It has been a bit hectic in Casa Kehoe, so I missed a few Saints this week.
The memorial of St. Angela Merici was celebrated o n January 27. You can read about her here.
Yesterday, January 28, was the feast day of one of the greatest minds of the Church–and very holy too–St. Thomas Aquinas. While I am partial to St. Augustine, St. Thomas cannot be ignored!
Read about him on the Catholic Culture web site.
Fr. Barron has a good commentary on the Angelic Doctor :
Some atheists assert that they do not believe anything that cannot be observed, 
experienced, and proven by the scientific method. Since you can not observe God or verify His existence by means of the scientific method, God does not exist.
They may have some difficulty with this article in The New Yorker, The Truth Wears Off. The results of well respected studies have what might be a fatal flaw. It seems that proven truths may have a limited shelf life.
“But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology.”
The author of the article, Jonah Lehrer, calls this the decline effect. He concludes with this observation:
The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that’s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe. Read more here.
Yup. And just because I can’t prove that God exists, doesn’t mean that He doesn’t. How much you want to bet that Jonah Lehrer is going to pillared for this article by some in the scientific community?
Critical thinking, like common sense, is not very common. Instead of reasoned 
discourse when refuting an argument, an appeal to feelings is employed. Often an attack is made against the person expressing a point of view (ad hominem) instead of the argument. This is a common, and decidedly uncivil, tactic by bloggers who disagree with the Catholic Church’s moral teaching especially on the hot button issue of same sex marriage.
Instead of attempting to learn what the Church actually teaches about human sexuality and marriage and why, the charge Catholics are bigots and stupid is made.
I have had people accusing me of needing an authority to “tell me what to do”, because I am insecure or lack something in my character.
Well poor Christian that I am, I most certainly am lacking in many of the virtues. Maybe even all of them. But I accept the teaching of the Catholic Church because it is true and not because I am a needy dependent person. I recognize my total dependence on God, but that does not mean that I left my brains in the baptismal font.
Then there is the lovely condescending accusation that, because I trust in the teaching of the Church of Jesus Christ, I am blindly following. In other words I am not very bright. Never mind that I read my way back into the Church beginning with the Catechism and that I have never stopped studying for even one day since, I must be lacking in intellectual rigor.
This is because what, too often, passes for intellectual rigor in our ever so enlightened culture is to have an open mind. This means that asking questions is the highest good. But finding answers is not. You must seek but not find.
But all that such a perpetually open mind leads to is uncertainty and doubt without end. It leads to dissent and sin.
Seeking truth leads to the discovery that truth is absolute because Jesus Christ is truth. Everything else is a lie.
Fr. Dwight Longenecker of Standing on my Head has a great post up, Dissent or discovery?, he addresses the misconception that Catholics no longer have to think”
“Err. I guess that would make SS Augustine, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, Maritain, Dawson, vonHildebrand, Edith Stein, von Balthasar etc etc the greatest philosophers, theologians and faithful Catholic thinkers of every age to be non thinking, brainwashed dummies.
No, it doesn’t wash. The Catholic Church does not demand that her members be brainwashed zombie cult members. There is a difference between dissent and discovery. The Church calls us to use our reason to explore the richness of the Church’s teachings. Even when it is difficult especially when it is difficult we are called to engage with the teachings of the church with an enquiring and questing mind. The questions are not the problem. Questions are good. The attitude is the problem.”
Heh. I am relieved to know that the Church is not a zombie cult!
Faith is indeed a struggle. Belief in something greater than ourselves is a struggle. I sometimes have moments of doubt. But I refuse to feed the doubt. I persevere in prayer and faith.
Fr. Longenecker ends his post thus:
“Nevertheless, from the emails and comments I get from around the country it seems that a very large proportion of the American Catholic Church are still locked in the downward spiral of dissent and doubt. This attitude goes nowhere at all, and all people get from it is a false freedom. The call license ‘liberty’. Lack of discipline they call ‘freedom of conscience’ and disregard for the sacred tradition they call ‘creativity.’ The dissenting Catholics in this country are basically making up their own religion, and whenever we make up our own religion we only end up worshipping one thing: ourselves.” Do read the entire post here.
The annual Pro life March in Washington D.C. is attended by hundreds of thousands 
of people who come to protest the evil of abortion. It is also the largest non reported, or at least under reported, national protest.
Last year it was reported that the Pro life protesters were middle aged and older. The MSM did not publish pictures of the thousands of young people, and they avoided the fact that it was the Pro Abortion counter protestors that were from the graying population.
