In a mother’s womb were two babies.

One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?”

The other replies, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”

“Nonsense,” says the other. “There is no life after delivery. What would that life be?”

“I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths.”

The other says, “This is absurd! Walking is impossible. And eat with our mouths? Ridiculous. The umbilical cord supplies nutrition. Life after delivery is to be excluded. The umbilical cord is too short.”

“I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here.”

The other replies, “No one has ever come back from there. Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery it is nothing but darkness and anxiety and it takes us nowhere.”

“Well, I don’t know,” says the other, “but certainly we will see mother and she will take care of us.”

“Mother?!” You believe in mother? Where is she now?”

“She is all around us. It is in her that we live. Without her there would not be this world.”

“I don’t see her, so it’s only logical that she doesn’t exist.”

To which the other replied, “sometimes when you’re silent you can hear her, you can sense her. I believe there is a reality after delivery and we’re here to prepare ourselves for that reality.”

*******

So, so good. Trying to grasp at life after death is just like this. Our modern snobbishness and worship of our own intellect has trapped us in a self-imposed prison of reason. Never have our egos been so big and imaginations so small. If we could but have the faith and humility to leap free of our own heads for a moment, we’d see quite plainly that we were made for so much more.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” (Shakespeare, Hamlet)

“The eye has not seen, and the ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love him.” (1 Corinth 2:9)

Make no mistake. The debate on Marriage today is not really about equality.

Cries for equality miss the entire underlying problem…which is that nobody actually agrees as to what Marriage actually is in the first place. Emotional appeals to equality are only distracting and delaying (potentially decades) a much more serious and important discussion as to what Marriage is. And it appears that we’re intent on learning that lesson the hard way as a planet. Which is a sad thing when you think about the children and next generation that will be confused and hurt in the wake of this “equality” movement.

We aren’t just messing with the prudence of some public policy here, folks. We are messing with the very entity that literally creates human beings! And in the process we are ignoring the right of every child to be born into and formed within the relationship of their actual mother and their actual father. Every child has that right (even though it’s not always possible). But anything less should not be treated equally (because it’s not).

But the broadness of the real debate is not easily summed up in 30-second sound bytes or communicated in 140 character status updates. Additionally, the entire foundation of the case for true Marriage has been undermined by our own twisting and redefining of Marriage in so many other ways. It’s our own fault nobody knows what a Marriage is anymore.

And so a complex and much more fundamental debate degrades into a political football that inspires narrow and misunderstood appeals to “equality.” As if equality is some kind of universal good. It’s not. It’s just as unjust to treat unequal things equally as it is to treat equal things unequally.

The appeals must be to justice. Including – most of all – justice for children. And that justice must be rooted in truth, which starts with figuring out what Marriage is in the first place.

If we don’t agree what Marriage is, how can we have a meaningful debate about marriage equality? We can’t. Ask somebody why they are fighting for “marriage equality” what their definition of Marriage is. Their answer will tell you exactly where the real problem is and where we must start.

Until we address that, get ready for decades of more confusion and hurt as the essential building block of our entire society is continually malformed and trivialized into irrelevance.

(More good logic further explaining my point in this article here.)

This video and kid president is making the world more awesome!

Check it out (video below):

My favorite parts:

“You got air comin through your nose. You got a heart beat! That means it’s time to do something!”

“What if there really were two paths? I wanna be on the one that leads to awesome.”

“What will you create that will make the world awesome? Nothing if you keep sittin there!”

“We were made to be awesome.”

You just been pep-talked, folks!

What were your favorite lines?

A worried woman went to her gynecologist and said:

“Doctor, I have a serious problem and desperately need your help! My baby is not even 1 year old and I’m pregnant again. I don’t want kids so close together.”

So the doctor said: “Ok and what do you want me to do?”

She said: “I want you to end my pregnancy, and I’m counting on your help with this.”

The doctor thought for a little and after some silence he said to the lady: “I think I have a better solution for your problem. It’s less dangerous for you, too.”

She smiled, thinking that the doctor was going to accept her request.

Then he continued: “You see, in order for you not to have to take care of 2 babies at the same time, let’s kill the one in your arms. This way, you could rest some before the other one is born. If we’re going to kill one of them, it doesn’t matter which one it is. There would be less risk for your body if you kept the one in your belly and killed the one in your arms.”

The lady was horrified and said: “No doctor! How terrible! It’s a crime to kill a child!”

“I agree,” the doctor replied. “But you seemed to be OK with it, so I thought maybe that was the best solution.”

The doctor smiled, realizing that he had made his point.

