Journey Notes: Evaluating Spaces

Compact efficient spaces are important because of the decreased cost needed to own and maintain them.  Important also because they challenge the idea that every home must be huge.  Today’s post is inspired by the Tiny House Talk Blog discussion about the tiny house movement (under 200 square feet) and why people have left it. These super tiny houses inspire me.  I’ve been a pack-rat and found I was not happy.  I owned all sorts of stuff, the sorts of things you are supposed to own but which I don’t use.  So during a particularly chaotic period of my life, … Continue reading

Voluntary Charity

VOLUNTARY CHARITY IS THE WAY GOD MEANS FOR MAN TO CARE FOR THE POOR. “The wealthy should help the poor. Jesus taught that. The Church Fathers taught that long before modern popes wrote encyclicals (just read St. John Chrysostom or St. Augustine of Hippo). But what Jesus, the Acts of the Apostles and the Church Fathers all had in common in this regard is that they were talking about voluntary charity. They were not talking about the state.”  <http://wdtprs.com/blog/2012/03/why-a-religious-model-for-the-state-is-not-good/> (boldface my emphasis) I’ve written on this topic on a number of occasions and am delighted to present to you the … Continue reading

Trust and the Bishops

The following video hit home with me.  The American Bishops have  been defining “social justice” not according to the documents of the Church but instead according to the Democratic party for many years now.  Because of this error, the care of the poor has been shifted from the Church to the government. True charity given freely has been replaced by forced taxation. Subsidiarity has been replaced with big government. The Christian serving Christ in the poor has been replaced by a hireling who follows rules and has little time or incentive to care about the individual.  Human dignity suffers, opportunity … Continue reading

CCHD violations of Catholic Social Teaching

CIA: Social Injustice This is a very important video about the problems in the Catholic Campaign for Human Development or CCHD. Helping the poor cannot EVER be combined with ideologies incompatible with Catholic values– and the CCHD, with the full knowledge of the Bishops, hands over millions of dollars to groups that promote directly practices contrary to Catholic values– in other words, if you, as a Catholic, donate to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development YOU are promoting abortion, handouts of condoms, homosexual marriage and communism. Catholic Social teaching condemns abortion, yet the CCHD sends money to groups that promote … Continue reading