1. Here's an interesting presentation (and engaging, I might add) on how contraceptive pills might have adverse effects on who a person is attracted to once they stop taking it...

    You can skip the beginning up to about the 2-minute mark. Watching even just 5 minutes will get you thinking.


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    Labels: Church Teaching Contraception Family Issues Marriage Sexuality The Modern Man


  2. In May 2010 I went on mission trip to two small, rural villages in Haiti. Our mission trip fell just a few months after the devastating January earthquake and aftershocks. However, our focus was not on building housing or offering medical care, but on building relationships.

    On our final morning in the first village we stayed in, some local women were invited to come and sell their hand-made bags, pot holders and other green and brown grass-woven goods. I grabbed some cash, and went down to visit them.

    Before I began looking at their crafts for sale, I was stopped by one of the priests. “Don’t just accept their prices,” he said sternly. “Get them to drop their prices a little before you accept.”

    I was confused. 

    The priest explained, “If you just hand them money, it’s as if their work isn’t worth anything. Don’t just throw your money at them. Show them dignity by giving them a fair deal.”

    It was so difficult to offer $2 for a bag that probably took a week to make, especially when I knew how poor these women and their families were. But as I gave them the fairer prices, there seemed to be something more equal between us. I wasn’t just giving out of charity. I was an equal. We were sharing in one another’s dignity.

    It is easy to buy and sell as if all actions are private: “I have this, and you want it. So, give me what I want, and you can have it.” It is even easier to think “I am giving my stuff to you” when we are being charitable. But is it really ours to begin with?

    Dorothy Day is known for saying that the extra coats we have hanging in our closets, our empty buildings and any “extra” things we don’t truly need are actually the poor man’s possessions. Their possessions, she says. So our giving isn’t “from me to you,” but “it is yours anyway.”

    In his book, Being Consumed, William Cavanaugh asks us to consider what we do when we go to Mass and receive the Eucharist. If we truly become the One Body of Christ that we receive, should we not live as if what I have is not mine, but ours?[1] 



    [1] Cavanaugh, William T. Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 2008. Chapter 4.

    Image: Me and one of the students in Haiti after something of a dance-off - notice the toilet paper under my flip flop strap to cover a wound incurred from trying to break dance a little too hard...
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    Labels: Charity Communion Eucharist Love Newspaper Columns Personal Story Poverty


  3. Human beings want to possess things. When we are little, our parents and teachers endlessly tell us to share: “Now let Bobby have a turn.”

    There’s something fundamental about ownership. The Church’s social doctrine affirms that “Private property is an essential element” of public order.[1] However, the problem isn’t that we shouldn’t possess. The problem is that we possess for a purpose.

    “Goods are meant for everyone.”[2] The problem with our desire to possess isn’t actually possessing, but why we possess. When we overemphasize the right to private property so much that it blinds us from seeing that what we are given is for us to steward for all people, then it is time to start really considering whether what we have is truly, ‘rightfully ours.’

    Many of us have far more than we need. We may respond, “But I need to provide for my family.” Yes. You do! And that’s the first step. What you possess is for another, not just for you. And when your family has enough clothing and food and vacation and living space, then what is your private property for?

    Christ calls each of us to a life of perfection—a life where we are so concerned about others that our possessions get ‘re-purposed”. What I own is no longer just for my own wants or needs, but for the needs and wants of my family, my friends, and those who need what I have.

    Yes, human beings long to possess. We desire to have, and, indeed, we were created to own and distribute. So many are in real need of more material things, and we neglect what we learned as kids: to share. Maybe it really is another’s turn.

    Give intentional purpose to your private property. Give away the clothing you don’t wear, and add another 3 months of clothing money, too. Volunteer to pick up and drop off your child’s friend so his less-fortunate parents don’t have to spend that gas money. Offer some of your vacation savings to financially assist the recovery of a cancer-patient, or set up a saving account to help with your niece’s college tuition later in life. Give your property a richer purpose, by purposing it for others.


