When I decided to become Catholic back in 1992, I did so primarily because I realized that the Church’s claims were true and I recognized that Jesus Christ wanted his followers to be united in the Catholic Church. However, I knew very little then what it meant to live as a Catholic. In the almost 18 years since I made that decision, I have come to realize that there are many, many great reasons to love living as a Catholic – reasons that I didn’t have a clue about when I first converted. These are not reasons why I became Catholic, but why I love being Catholic. Here are a few, in no particular order:

1) Confession

I accepted the truth of the claim that Jesus gave his apostles the power to forgive sins when I converted. However, I had no idea of the radical difference regular confession makes in one’s life. Even if I were to leave the Church (God forbid), I would still want to go to Confession just for the psychological benefits.

2) Daily Mass

The fact that Mass is celebrated every single day is an incredible blessing to the Church. Not only does it give us the opportunity to receive the Lord in the Eucharist each and every day, but we can know that thousands of Masses are being offered throughout the world all day, every day. Quite a comforting thought.

3) Art

In the Methodist church where I grew up, we had one picture of Jesus tucked away in a downstairs hallway. Other than that, all our walls were bare and bland. Now, as a Catholic I can regularly experience artwork like this and allow it to bring me closer to our Lord in ways I would have never imagined before becoming Catholic.

4) Mysticism

Modern Americans are very materialistic. I am not talking about the sin of greed (although we do love that sin as well), I am talking about the fact that we only accept things we can touch and see. Catholicism, however, has a deep vein of mysticism which counters that tendency. The depths in which some saints have plumbed the divine life is incredible, and it does much to remind me that what I can see is only a small portion of reality.

5) Saints

I had no idea of the diversity of saints when I first became Catholic. After 20 centuries, we have had martyr saints, child saints, monk saints, married saints, priest saints, intellectual saints and every other type of saint that can be imagined. I have come to love reading the lives of the saints and find that each life I read helps me in some way to better understand how to follow our Lord.

6) The Church is not American

Of course I understood before I converted that the Church was “Catholic” and therefore spanned the globe. What I did not realize was the practical benefits of that reality. When I was Protestant, most of the spiritual books I read were by 20th century Americans. Now I read spiritual books by 16th century Spaniards, 4th century Egyptians, 19th century Italians and 20th century Frenchmen. This wide variety of sources opens my eyes to different aspects of God’s Love that I could never get from just modern American writers.

7) The ubiquity

Whenever we went on vacation growing up, we usually didn’t go to church on Sundays, because it was difficult to know which Methodist church in the area was similar enough to ours to be acceptable to us. It got even worse when I joined a non-denominational church in college. Now as a Catholic I can travel anywhere in this country and there is a Catholic church nearby I can attend without fear. Yes, it might be a bit “loopy”, but it still has the Eucharist, which is the source and summit of our spiritual lives.

8) Adoration

When I first started investigating Catholicism I remember reading a question and answer section in This Rock magazine. A non-Catholic saw people kneel before the Eucharist and asked: wasn’t that idolatry? I assumed the answer would explain that Catholics are not really worshiping the host and they could explain the kneeling in some other way (at this point I was sympathetic to Catholicism but didn’t know much about it). I was floored when the answer stated that Catholics do indeed worship the host – and that this was appropriate because the host was actually Jesus Christ. But even this knowledge didn’t prepare me for adoration; six months after I converted I attended adoration during a retreat and it was a life-changing experience. Now I can’t imagine living without the opportunity to adore our Lord in the Eucharist on a regular basis.

9) Celibacy

I’ll be honest: before I became Catholic I thought it was weird that Catholic priests could not be married. I had no conception of the value of celibacy or the witness it gave to the world. Over the years, however, I have come to see the great value of the witness of celibacy for everyone – celibates and non-celibates alike. Celibacy reminds us of heavenly realities (where we will be neither married nor given in marriage) as well as points us to the great beauty of chaste love, something sorely needed today.

10) Purgatory

When I went to funerals as a Protestant, I remember being frustrated that I could not pray for the dead person. It felt odd to be at a funeral and pray for the family, friends, and even co-workers, but not be able to pray for the person we were there for! But my theology didn’t allow it. Now that I am Catholic, I find great comfort in being able to pray for souls who have died, especially those who did not appear to live Catholic lives. Purgatory gives me great hope and tells me much about God’s mercy.

