least ethical, least honest or generous candidates to enter the public arena in a long time.

To those who say, "No! You'll waste your vote."  No.  I am holding my vote.  It is not something someone is guaranteed because of their party.  It is something that must be earned.  No one has done anything to earn my trust, let alone my vote.

Why do I say there is no good choice?  It is not because I despair of good in this world or in people. I know I am not the only one who knows many on both sides of the political spectrum.   I know I am not the only one to be able to name names of people with R's and D's affiliated to their voting record that are to a person, decent, kind, thoughtful, diligent, people of good character.  I imagine most are trying to make the best of a situation they did not choose and do not want.

When I look at the fruits of pledging fealty to either side, both candidates demand too many compromises.   Anyone who doesn't fit one's political template is thus exiled to the political equivalent of Hell, for having thought otherwise.  Modern politics seems to thrive on this sort of instant US THEM, US GOOD, THEM EVIL sort of nonsense. This sort of rigid dismissal of all who think otherwise must be rejected.

Whatever that is, it's not American or Catholic, or even sensible. It's not healthy for anyone to presume to reading other people's hearts when we cannot even see each other's faces.     We are all more than politics, or we're supposed to be, and to be Catholic, we even have to see those we consider our enemies, as made in the likeness of God, and worthy of dignity, worthy of love.  It's too easy to give into snark, to vitriol, to declaring the other side willfully ignorant or deliberately evil.   It allows us to dismiss whole swaths of others and feel smug in doing so.

We are a diverse nation, with multiple reasons for our decisions, both pragmatic and ideological, social and personal, ethic based and steeped in history. By our very ordinary acts of everyday civility, and the peaceful transition of power from administration to administration, all of us prove, our great capacity for tolerance, our great capacity for diversity of thought, our ability to coexist despite what the political parties believe.

So while I don't have any faith or trust in the candidates, I do still hold great hope in the promise and reality of the everyday R's and D's.  I'm thinking they would probably prefer to skip both conventions, go to a local watering hole and complain about the candidate they got stuck with for this go around.

We'll survive whoever wins, because we are bigger than any one candidate.  Politics would have us always believe this is the critical juncture, (regardless of the year) where utopia or doomsday is around the corner.   I reject the damning despair and false hope presented.  The universe will go on, as it should, and it will the results of all of our efforts in the every day that determine whether we become a better nation or not.

My Catholic Bonifieds Mean Squato

Recently, David Mills wrote A Marxist Lesson for Breeding Catholics, arguing that those who espouse Catholic teaching and have many children, do so from a position of privilege, and thus do not see the struggle of the poor, or of those for whom, the possibility of having another child, constitutes a danger/and or burden they can anticipate.  

As a member of what he calls, the romantic middle class breeding Catholic society, I'd like to say the following to David Mills, and those who think Catholic Breeders have NFP Rose colored glasses on when they welcome a child into the world and thank God they're in the 5 if not 1 percenters.  

Phooey.  

Being a practicing Catholic with a large family means three things.

1) We hold to the teachings of the Church on sex and marriage, though it costs.

2) We have no romanticism about the reality of how hard it is to either abstain or follow the Church's teachings, when we can see all around us, how much seemingly easier it is for everyone else to fund college, drive a car smaller than a Suburban, and just go out to dinner as a family, let alone, consider a vacation.  Hey kids, let's go Camping.  Do you know why?  Because two hotel rooms means the vacation is three days tops.  

3) We do get joyous about the children, because we do celebrate life, but that doesn't mean when we are pregnant, we're thinking, yipee! We're probably thinking, "How could God trust us again? How are we going to do this?  Do you think we can manage?  What can we cut?" and ten thousand little logistics like, if it's a girl, do we have hand me downs we can keep for her, or is the stuff so old, we need to start over?    (Please, long time readers, know I'm not expecting, it's just the topic I'm discussing).  

I think, Mills is confusing romanticism with a joyful witness.  It's not romantic to have 300 unmated socks permanently stashed on your sofa because no one, not even you, wants to deal with sorting.  But it is a joyful witness to get everyone out the door, and not sweat if some of the sock ware choices are creative.  Two my little pony socks, but different ones?  Hey, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie are buds, why not in the foot ware department?  

It's a reality, if you have a big family, you get pegged.
Every time I've gone out with everybody, somebody says it.  "Mormon or Catholic?"  It's a standard response to having more than half a dozen. I don't mind it.  We grew into this size of a family, and into this witness.  It wasn't a pre-established design by us.  By God, sure, but not by us.  

