I have always been a sports fan, and growing up, I watched just about every major game played in Major League Baseball, college basketball, the NFL and the NBA. After getting married, I didn’t watch quite as many games, but continued to intermittently follow the different leagues and also added golf to my viewing habits. But now that I lack a TV, I only watch Major League Baseball (really, only the Reds) over the Internet.

However, when I initially got rid of my TV in late 2007, I quickly came upon a quandary: how was I going to watch the Super Bowl? My wife had no interest in the game, so we couldn’t really go to a Super Bowl party, and I wasn’t going to leave my family just to watch a game I didn’t care that much about, so in the end I missed the game. I admit: it felt a little weird as it seems as if EVERYONE watches the Super Bowl and that it is practically a national obligation. However, I didn’t really feel like I had missed anything that important and when the Super Bowl came around last year, I barely noticed it. This year the same holds true.

What I discovered, however, is how many people do NOT watch the Super Bowl. You would think that almost 100% of all Americans watch it, but in fact less than half watch even a few minutes of it, and only about a third of Americans view it at any one time on average. So actually more people do NOT watch it than do watch it, and they all seem to go about their lives just fine.

So if you are planning on watching the Super Bowl, enjoy the game! But if you have no plans to see it, do not feel alone – you are actually in the majority.

Recently, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference issued some protocols (PDF) for bishops, members of religious communities and all Church officials for the proper use of social networking sites. They contain good advice, which basically boils down to one maxim:

Don’t do anything online you wouldn’t do in person.

Really, it is that simple, although putting it into practice seems to be difficult for many people.

They also remind Catholics that real, live communication has priority over Internet communication, and if we overemphasis the latter at the expense of the former, we will be forgetting some very important people:

Great care must be taken by all Church entities, particularly those engaged in Youth Ministry, not to rely exclusively on social networking as a means of communication. To do this could be to exclude the poor – those who cannot afford a computer, who live in remote localities with poor internet connectivity, who struggle with illiteracy or who face other challenges which place them outside of the online world. Going to Church and hearing others talk about their social networking experiences can be profoundly isolating for those unable to take part. Social networking should only ever be one of a range of communication methods that we use to invite people into closer relationship with Jesus Christ.

This is a good reminder to those of us for whom modern technology has become second-nature. Not everyone can access the Internet with the ease in which most of us can, and we cannot forget that the Good News must be preached to them just as much as everyone with a Twitter account.

For my own Rules for using the Internet, click here.

Most practicing Catholics recognize the dangers of pornography on the spiritual life. Perhaps nothing in our society is better able to lead one away from God than this terrible evil. And, sadly, viewing pornography has become socially acceptable, thus leading many people astray.

Marcel LeJeune over at Aggie Catholics has written often about the plague of pornography, and he recently put up a very good post that shows that pornography’s destructiveness is not only spiritual, but it actually messes with your brain. He writes:

We have known for years that porn is destructive to marriages, families, individuals, and society.  We also know that is is addictive - more so than crack or heroin.  Science is just now finding out just how destructive it is to the brain.  Using pornography radically changes the neuro-pathways in the brain by causing the body to inject strong neuro-stimulants directly into the pleasure center of the brain.  Repeatedly doing this means the structure of the brain itself is altered and the effects are devastating.  As one psychologist puts it, “pornography hijacks the proper functioning of their (men in particular) brains.”

Go read Marcel’s whole article, and then redouble your prayers for all people who are ensnared by the evil of pornography.

St. Maria Goretti, pray for us!

These two things are important truths of our faith:

• The Rosary is one of the most powerful prayers we have available to us.
• As Catholics, we are mandated to pray for our bishops, who are entrusted to guard and teach the sacred deposit of faith handed on to us from Christ and the apostles.

So someone put 2 and 2 together and came up with a wonderful idea:

Pray the Rosary for the Bishop

From their website:

Heaven knows that our good Bishops are under fire for standing up for our Catholic Faith nowadays. What can we do about it? Support them with our prayers!

Rosary for the Bishop is a campaign that aims to support Catholic Bishops through prayer of the Rosary. Please take a few minutes to join in praying for your Bishop.

