The Church is Full of Hypocrites!!!

I am guessing most Catholics have heard someone who doesn't go to church tell them one of the reasons they don't darken the doorway of churches anymore is because they are "full of hypocrites".  Is it really?

Well, yes and no.

First things first, we need to define our term. What is a hypocrite?
There are two definitions in the dictionary:

1. a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2. a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

Do Catholics fall into either of these definitions? Sometimes we do. Anytime you sin or fail to live up the the standards that are set before us by Christ and the Church, then it could be said we are hypocrites.

But, what most people mean when they call someone a hypocrite is that the person is two-faced and does not even try to act in accord with the standards of their faith. So, in this respect many Catholics are not hypocrites.

Regardless of the semantics, I think some motherly wisdom is the best way to get to the heart of the matter.

My mom was a public high school teacher for decades. She frequently had her students throw the hypocrite charge at her as a reason they didn't care to engage Christianity. My mother simply replied with something similar to this (she also used it on me when I made the same accusation of hypocrisy when I was rebelling):

"You are correct, the Church is full of hypocrites. Come join us."

Motherly wisdom for the modern man.

Fr. Barron on Relationships and Marriage

Open Minds

"Don't you have an open mind about everything?" I guess I really don't have an open mind if it has to be open to everything and to tell you the truth, I think that is a very good thing.

An open mind can be a dangerous thing to waste because:

• Do you really want an open mind about genocide?
• Do you really want an open mind about rape?
• Do you really want an open mind about terrorism?
• Do you really want an open mind about evil?

I think that problem lies in the fact that many who style themselves as open-minded people aren't very "open-minded" about those who disagree with them. They want everyone to think as they do...of course it ends up looking pretty close-minded when quickly examined.

I think GK Chesterton said it best:

Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

Fr. Barron on The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist

How God Uses Our Suffering

Want To Change the World? Maybe Just Yourself?

Well, change starts with the first step forward and continues as you progress toward your goal. There are three great goals of the Christian life:

• Give God glory
• Grow in holiness
• Go to Heaven

If we want to achieve these three goals we have to make choices, in the present, that will help us reach our future destination. More than anything, we must have faith, hope, and love. Because these are goals that drive the Saints. These positive motivations will give us reasons to make the right choice.

But, making the right decisions isn't easy sometimes. This is where habit and character come in. We must ask God for help in making changes, because changing our bad habits into good ones is never easy. Yet, this is where virtue is formed and a virtuous person (a person of good habits) is a person with character.

Make the right choice today. Take that step forward.
With that in mind, I ask you to take some time to read the following thoughts of Pope Benedict XVI:

I hope that among those of you listening to me today there are some of the future saints of the twenty-first century. What God wants most of all for each one of you is that you should become holy. He loves you much more than you could ever begin to imagine, and he wants the very best for you. And by far the best thing for you is to grow in holiness.

Perhaps some of you have never thought about this before. Perhaps some of you think being a saint is not for you. Let me explain what I mean. When we are young, we can usually think of people that we look up to, people we admire, people we want to be like. It could be someone we meet in our daily lives that we hold in great esteem. Or it could be someone famous. We live in a celebrity culture, and young people are often encouraged to model themselves on figures from the world of sport or entertainment. My question for you is this: what are the qualities you see in others that you would most like to have yourselves? What kind of person would you really like to be?

When I invite you to become saints, I am asking you not to be content with second best. I am asking you not to pursue one limited goal and ignore all the others. Having money makes it possible to be generous and to do good in the world, but on its own, it is not enough to make us happy. Being highly skilled in some activity or profession is good, but it will not satisfy us unless we aim for something greater still. It might make us famous, but it will not make us happy. Happiness is something we all want, but one of the great tragedies in this world is that so many people never find it, because they look for it in the wrong places. The key to it is very simple – true happiness is to be found in God. We need to have the courage to place our deepest hopes in God alone, not in money, in a career, in worldly success, or in our relationships with others, but in God. Only he can satisfy the deepest needs of our hearts.

Not only does God love us with a depth and an intensity that we can scarcely begin to comprehend, but he invites us to respond to that love. You all know what it is like when you meet someone interesting and attractive, and you want to be that person’s friend. You always hope they will find you interesting and attractive, and want to be your friend. God wants your friendship. And once you enter into friendship with God, everything in your life begins to change. As you come to know him better, you find you want to reflect something of his infinite goodness in your own life. You are attracted to the practice of virtue. You begin to see greed and selfishness and all the other sins for what they really are, destructive and dangerous tendencies that cause deep suffering and do great damage, and you want to avoid falling into that trap yourselves. You begin to feel compassion for people in difficulties and you are eager to do something to help them. You want to come to the aid of the poor and the hungry, you want to comfort the sorrowful, you want to be kind and generous. And once these things begin to matter to you, you are well on the way to becoming saints.

