If anybody out there reads this blog, please pray for my brother who is suffering from physical ailments and also facing difficulty in finding a job. Please pray that he may be healed physically and spiritually and that he may find employment soon.

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out
to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he
went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith he
sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country,
dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the
same promise; for he was looking forward to the city with
foundations, whose architect and maker is God. By faith
he received power to generate, even though he was past
the normal age--and Sarah herself was sterile--for he
thought that the one who had made the promise was
trustworthy. So it was that there came forth from one man,
himself as good as dead, descendants as numerous as the
stars in the sky and as countless as the sands on the
seashore. All these died in faith. They did not receive
what had been promised but saw it and greeted it from afar
and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on
earth, for those who speak thus show that they are seeking
a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land from which
they had come, they would have had opportunity to return.
But now they desire a better homeland, a heavenly one.
Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he
has prepared a city for them. By faith Abraham, when put to
the test, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the
promises was ready to offer his only son, of whom it was said,
"Through Isaac descendants shall bear your name." He reasoned
that God was able to raise even from the dead, and he received
Isaac back as a symbol.
Hebrews 11:8-19

As the people of Christ, a community of hope and faith, we are called to trust in the love of God when He calls us out of our comfort zone and asks of us more than we think we can accomplish. Abraham was told by God to leave his homeland, to make a dangerous journey, so that he could take possession of a foreign and hostile land that he had never even seen before. Even after his arrival in the promised land, his life was not easy. Abraham had been promised descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, not a likely outcome considering that he was at the time childless and he and his wife were too old to conceive. Still, he trusted and God rewarded his faith with a son. How shocking must it have been to Abraham, after all he had been through and the faith he had put in God for the life of his son, when Isaac's life was demanded as a sacrifice? Even in spite of this seeming contradiction, Abraham trusted that God would keep His promise and ultimately He did just that. How much more should we trust God when He asks the seemingly impossible from us, considering that He is unlikely to ask of us nearly as much as He did of Abraham? Most of us are called simply to bring Christ to those around us, not in hostile lands or empty wilderness but in our own backyards where the Good News is just as desperately needed. Will we respond with faith and acceptance of the love of God, or will we favor instead our own will and plan for our lives?

I'm not saying that it's easy, Lord knows it isn't and I'm the least of all when it comes to subjugating my own will to His. It is only through the grace of God that we are able to answer His call and do what is pleasing to Him and yet we are called to ask for that grace and seek that which is pleasing to Him. It is the great contradiction vocalized in the plea of the man in Mark 9:24, "I do believe, help my unbelief." We are called to ask for that which we cannot even fathom on our own much less obtain, to reach our short arms out to Him who comes down to meet us where we are. We are called to have faith in that which we cannot see and to seek that which we cannot fathom, and only through the grace of God can we finally obtain this great gift which brings eternal life.

So apparently a judge in California declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional, setting the stage for more appeals and possibly leading to the nullification of every "traditional marriage" referendum in the country. Personally I find it ironic that a homosexual judge from Illinois can be celebrated for spitting on the will of the people but when a religious group like the Mormons that has members in California but is headquartered in another state tries to get people to vote then it's suddenly the worst thing in the world and they have to be punished for it. Of course, this doesn't mean that I'm surprised. It was only a matter of time before they found a judge to do this, and history has told us that many radical changes in our country both good and bad have come about through a judicial disregard for the will of the people.

This may seem like a small thing, like an inconsequential movement toward something that will have no effect on those who don't approve, but if history has taught me anything it's that California is the harbinger of doom and things always end up worse than they were when they started. Looking at abortion, many probably didn't believe that the actions of a few liberal states like California and New York would shortly be mandated throughout the country. They also probably didn't think that we'd be experiencing such a breakdown in the family, such catastrophic rises in child and spousal abuse as well as other sorts of domestic violence, and in fact many in the pro-abortion movement seem to have thought that legalized abortion would lead to the eradication of such evils. In five or ten years we may face a situation where a federal judge declares all "marriage between a man and a woman only" laws unconstitutional, and then we'll all be in this situation. It will be tragic, but it certainly won't be surprising.