Sounds like a great idea to me. Even if you don’t sign up at the website, try to make the effort to pray a rosary for your bishop in the next week.

I received an email today from my editor and he told me that Our Sunday Visitor had decided to change the title of my book (because it was being used in over 10 other books). I admit, my first thought was “No!” But after I saw the new title, I thought “Yes!”

Without further ado, it will be called:

Who Is Jesus Christ?
Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew

I am very pleased with this title because I think it succinctly encapsulates what I am trying to do with this book: help people to know Jesus better through the reading of Sacred Scripture. It also implies that fact that for many, the Bible is a mystery and help is often needed to understand it. Hopefully, come September, help will be on the way.

When I was a teenager, I was very involved in my (Methodist) youth group. It was a wonderful time in my spiritual life, and I am very thankful for all the things I learned during that time. I think there are many Christian adults today who can look back at their time in high school youth group as a time of spiritual growth and advancement. Yet I have to admit that I have for a long time had an uneasy feeling about the culture of youth ministry within the church.

My concerns revolve around two common aspects of many youth groups: the lack of parental involvement and the “consumer” mentality of many of these groups. The fault for the first problem often does not lie with the youth ministers, but with the parents, who consider the parish’s youth group a means to “outsource” their duties to raise their kids Catholic. I’ve known many youth ministers who practically beg parents to get involved to no avail.

But the origin of the other problem – the “consumer” mentality of youth ministry – I think falls more closely to the nature of modern youth ministry itself. I recently ran across an article (entitled “I think I’m doing youth ministry all wrong“) by Tim Schmoyer, a youth minister who articulates my concerns quite nicely (emphasis added):

Despite knowing otherwise in my head, the way I actually lead my church’s youth ministry is mostly from the mentality that our youth ministry is a program or service we provide to families. It’s almost like I’m unintentionally feeding the consumeristic perspective by sometimes using language like, “We offer small groups…” and, “We provide connection points for your teens…” Since when was ministry ever supposed to be about what a paid staff member and a couple adult volunteers are expected to spiritually provide for teens and families?

Youth ministry should not be about how the church can serve the youth or even how we can provide programs that help them grow spiritually. That’s the parents’ responsibility. In fact, I don’t think youth ministry should even accidentally enable parents to outsource their God-given responsibility to us, something I know my ministry is all too guilty of. Support parents, yes, but enable them to outsource? No.

The Greek word for “church” is literally “ekklesia,” a community of believers who are “called out” to serve and edify each other and the people around them.

Instead of fueling the consumerism mentality of what a church “offers” or “provides” and which church in town does it best, youth ministry should probably be about helping teens use their God-given gifts to serve the body. It should teach families that youth ministry isn’t just about what the church does for them, but that they are “called out” to think beyond themselves with a servant’s heart. I bet teen church drop-outs would decrease if they actually served as a valuable and essential part of the local body of Christ.

Note the first section I highlighted: it is the parents’ responsibility to help their children grow spiritually. This cannot be out-sourced. A youth program’s purpose is to simply assist the parents in this task. But it is not the job of the youth program to “sell church” to teenagers. It is to give teens an outlet for practicing the faith that has already been imparted by the parents to them.

I recognize of course that in the real world many, many parents are not doing this job, and many youth ministers are heroically trying to fill that gap as best they can. But no matter what, the focus of youth ministry should be less about making the Church conform to the desires of teenagers as it is making teenagers conform to the demands of the Church.

The average Catholic – as well as the average non-Catholic – believes that the Catholic Church is one monolithic church, with one way of celebrating Mass and a single hierarchy which rules that church. However, the truth is much more complex, so much so that I’m reminded of the saying, “I don’t believe in organized religion, I’m Catholic.”

In reality the Catholic Church is made up of over 20 sui juris churches. What does sui juris mean? That each of these churches is under its “own laws”. In other words, each church can have its own canon law, its own liturgy, and its own governing hierarchy. Some of these churches are headed by a Patriarch, some by a major archbishop, some by a Metropolitan, and some simply by a bishop. Each of these churches, however, it in communion with the bishop of Rome, and, according to Vatican I, he has universal jurisdiction over all the churches.