Fr. Barron - A Nation Under God

Are You a Devout Catholic in College?

If you are a devout Catholic in college (or recently graduated), I highly recommend you read this post from Elizabeth Foss. It is insightful.

As I've watched college students graduate recently, I've noticed a distressing trend. Campus ministries are becoming better, teaching orthodoxy without hesitation. Genuinely Catholic colleges are brimming over with zealous young people.

And yet.

There is a harshness, a sort of snobbery happening. I watch in not a little horror and listen to what they are saying, as they measure other people by their overt acts of piety, while they size people up and discard them like the stuff of yesterday's recycling bin because they don't fit the new collegiate image of perfect holiness.

And I can just imagine that several years hence, they will go together with their young children to a playdate. They will meet another young mom at the park. They will inquire as to how many children she has. And when they discover that she has two, four years apart, they will say something sanctimonious about how they are open to God's plan for having children and has she ever heard of NFP? She will sit and wonder briefly whether she should tell them about the two years of cancer between the first birth and the second, about how desperately she prayed for this second child, about what a miracle he is. That young mom, with the two children widely spaced, will have just learned how some people of faith can judge one another. Litmus tests. Checklists. As she raises a family in the real world, she will see that attitude given voice over and over and over again, while Jesus weeps for his Church, broken and divided.

What's the opposite of gentleness? Harshness. Hard lines. Brittle rules.

So there you are, you all grown up and graduated and out in the real world! You've come so far. You've left behind the safety of campus life, the happy campus ministry, the structure of academia. You've gone and gotten yourself a real job in the real world. With a real cubicle and a good excuse to shop at that very fine career wear store. Good for you!

You have a zeal for the faith that can be spotted a mile away. You wear it proudly splashed across your chest on more than a dozen t-shirts collected over the years of vibrant Catholic education. And you've come to embrace all those devotions of our faith as you've learned of them in your coming-of-age. You are on fire for your faith and you are eager to go out there into the real world and tell everyone just how Catholic you are.

May I whisper a word or two to you?
CONTINUE READING.

Two Reasons Same-Sex Marriage Is Gaining Ground

Catholics have not done a good (or even adequate) job of addressing the attacks on marriage. These attacks continue to grow stronger and without an understanding of how to defend marriage and the reasons behind the break-down of marriage, we will continue to see our culture slide into the anti-marriage mentality. Before I get into the reasons why same-sex marriage is gaining ground we need to explore some of the fundamental reasons why same-sex "marriages" are not good for those in them or society.

WHAT MARRIAGE IS.
Marriage is the basic cultural building block of society. One man, one woman, and their children unite as a family - every bit of evidence shows that families thrive in monogamous and stable homes with two biological parents of opposite sexes who remain married. This means that there is less poverty, crime, strife, etc. in homes where marriages do well. This is because the mother and father of children cannot be replaced. Two fathers or two mothers cannot provide what one mother and one father can. The role of the father can't be replaced by a woman and the role of the mother can't be replaced by a man. Studies back up this claim. Thus, same-sex couples can never provide all that children need to thrive. When families suffer the rest of our culture suffers.

Furthermore, same-sex relationships are not the same as male-female ones. While a same-sex couple might have strong affectionate feelings for one another, nature shows us they cannot bond as a married couple can. They cannot procreate and their bodies are not made to compliment one another. Think of this - a male or female by themselves is incapable of creating human life. They need the other. Thus, our bodies are incomplete without the opposite sex.

NOT ABOUT LOVE.
True love is to choose what is best for the other regardless of the cost to myself. This means same-sex relationships can never have loving sexual relationships. This is because the true act of sex is about giving yourself away, but in same-sex relationships you can't do this because the body isn't made to be given to someone of the same sex. A married couple can say, with their bodies, I want to create life and bond with you. I want to be one with you. This is impossible with same-sex couples, because while the body might still be saying this, the act itself is ordered toward selfish pleasure - not creating life or bonding the couple as one flesh.

NOT ABOUT EQUALITY.
Many people say that same-sex couples "deserve" the "right" to marry and that those that oppose them are merely bigots who want stamp out the rights of others. This isn't the case. The Catholic Church consistently teaches the respect of others, regardless of sexual orientation. It also teaches us to love and serve all. But, we must also work for truth and the common good. This means while we fight against same-sex marriage, we do not fight against individuals.

