I went to Confession Saturday evening.  We were over in Cleveland, GA, attending the La Leche League of Georgia Area Conference (Unicoi State Park, Helen, GA) and went to Mass at St. Paul’s.  We had the time, so we decided to go to Confession also.

The Pastor, Fr. Vincent, is a fascinating guy to listen to because he is Zimbabwean and has an interesting British accent.

Anyway, when I told him it was 5 months since my last Confession, he told me I should come once a month, and that the Pope comes weekly.  He said, “this is a sacrament you should come to because of greed, because of selfishness.  Because you see, this sacrament allows you to get rid of the stuff that keeps you from being the person God created you to be - so it is out of a thirst to be the person God created you to be that you should come to Confession often.”

Amazing what you’ll find on Facebook. An old acquaintance of mine who happens to be a “friend” on Facebook posted a rather lengthy manifesto after her experience at the Passion Conference this past weekend. For the uninitiated, the Passion Conference has been going on for some years now, led by Louie Giglio (whom I am told is quite a speaker in the church growth movement) which features a lot of rock-type “praise” music, powerful preaching, and so on. Never been to one, but this is the impression I get from folks who have been there. My boss says the music is all 7-11 songs. The same seven lines, sung eleven times. Anyway, here’s what she wrote:

This weekend was Passion Regionals in Atlanta and I had the opportunity to volunteer. It was an amazing weekend of renewal mixed with personal challenge. Speakers included Louie Giglio and Francis Chan and worship leaders Chris Tomlin, Charlie Hall and David Crowder. God was certainly glorified!

So today I started reading Francis’s new book, Crazy Love, which I picked up at the conference. I’ve only read the first chapter, and already I’m starting to remember the untruths I believed about God, Christians and the Church when I was growing up. I’m not blaming my church; without them I wouldn’t have necessarily experienced the fundamentals that I now take for granted (I’m learning that over and over, and repenting for it!). Don’t get me wrong; my parents never taught me these things overtly, nor did the church. However, here are the top 5 myths about God, Christians and the Church that I came up with:

1. God is big and powerful, and he lives up in Heaven, but is somewhat disconnected from us.

2. To be a Christian, there are all kinds of rules to follow, most of which involve a long list of things not to do.

3. Church is where Christians go on Sunday and if you don’t go, you’d better be hospitalized or gravely ill.

4. Don’t hang around people who don’t go to church because they will be a bad influence on you.

5. Worship = Hymns (verses 1, 2 and 4) or Latin Songs that nobody understands.

Now this may all seem absurd to some of you, but how many of us are still living as if these “myths” are reality? For example, how many of us have meaningful relationships with people who aren’t believers? Or how many feel that God takes attendance at church every Sunday and if you’re not there, you’ll be punished? And I’d venture to say that lots of believers say that they have a relationship with God, but still feel at times, really disconnected from Him.

I’m confessing now with a repentant heart that I do not believe these lies anymore. God is very near to my heart now, and having a relationship with Him isn’t about what NOT to do, but rather how to ENJOY His love and all He can do through me. I missed church today, but still had fellowship with Him and other believers. I am intentional in developing relationships with those who don’t yet know the love of Christ. And I know worship can involve singing, clapping, jumping (as demonstrated by the students at Passion!), or…watch out now…raising your hands! Who would have known?!

Ok, now for the record, she and I are on exactly the same page with regard to having friends of different beliefs. I have lots of non-Catholic friends and family members and try to be a good representation of the Faith without ramming the Truth down their throats (and the last part of that statement was written with tongue planted firmly in cheek.) Taking her “lies” on a one-by-one basis:

1. She’s right - we shouldn’t consider God to be “disconnected” from us. But, by the same token, too many folks take the “accepted Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal Lord and Savior” thing too far, to the exclusion of all else - like what you DO as a result of that relationship, for example. I have a co-worker who, whenever I speak of anything liturgical with Methodist of Presbyterian co-workers, says “I just love Jesus.” Something there about babies who aren’t ready for solid food. Of course there’s more to it than just loving Jesus - there’s work you do following him, the sacraments, and so on. Sanctification. Shouldn’t place so much focus on the “personal relationship” that we forget about serving Him.