There are many other reasons I love being Catholic, but I’ll leave it to these ten for now. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

appear to be tomorrow’s cigarettes.

Looks like 14:

I have always been a big fan of science fiction. Growing up I religiously followed all the latest science fiction shows, from Star Trek to Star Wars to V. I loved to consider the possibility of extra-terrestrial life and humanity’s interaction with it.

However, now that I am an adult, I don’t really think intelligent life exists outside this planet. I obviously don’t hold to this belief dogmatically, as I cannot prove it one way or another. I just think that man is unique in all of creation: a physical species with the ability to think and choose.

But what if I’m wrong? What if on another planet there is intelligent life? This is now being debated at the Vatican Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Before debating what it would mean if intelligent life exists outside our planet, I think we have to first take a step back. We first have to define “intelligent life” itself. I would define it in the classical Catholic sense: a being with a mind and a will; i.e. someone with the power to think and to choose. The only intelligent life on this planet is humanity (aside from angels), so finding animal or plant life on another planet does not constitute “intelligent life”. If we found animal or plant life on another planet, it could easily be considered part of creation which has been placed under the dominion of man.

But how would we determine if extra-terrestrial life is “intelligent”? How would we know if a species could in fact think and choose?

It could be obvious: if an alien species had developed a culture in which people engaged in art, music, philosophy and other such activities, we would know that they could think. If the species showed an understanding of love between them, we would know that they could choose. And more ominously, if the species had a history of violence and injustice, we would know that it had fallen, which would also show that it was “intelligent”.

Personally, I do not think it will be difficult to ascertain if a life is “intelligent” as I do not think such life would be very dissimilar to human life. Mankind is made in the image and likeness of God, and it is that very image and likeness which makes us “intelligent”. It follows then that any intelligent species would also be in God’s image and likeness and therefore would in some way be similar to us. So it seems to me that it would be obvious. If we encounter intelligent life on other planets, we’ll know it.

But what would that mean to our theology? I think that the big question revolves around the Fall and God’s response to the Fall. In our world, God became man to save us from ourselves. This was His solution to our Fall. Could He also incarnate Himself as another species? Someone in the article I linked above stated that “multiple incarnations is a heresy in Catholicism”. I don’t think that is true; at no time has the Church definitively ruled on such a doctrine. But it is a troubling thought nonetheless. Does it diminish the power of The Incarnation if it was instead just one incarnation among many? Or does it show God’s power even more clearly?

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Leo the Great. Leo is best known as the pope who stared down Attila the Hun, thus delaying the fall of the Western Empire to the barbarians. However, I would argue that his actions against Attila are insignificant compared to his work in the area of Christology. Soon after Leo’s death the Western Empire did fall, but Leo’s declaration of the two natures of Christ still guides the Church to a proper understanding of Christ today.

After the legalization of Christianity under the Emperor Constantine in the early 4th century, the Church was engaged in a very public and very painful debate to answer the question that Jesus asked his apostles three centuries earlier: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter’s answer of “The Christ, the Son of the living God” needed further elaboration. Was Christ God? If so, was he still a man? Or was he some combination of the two, making him a third type of being? How can someone be both God and man at the same time? And if Jesus of Nazareth is God, what did that say about Mary? Was she just the mother of Christ or the mother of God? If Jesus is God, does that mean that God “died” on the cross? These are serious questions, and the answers the Church gives has major implications for the life of all Christians.

This was the situation in which Leo was Pope. After the Council of Ephesus in 431 the East was furiously debating the exact relationship between Christ’s human nature and his divine nature (the West was much more conservative in orientation and usually didn’t have these types of debates at this time), and their theological debates were not without major political ramifications (as is usually the case with theological debates). Into this mix Leo produced his famous “Tome” which clearly declared that Christ was a human person who had both divine and human natures and that there was no confusion between these two natures.

After reading this Tome out during the Council of Chalcedon, the Council Fathers proclaimed:

This is the faith of the fathers, this is the faith of the Apostles. So we all believe, thus the orthodox believe. Anathema to him who does not thus believe. Peter has spoken thus through Leo!

