One of "Those Parents"

One of “Those Parents”

          “If that was my child, he’d never act like that!”  “I would never allow my daughter to behave that way!”  How many times have we been out in public, watched a five-year-old ball of terror, and thought these things?  I’m sure I have, more than once.  Of course, that was all before I became a parent myself.

          Now I am a parent, and my kids are sometimes “those kids.”  I mean, they can really be “those kids.”  Trust me.  The good news is that it has made it much easier for me to resist rashly judging other parents desperately struggling to maintain control (or is it sanity?).  The bad news is that now there is a new temptation.

          Now the temptation is not to look like “that parent.”  I know what people must be thinking when my son is sitting outside a supermarket on a curb throwing a tantrum, or running down the aisle of the library while I’m trying to check out his books.

          Believe it or not, I’m quite a strict parent.  And the fact is, I have children with some special needs.  It’s been a learning process, but with a lot of prayer, and some occasional patience, we have turned many corners.  But there are times you wouldn’t know it to see us.

          This new temptation is called human respect.  It’s that weakness that makes us concerned about how we appear in the eyes of others, rather than how we truly are, in the Eyes of God.  It’s that temptation to lose patience in public, so I can prove to all those anonymous eyes that I don’t tolerate such behavior either.

          Sometimes it takes the opposite effect, and tempts me to go too easy, or look the other way, so I don’t look like an ogre.  I’ll admit, there have been times when I have responded to one of my children based more on how I would appear to others than what my children really needed.

          I wonder, though, when I die, and stand before God, will He take into consideration the opinions of those random strangers who were exposed to my family for five minutes at Target?  Or will He be more interested in whether I was willing to bear the stares and whisperings of the crowd for the sake of my children?  Is it my duty to look virtuous according to the world’s standards, or to train my children to be virtuous according to God’s standards?

          God gave our children, His children, to us.  This is no task to take lightly.  If we are to be worthy of it, we have to set aside our temptations to human respect.  Jesus wasn’t concerned with what other people thought when He hung dying on the Cross for our sake.  We must, with God’s Grace, take up our own crosses for the sake of our own children.

Link - The Jaffe Memo

Link – The Jaffe Memo

          Abby Johnson, the former Planned Parenthood director turned pro-life activist, gives a shocking account of a secret 1969 memo from Planned Parenthood to the government, in response to a request for help finding solutions to the “problem” of “overpopulation.”  The contents are terrifying, but also terrifyingly familiar.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/secretive-planned-parenthood-memo-how-to-stop-overpopulation-by-discouragin

The Fugitive Slave Act, 2011

The Fugitive Slave Act, 2011

          The Fugitive Slave Act was passed as part of the Compromise of 1850, which allowed California to become a free state, upsetting the balance of 15 slave and 15 free states in the U.S.  The law said that anyone who gave any aid to a runaway slave, including a blanket to one who was freezing, or food to one who was starving, was breaking the law, and was subject to fine and imprisonment.  If you did not turn in a runaway slave, you were also breaking the law. 

          President Zachary Taylor refused to accept the Fugitive Slave Act, but when he died of sun stroke after the dedication ceremony for the Washington Monument, Millard Fillmore became President.  He approved the law, and announced with the acceptance of the Compromise of 1850, that the United States had now finally settled the issue of slavery.  This may be a source of hope for us, seeing that inept and out-of-touch politicians aren’t a new phenomenon.

          I am a student of Presidential history and I count Fillmore among the worst largely because of the Fugitive Slave Act.  It was a particularly evil law because it made doing good a crime and tried to enforce the doing of evil on good people.  How ironic that our first African-American President has dictatorially decreed the 21^st century version of the Fugitive Slave Act by requiring, in his health bill, all insurance policies to cover, at no charge, contraception, including those that induce early abortions.

          I make this connection to the Fugitive Slave Act because once again a law is trying to force good people to do evil against the dictates of their consciences.  Mr. Obama, of course, has scorned conscience protection legislation, and has taken clear and deliberate aim at the Catholic Church, among others.

          The bishops have responded by forming a committee to fight this action, and it is about time we all stood up to fight back against the constant attacks on our religious freedom.