2. This is like #1 - if you’re so wrapped up in the personal relationship aspect of the faith, you miss out on the fact that you are supposed to “do” and “not do” certain things. No, the rule book is not the primary focus of the faith, but it is there, and it’s there for a reason. Sanctification. Of course, coming from a sola fide mindset it’s hard to consider that one might have to do anything at all (except believe, which is a work itself, and I’ve gotten into the convoluted thought processes behind this in previous posts. I’ll spare you now.)

3. Well, Jesus is there at Church. He asks an hour a week. He wants to be physically present to us and in us. He gave us the Eucharist. If you miss that, then obviously, going to church on Sunday would be a matter of personal preference. If you’re just going to hear someone preach, you can do that equally well on the sofa at home or at a rock concert masquerading as a worship service.

4. Personally, I think it’s a good rule for teenagers to follow, not to hang out with people of a different value system, as they will be a bad influence on you. Teenagers of course think that they have it all figured out (though for some reason I never really had that feeling as a teenager, I have known enough to know that most do) and that they can avoid negative influences. Or, they excuse it with “I am sharing the gospel with them so I should spend time with them.” Simple fact is, to a teenager, the things that teens of a different value system tend to do are a heck of a lot more fun that the things that a solid Christian teenager tends to do. And, being exposed to such stuff as a teenager can result in developing a greater sense of moral relativism and “tolerance” (2007 definition, not the dictionary definition) which will make the liberals very happy but which results in someone ultimately drifting away from their faith because, hey, what’s the point?

5. In college I went through a period of thinking that rock music could be a legitimate part of a church service. Then what I realized was that the rock music was creating an emotional high that felt good but had no real depth or impact on my faith. Now I have gone back the other way…I have seen how Life Teen music done in the most flamboyant of ways waters down the awesomeness of what happens at Mass (and thankfully, many teen and college types are seeing the same thing,) and essentially, rock music at Mass insults the intelligence and spiritual depth of the communicants, because it says “you need to be attracted by this music because nothing else that’s going on here would interest you.” All that said, I still to this day think that “praise choruses” have a legitimate place in worship services/concerts which are separate from Mass or any other formal church service for that matter. As for Latin songs that no one understands, it’s very easy to find out what the Latin means if you’ll go to the trouble. Latin’s part of the universality of the Church which has been rejected for 500 years by Protestants.

Here we go.  DFCS should just line up and arrest each parent that agrees to let their baby participate in this.

Baby Borrowers is a unique social experiment that takes five teenage couples on a rollercoaster ride of adult responsibility, allowing them to experience parenting firsthand. Desperate to have their own life and family, our lovebirds are thrown in at the deep end. They�re given real houses and real responsibilities � the most important

of which is to look after children from a range of age groups. They�ll begin with an infant, followed by a toddler, pre-teen, young teenager, and lastly a senior citizen. In the end, will these couples be able to cope with the pressure of parenthood or will they break?

 This ranks right up there with that show they tried to do a couple of years ago with the drug-addicted hallucinogenic Episcopal priest who had a lesbian daughter and the nutty father or whatever…what was that called…”the gospel of ___” ….can’t seem to recall.  Anyway, hopefully, this garbage will suffer the same fate.  As an attached parent, I can’t imagine what kind of self-absorbed, irresponsible, abusive parent would allow their baby to be “used” in this way.  They aren’t fit to be parents and they should have their babies taken and given to a loving couple who won’t sell them and in so doing sell their own souls.

Well I figured that being in discernment would mean that I’m off limits to girls. What a nice idea. Unfortunately some of the girls that I go to school with that don’t really understand the Catholic Church (Ignorant prots). They are convinced that the last girl I dated turned me “Priest” as if it were like she had turned me gay. So now they are trying to redeem themselves as the female race by finding me a new girlfriend. I keep telling them I am off limits; don’t waste their time. It’s not fair to me and its not fair to any girl that would think I am interested in her. When I told them that they were tempting me, they said, “so you do think that she is pretty?” Well lets look at the facts: I am a guy, I’m 19, I like girls. Of course she is pretty, you’re tempting me! They just don’t understand that I’m pretty much taken. No I’m not taken by a girl, but at least as of now, my life belongs to Christ and His Church. So to all of the people that want to find me a girlfriend, you’re about six months late.

As we had a very busy day yesterday, and knew we’d have a busy one today (thus my daughter wouldn’t be taking a nap either day) we slept in a little this morning.  It wasn’t until my daughter toddled into the bedroom that we realized how late we had slept, and we quickly realized we wouldn’t be making it to the 9:30 Mass.  We figured we’d go to the 11:00 Mass instead, and we had plenty of time.