That being said, marriage laws are by definition discriminatory. They discriminate FOR families (not against non-married persons) in order to build up what is good for society. Where do children thrive? In the traditional family. If we tear that down, then society will suffer. Thus, the government needs to help support this building up of what is good for society.

Thus, marriage is about more than two people who have good feelings for one another. It is about the good of society - which is why the government got involved in it in the first place.

Some may argue that a same-sex couple should be able to do things such as share property rights, visit in the hospital, etc. But, all of these legal hurdles can already be overcome with current laws and a few documents.

So, what they are really looking for is social acceptance of their behavior. This is why the Catholic Church is enemy #1 for advocates of same-sex marriage. They cast us as homophobic, archaic, and mean-spirited. Which is not the truth.

Catholics need to fight such lies. But, to do so we need to know where it all comes from.
----
My thesis is that there are two main cultural culprits that have gotten us to where we are today:

1. Contraception
2. Pornography

REASON #1 - CONTRACEPTION - THE ROOT OF THE ISSUE:

Contraception has caused a number of cultural issues, not the least of is the fundamental re-orienting of the purpose of sex for the majority of people. What is the purpose of sex to modern man? Pleasure. This contraceptive mentality has changed us as a people. Sex is for pleasure however we can get it and is what we wish it to be. Sex is not for making babies or for bringing two spouses together. It is purely a selfish act of fulfilling a 'need', not a giving of self to another.

Contraception makes us turn inward, rather than outward - it perpetuates this selfishness on our part. It also sees marriage as an optional social construct (an attitude which harms women and children most of all)

This mentality is tearing apart our culture. I have seen it time and time again. It happens when sex between two people becomes about me rather than you. Thus the fruits of contraception include:

• Divorce rate doubled between 1965-1975 from 25% to 50%
• One demographer has shown that access to the pill paralleled the increase to the divorce rate
• 41% of births are to unwed mothers in 2008 (72% of black babies)
• 41% of pregnancies end in abortion in New York City
• 50% of marriages end in divorce.

Now pick one of these that is good for our culture.

When sex isn't about babies or bonding, then it becomes selfish. Once this happens, the family breaks down. Once the family breaks down, society breaks down.

REASON #2 - PORNOGRAPHY - THE DEATH OF MARRIAGE:

If contraception weakened marriage, pornography is killing it. More and more marriages are being ravaged by pornography and the trend will not slow down anytime soon. With 80% of young men and 33% of young women regularly using porn, more people will be unable to really love another person. Why? Take a look at this:

• Shown to devalue the other person and sex within marriage.
• Porn creates fantasies that real persons can't live up to.
• Porn sets up sexual habits or addictions that create "boredom" with only one other person.
• Porn creates distrust within marriage and is cheating on your spouse.
• Sexual satisfaction is decreased significantly.
• Porn strips sex of love and makes it about using others and objectifying them.

That is just the tip of the iceberg. It gets much worse when you really crack open the stats.

Suffice it to say, porn kills marriages. Thus, it is destroying our culture. But, at the root of porn is the contraceptive mentality that sex is about ME.

HOW CONTRACEPTION AND PORN LEAD TO SAME-SEX MARRIAGE:

How does it all fit together? Well, it is quite simple.

1. Contraception strips sex of it's intended purpose - babies and bonding.
2. Pornography re-defines sex into pleasure alone.
3. Thus, once someone has bought into contraception and pornography, they won't be able to argue that same-sex relationships are wrong, because there is nothing left to argue about. Who are they to tell someone what they are doing is wrong? Who are they to say someone shouldn't have pleasure when having sex?

We have given away too much. The stakes are too high. So, what do we do?

THE GOOD NEWS

The good news is that there is THE Good News - the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Christ CAN restores hearts.
Christ CAN forgive sin.
Christ CAN change our culture.

But, we have to do our part. This is the action plan.

• We have to pray for our culture and for all people.
• We can't see anyone as the "enemy".
• We have to educate ourselves.
• We have to speak up and fight back.
• We have to vote our morals and faith.
• We have to evangelize others so God can change their hearts.

This battle for our culture is not lost yet.

Further reading:
**What is Wrong With Porn?
**Contraception - What the Church Teaches.
**"Same Sex Marriage: Why Not?"
**The Debate about "Same-Sex Marriage"
**Special Report on Gay Marriage

Fr. Barron on Why the Ascension of the Lord Matters

Good stuff, as always, from Fr. Barron:

The Cult of Personality

A cult of personality is a very dangerous thing
It leads us to seek truth from men and not God and it isn't good for the person who is at the center of the cult either:

"We are given to the cult of personality; when things go badly we look to some messiah to save us. If by chance we think we have found one, it will not be long before we destroy him."
-Constantine Karamanlis

Fame can cause some to believe that the person who is famous has some special power. Yet, God is the one who gives and takes away all gifts.

