The whole concept of submission in marriage has taken on some very non-catholic baggage these days. I think we need to reframe the Catholic teaching on submission in marriage so as to avoid all the negative stuff and get at the heart of a proper Catholic understanding of “wives submit to your husbands…”(Ephesians 5: 21 etc) Replace the language using “submit” with this: “I am my husband’s second, I have his back in the spiritual war we call life.” I chose this because in Catholic teaching men and women are of equal dignity. We are partners, we are part of … Continue reading
Category Archives: Spiritual Warfare
Hating on the Rosary makes the people who do it look foolish and ignorant. Even more ridiculous, they claim the Bible as their justification for speaking out against the Rosary. I think my readers are better than that and if they do not already know the awesomeness of the Rosary they are at least open to knowing what it is and why they should not hate on it. For those who don’t know: The Rosary is a structured meditation on the GOSPELS. The 20 meditations taken from Scripture. The pattern of prayers, the contents of which are also Gospel based, … Continue reading
Guess what people? I consider ABORTION=MURDER. There, I have said it. I am against the murder of a baby for any reason. No argument has ever been made that will sway me. No argument has ever been made that would make keeping it legal OK with me. Those, like the Democratic candidate for president, who are in favor of abortion through all 9 months gestation, are in favor of murdering viable full-term babies. If you vote for such a person you are helping to promote that agenda. Turn your back on me–I do not care. If you can stomach voting … Continue reading
People in our culture are starving for beauty. I remember when Trudy Krise, a wonderful woman, would bring her deserts to class for the snack. Those days we had standing room only! People stood around the table exclaiming over the beauty of her deserts. They were indeed a work of art, and what is more, they tasted BETTER than they looked! People are so starved for beauty that knowing her art would be at the next class was all it took to get standing room only. Why the popularity of the Extraordinary form of the Mass? We often call it … Continue reading
Beauty is missing from our culture. Oh, there are still a few beautiful buildings put up, and you can buy pretty things, and you can find artists making art, but the everyday making of beauty is missing. We have devalued it until it has almost completely vanished. The mentality that if your work is not producing a paycheck then your work has no value is killing off everyday beauty. Home making is both work and an art form that is almost dead from neglect because it does not bring in a paycheck. Few are those who knit or crochet beautiful … Continue reading
Having chosen by an act of will to be grateful for our many blessings and having chosen to pray for God to correct our emotions to bring them into line with the fact of our gratitude. We next should consider an appropriate response to this new attitude. What action should we take? I suggest we look at our blessings, note how we have enough, we have what we need, and can recognize how blessed we are in this. From here we should turn out eyes outward, to the news we hear and read, the Christian martyrs in Syria and surrounding … Continue reading
Preparation for Spiritual Warfare takes many shapes. Confession, aka Sacrament of Reconciliation, is always a good place to begin, but another very good beginning is GRATITUDE. An act of will is a good way to begin with any virtue and can be chosen even in the face of uncooperative emotions. Feelings are not fact! It is not essential to FEEL a virtue to HAVE that virtue. I’m grateful as an axiom. Still, I wanted to feel the emotion of gratitude, not just the fact of it. Recently, we had a fire that cost a lot in lost equipment and there was … Continue reading
Scripture is clear that our enemies are not the people whom we see before us but the principalities and powers in the spiritual realm who are driving the evil being done by our obvious human enemies. History is full of endless rounds of futile violence that generally cycles back around years after it seems to have all been settled. WHY? Because of sin of course. We all KNOW this if we know anything about our faith, but it is so basic, so obvious, that most of us give it no thought at all. Yet, that sin is the hook that … Continue reading
Christians alive today are part of the Church Militant. The secular world thinks of violence when they think of militant things. But the secular world is limited in its thoughts to the would of the visible and material. Church Militant is all about spiritual warfare. Spiritual Warfare is about prayer and growing in heroic virtue. I speak of course of the vocational goal of becoming a SAINT. So I see darkness rising, what am I to do? As a Christian, I step up my prayers. I make an effort to pray more diligently for the leaders of our Church, for … Continue reading
“Right now I have a sense of growing evil that has me both a little shaken and increasingly combative. I am taking some steps in my own life in the face of what I see on the horizon. I suggest that you do to. As part of that preparation… GO TO CONFESSION.”– Fr. Z’s Blog I’ve been feeling this for a number of years now, growing stronger over time. At first, it would only be short waves of evil, easily over-looked, but in the past year the sense has been intense and almost over-whelming. I’ve stepped up my efforts with … Continue reading