The thing is, later in the morning, there’s a whole lot more traffic, so we knew we’d have to give ourselves more time to get to the parish.  Normally it’s 10-12 minutes when we go to 9:30 Mass, but when we go to 11:00 (this was the first time in probably a year and a half that we’ve been to the 11:00.)

So, as we’re driving, I commented to my wife about how many cars there were on the road.  From the second row of the minivan, we hear a small voice, “Look at all those cars of all those hopeful people going to church!”

“What?” I said.

“I said look at all these hopeful people who belong in church!”

My wife said, “she doesn’t know it, but she just said something really profound.”

And no, we have no idea how she came up with the concept at all.

Came across this during my usual reading today on the Interwebs:

“What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence — moral, cultural, social or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how ‘democracy’ (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods? The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be ‘undemocratic.’ Children who are fit to proceed may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s [of the same age] attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. We may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when ‘I’m as good as you’ has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway, the teachers — or should I say nurses? — will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men.” C. S. Lewis

Lewis died 44 years ago.  Prophetic, no?

From me to you.  It was one week ago that I put up two blog posts referencing stories in the Georgia Bulletin.  Thanks to the Curt Jester, many of you checked out my posts and commented on them.  How many?  SiteMeter says that there were 1011 unique visitors to this blog in the last week; an average of 144/day.    Prior to this week I had about 20 visits/day, and I had 970 unique visitors in the entire 8 weeks or so that I have been using SiteMeter.

I’m going to do my best to make this thing interesting enough for you to keep coming back.  I would love to actually have a little touch of relevance in St. Blogs, but I am humbled by the interest you folks have put in these two stories.

By the way, there are a couple of more editorials on the subject of TLM that I will be citing in the coming days!

Little Caroline’s going to be a big sister!  We spent a couple of hours this morning getting an ultrasound.  This little miracle of life is developing normally so far as we can tell, and will be coming out the last week of January, God willing.

My wife brought to my attention a story making the rounds on the boards at Mothering.com.  A lady and 8 of her kids were at Applebee’s in Lexington, KY, June 14.  She had her 7-month-old with her, and he needed a snack.  Being a breastfeeder, she began nursing, and her waitress told her that her manager had indicated she needed to cover up (she had requested a corner booth so she would be in a quieter and less public part of the restaurant.)  Because it was June, she had nothing to cover up with, so the manager came over and continued the harassment.  She presented him a copy of Kentucky breastfeeding laws, showing that legally she was under no obligation to cover up, and what she was doing was completely protected by law.  He eventually intimidated her into going out to her van to nurse her child.

She got a lawyer to draw up a letter to that Applebee’s location, which was ignored.  A month later, she had another sent to that company that manages that Applebee’s location.  The management company responded: “we regret that Ms. Ryan left without being served and would like the opportunity to personally invite her to return” …. “we are also considering keeping blankets in the restaurants for use by breast-feeding mothers that may not have them readily available as a result of this incident.”  Talk about not getting it.  We’re sorry we discriminated against you, now please come back to our store so we can discriminate against you again.

Anyway, she is gaining increasing media attention and is having a nurse-out at that location (and throughout the country, additional protests are being planned at other Applebee’s locations.)  The management company spokesperson apparently commented that she must have a hidden agenda since she carries a copy of breastfeeding law with her.  Applebee’s corporate responded to her that the manager acted in a “lawful” manner.  The company is apparently not interested in even finding out what the law on the subject is in the localities they serve.

Read more about it here! 

Media attention here  (be sure to read the comments, most are supportive of the baby’s right to nourisment but some of from idiots)

In a move sure to delude this author into thinking he has some relevance in the Catholic blogging world, a blog troll has hit RomanCatholicbyChoice.com and commented on three of my posts yesterday.  The troll is called “Katherine.”  “Katherine” claims to be a “progressive” Catholic and attacks my views on socialized medicine, womynpriest wannabes (i.e., the Chittister types, the sour-faced nuns who don’t wear habits anymore) and my posting of some of the 1963 Communist Party goals.  You can check out the nuttiness below.   Trolls, please comment.  Let me know you’re there.  One of the sure ways I can get respect and credibility in the blogging community is by having trolls commenting on my blog.  Maybe I’ll get a trackback from Gerald at the Cafeteria or The Curt Jester, or maybe even Jimmy Akin.  Ooh…I’m hyperventilating just thinking about it.

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