It was St. Peter who first answered Christ’s famous question, “Who do you say that I am?” and it fell to St. Peter’s successor to give us a better understanding of that answer, an understanding that still forms the basis for orthodox Christology today. If we want to know who Jesus is, we need to follow the confession of Peter and his successor, St. Leo.

St. Leo the Great, pray for us!

I strictly control the amount of time my children spend on the Internet, and I also strictly control what sites they can access and from whom my oldest daughter (the only one with email) can receive email (three cheers for Mac’s great parental control features!). I think this is just part of being a good parent. There is no question in my mind that, along with so much of the garbage to be found on the Internet, just using it can easily become addictive, especially for someone who is not yet mature enough to handle it.

However, in China, they seem to have taken things too far: they have “Internet boot camps” in which physical means such as beatings and electro-shock therapy are used to cure teenagers of Internet addiction. Fortunately, the government there has stepped in to ban these practices after a teenage died at such a bootcamp.

Have you ever noticed that almost no abortion clinic includes the word “abortion” in their name? Usually abortion clinics are named something like “Springfield Women’s Center” or “Family Planning Services”. Out of over 400 abortion clinics in this list, only seven actually have the word “abortion” in their name. In most cases, abortion is the clinic’s main business, yet they don’t advertise that service openly.

Yet, if you look at the typical pro-life crisis pregnancy center, most of them have the term “pregnancy” in them (see this list). They make it clear what their business is: they help women who are pregnant.

So which one is being deceptive in their advertising practices? Here in Montgomery County, Maryland, the county council has decided that it is the pro-life pregnancy centers which are deceptive, and therefore they want to pass a law requiring them (and only them) to advertise what the do NOT sell, i.e. abortions. The directors of these CPC’s are understandably not pleased:

“The people who are using our services aren’t misunderstanding what we do and what we’re providing,” said Jacqueline Stippich, executive director for Shady Grove Pregnancy Center. She said most of the center’s new clients are referred by past clients.

A similar proposal currently being considered by the Baltimore City Council.

Rockville Pregnancy Center Executive Director Gail Tierney said those types of legislations are singling out anti-abortion pregnancy centers to score political points.

“I just kind of find it strange as a medical clinic to make us list things we don’t do,” Tierney said. “It’s like having Home Depot having to post a sign saying: We don’t sell dresses.”

Seven years ago, John Allen Muhammad, the “Beltway Sniper”, terrorized the DC area for three weeks in October, randomly killing 10 people and wounding 3 more. I remember it well. If you drew lines between the first three locations in which people were shot, my office was in the middle of that triangle. I can remember running zig-zag across the street to get to another office building and standing behind large tarps at gas stations while I pumped. I had moved to the DC area the year before – right before 9/11 – and with the Sniper, 9/11 and the anthrax scare, I was reconsidering my move from Ohio. There is a reason we use the term “terrorist”.

Tomorrow Muhammad is to be executed by the state of Virginia for his crimes. Bishop Paul Loverde of Arlington is asking that Muhammad be given life in jail rather than the death penalty. I support his call to commute the death penalty for Muhammad. In fact, I think the death penalty should be abolished in this country.

Why? It is not that I think the State does not have the right to use the death penalty. Both Scripture and Tradition make clear that legitimate governments are allowed to use the death penalty as a means of maintaining order if that is necessary. However, just because the State has the right to execute does not mean it has the obligation to do so. Like Pope John Paul II, I do not think that the death penalty is necessary in modern society. Our country is the most materially blessed nation in the history of humanity – we don’t even blink an eye at 65″ HD television sets sitting in someone’s living room – so we have the resources necessary to detain dangerous criminals and keep them from society if needed.

Furthermore, I think it profoundly sad that our culture is so incredibly violent and yet we react with surprise and indignation when we produce violent criminals. From video games to movies to popular music we pump violent imagery into the minds of our citizens and then we are shocked when some of them act out on it? Combine that “imaginary” violence with the real destruction of human life that is abortion which surrounds us, and we have a recipe for disaster. But when someone does act out in violent ways, our solution is simply more violence: let’s just kill them to rid ourselves of the problem.

