No, you are not worth it

Relationships between men and women can be so frustrating, but I’ve come to the conclusion again (but in a deeper way) that really, only God is worth it. I remind myself that only when we love God first and foremost can we truly love another in the way that they deserve:

Only God is worth my desires, my heart
Only he is worth my attention, my time
No woman is worth my heart

I’m tired of being the white knight in shining armor
I’m tired of saving damsels in distress
I have very strong armor and a sharp sword
Yet I want to be seen for who I am under the armor
I don’t want to be used for what I can give
I want to be seen, appreciated for who I am

No, under the armor I’m not perfect
I have many scars
But God sees me for who I am
He understands me, appreciates me for who I am
No I’m not worth it either, but God makes me worthy
I don’t need to be seen, but I want be
I’m tired of the fakeness, yet I have all that is real and true
No, you are not worth it, but for me, if it is meant to be, he will make you worthy

Why you are not worth it

In this world today women feel over entitled. Feminism has destroyed relationships between men and women. Some evidence of this is the MGTOW movement; for the record I don’t entirely agree with the whole movement but have a listen to RIP Traditional Relationships – A Rude awakening. If we are merely looking on a worldly secular level, it makes no sense at all to get married. Why the hell would I want to get married if it is about mutual use instead free, self-giving love?

I talk to both men and women: they say they would want to believe in a love that is real, unselfish, self-giving, loyal, faithful, total, free, in other words a divine, Godly love, but they believe it is a fantasy. I believe, in part, they think it is a fantasy because they don’t experience this kind of love -a pure love- in their daily life: none in their “family”, none in their “community”, and not even among “friends” and sometimes not even in church! It seems an indictment on how far away people and society are from God, not having that kind of self-giving, loving relationship with God, thus they don’t have it in their personal daily relationships. Mere words are not going to convince people that this kind of love exists, it seems only by personal experience and testimony that people may be convinced.

No, marriage isn’t about “what’s in it for me?” or let’s have a contract: “i do this, you do that”. Marriage isn’t about just passing on your genes nor savage “survival of the fittest”. It’s not about “disney damsels, ponies and butterflies”. It can be about mutual emotional consolation, but it can’t be the only purpose. We in this society can be so selfish. It’s not about F-ing around but giving a good F, actually caring for the world, the future generation – imagine: for love of God and for someone outside ourselves.

Why marriage and relationships are worth it

I believe in marriage for many reasons, one reason is children benefit most from marriage. Without men to be fathers and women to be mothers, children become abandoned, who feel like orphans and in some real sense are actual orphans who do not know God, thus do not have a deep, unselfish relationship with him, thus recreating the dysfunctional cycle of fake-love in all their personal relationships.

I refuse to give up: I will fight for the homeless, orphaned, and abandoned because they are worth it. Building a society based on an authentic, life-giving love it worth it because it is what God wants: to love us as we are yet push us to grow, not for his benefit, but for our own benefit. Sure, loving on this higher level of Godly love is not always easy, but who wants a cheap “love” – real men are created for real love, which can be hard, but definitely worth it. Our bodies of man and woman, with our sexual organs, show we are made to be a mutual gift – we are not God, we cannot give what we don’t have – we have to be open to receiving the love of God, to give as he does.

 

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On Relationships (Revision 17)

It’s hard for me to imagine I could write authoritatively on the subject of relationships, as there is a lot for me to learn, though I’ll start compiling a list of notes and develop it as my own from there. The initial skeleton of notes came from Jackie Francois years ago at one of her talks, yet the majority of the content here now is from my own experiences and from my own learning.

Relationships

Discerning God’s will is not a dichotomy of choosing either marriage or religious life. Dying to me means choosing to surrender to God not once but repeatedly, every day. Discerning to me means dying and sacrificing in Love, carrying our cross, awaiting with the Holy Spirit to see if it produces any fruit – not just in choosing our vocation, but in every decision in our life. Sometimes this means just being content right now that we are growing in love and not needing to pursue anything but the love and honor of God, giving unreservedly all.

How does discerning God’s will relate to relationships? Each relationship e.g. friendship does not have to be some soul-wrenching experience, simply enjoying the presence of another and having fun is sufficient for friendship. I’m referring to relationships in the context of prospective marriage. Obviously (or not), one has to know oneself and have done at least some serious discernment to know their vocation to enter into a commitment, a relationship with another. Human beings [on a certain level] are mysteries, there isn’t an exact science to relationships (and this is a good thing that people are mysteries, that our relationships can grow on an infinite scale). At the same time there are certain immutable truths to help us navigate the amazingly complex world of relationships between men and women. It seems absurd to believe that the creation of the universe to be without purpose and when we look at this in the context of marriage we see that when we understand the purpose of marriage, many complexities in relationships are dispelled.