Even in Catholic circles fame has it's drawbacks. When famous Catholics act badly, scandal erupts. This, of course, has many examples today. But, what we must all remember is the following:

• We all sin.
• We all need forgiveness and prayer.
• We stand in need of grace and our talents and gifts are not our own - but God's.
• The only two sinless persons are Jesus and Mary.
• No person is converted by another person's power - but by the Holy Spirit. So, regardless of how amazing a person's talents are, they are not, in and of themselves, the reason another might grow closer to Christ.

As GK Chesterton said:

"The present condition of fame is merely fashion."

Top 10 Modern Myths About the Catholic Church

When I decided to write this list, I thought about how it has changed, even in the past ten years. If I were to write this list 10 years ago, it would probably include these items:

• Catholics worship Mary.
• Catholics believe non-Catholics are going to hell.
• Catholics believe the Pope cannot sin.
• Purgatory no longer is a Catholic doctrine.
• Catholics were told not to read the Bible.
• etc.

But, none of those appear on this list for today. This is because the modern person's knowledge about Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, is worse than it was 10 years ago. This means modern people are more secular in their thinking and thus the myths have evolved. Without further commentary I give you:

Top 10 Modern Myths About the Catholic Church

10 - The Catholic Church is anti-woman and misogynistic.
This myth has deep roots. Certainly there are men in the Church's history who may have been misogynistic, but the Church itself has never been. In fact, the biggest defender today of women's basic human rights is the Catholic Church.

9 - A large number of priests are perverts and/or pedophiles.
This just doesn't have any support in the numbers. At worst, the numbers are about 4% of priests can be credibly linked to abuse (this is still WAY too high). But, the priesthood itself isn't full of predators or perverts. By comparison teachers could be as high as 5% or more. This is in no way defending any priest if they did something wrong, but rather a busting of a myth.

8 - Celibacy is the cause of the priestly scandals.
Again, the numbers don't bear this myth. If this were the case, then we should see a much lower rate of abuse in non-celibate ministers. We don't. In fact, it could be higher in others. How a marriage would solve a psychological issue of wanting to abuse children is beyond me.

7 - Catholics don't think for themselves.
The basic idea is that we should never try to rely on any external authority. Rather, we need to make up truth "for ourselves". No, we don't make up the truth. It is above and beyond our opinions. But, we do need to seek it out and work to find it. Having an adult faith means we have to know it, but we should always examine it and test it - as St. Paul says, "Test everything; retain what is good." 1 Thes 5:21

6 - The Church is homophobic and encourages discrimination against gays.
While not accepting any kind of sinful behavior as ok (from anyone), there is no evidence of this myth's veracity. I will let the Catechism answer this one:

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

5 - The Church doesn't allow abortion and contraception so that there are more people they can control.
This is from those that see the Catholic Church only in terms of power (as they define it). So, they can't believe that the moral reasons for opposing these issues makes sense, rather they make the irrational claim that it is all about making more Catholics. No, it is actually about doing the right thing. Read more here and here if you doubt.

4 - The Catholic Church is anti-sex.
Actually, the Catholic Church is pro-sex, when sex is for the proper purposes and is between a married man and woman. Sex can be beautiful and wonderful. In fact, it can be sacred. That doesn't sound "anti" to me.

3 - The Catholic Church supports immigration for everyone because they know most of the immigrants come from Catholic countries and the Bishops want their money.
First of all, the immigration issue doesn't have a "one-size fits all" mentality with the US Bishops. Second, this is a distraction from the real problem - justice on both sides of the borders of the USA. The US Bishops do not condone breaking the law or violating anyone's human rights. How that works in concrete political policy is for us, the laity, to figure out.

2 - The Catholic faith and science are not compatible. 
Another distraction. The Catholic Church's priests and laity have furthered science, not held it back. There are a number of Catholic scientists who are the founders of their area of expertise: Mineralogy, Modern Chemistry, Modern Algebra, Atomic Theory, Astronomy, and more. If you want to know the full story, I recommend this book.

1 - The Catholic faith is stuck in the past and needs to be updated to reach the modern world.
If this were the case, then we should also see significant growth in Protestant denominations that have gone down this path - Episcopalians, ELCA Lutherans, etc. But, it is the opposite, they are losing numbers rapidly. Rather, the truth attracts and the truth never changes.

Fr. Barron on The Holy Spirit in The Life of The Church