The power of the Sacraments
I'm still digging though my old blog, my three LiveJournals, and my old private online journal (a few people had access to it) for posts about Catholicism. I found this one, not strictly about the Church, but I'll tie it in.
I would say that right now, there is nothing right in my life. There is nothing I can point to and say, "There, I feel good about that." I am fully responsible for that; I don't pass the blame to anyone else. But that doesn't mean I have a clue what to do about it. Even wanting to improve my life in certain areas makes me feel bad, as if I am being unrealistic, or discontent, instead of desiring healthy improvement.
I consider myself in need of losing a few pounds, for example; is that realistic, a good goal, or another example of my unreasoning cruelty to myself? Am I just buying into unrealistic images when I chastise myself for my physical appearance, or is that extra inch around the midsection something that should go?
Most of the time I seem to be literally powerless against myself and my bad habits; and I'll admit, it's there that I do start to blame those around me. If it weren't for him I wouldn't eat poorly. If it weren't for them I wouldn't be so helpless and angry. Etc.
There's some truth to it, that others can support you and influence you in your beahvior, but I know I'm the only one responsible for what I do and how I think. It's just--so much is wrong, and there's nothing to draw on for inspiration and strength to make the necessary changes. And that's just . . . overwhelming.
September 27, 2004
In the entry I wrote on the night of my entrance into the Catholic Church, I wrote, "Now is open to me the sacrament of restoring that disorder, the sacrament that has the full power to restore me to rights, if I only let it do so."
Reading this back I see that even though I have not progressed to sainthood, I
have progressed. I still have bad habits, and I still fall prey to them, but--grace is working. To be honest, my kids, and my attitude toward my kids, have been a source of intense conflict for me. I have gone through periods where I have hated and cursed them, blamed them for everything bad in my life. You get to feeling you'll choke on your fury.
Then you get to Confession, and if you do what God has asked you to do: confess with contrition and do penance--the most beautiful thing happens: you grow a new heart.
I have been in a spiritual valley this last year; I want, at the end of 2007, to look back at the things I had to confess at the beginning of this year, and wonder how I ever entertained such weakness.
Labels: change of heart, dark night of the soul, sacraments
Faithful, but definitely not successful
Why does it seem like for all my talking about the Faith, the only fruit it bears is indifference? It seems that this must be my gift, to provoke a placid indifference to whether or not the claims of the Catholic Church are true. There is my mother; I can't even get far into a conversation with her without her saying she doesn't know what to say about X, so . . . . To which I say, "If you don't know, don't you think you should try to figure it out?" Her response is to shrug. Another friend started out trying to convince me that the Church of Christ was the true church, only, by the end of our email exchanges, to be found espousing God's indifference to what church we belong to. I find it disheartening, personally discouraging, and think of Salieri in
Amadeus: "Why would God implant the desire, and then deny me the ability?" I don't understand uninterest in these matters, I don't understand not wanting to know the truth, or not believing that there is one. I don't understand how what is so clear and logical and understandable could be so obscured by my efforts to communicate it that it doesn't still manage to make it through, like light through a muddy pane. I am faithful in spreading the faith, but certainly not successful, and for me, that's the same as being faithless.
Labels: discouraged, struggles
Pro-abortion politician publicly rebuked at Mass
Deacon Tom McDonnell used his homily for some choice words for a pro-abortion parishioner. (How's that for pro-choice?)
Deacon Tom McDonnell's admonishment of the Buffalo Democrat for voting for federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research led Higgins and his family to walk out of the church. Higgins also has a clear history of supporting abortion and Planned Parenthood.
Said the persecuted politician:
"The lesson here is that the Catholic Church has enough problems and should take greater care before allowing nonpriests to use the church as a forum to advance what clearly was a political agenda," Higgins said.
Later, the parish priest apologized publicly for the incident, and even the bishop offered a statement:
"The pulpit is not the appropriate place for confronting a member of the congregation. It is my belief that in situations like this, we are more effective when we have substantive, one-on-one conversations with individuals outside the context of the Mass," said the bishop.
Hmm. Not long ago I had an argument with a Church of Christ preacher who was upset that this sort of thing did not happen regularly. In his opinion, because the Church does not issue public condemnations like this, this was more proof that the Church is not the true Bride of Christ. (I asked him if he ran his congregation that way, and if so, were there any members of his congregation left to condemn?) And I apply what I said then to this incident.
Rep. Higgins is espousing a heresy. And he is publicly supporting a heresy. He should be rebuked, and frequently--but not in the context of Mass. The homily is reserved for reflection on the readings, for one thing, and what Deacon McDonnell did was technically a liturgical abuse. But more importantly, the deacon is not privy to what goes on in the confessional. Yeah, it looks for all the world like Rep. Higgins is making merry sport of dogma, but the deacon is not his confessor, and he doesn't know what he's told his priest, nor what his priest has told him. The Church in the past has erred on the side of severity, but as St. Odilo said, "If I must be damned, I would rather be damned because of my mercy rather than my severity."
Labels: pro-abortion politicians, pro-life
Prince Charles, squeezed in next to the screaming toddler
FOX is reporting that Prince Charles, for whom I had high hopes after hearing him diss modernist architecture, actually flew
commercial to the United States this week, and will mingle with the commoners while touring Philadelphia. What is the world coming to when you can't even expect a prince to rise to his station? The egalitarian infection runs rampant!
(You may think I'm being sarcastic, but you would be wrong.)
Labels: monarchies
Heir to British Throne Converts, Marries in Catholic Ceremony
Catholicculture.org reports that Lord Nicholas Windsor, 25th in line to the throne, has not just converted to Catholicism, but has wed in a Catholic ceremony. Well, but he's not 25th in line any longer, as conversion to Catholicism has been grounds for exclusion from the line since 1701. (Which was why George IV, the son of Mad King George (whom I was for), kept his first marriage to a Catholic a secret.)
Labels: converts, monarchies
Cannibalism Redux
Last month, the BBC revealed that maternity hospitals in Ukraine are taking newborn babies from their impoverished mothers and murdering them for their organs. A team of Council of Europe investigators found that the babies had been completely dismembered and mutilated — their internal organs had been ransacked, their brains had been removed, and even their arms and legs had been cut off and sucked dry of their marrow.
Romanian women are enticed into donating their eggs in exchange for a sum of money equal to a month's salary. They are then virtually enslaved, fed powerful drugs, and harvested repeatedly until they are paralyzed.
http://www.catholicexchange.com/node/9381Last week I was at the gynocologist's. In the bathroom was a poster inviting women to donate their eggs for money. Why? Because women and children are chattel.
(I left a comment on the poster.)
Labels: cannibalism, pro-life, reasons to panic
Religion gone in 25 years
The statements in this article are so laughably contrary to all that 100,000 years of human existence have established that we know about human nature that it boggles the mind. The best part is where they actually say:
People's fascination for religion and superstition will disappear within a few decades as television and the internet make it easier to get information.
Somebody's never heard of Charlemagne, who single-handedly ended the Dark Ages brought on by the barbarian hordes by establishing co-ed schools all over his kingdom (modern France and Germany). His reasoning was that a person could not act rightly if they did not have the right information by which to do so.
Labels: atheism, modernism