The real question here, the real uncertainty about the rapid movement toward entropy and chaos that is defines our culture, is whether this will be used to persecute religious groups that oppose gay marriage. This sort of thing has happened in the past, where churches that rented out halls for wedding receptions were sued for not renting them out to gay couples. If the courts decide that church weddings are a "service" like renting out facilities, what would stop them from deciding that such services have to be offered equally regardless of sexual orientation? What would stop them from penalizing churches that performed weddings for straight couples but refused to perform them for gay ones? Even if they couldn't punish churches and clergy for their inconvenient beliefs, what stops them from using litigation to discourage laity from supporting those churches and clergy? We may very well end up in an era of persecution of the Church in this country, perhaps not tomorrow or next year but soon enough, and I only pray that God graces our leaders and the faithful with the strength to endure. Perhaps after a while our culture will realize the error of its ways and return to God, hopefully before we become so morally bankrupt that we end up like the Roman Empire and fade out of existence as a society, and at that point we'll need somebody to reintroduce His ways to a fallen world.

If then you were raised with Christ, seek what
is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand
of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on
earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden
with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears,
then you too will appear with him in glory. Put to
death, then, the parts of you that are earthly:
immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the
greed that is idolatry. Stop lying to one another,
since you have taken off the old self with its
practices and have put on the new self, which is
being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its
creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision
and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free;
but Christ is all and in all.
Col. 3:1-5,9-11

What is it about us that, while we proclaim our belief in Christ and pledge to serve Him, clings to the vestiges of paganism as if our lives depend on it? We seem to live as two separate people, one concerned with the things of Heaven and the Word of God and the other mired in the flesh and its urges. Saint Paul is talking to the community of Colossae, Christians who had accepted Christ and yet seemed to be falling back into the sins that characterized their pre-Christian lives. Paul reminds them that they have been recreated in Christ, that their old selves and their old "gods" have died and no longer have power over them.

How much do we in modern society, most of us never having been pagans in the traditional sense, behave as if we were in fact pagans and show our constant need for conversion to the faith of Christ? We may not have a pantheon of gods and goddesses to worship, but we do just fine to fashion idols out of the things that surround our earthly lives. In his homily today, the pastor of my parish mentioned the story of Juno Moneta, the Roman goddess in whose temple was the mint where Roman coins were created. It is this epithet that gives us the word "money," and yet the word moneta does not relate to currency but rather refers to a warning or reminder. Perhaps we can see this as a warning to ourselves when we mix religion and the pursuit of money, the message of the "prosperity gospel" being a particularly egregious example, and when we risk crossing the line into an outright worship of wealth. Perhaps we should approach money as we do Uranium, having a particular usefulness but extremely dangerous if possessed in large amount or held too closely. Many seem to think that St. Paul called money the "root of all evil," but as my pastor pointed out today it was the love of money that Paul was warning against rather than the thing itself. Money has its uses, it can be given in charity to those without and it can be used to uplift people and to build things in praise of God, but if we hold it too closely or being to see it as an end rather than a means it will end up consuming us. We should always hold wealth at an arm's length, using it to do good works and bring others the Gospel but being careful not to become too attached to it. It is God who will allow us to do this, He who will show us the truth of the world and allow us to overcome its pull.

Sin has an effect like gravity upon us, it keeps us down when we want to float away in the direction of light and grace and God. Every sin that we indulge in increases that gravity, like heavy chains that weigh us down ever more toward the dirt of sin. After a while these chains can become familiar, so familiar in fact that we don't even notice their presence. Even if we become used to them and gain the ability to stand and walk in spite of their weight, we remain unable to rise to the heights that should be within our grasp. If we ask God to then He will take the chains from us and show us how to fly, and yet how many among us ever ask? We may think that we are asking, and yet we know not even how to much less what should be requested. To receive we must ask, and to ask we must listen for the direction of Him who already knows our yearning. May He lift up our heads to see the stars and break our chains so that we can reach for them.

Apparently not all "diversity" is welcome at public universities

I wonder if liberals/secularists understand how this could come back to bite them. If one opinion can be blacklisted then any opinion can receive the same treatment. There are plenty of atheists who consider religious belief to be at least a mental flaw if not a sign of mental illness, should they be banned from receiving mental health degrees because they might traumatize their religious patients? Better yet, should people who have these views about religion be banned from becoming teachers because they might take their bias out on their students? It is possible to counsel somebody with whom you disagree, and I'm sure that this young woman would have been a wonderful counselor to all of her students whether gay or straight. This school is obviously trying to create a consensus that doesn't exist by expelling everybody who doesn't agree with them, and that's never a good thing for an educational institution to do. I hope that some other more courageous school gives this young woman a place, and that her lawyers sue the school for enough money to give any other institution pause when they consider this sort of action in the future.

I thought that the point of going to college was "diversity" and encountering different viewpoints.