    [1] Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Washington, D.C.: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2004. No. 176.
    [2] Compedium. No. 177

    Image source
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    Labels: Catholic Social Teaching Newspaper Columns Stewardship


  4. Last week a group of Confirmation students visited Saint Meinrad for a day of prayer, touring, and faith formation.

    A brother seminarian of mine from Little Rock, Arkansas gave a great session on what it means to be a disciple of Christ. His point was that our faith does not limit us. Rather, when we begin to live our faith as it has been revealed by Christ and transmitted through the ages, we actually become most free.

    Jesus at the center of what looks like a wheel. The Sacraments serve as the hub around the center, and for spokes branch to the “tire”. The four spokes are community and service, which connect us to one another, and prayer and Scripture, which connect us to God through Jesus. The surrounding layer is obedience – something most of us hear as anything but “freeing.”

    To bring it to an eight-grade level, my friend asked the students if anyone played an instrument. We walked through what it was like for one of the students to learn and continue getting good at playing the piano. 

    The analogy makes sense. The student who sat down for the first time to play was not "free" to excel at that task. You can't play like Mozart or Beethoven or even like a piano teacher until you learn the "rules" for playing. You also can't play well until you practice, mess us, try again, and seek counsel from others who are experts. The same goes for sports or any skill set in your career: we are not free to do things well until we listen to how things should be done in the first place. 

    Many people today want to pick and choose what they follow in their life of faith. They agree with the Church on this issue but ignore that one. But if we are ever to fully become excellent at living our faith, we won't do it by remaining comfortable. We won't do it by picking and choosing what seems right to us—imagine how bad pianists would be if they all just played however they wanted to.


    Experts in the faith are free to follow Christ more fully because of their full obedience to what has been revealed and passed down to us. And by listening to the wisdom of Church leaders and saints—both ones still here and those in Heaven—we too can become free.

    Image source
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    Labels: Discipleship Freedom Newspaper Columns Obedience


  5. The Lord is risen, Alleluia! We have waited 40 days and now celebrate new life in Christ who died for us and now lives forever. Let us make the Resurrection worth the Lent.

    We spend a large part of our lives in Lent. If you’re 10 years old, you’ve spent more than a year in Lent. If you’re 35, that’s nearly four years. And for our wisdom figures out there, 80 years of life has meant 8 years and 9 months of fasting from sweets, doing extra works of charity, or daily Lenten rosaries. But can people see how your life is different because of your Lents? Or because of your faith in general?

    It seems like the name of ‘religion’ only gets dragged through the mud. Laws are passed, amended, fought over, and struck down. Attacks on innocent adults and children have been perpetrated in the ‘name of religion’. Those without a mature sense of their faith might easily wonder, “What is religion about? Oppression? Violence—even murder?”

    No. It’s about life—life to the full. And we have to show them that.

    Lent and other Christian practices only exist because of Easter. Had Jesus not been raised to life from the dead, there would be no Lent—and no Christian faith!

    Jesus himself told his disciples, “I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly” (Jn 10:10). Jesus showed us first that the suffering we endure does not end in death, but unending life. The way of living he invited us into—what we call our ‘religion’—commands nothing but what Jesus himself did: only to love.

    We embark on the Easter season for the coming 50 days. If you spent the past 40 days on a Lenten Promise of prayer, fasting or almsgiving, what about making an Easter promise of prayer, rejoicing or sharing the Good News?

    Make Easter life worth the Lenten deaths. Make a promise to smile more, to celebrate often, to share the love and Good News you know, or to spend more time with the risen Christ.

    Religion will only get a better name when those who act based in the name of religion live in a way that astounds, a way only explained by looking to the life, death and resurrection of Christ.


    This Easter show the world what it means to “have life and have it more abundantly.”

    Image source - the tomb of Jesus
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    Labels: Easter Newspaper Columns The New Evangelization
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