There are currently 23 sui juris churches that make up the Catholic Church. They include:

1. Latin Catholic church
2. Coptic Catholic church
3. Ethiopian Catholic church
4. Maronite church
5. Syriac (Syrian) Catholic church
6. Syro-Malankara Catholic church
7. Armenian Catholic church
8. Chaldean Catholic church
9. Syro-Malabar church
10. Albanian Greek Catholic church
11. Belarusian Greek Catholic church
12. Bulgarian Greek Catholic church
13. Byzantine church of the Eparchy of Krizevci
14. Greek Byzantine Catholic church
15. Hungarian Greek Catholic church
16. Italo-Albanian Catholic church
17. Macedonian Greek Catholic church
18. Melkite Greek Catholic church
19. Romanian church United with Rome
20. Russian Catholic church
21. Ruthenian Catholic church
22. Slovak Greek Catholic Church
23. Ukrainian Greek Catholic church

As you can see, 22 of these 23 churches are Eastern churches; only the Latin church is Western. But the primary reason most people don’t know about all these Eastern churches is that the Latin Catholic church makes up 98% of all Catholics worldwide. So, if you meet a Catholic on the street, there is a very good chance that he is of the Latin church.

Another thing that people often confuse is the difference between a “rite” and a “church”. The churches above are NOT rites; instead they each practice a rite. A rite is a liturgical patrimony: it is the way in which a church worships. There are primarily six different rites within the Catholic church (with many variations within the different churches). They are:

1. Alexandrian
2. Antiochian
3. Armenian
4. Byzantine
5. Chaldean
6. Latin

So one might ask themselves: why all the diversity? How did it happen that the Catholic Church has so many churches and rites? Why isn’t there just one church and one rite for all Catholics? Because historically, as the Christian Faith spread throughout the Roman Empire, and even beyond, Christians appointed leaders for their local church and developed different forms of worship and church law. These churches were all united in “one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” yet they expressed this faith in varying ways. Over time, these differences were formalized into the various churches and rites. I recently found a very helpful graphic which shows this development (click to enlarge):

Source.

The diversity of the Catholic Church is a wonderful thing. We finite humans cannot ever contain the many ways to worship our infinite God. Praise God for all the churches of the Catholic Church!

Some regular readers of my blog might wonder why I often write negatively about technology. After all, this is a blog, right? Isn’t that the epitome of modern technology? And don’t we regularly hear about the Pope encouraging both the clergy and the laity to embrace technology to further the Gospel?

Yes, all this is true. And I’m not anti-technology. I use the Internet for an average of 8 hours each weekday (for both work and leisure), I have worked in the technology field for over 15 years, I have six computers in my house, I own an iPhone, I am on Facebook, and I maintain a blog (I draw the line at Twitter). Clearly I’m not a Luddite. Yet I am also not a technology evangelist. Why? I have seen first-hand the dangers too much dependence on technology can have on the spiritual life.

One thing I often notice is whenever the Pope or other church official makes a “pro-technology” comment, it makes headlines on Catholic blogs and tweets, yet the warnings that usually follow the comment are left out. A case in point is the pope’s recent comments encouraging involvement on the Internet. Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, followed those comments with some words of caution:

“The believer who ventures with enthusiasm and with courage into the world of social communications — boiling over every day with extraordinary technological novelties, from the iPod to the iPhone to the iPad — must know well the goal that guides him so that he is not taken captive by fascination for the means and thus loses his way.”

“And the goal,” the spokesman recalled, “is encountering God, who is the ultimate meaning of the relationships of dialogue, friendship and sharing that the Web makes possible today.”

“The traps that fill the pathways of cyberspace are countless,” Father Lombardi acknowledged, “from superficiality to falsehood to perversion. But there are also many users who seek friendship, truth and goodness.”

“Taken captive”: strong words which, I believe, accurately describe the pull of modern technology on many people. Technology has changed from a means to an end, and we can see an example of this in the fascination with Apple’s new iPad. For months people waited with bated breath for its release and rumors flew as to what capabilities it would have. Most of the discussion did not center as much around how it would help one to do certain tasks better, but instead on how cool it would be to have a device that can do [fill in the blank]. And in the end, the primary focus of the iPad was not productivity, but passive leisure. Now you can surf the web from your couch!