But with having a JUMBO FAMILY PACK XXL family means you do get presumed to have somehow bypassed the moral struggles of parenting, and moved straight to some sort of perfected state, only punctuated by Erma Bombeck worthy moments of zany antics.   It's not true.

First, we have the normal battles, I mean discussions over who took the batteries for the remote, where is his shoe and going to bed even when you're not tired, how can you not be tired? I'm tired! just like any other family.  

Second, we're not here to judge anyone's faith life.  Honestly, I'm trying to make sure I get through mass or the movie or dinner or wherever it is we are whatever it is we're doing with the same exact number of people I showed up with, and hoping, none of them are doing something I won't be able to explain, like going through the free lollipops and opening all the ones that say "?" on them, to see if they can find their favorite flavor.  My Catholic bonifieds mean squanto except to the extent I live them, (which means, if I'm judging anyone else's attempt to live out their faith, carry their cross and discern how to serve God and their neighbor with all their heart, strength and mind),  I could have 15,000 children, and it wouldn't make me a good Catholic.

Third, a practicing, not perfected Catholic, and family size is no indicator of faith size.  What we wrestle with, may be less self evident, but that does not make it any less a reality.  

Finally, I'd like to insert any other word in for "wealthy" and indicate the absurdity of making this qualifier on living a Catholic life.  

"Only the affluent will find being open to life easy."
"Only the educated..."
"Only the powerful..."
"Only the physically strong..."

Money certainly helps with the physical needs (and there are plenty), but the way this article begins, it presumes, someone starts pre-fab, wealthy, and says, "Because I'm wealthy, I can afford the luxury of being open to life."  The world we live in, would seem to indicate, that's not the thinking that goes on...not because there aren't wealthy people open to life, or the wealthy people who were open to life, became poor because they were open to life, but because I would just eliminate the qualifier, and say, "Only those open to life, are open to life.  Some are blessed to find it easy."

The rest of it, I seriously doubt enters into the equation. We're all called to be saints.  If we're all called to be saints, you can bet, however God plans on bringing us to His table, it will be luminous, joyful, and even glorious, but it will also be sorrowful at times, and not easy.  To follow Christ is to hold onto a cross, to say even when you have nothing left, "I will serve." not because you want to prove yourself, but because you love.    

Practicing Catholic Synod At Home and In The Parish

The Synod is ongoing, but what about the rest of us, in the parishes, in the pews?  The pope has returned to Rome and we've had a week of feasting on identifying as Catholic to the world.  Now it's time for the work of being Catholic.  As a member of the Catholic blogosphere (not an actual cabal or illuminati, it's my own made up name for the mass of Catholics out there blogging about either being Catholic, trying to live Catholic, or learning about Catholicism), the big question we're all left with, is now what?   

Somehow, in the midst of feeding the homeless, clothing the naked, reading scripture, praying the rosary, standing up for the unborn, instructing the ignorant, and all of that, we've somehow sensed, we've missed something important.  So important, there's a Synod on the Family going on, because all this doing has not done what it is supposed to do, create a community, a sense of being each others' brothers and sisters, in Christ, and in reality.   Why hasn't that happened?  

Because we've been a Church of Marthas or Marys, of left wings and right wings, rather than Marthas and Marys, we've been so busy either trying to find the right prayer, right saint's practices to know for our interior lives, or so busy trying to right the world's wrongs (sort of like Catholic Captain America or Catholic Batman), we've stopped focusing on where all this starts, and the point from which all of this should flow.   
Pope Francis called families, "Factories of Hope," for so they are supposed to be.   If the Domestic Church is a factory of Hope, then the Church --that is, parishes, are to be industrial complexes of hope.   How do we do this, both on the micro and macro scale?  
First, we must begin by looking at the Holy Family, which starts with Jesus.  Mary says yes to God's plan, and the Holy Family begins.  St. Joseph says yes to Mary, and the Holy Family flourishes.  Not economically, but emotionally, spiritually, and physically, the family does what it must to live and even thrive, with each person of that blessed three doing their part to build a full life.  Joseph teaches his son a trade, he also takes them to Egypt, keeping Mary and Jesus safe.  These are the special ministries gifted to him, and to all husbands and fathers, to make the home a place of security and stability, to make it possible to thrive.   Mary feeds and nourishes, ministers and prays, this is her hidden ministry, not unlike every mother who ever surrendered nights to a sick child, or whole years to the care of an infant.  The interior surrender required to mother or father is no small sacrifice, but done well, is like the air itself, expected and necessary and yet invisible.  This sort of air, should be the air we breathe at home, and all the more so at Church.  
So why isn't that happening?  
Well, it is, but like the air, we cannot fully see it, we can only see (for the most part), when we miss the mark, when we pollute the air the Domestic Church and the Church herself, is supposed to create.  
So how do we become better stewards of our families and our Parish, so as to create the community, to preserve, protect and heal the Body of Christ we're called to be?   