I am not saying that people do not have personal responsibility. We all make choices in what imagery we consume and how we react to it. Yet I cannot help but wonder why it is that as a society we are willing to destroy people with our rotten culture yet are unwilling to spend the funds necessary to try to rehabilitate them. (I would also argue that the extreme form of separation of church and state our country has adopted in recent generations exacerbates the problem, as churches are not allowed to be directly involved in this rehabilitation effort).

Finally, I think the abolishment of the death penalty would be a strong pro-life stand in our culture of death. Abortion and the death penalty are not equivalent issues – the death of an innocent child is not the same as the death of a convicted criminal by the State – yet I think both are fundamentally saying that killing a person is the solution to a problem. In our country, where such a “solution” is never necessary, we should strive to abolish the death penalty, including for people like John Allen Muhammad.

A funny video for your weekend, as Tim Hawkins reminds us that not every verse of the Bible is “family-friendly”:

On this date in 1789, Father John Carroll was appointed the first bishop of the newly independent United States. He was made the bishop of Baltimore and served in his position until his death in 1815. He came from a family of distinguished Catholics; his cousin Charles was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence. From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Church troubles, Trusteeism in New York, and Nationalism in Philadelphia, at this time decided the priests of Maryland (March, 1788) to petition Rome for a bishop for the United States. Cardinal Antonelli replied, allowing the priests on the mission to select the city and, for this case only, to name the candidate for presentation to the pope. Twenty-four of the twenty-five other priests in the meeting voted for Father Carroll. Accordingly on 6 November, 1789, Pope Pius VI appointed him bishop. His consecration took place in Mr. Weld’s chapel at Lulworth Castle, England, 15 August, 1790, at the hands of the Rt. Rev. Charles Walmesley, Senior Vicar Apostolic of England. Bishop Carroll returned to Baltimore in triumph, 7 December, when he preached an appropriate and touching sermon in St. Peter’s church.

Carroll of course lived in a time of great anti-Catholicism in this country. Once he said in reply to such an attack:

[Catholics'] blood flowed as freely (in proportion to their numbers) to cement the fabric of independence as that of any of their fellow-citizens. They concurred with perhaps greater unanimity than any other body o fmen in recommending and promoting that government from whose influence America anticipates all the blessings of justice, peace, plenty, good order, and civil and religious liberty.

Let us ask for the intercession of Archbishop Carroll for our country this day.

Sometimes those of us who grow up Christian, or even just in a Christian culture, don’t realize how radical the Christian faith is. We proclaim that God became man…and then was killed. And we call that “the Good News”! Sometimes it takes someone with a completely different upbringing to remind us of the scandal of the Cross.

This is the story of Jaideep Singh, who recently became a Maryknoll missionary, a societies of apostolic life founded in the United States in the early 1900s. Today he is Fr. Stephen James Taluja.

Born in 1981, the youngest child of an important Indian Sikh family, the only male eagerly awaited by his parents after three daughters…

“My mother was a very devout woman who introduced me to the teachings of the Guru Granth Sahib educated us at home in the prayer and recitation of the hymns of the sacred scriptures. My father accompanied me to the Gurdwara, the Sikh temple, and he raised me in the faith of the almighty. My parents instilled in us children love for God and a sense of service to the community”.

The young Jaideep studied at St Stephen’s School in Chandigarh, the capital of Punjab. Harold Carver, dean and founder of the institute remembers the young Sikh who “excelled in sports and played in the under 19 national soccer team of the state, loved music and sang in the school choir”.

Because of the quality of his singing the little Jaideep was invited to sing at midnight Mass on Easter Eve in the local church of St. Sebastian. He was 13 years old and attending the 7th class. It was the first time he had set foot in a Catholic church making the unusual occasion even more special for the young Sikh. Today, he says: “In that night I have vivid memories of the crucifix hanging on the wall and all the people on their knees praying. I did not understand how people could pray to a weak and dying God. For me, God had to emanate strength and power. And that God was just the opposite. ” Fr. Stephen remembers “the charm of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, common prayer and the unveiling of a totally new way for me.” He left the Mass with the image of “the cross and crucified Lord” in his head as well as “emerging questions about the meaning of life.”