—

Our lives start long before we are born.

“Sin is more profitable than innocence. Innocence had made me arrogant, sin made me humble.” – St. Ambrose

Modern Man wastes both his innocence and his guilt. One to sin and the other to the loss of the sense of sin. Guilt has become a psychological complex in need of curing, rather than an opportunity for profit.

The greatest saints, on the other hand, often having most wildly lost their innocence, are the ones who learned to profit most from their guilt – from their sin.

Sometimes we spend too much time lamenting our failures or sins and not enough time profiting from them. Our initial reaction – a first step – must be contrition. But it is there, in such remorse, that also begins the profit. It is there that we learn a wisdom and humility that innocence will never teach to imperfect creatures like us.

“Atheism deserves better than the new atheists whose methodology consists of criticizing religion without understanding it, quoting texts without contexts, taking exceptions as the rule, confusing folk belief with reflective theology, abusing, mocking, ridiculing, caricaturing, and demonizing religious faith and holding it responsible for the great crimes against humanity. Religion has done harm; I acknowledge that. But the cure for bad religion is good religion, not no religion, just as the cure for bad science is good science, not the abandonment of science.” – Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

I love this quote from Rabbi Sacks (thx to Brandon Vogt for sharing it!). The fundamental flaw of the new atheism truly is that it “criticizes religion without understanding it.” And from there, without understanding it, any mockery, miscontext, ridicule or demonizing just comes off as uneducated. Of course, the fact that most religious folks don’t understand their own religion either is what has given the new atheism any traction whatsoever. But to anyone who understands good religion in the slightest, the new atheist is consistently seen as having entirely missed the point.

And of course, in an age where so many people have tossed out their own bad or (more commonly) misunderstood religion and replaced it with no religion and a hatred for “religious people,” the cure here is ever more important. The cure for bad religion is not “no religion.” The cure is good religion. The cure is going out and learning about and understanding good religion. There you’ll find the peace your heart and mind desire. There you’ll find eternal life.

Here’s some great commentary from Fr. Barron on the same subject of the new atheism:

I get a fair number of non-Catholics ask this honest question about Mary. They say, “look, I get it, she’s important and a Saint, but I think Catholics just go overboard. I mean, why spend so much focus on her when you can go straight to God himself? Isn’t she a distraction?”

I believe it’s a fair and honest question. They often go on reminding that…

“Jesus commands us to ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind’ (Matthew 22: 37). So by spending so much time and energy devoted to Mary, you can’t possibly be loving God with all your heart, mind and soul!”

But I think all of this stems from a false understanding of how Love works. I think we make the mistake of thinking of our Love like we think about our energy or our time.

We have a set amount of time and energy in our day. They are “zero-sum” aspects of our life. The more of them we spend on one thing, the less we can spend on anything else. Love is not like that.

Parents who already have a child sometimes aren’t sure if they can have more children. They think that in order to love another child, they’ll have to love their first child less. But any parent of a large family can tell you that this is not how it works. The love doesn’t get divided among our children like our time and energy do, it is multiplied.

Here’s another way to look at it. I’m married. By loving my wife directly does it mean that I love God less? Does it mean that by spending my entire life (as I’m called to do) serving her that I am now unable to love God with all my heart, mind and soul? No, of course not! In fact, it’s the opposite. As a married person, the practical, primary way that I love God is through loving my wife (and any children we have). So my wife does not steal my love for God. On the contrary, she is a conduit for it.

Even better, she’s a magnifying glass for my love of God! When I love her, my love doesn’t end with her, it in turn flows through her and empowers her to love God and others that much more as well. That’s where the magic of multiplication happens.

And not only does God teach us this magnification trick through the sacrament of Marriage, and through us being The Body of Christ, but he spells it out very clearly in Matthew 25:40 when he says “whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”

So not only are our marital spouses such magnifying glasses, but each and every one of our fellow humans are, too! So, really, if you have the choice to “love God directly” (bypassing everyone else here) or to love God through billions of walking magnifying glasses God has put into your life, the answer for any God-lover is clear.

And Mary? Well she just happens to be the biggest, purest, strongest and most-directly-pointed-at-Jesus magnifying glass there is. That’s why we love her so much. Scripture affirms this, too, in Luke 1:46 when Mary says “My soul doth magnify the Lord.” There you have it, folks. So the more we love Jesus, the more we should love her. She magnifies Jesus for us like nothing else and does the same with our prayers back to Him.

All of this is confirmed in my personal experience, too. The people I have met in life who most clearly and most purely love Jesus also happen to have the strongest devotions to their fellow Man…and, most especially, to Mary.