First, we must recognize, the hidden crosses of our lives are what need ministering.  The cry of the woman in this article which inspired this post,is not that different from the silent cry of the teen who is feeling overwhelmed by life, or the older adult who suffers from feeling cut off from all of life by widowhood, or the single mom who struggles with a kid with special needs. The reality is the Church is supposed to be a hospital, not a triage center, with ongoing pastoral care for all who enter her doors.

We have perhaps become too committee oriented, too compartmentalized as a people, and as a church, shunting problems to the "proper people" with the "proper credentials," when what we really should be doing, is ministering to whichever souls show up, and not presuming anything, about the mother of twelve or the father of two, the kid with the nose ring, or the woman who comes to every mass. If we must assume anything as a Catholic about everyone else in the pews, it is that they, like us, are starving, and need to be fed.

Second, we must recognize, within the Domestic Church, the man and woman before receiving the sacrament of Marriage, are like the bread and wine, and with the sacrament, transformed though the accident of their forms remains.  The substance is forever sacred, and supposed to be given to the other, as a means of sanctification, healing, and sustenance. That feeding of each other, is supposed to make the rest of enduring the trials of this life, bearable. It isn't just sex, it's intimacy and primacy, two things we often ignore because there are so many "real world" demands on time in this day and age, so many distractions.   We need to teach this to couples considering marriage, couples in marriage, and to imprint it on our children, this is the expectation, the purpose of marriage, to witness to the world, and to each other, the love of God.

And Third (this is by no means exhaustive, but blogs can only run so long before people get bored), we must begin constructing community, both within the Domestic Church, and in the larger Parish.  

What does that mean?

Families must work, eat, play and pray together, to be fully what they are called to be.  The Parish, being a larger family, must provide through the sacraments, services and opportunities for instruction, opportunities for all four.   Cultivating Traditions which build, rather than exhaust, will be the challenge of the Church, helping feed the body, mind and souls of a hungry and exhausted people, desperate for not a respite from the world, but a healing of the world itself.  

Prayer and Fasting

I was going to write a humor piece today about the next two week hiatus I intended to have. 

But unless you've been under a rock, if you're part of the Catholic blogsophere, (and I am), you've no doubt seen or read about the interview.  It breaks your heart to think people could discuss either the procedure or the procurement so casually over a salad and wine.   Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood apologized for the "tone" of the discussion, (note, not the content).     

I saw comboxes filled with justifiable horror, and some things which were far less justifiable, condemnations.   Yes, these people kill the innocent for money.  They do so for a living, it's what they do.   As the old joke goes... We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling over the price.

We will not convert Cecile Richards via this expose, or the senior director of medical services for all of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Deborah Nucatola or anyone else, even given the ick factor of harvesting human organs from unborn children willfully discarded and destroyed.   These are people who must live with themselves and to my understanding, there are only three ways they could manage to get through the day and consider themselves moral agents.  

1) They view abortion as a good, not an evil.  Because they view it as a good, as a service they provide to the needy; those who oppose it must be willfully blind to the suffering and fear of the women seeking an abortion. Whether because of their faith or ignorance of the reality of said women seeking abortion, those who oppose abortion do not understand the true service provided.  Ergo, their opinions don't matter, and can be dismissed.  

2) They view abortion as a necessary evil, for the greater good.  The end justifies the means, with the goal being a good. (Independence, freedom from pregnancy). Anyone who doesn't, is imposing their morality and again can be dismissed.   

3) They view having an abortion as a neutral act, having no morality save that ascribed by the person considering it.  As such, they think abortion is something that needs to be destigmatized because it's a hard reality, and having the bonus of morality makes the hard reality worse.  

If we're going to win the hearts of people who think we have nothing they need to hear, it will take more than exposes and votes and threats of fire and brimstone.  It will take serious love, prayer and fasting.  

