Learning to be Quick to Listen

Bishops must guide their faithful to use their vote to oppose efforts to legalize abortion and euthanasia, Pope Benedict XVI told bishops from Brazil. "Dear brother bishops, to defend life we must not fear hostility or unpopularity, and we must refuse any compromise or ambiguity which might conform us to the world's way of thinking," the pope said October 28 during a meeting with bishops from northeast Brazil. The bishops were making their "ad limina" visits to report on the status of their dioceses. Pope Benedict did not mention the fact that Brazilians were to vote October 31 in a presidential election, but said he wanted to discuss with the bishops their obligation to give their faithful the information and moral guidance they need to ensure their political decisions contribute to the true good of humanity. Both of Brazil's presidential candidates, Dilma Rousseff and Jose Serra, have said they oppose lifting restrictions on abortion, but Brazil's anti...

A 31-year-old Michigan nursing student is experiencing her own personal housing crisis after she posted an ad on a church bulletin board looking for a "Christian roommate." After seeing the notice, someone in the community filed an official complaint with the Fair Housing Center of West Michigan, alleging that the ad "expresses an illegal preference for a Christian roommate, thus excluding people of other faiths." Rather than dismiss the complaint as ridiculous on its face, the agency flew into action. "It's a violation to make, print, or publish a discriminatory statement," Fair Housing's executive director said. Representatives from the National Fair Housing Institute say it is illegal to advertise for a Christian roommate or indicate any type of religious preference. But, as the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) points out, there's nothing discriminatory about it. This woman "is not a landlord. She does not own a management company. She does ...

Pope Benedict XVI in his brilliant book Jesus of Nazareth tells us that God is on the way to you. In this day of false gods and lack of faith, many people have decided that they do not need God or do not believe that God exists. Pope Benedict tells us, "...we have developed a concept of reality that excludes reality's translucence to God. The only thing that counts as real is what can be experimentally proven. God cannot be constrained into experimentation." This set off the brightest light bulb moment for me. I have been struggling with reading the Old Testament. It was my reason self that had taken over as I read. But we understand that there is faith and reason and they are separate. Trying to constrain God in a petri dish would be like trying to grab an alligator by his mouth. You will get a nub back. The same is true about God. You will blind yourself to the reality that God is bigger than that and is incomprehensible to us. His mystery lies in His majesty. So you h...

Reading the Old Testament always causes me to pause. God and Israel have a really rocky relationship. No matter what God does and how much He gives to them, Israel still does not fully trust Him. The other thing that creates problems for me is placing the story in the right context. What else is going on? What was the norm of the day? I was reading the story of Pharaoh and Moses in Exodus and as soon as I started reading about the plagues, the movie about the Ten Commandments popped into my head. How many times have I seen that movie? The images flood over you and even as you are reading the Bible, the scenes from the movie play out. I found myself saying "but where is this or that" referring to things that occurred in the movie but are not necessarily written in the Bible . Anyway, it also caused me to focus my attention on the plagues that God used to convince Pharaoh to release Israel. By digging deeper, I have come to understand that each of the plagues was designed to il...

There was an interesting article in the USA Today recently that talked about society's current obsession with fear. It seems, since September 11 or maybe because of it, we have grown increasingly more anxious about such threats as terrorism attacks, health pandemics, and environmental disasters (like the recent oil spill). The author of a new book Be Very Afraid makes the argument that "our method of coping is to make an idol out of any activity, agency or technology that will promise us security." Robert Wuthnow wrote the book and is a sociologist. Columnist Henry Brinton notes that "we worship the god of security." It has become a false idol for us because of the feeling of constant threats. Brinton says, "One of the goals of religious faith is to fashion a life that is not consumed by fear of death. This can be done by looking for eternal value in each day on earth, eternal salvation in heaven, or some combination of the two. But these approaches are dif...

Pope Benedict XVI denounced "terrorist ideologies" that spur violence in God's name as he opened a meeting Monday of bishops from around the Middle East.Pope Benedict said such ideologies were based on false gods and should be "unmasked." The pontiff made the off-the-cuff remarks at the opening working session of the meeting, or synod, which was called to address problems the minority Catholic Church faces in the largely Muslim region. In his remarks to the synod participants, Pope Benedict lamented the forces at play in the world that "enslave" men and threaten the world, citing drugs as well as "terrorist ideologies. The make violence apparently in the name of God, but it's not God: These are false divinities that must be unmasked. They are not God." Is war ever the right answer? Didn't Jesus Christ come to replace the hate and violence with peace and love? Doing something that we know is wrong and saying it is in the name of God d...

Last month, as the abortion industry celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the FDA approval of RU-486, we learned the grim news that two more women have died from complications related to the abortion drug. Since its approval in 2000, 12 women (and approximately a million babies) have died as a result of RU-486's growth in the U.S. Ella, which is almost a chemical twin of RU-486, was approved by the FDA on August 13th. According to the CDC, both women died from complications with c. sordelli, the bacteria linked to a number of RU-486 casualties from 2000-2006. Many are claiming that the FDA's approval process for RU-486 was significantly flawed. Since then, more than 1,300 women have reported adverse effects from using the drug--including 336 hospitalizations, 172 blood transfusions, and now 12 deaths. RU-486 continues to sit unopposed on pharmacy shelves, while women pay a severe price. Other drugs with less extreme effects have been pulled from the market--but the FDA seems i...

The recent suicide of a Rutger's student who was "outed" by his roommates, pushed me to look more closely at what our Church teaches about homosexuality. The Catechism says in 2357, "Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.' They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which...