Note that I am not saying that the iPad, or owing an iPad, is immoral. But the inordinate fascination with it and all new technology is spiritually unhealthy. One of the things an over-emphasis on technology does is that it dehumanizes us. When our primary contact with the outside world is through a screen, we begin to lose a certain sense of the sacredness of each human person. Consuming a steady diet of violence, sex, and disasters via TV, video games or the Internet desensitizes us to the human reality behind it. We can see the extreme form of this desensitization in this news story:

Inventor unveils $7,000 talking sex robot

This technological marvel is considered a breakthrough because it can “interact”, through artificial intelligence, with its owner. We see this and are rightly disgusted, but how far away is it from someone who spends every waking hour interacting with Facebook “friends”? Is it not in both cases someone who is filling the need for human interaction with technology instead of real, physical human interaction?

Simply calling modern technology a “tool” whose morality is wholly dependent on its use (or abuse) is not the answer, either. We need to recognize that many modern technologies are more ripe for abuse than older ones. Yes, a knife can be used to cut carrots or cut a child’s neck, but nothing in the knife itself gears you to one action over the other. Many of the technologies today, however, actually lead one to spiritually unhealthy lifestyles by their very nature. Thus, we must be on guard at all times that, as Fr. Lombardi stated, “the goal is encountering God, who is the ultimate meaning of the relationships of dialogue, friendship and sharing that the Web makes possible today.”

St. Isadore, pray for us!

The new Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church is proposing the year 2013 – the 1700-year anniversary of the Edict of Milan – for a major meeting between the Pope and Eastern Orthodox leaders:

Patriarch Irinej said that a 2013 anniversary important to Christians would be a “good opportunity … to meet and talk.”

He added that “with God’s help this (dialogue) would continue to overcome what had happened in history and take a new, Christian road.”

The year 2013 marks 1700 years since Roman emperor Constantine the Great signed the Edict of Milan to establish religious tolerance for Christians.

Serbia’s patriarch has suggested that the ceremony to mark the anniversary could be held in the Serbian city of Nis, emperor Constantine’s birthplace, and include Pope Benedict XVI as well as key Orthodox Christian leaders.

That would be the first ever visit by a pope to Serbia, a rare European country not visited by the Roman Catholic Pope.

This is doubly significant because the Serbian Church is known as a “hard-line” Church when it comes to ecumenical relations. But Irinej, the new Patriarch, seems to be charting a new direction for his Church.

Not surprisingly, the Vatican is enthusiastic about the possibility:

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office,…told the Belgrade paper Blic that this is a suggestion “we welcome with great joy.”

Referring to the predecessor of Patriarch Irinej, Father Lombardi added: “This is a sign that the dialogue that began at the time of Patriarch Pavle will be continued with the new patriarch.

“It would be nice if he would make a step further in order that we meet and see the possibilities for cooperation.”

It is amazing how quickly things have progressed in East-West relations in the past few years. We still have a long way to go, but the signs have been very encouraging lately.

St. Peter and St. Sava, pray for us!

Today is the Feast of the Presentation, and also in America it is Groundhog Day. Last year I discovered that the two are actually related. Another name for today’s feast is Candlemas, and according to Wikipedia:

In the United Kingdom, good weather at Candlemas is taken to indicate severe winter weather later: “If Candlemas Day is clear and bright, / winter will have another bite. / If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain, / winter is gone and will not come again.” It is also alleged to be the date that bears emerge from hibernation to inspect the weather as well as wolves, who if they choose to return to their lairs on this day is interpreted as meaning severe weather will continue for another forty days at least. In the United States and Canada, Candlemas evolved into Groundhog Day celebrated on the same date.

In my previous post, I listed the various saints, doctors, Fathers, and other Christians whose work I quote in “Who Do You Say That I Am?” As I mentioned in that post, I don’t want to invent any new interpretation or new doctrine; instead, I want to stand on the shoulders of the giants who have gone before us in the Faith.