Well, I guess that pictures and reports from the Christian and Pro life presence on the internet, is too hard to refute. This year, at least from the news accounts that I have seen, they are trying another tactic.
They are implying that the young people were all bused in from Catholic and Christian schools. Translation: young people are not really Anti Abortion and Pro life, they just want a field trip and a day off from school.
What they fail to understand is that the tide is turning in the US.. Many polls confirm that more people consider themselves Pro life than support abortion.
This is especially true among teens and young adults. They tend to understand that human life is sacred, unrepeatable, and unique. They understand that Pro Choice really means pro the killing of an innocent human being.
Deacon Curtis Turner in his post, Catholicism – The Original “Megachurch” offers hope for the future:
Imagine 25,000 young Catholics cheering for their bishops, priests, religious and deacons! Imagine a standing ovation at the mere mention of the Holy Father. Then imagine a moment in the Mass when those same 25,000 young people come together in a perfect silence while praying for the safety of the unborn.
That was the scene at the Mass for Life in Washington’s Verizon Center. Here is the really neat part. About four miles away the same thing was happening with another 10,000 young Catholics in the DC Armory building. Now, add the rest of us older folks attending Mass in dozens of parishes throughout the city and you had a pretty exciting day to be Catholic.
I have been to several hockey and basketball games in the Verizon Center but no professional athletic team could excite me more than that many teens worshiping Christ and resolving themselves to fight for the rights of the unborn.
Read more of Deacon Turners post here.
By his own account, St. Paul was an enthusiastic Jewish persecutor of the first Christians. In his zeal for the law, he was responsible for the death and imprisonment of many Christian men and women. He was present at the martyrdom of St. Stephan.
Paul persecuted Christians out of zeal and love for God. He thought that he was justified by his actions. Then something mysterious and profound happened to him on the dusty road to Damascus as he traveled to bring Christian prisoners to Jerusalem for trial. (Acts 22)
St. Paul had a personal and dramatic encounter with Jesus Christ. Although there was no horse to fall from, there were plenty of special effects. A light so bright that Paul is blinded. He collapses onto the road. Then he hears a voice asking, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me.
Paul could not ignore the voice and penetrating light of Christ. Paul responds without hesitation, What shall I do Lord? In this singular event, Paul is transformed. The course of his life has been irrevocably changed.
St. John Chrysostom said that St. Paul never looked back.
Paul’s blindness is a symbol of his blindness to the truth of Jesus Christ. The Apostle remains blind for three days until Anani arrives to lay hands on him. (Acts 9). But Pope Benedict has said that it is only after being illuminated by baptism that Paul was truly able to see.
It is not surprising, then, that St. Paul emphasized baptism:
“Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life. For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.” (Romans 6:3-4)
In the letters of St. Paul, the first seeds of Christian doctrine are revealed. They contain a Sacramental theology which has matured and developed through the centuries. St. Paul’s conversion experience was powerful. God intervened in his life to give him the gift of grace. Pope Benedict, in his catechesis on St. Paul, says that “We are Christians only if we Encounter Christ”. The ordinary way that Christians encounter Jesus Christ and enter into a relationship with him is through the Sacraments of the Church.
It is in the Sacraments that we truly meet Christ. It is the ordinary way that Christ becomes knowable, receivable and touchable especially in the Eucharist. Christ meets us in the sacraments so that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can participate in the very life of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Most of us do not experience Christ in such a dramatic way as St. Paul, yet we can only be Christians if we have encountered the living Christ.
It is only in this encounter that we can answer the deepest questions of the human heart. Who am I? Why am I here.? Does my life have meaning? Is there a plan for me? How do I find joy.
St. Paul’s encounter with Jesus Christ caused him to take a new direction in his life. By our Baptism into Jesus we are called to change our lives by turning back to God, and away from sin every day of our lives. Our faith needs to be a lived faith. Christian are called to be one with Jesus Christ. We are all called to, with great energy and joy bring the good news of the Gospel to all that we meet.
From the Catholic Culture web site:
“How Francis developed a gentle and amiable disposition is a story in itself; he was not born a saint. By nature his temperament was choleric, fiery; little was needed to throw him into a state of violent anger. It took years before he mastered his impatience, his unruly temper. Even after he became bishop, there were slips, as for instance, when someone rang a bell before he had finished preaching. The important point, of course, is that by constant perseverance he did in time attain perfect self-mastery. Wherein lies a lesson.” Read more here.
A reminder that with perseverance and total submission to God, each of us can become a saint. I just have stop being so stubborn and willful.
St. Francis also had a great deal of patience.