Read the whole thing here.

H/t: Intentional Disciples.

sometimes evil does triumph.

Today’s saint, St. Charles Borromeo, was one of the main proponents of the Council of Trent, which did much to reform the Church during the 16th century. In his honor, I’d like to have a quiz related to the last three Councils of the Church.

Each of the following statements come from the Council of Trent, Vatican I or Vatican II. Can you guess which Council each statement comes from? (Scroll down for answers)

1. But the college or body of bishops has no authority unless it is understood together with the Roman Pontiff, the successor of Peter as its head.
2. In virtue of his office, that is as Vicar of Christ and pastor of the whole Church, the Roman Pontiff has full, supreme and universal power over the Church. And he is always free to exercise this power.
3. The Roman Pontiff, as the successor of Peter, is the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity of both the bishops and of the faithful.
4. In accordance with the centuries-old tradition of the Latin rite, the Latin language is to be retained by clerics in the divine office.
5. In the Latin Church the pipe organ is to be held in high esteem, for it is the traditional musical instrument which adds a wonderful splendor to the Church’s ceremonies and powerfully lifts up man’s mind to God and to higher things.
6. Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.
7. The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church.
8. Since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred, writings for the sake of salvation.

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And the answers are…

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Surprise! They all come from Vatican II! Remember that the next time someone (either “progressive” or traditionalist) tells you that Vatican II “changed everything”. As Pope Benedict often teaches, Vatican II must be interpreted in the light of the full Catholic Tradition, of which it is a part.

Below are the documents for each of the above statements.

1) Lumen Gentium 22

2) Lumen Gentium 22

3) Lumen Gentium 23

4) Sacrosanctum Concilium 101.1

5) Sacrosanctum Concilium 120

6) Sacrosanctum Concilium 36.1

7) Dei Verbum 10

8 )Dei Verbum 11

Many of my devoted readers might not realize that there are other Catholic blogs out there on this interweb thingy. Yes, it’s true! Not only that, but they are really, really good! So, as a public service to my readers, I give you some of my favorite posts from the past few days:

Judas Maccabeus vs. Gaudium et Spes: With a title like that, it must be interesting. Br. Charles looks at the strange juxtaposition of readings in the Office of Readings recently.

A Very Common Confusion: Mark Shea adroitly answers a common question from a Protestant minister regarding the practice of Catholics praying to Mary.

Justification and the Analogy with Inscripturation: Francis Beckwith makes an interesting, if novel, comparison between Justification and the Inscripturation of Scripture.

Bryan Planned Parenthood Director has a “Change of Heart”!: Marcel at Aggie’s Catholics gives the inside story about the PP Director who became pro-life.

One of the chief scourges in the history of the papacy has been nepotism. Renaissance popes especially engaged in this foul practice of granting Church offices to undeserving nephews, cousins, siblings, and even sons. Too often the Red Hat was given to relatives of Popes who were quite unqualified for the task, some even receiving it while they were still in their teens. The height of papal nepotism occurred during the 15th and 16th centuries, and it was not until Pope Innocent XII’s bull Romanum decet Pontificem in 1692 that the evil of nepotism was finally curbed in the Vatican.

Why do I bring this up today? Because today we celebrate the feast of St. Charles Borromeo, who was the product of papal nepotism: he was made a bishop and Cardinal by his uncle, Pope Pius IV. I find the scandal of Borromeo’s appointment to be very in keeping with how God works in this world. Throughout the Old Testament you find people acting in scandalous ways, but God uses those imperfect actions to effect His Will. And what is more scandalous than the Cross? In the Cross we see the “failure” of Christ – yet it is exactly that failure which brings our redemption. Church history is littered with sinful and imperfect men and women who Christ uses to extend His Gospel to the ends of the earth.

Pope Pius IV gave his nephew a plum ecclesial appointment, one that perhaps should have been given to a more “deserving” candidate. Yet God raised up St. Charles Borromeo to be one of the great reformers of the Church who did much to bring countless souls to Christ. Never doubt that God can work in any situation to bring about good. As St. Paul wrote, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28). All things.

St. Charles Borromeo, pray for us!