But the greatest literary giants of Christianity of course are the authors of Scripture itself. These men were theologians of the first order, and unlike any other authors, their work was inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Bible is the primary source for theology and any Catholic work should be soaked in the Sacred Page. And this is true of any Scriptural study as well: you must use the Scriptures to understand the Scriptures. One must always recognize the context in which a biblical book was written – not only the cultural context, but the canonical context. By placing these books in one Bible, the Church tells us that they are all interrelated on a deep level. So if we want to understand what Matthew is saying about Jesus, we must look also to the other biblical books to see what they also say about Jesus.

With that in mind, here is a list of all the biblical books I quote, along with the number of times the book was quoted:

Old Testament

• Genesis (13)
• Exodus (5)
• Leviticus (1)
• Deuteronomy (1)
• 1 Samuel (3)
• 2 Samuel (3)
• 1 Kings (3)
• 2 Maccabees (1)
• Psalms (5)
• Proverbs (1)
• Song of Songs (1)
• Isaiah (7)
• Jeremiah (4)
• Ezekiel (2)
• Daniel (1)
• Hosea (2)
• Micah (1)
• Zechariah (1)
• Malachi (2)

New Testament

• Matthew (109)
• Luke (8)
• John (9)
• Acts (6)
• Romans (6)
• 1 Corinthians (11)
• 2 Corinthians (2)
• Galatians (4)
• Ephesians (2)
• Philippians (5)
• Colossians (5)
• Hebrews (1)
• James (1)
• 1 Peter (1)
• 2 Peter (1)
• 1 John (4)
• Revelation (4)

I’m happy I was able to include such a wide breath of biblical texts. The only omission that might stand out is that I didn’t quote the Gospel of Mark at all. This is mostly because whenever I had a text which was shared by both Matthew and Mark, I always chose Matthew, since that is the basis of the book. No slight was intended to Mark!

The moral of the story: if you want to understand Scripture, read Scripture!

When I was writing “Who Do You Say That I Am?” I was consciously trying not to say anything “new”. Too often in Scripture studies you find everyone trying to make a name for themselves by advocating some new theory or interpretation that no one has ever heard of before. This will make them stand out and, they hope, help them sell more books. In my view, if a Scripture interpretation is brand new, it is probably faulty. This is because for almost 2,000 years we have had saints, Fathers, doctors and scholars pouring over the words of Scripture – do we really have the arrogance to think that we have some new interpretation that no one has ever thought of?

This does not mean, of course, that old views cannot be said in new ways. I hope I have done this with “Who Do You Say That I Am?”. But always with the recognition that I am standing on the shoulders of those who came before me and that my interpretation of the Holy Scriptures is only an extension or restatement of what they have already taught the Church. Furthermore, I wanted to include the entire Tradition of the Church, not just one aspect of it; so saints from both the East and the West and throughout the centuries have been consulted.

With that in mind, I recently had to go through my manuscript and check all the references to make sure all were properly noted. While I did that, I kept track of the various people I quoted in my book, and I was pleased to see that I was able to include a broad spectrum of Christian voices from both the East and the West and throughout the centuries. Here is the list of people quoted in my book (the number following a name indicates multiple quotations):

• Aphrahat
• St. Augustine (4)
• St. Basil
• St. Bernard of Clairvaux
• Blessed Theophylact
• St. John Chrysostom (4)
• St. Clement of Alexandria (2)
• St. Cyprian
• St. Cyril of Alexandria (2)
• The Didache
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
• Divine Liturgy of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Mark
• Fyodor Doestoevsky
• Eusebius of Caesarea
• St. Gregory the Great (2)
• St. Ignatius of Antioch
• St. Jerome (3)
• St. John of Damascus
• St. John of Karpathos
• St. John of the Cross
• St. Justin Martyr (2)
• St. Maximus the Confessor
• Origen
• St. Polycarp
• Pope John Paul II
• Pope Pius XI
• Psalm of Solomon
• St. Teresa of Avila
• Theodore of Mopsuestia
• St. Thomas Aquinas

As I mentioned, I was very pleased with the results: I included the voices of a wide variety of Christians and hopefully their voices will allow readers to enter more deeply into the words of Scripture. This list does not, of course, include all the quotations from Scripture in the book, which numbers almost 500 different verses from throughout the Bible. I’ll try to make a list of the different Biblical books I quote as well and post that later.