Do you want everything (everything good anyway)? Well it’s being offered to you…but for a price.

A lot of Christians get lulled into an over-simplification of their faith. This over-simplification deconstructs into a dangerous conclusion that there is nothing we have to *do* (i.e. a “work) in order to attain eternal life. They say that if your salvation requires “work” on your part, then you have implied that Jesus’ work was not enough or that His Grace is insufficient. Not only are both of those conclusions illogical, but they lead to a Christianity where there is nothing that one *has* to do (which is not Christianity at all).

Eternal salvation requires work on our part, not because Jesus’ work was insufficient, but because God requires us to work! When I require that my 3 yr-old son pick up his toys in order to get dessert, it doesn’t therefore follow that I am unable to pick up the toys myself. That would be nonsense. I just require that my son make the effort because I know it’s just and it’s good for him (and then I usually have to tidy them up properly myself even after his effort). I don’t require that he do it perfectly, but I do require that he make the effort.

And the requirement to make the effort (i.e. do some work) doesn’t therefore mean that God’s Grace must not be enough. In fact, it is only by His Grace that we are able to even *make the effort* in the first place! All Grace and Grace alone. This is (and always has been) Catholic teaching.

Is a Christian required to love? Yes. Is a Christian required to forgive? Yes. Is a Christian required to give up their own life for Christ and others? Yes. All of these require effort on our part. God could do them for us, but he prefers to work through our effort and free choice to cooperate with his Grace. It is that free choice which God gives us that makes real love even possible in our universe.

So is eternal life still offered to us as a “free” gift? Sure. But even free gifts, by the nature of the gift, can require something on the part of the receiver.

If somebody offers me free swimming lessons, I don’t actually receive swimming lessons by just passively sitting there, “accepting” them and proclaiming how much I believe in swimming lessons. No. To receive the swimming lessons it requires me to do something. I’ve gotta make an effort and I’ve gotta jump in and get wet.

That’s what choosing to be Christian is all about. It’s not some magical process by which we are given a free pass to get in to heaven without us having to do anything. On the contrary, it’s a free opportunity to let God’s Grace work on you by surrendering all, forgiving unconditionally and loving genuinely so that the trials and challenges of this world are transformed into things that sanctify you for the next.

Leonardo Da Vinci nailed it when he said “O Lord, thou givest us everything, at the price of an effort.”

Everything. But you have to make the effort to participate in the gift. Time to jump in with both feet and get wet.

[photo credit]

Fr. Spitzer is the kind of guy you’d put on Larry King Live when guys like Stephen Hawking venture outside their field of expertise (science) and start saying crazy things about the need for God. Seriously, that’s what happened.

Fr. Spitzer is such a great spokesman for the intellectual weight of the Catholic Faith within the scientific world because he’s a well-respected expert in both. And he does a great job (check out his Magis Center) of showing how both faith and reason converge to tell the richest, most satisfying Story of Us.

I’m posting this as a part of Support a Catholic Speaker month. Something I started back in 2009 and now Brandon Vogt has so kindly taken up, run with and made even better (<- check it out it’s awesome!).

A little more on Fr. Spitzer:

Fr. Spitzer is a Catholic Priest in the Jesuit order, and is currently the President of the Magis Center of Reason and Faith (www.magisreasonfaith.org) and the Spitzer Center (www.spitzercenter.org). The Magis Center produces documentaries, books, high school curricula, college courses, adult-education curricula, and new media materials to show the close connection between faith and reason in contemporary astrophysics, philosophy, and historical study of the New Testament.

Such an important task in our current day. Please support his work and share his wisdom.

I had a commenter accuse the Catholic Church of being a “dead religion.” She claimed the only place you can find Jesus Christ in a Catholic church is “hanging dead” on a cross.

For any Catholics who practice their faith, this seems like a very disconnected accusation. But there are a lot of people who seem to have this misconception. So here’s a quick, partial answer to clear it up a bit.

First, let’s start by pointing out that Jesus on the cross is not something to be scoffed at. In fact, his death on the cross is the central event of the entire Christian faith. It wasn’t an empty cross that redeemed the sins of the world. It was the cross that hung the body of Jesus Christ. It is his sacrifice and death, not his resurrection, that saves us. Displaying a crucifix reminds us of the most important thing God did for us. It is the ultimate sign of how much He loves us.

This is why it is displayed so prominently in Catholic churches.