          Obviously this is an unjust law, and as Pope John Paul II said, an unjust law does not have to be obeyed.  In fact, we do not have to regard it as a law at all.  Disobedience will come with a price, though, that we as Catholics have to be willing to pay, but can never accept as normal in the United States of America.

          Our country was founded on the sacrifices of men and women who were willing to die to protect the freedoms we now see taken away by executive decree.  We need their spirit of sacrifice.  Our legislators need to know where we stand.  We may need to give up some of our money and our time to ensure that in the upcoming elections we get leaders who believe in the freedoms they take an oath to defend.

          Most of all, we can not be silent.  The President of the United States works for us; he is not our master.  Mr. Obama needs to be reminded of that.  Call and write the White House and your local newspaper, show up at town hall meetings, and support the Church’s efforts to speak out whenever you can.

Happy Advent

Have A Blessed Advent!

          I have included a Nativity slideshow set to music at the bottom of this page, which will be posted throughout the Advent and Christmas seasons.  God bless!

Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation

President Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

The Holy Priest

The Holy Priest

          We’ve been reminded in recent years of the destructive power of priests who are unfaithful to their calling.  The scandal of abusive priests has done incalculable damage and caused immeasurable pain.  It makes sense – the perversion of something powerfully good is powerfully bad.  In light of that, it’s important for us not to forget the incredible force for good a holy priest truly is.

          The vast majority of our priests are good and holy men who bring Christ to a world that is desperate for Him.  One such man is a priest I’ll call Father O’Callahan.  He is a man of such profound humility that he would never approve of my praising him by name.  He is one of the thousands of priests hidden from the eyes of the world, working faithfully and tirelessly, bringing souls to Christ.  Of the hundreds of stories I could tell, I’d like to share the last day he served as pastor of our parish.

          Father O’Callahan was the founding pastor of my parish and he’d been there for 30 years.  Every morning as I arrived for Mass, I’d see him walking through the courtyard with his breviary, faithfully praying his Morning Prayer.  As time wore on, he neared his 75^th birthday, mandatory retirement age for a diocesan priest.

          I remember the June morning of his last day as pastor.  It was an emotional time for all of us because, though we knew this day was coming, it would be very hard to say goodbye to this man who had been our shepherd for so long.  I drove up to the church for morning Mass.  As I got out of the car I saw the picture of faithfulness.  There was Father O’Callahan, strolling through the courtyard, with his breviary, praying his Morning Prayer, as if it were any other day.

          He started Mass as he always did, gave a homily on the readings of the day, and directed all his attention to the Sacrifice of the altar, calling none to himself.  It wasn’t until the final blessing, as he prepared to walk the aisle to the vestibule for the last time, that we finally heard his voice crack.  He finished the prayer and walked out, with dignity and courage.

          I learned a lot that day.  There are many days that I am tempted to consider “my day” - my birthday, Father’s Day.  Certainly last year when the San Francisco Giants were in the World Series I expected the world to stop for me for the better part of a week.  If anyone ever deserved “his day,” it was Father O’Callahan.  But he remembered that it was God’s day.  He didn’t want an excuse to escape his duties.  He was faithful.  It summed up for me all the lessons I had learned from him about what it means to be holy, to be a man of God.

          I still see Father O’Callahan at many different parishes.  He’s constantly helping out, celebrating Mass or the other Sacraments.  At one parish they even put his name on one of the confessionals since he is there so often hearing Confessions.  He is a priest.  His assignment as pastor may have come to an end, but he wants nothing to do with retiring from being a priest.  He knows who he is.

          I try to remember Father’s witness when I need a kick in the pants.  Perhaps we need “our days” every now and then.  But we must never forget that all days are gifts from God.  There’s no retirement from being who we are called to be.  Faithfulness.  That is Father’s legacy.  May it be ours as well.

Link - Catholicism's Top Ten (part 2)

Link – Catholicism’s Top Ten Part 2

          Here’s the link to the second part of H.W. Crocker’s Catholicism’s Top Ten.

http://catholicexchange.com/2011/11/15/137793/