Turns out that this only applies if the diverse viewpoints are not too different, or in other words if the ideas expressed are acceptable to the liberal establishment. If you say something that offends their fragile sensibilities then you can expect to be thrown out in favor of somebody who preaches to the choir. The worst part of this is that the teacher was fired for expressing the true teaching of the Catholic Church in the context of a class about the Catholic Church. Perhaps the statement he made could be considered inappropriate if he was a sociology professor teaching a class about alternative sexuality, although as I said before the whole point of college is challenging a student's beliefs, but how do you teach a class about Catholicism without bringing up one of the most visible issues of contention between the Church and society at large? If the school expects its teachers to gloss over things that they consider uncomfortable then I can't imagine that their classes are very informative, and I have to say that I'm glad to have not gone to this university.

It's a good thing that the American Association of University Professors is on the professor's side on this, last I checked they were more likely to condemn institutions related to the Catholic Church than to support them. This does create a troubling precedent though, if teaching at state schools is subject to the opinions of secular culture then students will only learn what the liberal establishment lets them learn. I had a history professor at my Catholic university who idolized Margaret Sanger and considered legalized birth control to be the crowning achievement of the 20th century, and yet she was allowed to teach because the school valued professorial independence. If they replace this professor with one who omits or ridicules the beliefs of the Catholic Church where they aren't acceptable to liberal society then the class will suffer for it and the students will be that much less prepared to enter a society where the Church does indeed hold such beliefs. The school's representative argued that the professor's e-mail violated the school's rules on inclusivity, but apparently they have no problem with not being inclusive as long as the ideas they're excluding are time-tested and separated from the fickle whims of public opinion. The liberal establishment is only tolerant to those they consider "tolerant," which doesn't include anybody who holds views contrary to theirs. Anyone who challenges their pre-conceived notions and agendas is marked as "intolerant" and loses any right to their opinion.

It would be nice if I could believe that the mainstream media will pick up on this blatant attempt to indoctrinate the young by silencing opposing viewpoints, but I've been around long enough to know that if they did mention it they would portray the professor as an intolerant fascist and the university as a paragon of virtue and acceptance. The media is just as beholden to the liberal establishment as our system of colleges and universities, at least as far as social issues are concerned, so they're not going to give voice to something that would challenge the views of that establishment.

God bless your Church, give it perseverance in adversity and peace in persecution, grant it your strength to prevail against the forces of evil and to endure the disdain of the world and those enslaved to the flesh. Grant this through Jesus Christ, your Son and our Lord. Amen.

This is an act of sacrilege, a sign of the disdain with which we are held by secular society. Would they do such a thing to the tombs of Protestant bishops, much less to those of Jewish or Muslim leaders, regardless of the crimes of which those religious communities had been accused? I think not. They only do these horrible things to the Catholic Church because they hate us for our "meddling." We've been held to be respectable for too long, perhaps distrusted for our beliefs which challenge the desires of the flesh but still invited into society and allowed to hold our Masses with a degree of freedom. It would seem that the world has grown tired of our chiding as it falls deeper into the abyss of carnality and avarice, and so it has decided to bring us low by destroying our sacred tombs and desecrating our holy objects. Unfortunately for them we've been through this many times before, and our Scriptures along with the grace of God will bring us through just as they have always done throughout the last two thousand years.

We've had it easy for a long time, being held respectable by the world may have its advantages but it doesn't help one to lead a holy life. We've grown comfortable in polite society, holding a grudging acceptance from those whose great-grandfathers scoffed at us and regarded us as vermin and trash. Now it would seem that this acceptance, this toleration, is at an end, and frankly it may be the best thing that could happen to the Church. We are supposed to be at odds with the world, despised by it because we say the things that it doesn't want to hear. We are supposed to speak truth to power, and that simply can't happen if we ourselves constitute that power. A rising tide of persecution may strip away from our ranks those among us who are perfectly willing to worship God in comfort but unwilling to do so in adversity, but those who remain will worship Him all the more in their absence. We may not continue to have 1.1 billion adherents, but the ones who remain will be all the more devoted due to the risk involved. This is a very clear violation of the Church's freedom of worship, showing clear contempt for the faith of Catholics, and it would be naive to think that such things couldn't happen in other countries.

This attack on the Church makes me sick, as it should to all Catholics. Anybody who would use these thinnest of excuses to desecrate sacred crypts can't have much respect for our religion. It's the beginning of a new era for the Church, an era of persecution and contempt, and this is but the first of likely many attacks to come. God bless us all.