Excerpt from Catholic Online (This is a longer biography on the Saint.)
“Throughout his life he waited for God’s will to be clear. He never wanted to push his wishes on God, to the point where most of us would have been afraid that God would give up!” Read more here.
I am still working on patience. Knowing what God’s will is, at least for me, very difficult to discern. Every time that I think that I am on the right path, it turns out that I took the wrong fork in the road.
Perhaps it is time to cultivate the virtue of patience and follow the example of St. Francis.
Today’s Office of Readings has an excerpt from The Introduction to the Devout Life, by St. Francis De Sales. Read it here.
I just stumbled on a bit of trivia about Pope John Paul II from Erica Bonnell on the Washington Times web site. It seems that he is the only Pope to have the story of his life presented in a marvel comic book! The things that I learn on the internet.
Erica, commenting on the beautification of John Paul II on May 1st, points out “that
sainthood is a celebration of a Christ-like life led by an individual; it is not a report card on their leadership.”
I don’t know how I missed this. It is so clear to me, even as I don’t live it, that we are 
but pilgrims on this earthly vale of tears. Our true home is Zion the heavenly Jerusalem.
Archbishop Chaput of Denver has a great article on the Catholic Judge who was gunned down in Tuscon. Grab your tissues!
In January 2008, at the invitation of Bishop Thomas Olmsted, I gave a homily at the annual Red Mass for attorneys, judges and public officials in Phoenix. The theme wasn’t new; I’ve said it a hundred times. So has Bishop Olmsted. So have many other bishops. But over the past weekend I dug it out and reread the homily’s last few lines:
“We’re citizens of heaven first. Our time here is limited. This life passes. Eternity is forever. We need to act in this world accordingly, with lives of Christian service to the poor and afflicted—including the unborn child, the immigrant, the homeless and the elderly. The more authentically Catholic we are in our lives, our choices, our actions and our convictions, the more truly we will contribute to the moral and political life of our nation.”
Sitting in the congregation that day was a woman named Maureen, an active and very committed Catholic, and a veteran of crisis pregnancy counseling with Tucson’s Catholic Charities. After the liturgy she moved on to the other tasks of her day, as I did mine. Except that Maureen apparently talked about the Red Mass with her spouse. And 10 months later, after the 2008 election, I got the first of several extraordinary letters from her husband—John Roll, chief judge of the federal District of Arizona; the same John Roll who died in the terrible Jan. 8 shootings in Tucson. Read more here.
While every Catholic has a right to the Sacraments of the Church, this right is not 
without a corresponding responsibility on the part of the faithful. In other words, Sacraments are big deals and should not be trifled with.
“No one can make a claim to the right to a nuptial ceremony,” he said.
Today we celebrate the feast of one of the great martyred deacons of the Church. Please pray for all deacons of the Church today as well as those in formation.
Vincent of Saragossa was one of the Church’s three most illustrious deacons, the other two being Stephen and Lawrence. He is also Spain’s most renowned martyr. Ordained deacon by Bishop Valerius of Saragossa, he was taken in chains to Valencia during the Diocletian persecution and put to death. From legend we have the following details of his martyrdom. After brutal scourging in the presence of many witnesses, he was stretched on the rack; but neither torture nor blandishments nor threats could undermine the strength and courage of his faith. Next, he was cast on a heated grating, lacerated with iron hooks, and seared with hot metal plates. Then he was returned to prison, where the floor was heavily strewn with pieces of broken glass. A heavenly brightness flooded the entire dungeon, filling all who saw it with greatest awe.
After this he was placed on a soft bed in the hope that lenient treatment would induce apostasy, since torture had proven ineffective. But strengthened by faith in Christ Jesus and the hope of everlasting life, Vincent maintained an invincible spirit and overcame all efforts, whether by fire, sword, rack, or torture to induce defection. He persevered to the end and gained the heavenly crown of martyrdom. Source: Catholic Culture.
St. Augustine thought highly of this holy deacon, and gave a sermon on Vincent’s faith in the face of extreme torture. You can read this beautiful sermon at the Crossroads Initiative.
Prayer for Deacons
Holy God, Saint Vincent served You as a permanent deacon and gave his whole life and soul to You, even to the point of becoming a martyr. I lift up to You the deacons of the Church and all those who are being called by God to become deacons. Guide them as they discern how to serve the Body of Christ. Prevent the attractions of the world and the busyness of secular jobs from interfering with their vocations. Teach them to grow in humility. Help their families learn from their examples and support their diaconates with trust and joy. Saint Vincent, pray for us. Amen.
A Deacon's Wife 