St. Paul says to preach Christ crucified (1 Cor 2:2). What better visual aide is there to such preaching than a crucifix? And in fact, Galations 3:1 actually refers to Christ being “publicly portrayed as crucified” to them (i.e. seems like they were looking at a crucifix). That’s not to say Catholics have anything against empty crosses. We use those all the time, too. I’m just pointing out that the image of Christ crucified is a very biblical one.

And if that’s not enough, the call of the Christian is to take up our cross and follow Jesus. If you ever want to know what that means, you won’t find the answer by looking at a cross…unless of course that cross has Jesus hanging on it. The crucifix is the complete answer to what it means to take up your cross and follow Jesus.

For a Christian, the image of Jesus on the cross is not at all a sign of a dead religion. On the contrary, it’s the perfect depiction of what Love looks like. If we miss that, we miss the heart of what it means to be a Christian.

Second, all of that said, Catholic churches are like the masters of beautifully and artistically displaying every Jesus version imaginable. We got Unborn Baby Jesus, Newborn Baby Jesus, Teenage Preacher Jesus, Divine Mercy Jesus, Miracle Worker Jesus, Garden-praying Jesus, Transfiguration Jesus, Crown-of-thorns-wearing Jesus, Cross-carrying Jesus, Wine-making Jesus, Ascension Jesus, Last Supper Jesus, Risen Jesus…and I’m not even done with the mysteries of the Rosary yet.

Probably no Buddy Jesus.

Sorry. He’s still your buddy, though.

Anyway, I could go on and on and on but I’ll spare you the list. My point is that clearly Catholics love Jesus so much that they can’t help painting, sculpting and stain-glassing him in pretty much every way imaginable. Almost all of the above representations of Jesus can be found around my parish (and most parishes). And, not to mention, every Catholic church displays the “stations of the cross,” which visually commemorate the “Passion” of our Lord.

And everything else displayed in a Catholic church, if it’s not Jesus, actually points to Jesus. No lie! Every saint or other piece of art is there because that person or thing inspires us to love Jesus more. That’s the only reason they are there. They are all like big red flashing arrows pointing to Jesus (except way more inspirational and stylish). They are all. about. Jesus. Nothing else.

Third, Jesus is present in the written (and proclaimed) Word of God at a Catholic church. You’ll hear more scripture during a Catholic Mass than in any non-catholic service (at least that I’ve been to, and I’ve been to a lot of them!). Additionally, in a Catholic church, the Bible is displayed, stored, moved, lifted up, read and treated with more reverence than I’ve ever seen anybody treat a book. It’s all done for Jesus.

Fourth, Jesus is present in the congregation in that we are His Body, the Church. And (hopefully!), He is seen and made present by each person in attendance in the living out of their faith, hope and love. This point can’t be overstated. If other people are walking into a Catholic Church and not seeing Jesus, it’s probably not their fault as much as it is ours (the Catholics in attendance). When people look at us, do they see Jesus? Do our lives point to Jesus like the lives of the Saints do? If we do all of these other things and then miss this point, then we miss the entire point. Jesus should be evidently present in each member of the congregation.

But, also, Jesus is uniquely present in the ordained priest. Every Catholic priest has been given orders and authority that have literally and directly been passed down from Jesus and his Apostles. The Apostles literally laid hands on the guy who laid hands on the guy who laid hands on the guy…..who laid hands on the priest saying the Mass. Jesus said “he who hears you, hears me” and then told them to “go!” Well, here they are. Every priest has been officially commissioned and authorized by the direct successors of Jesus. If you love Jesus, you gotta love that!

Fifth, and most profoundly, Jesus is present - Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity - in the Eucharist (Communion). This (a.k.a. Jesus) is the source and summit of the Catholic Faith. He is the center of every Mass. His once-and-for-all sacrifice is made present at every Mass. Every person, when entering into the sacred space, drops to a knee to worship and honor Jesus. We fulfill Jesus’ command to “Do this in memory of me.” We consume his flesh and blood, as he carefully and clearly instructs in John 6. We make a statement of communion with Him and His Bride (the Church) as the physical presence of the Savior of all Mankind literally becomes a part of our bodies and floods our souls. It’s a straight-up Jesus fest.

And all of this is celebrated in the Catholic Church every hour of every day in every nook and cranny of our planet in communion with each other.

Now how can any Jesus Freak not dig all this Jesus?! Jesus be everywhere up in the Catholic Church. Sure, you might not agree with all of that. You might think some of it’s weird or crazy. But people thought that same thing about the first Christians, too.

If you want to know where Jesus is in a Catholic church, the answer is: Everywhere.