As incredible as it may seem, for God's mercy and love is beyond ours, that woman sitting discussing her skills at crushing the top and the bottom, like Dr. Kermit Gossnel, and all other advocates who profit from, and push for the continued killing of the innocent, are our brothers and sisters in Christ.   They are Saul before his trip to Damascus.    They are the slave trader before he began his conversion and eventually penned "Amazing Grace."  So I have a proposal for all readers/pro-life advocates/Catholic bloggers out there that made it this far.   

Adopt an abortionist, director of a Planned Parenthood, or a politician who advocates for the procedure for the next year.   Come up with a doable prayer and fast you can perform on behalf of that person.  

Why?     
"Some demons can only be driven out by prayer and fasting" (Matthew 17:21).

My suggestion is to take one person who is a public face advocating/supporting this grave evil be done to and by human beings.  I'd prefer to have two people adopt each person. Your prayers and fasting are up to you.  Make it a doable thing, like a Hail Mary a day for the person in question, and a nickle a day for a local Crisis Pregnancy center or a rosary a week, anything you wish, but state the person you wish to claim.     

I've chosen Cecile Richards because she is the public face of Planned Parenthood, and I don't think discussion at this point is possible.  If we were to sit down at a dinner, and I were to talk about the innate dignity of every human from point one, it would not be heard.  If I were to talk about the crime which cries out to God, slaughtering the innocent, it would not be heard.  She has come to hold what she does is a good.  

My husband has choses Dr. Deborah Nucatola, the woman in the video.  We hope others will join in this project for the next year. 

Imagine an army of Pauls from the army of Sauls.  

1) Cecile Richards
2) Dr. Deborah Nucatola
3) Dr. Kermit Gossnel
4) Dr. Leroy Carhart (Local, does late term abortions).
5) Any member of the Pro-Choice Caucus: 

Federal Caucus Member	Blumenauer, Earl	D-h03	Portland
Federal Caucus Member	Brownley, Julia	D-h26	Thousand Oaks
Federal Caucus Member	Capuano, Michael E.	D-h07	Randolph
Federal Caucus Member	Cohen, Steve I.	D-h09	Memphis
Co-Chair	DeGette, Diana L.	D-h01	Denver
Federal Caucus Member	Doggett, Lloyd A.	D-h35	San Antonio
Federal Caucus Member	Ellison, Keith M.	DFL-h05	Minneapolis
Federal Caucus Member	Engel, Eliot L.	D-h16	Bronx
Federal Caucus Member	Farr, Sam	D-h20	Santa Cruz
Federal Caucus Member	Frankel, Lois J.	D-h22	Boca Raton
Federal Caucus Member	Grayson, Alan M.	D-h09	Orlando
Federal Caucus Member	Green, Gene	D-h29	Houston
Federal Caucus Member	Grijalva, Raul M.	D-h03	Avondale
Federal Caucus Member	Honda, Mike	D-h17	Newark
Federal Caucus Member	Huffman, Jared W.	D-h02	Ukiah
Federal Caucus Member	Kildee, Dan T.	D-h05	Flint
Federal Caucus Member	Lee, Barbara J.	D-h13	San Leandro
Federal Caucus Member	Loebsack, Dave W.	D-h02	Davenport
Federal Caucus Member	Lowey, Nita M.	D-h17	New City
Federal Caucus Member	Lujan Grisham, Michelle	D-h01	Albuquerque
Federal Caucus Member	McDermott, Jim A.	D-h07	Seattle
Federal Caucus Member	Nadler, Jerrold L.	D-h10	New York
Federal Caucus Member	Pallone, Frank J.	D-h06	New Brunswick
Federal Caucus Member	Pocan, Mark	D-h02	Beloit
Federal Caucus Member	Quigley, Mike	D-h05	Chicago
Federal Caucus Member	Scott, David A.	D-h13	Smyrna
Federal Caucus Member	Sinema, Kyrsten	D-h09	Phoenix
Co-Chair	Slaughter, Louise M.	D-h25	Rochester
Federal Caucus Member	Titus, Dina C.	D-h01	Las Vegas
Federal Caucus Member	Tsongas, Niki S.	D-h03	Fitchburg
Federal Caucus Member	Veasey, Marc A.	D-h33	Fort Worth

5) Hillary Clinton (she's the forerunner but I'm not singling her out other than for that reason).

6) Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg --She's been outspoken on this issue, but any and all of the justices need our prayers on this issue.
7) Prayers are always valid, so pray for the soul of George Tiller --murdered abortionist.
8) Pray for the unknown fathers who have no capacity to protect their children from death.
9) Pray for the nurses and assistants who perform these actions.
10) President Obama and those of his administration that share this view of the unborn as mistakes, punishments, and disposable.
11) Republicans for Choice --I'd list the members but the site ironically does not give any names.
12) Catholics for Choice.   They are denying part of Catholic social justice teaching and moral teaching, by advocating dissent on this issue.
13) There are more but that's for anyone who wishes to discern.   The goal is to adopt a person, make it personal to you, for whom you will pray as a friend prays for a friend, someone who we hope we either get the privilege of welcoming into Heaven, or the honor of being welcomed by.  

We know as Catholics, we will be asked one day, how many did you bring?  Did you turn your one, two or ten talents into more, or bury them?   Our lives are one giant project to invite everybody.

Let's get to work.

Feeding the Sheep, Feeding the Lambs, Feeding the Sheep

I was going to do a rant today, but the world doesn't need another post by another blogger annoyed at the world.  I look out at the snow falling, covering everything, making the bare trees beautiful and the muddy ground bright.  The world needs beauty, and it is starving.

This week, a woman paid to have herself killed because her looks had begun to fade.  In all the discussion, not once have I seen anyone look at this picture of this woman and say what should be obvious.  

This is a beautiful woman.    Source: Daily News.

She should not have done this because she turned someone who was beautiful into ashes.  She should not have done this, but what's more, others should have said, "Don't do this. You are lovely, too lovely to turn into ashes and mail back to an office.  You have more to offer than merely your money or your looks." Someone should have loved her that much, and she should have known it.

Miley Cyrus is another example of a beautiful woman turning herself into something far less lovely. She too needs someone to say, you have more to offer than you are giving.   She does not realize or care that one day she may grow stale, because someone new will sell themselves out even more for even less.   I know people have written to her including Sinead O'Connor, telling her, you need not be less.  You could be beautiful and are beautiful, without this new act.

But she like so many in the entertainment world, like so many in today's culture, confuse sex with beauty, confuse sex with love, confuse notoriety and infamy and crowds with love, confuse voyeurism and fame with genuine desire to see her personally. They see the stage, they see the sex, they see the train wreck.  They do not see her.

Real beauty delights.  

Real beauty you drink in and each time you see it, you see it more. 

 Like the face of your beloved, no matter how long you've know that person, 

each time they smile, you see it new.   

Anyone who has ever held a newborn knows this innately. You hold this person, 

and you could drink in looking at their face all day.  No matter how old they get, you will never tire of seeing them smile.

(I'll use my daughter because I can). But the same holds true for kiddos in utero. 

From lifenews.

You see a touch of the infinite, of the mind and heart of the God who created this thing called beauty in the first place.

We need to reintroduce or rather remind the starving souls of this planet of what beauty is.  

Because some things which should not have been forgotten, have been lost, lost to the point that a woman who feels lonely, feels she should pay strangers 14K to turn herself into ashes, because no one, including herself, thought her beautiful enough to save. Lost to the point that a whole world will watch a young woman with talent and looks debase herself constantly and applaud her daring.  

A rose is beautiful as a bud, and as a full bloom, and even its petals hold the fragrance of loveliness once they fall.   Just as our world holds beauty in all its seasons, our people do as well, but we need to relearn how to see it and reveal it to others.  

As Catholics, we've done a fair job in this country of fitting in, but in doing so, we've lost some of our salt and flavor, some of our light, for we've failed to proclaim the absolutely amazing thing about our faith, the belief that all of us are called to be luminous, to be saints.   All of us, no matter our lot, our life, our finances, our education, our politics, our preferences, our creed, our professions, all of us, even those we find distasteful at best, are to be treated as children of God. To treat each person as the honored guest at the banquet, that is the full rendering of faith via works. It is not separate from faith, it is not ahead of faith, it is not behind faith, it is integrated, part of what reveals the depth of our faith. Who would we not serve? That is the limit of our love.  

If we would show the world our faith,  if we would show the world beauty, we'd best get to washing feet, feeding the lambs, tending the sheep.

But what would that entail?  How would we go about this, what do we do?  Blessed Mother Teresa talked about what that would mean:

“Stay where you are. Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering, and the lonely right there where you are — in your own homes and in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. Everywhere, wherever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, just rejected by society — completely forgotten, completely left alone.”

Because real beauty is fearless, touching, healing, truthful and achingly intimate.  As Catholics it is our job to make the Church beautiful, so that the people out there who think their lives no longer worth keeping, or their virtue worth cherishing, who think their lives are over or too hard, know otherwise because they happened to run into us today.