God created marriage. The Goal is Heaven. Each other should bring each other to heaven:

  • St Thomas (I’m paraphrasing) says to love is to want the best good for the beloved. Upon some meditation we realize that the best good is God (love is in the will)
  • Each person should be leading each other to God:
    • Marriage is not the ultimate satisfaction of your deepest desires
    • In a marriage, one should not be a pseudo parent to the spouse otherwise there would not be a real husband-wife relationship
    • Your sole source of happiness cannot be in marriage, in this sense you can not find happiness in marriage, if the marriage is working, you can only be happier (you have to take responsibility of your own happiness)
  • God created sex; it is good! Sex is holy!
    • Sex should be celebrating intimacy (in-to-me-see, seeing, truly knowing the soul of the beloved) and its purpose is to bring the miracle of children into the world, to raise them up to be healthy, independent, adults, baptized in Love i.e. in God to be who God created them to be, gifts to the world
    • Sex in marriage is supposed to be an image of heaven, a foretaste of heaven
    • Sex is the renewal of the marriage vows, and marriage should be an example of God’s love in the world:
      • a free love (one made by deliberate choice e.g. not forced nor through co-dependency)
      • a total love (not promiscuous, uncommitted relationships, exclusive)
      • a faithful love (loyal, constant, and with faith, supernatural love)
      • a fruitful love (one that through intensity, births life)
    • Chastity does not take away from sex (it is not abstinence), it is the power to love:
      • As part of being a free love, one has command over his passions, such that he can give love as a gift (as a free person not enslaved; true freedom is choosing what is right, not being enslaved to sin)
      • Having command over the passions, one can truly give a free, total, faithful, fruitful love
      • Chastity is about purifying love that one may be truly intimate:
        • it is not co-dependency i.e. using each other to satisfy a deep void e.g. contraception
        • when both individuals are independent i.e. have a self identity, they can have a real “in-to-me-see”

Marriage is a gift from God. It seems to me we have to admit that there is much outside of our realm of control and we have to trust this to God. In some sense it isn’t something that is earned. In the heartache of relationships or the lack thereof, it seems an invitation for us to make progress to grow into a deeper relationship with God. And that is where our affections is supposed to be first anyway. Even in a marriage your spouse isn’t going to fulfill your deepest desire – only God can do that. So instead of focusing on things you cannot control i.e. waste energy in being anxious, focus on being present to God, attending to him. Secondarily (or concurrently) we can focus on becoming a healthy person, who can then be a good spouse either to God or another person, or to be a good parent to oneself, such that one may be a good parent to others.

Marriage is a sacrament. Both man and woman consecrate the love to Christ to invite him to be the center of the relationship and give them supernatural grace to grow and experience divine love and be able to model this love to their children and thus society.

[I’m beginning to realize this page needs a lot of reformatting and editing; perhaps breaking the page into more digestible portions]

Need to elaborate on:

  • the right of children to have a mother and father
  • the effects of divorce – a death experience
  • non-religious reasons against same-sex marriage

PRINCIPLES

  • Each relationship is unique; it is not a science (it does not mean there aren’t universal truths to guide us)
  • Some stuff I’ve come across that seems to make some sense though I don’t know its epistemological origin:
    • “If a man cannot see a woman’s worth then he is not for her” (how can he see her worth if he doesn’t respect her?)
    • “If she’s not interested, she’s probably not worth pursuing, but if she doesn’t know you, she can’t be interested”
    • “If she’s amazing, she won’t be easy. If she’s easy, she won’t be amazing. If she’s worth it, you won’t give up. If you give up, you’re not worthy” (yet I think it’s important to not put the woman on a pedestal to the point she implicitly thinks she can trample on the man or use him for more than she ought, is not the man supposed to lead or at least the relationship be on the same level?)
    • A woman’s heart should be so lost in God that a man needs to seek Him in order to find her (women should set the standard for men yet unfortunately in this “modern” world, other women [often through no fault of their own i.e. ignorance] lower the standard among women and make it harder for decent women to set the standard)
  • Optimism and trust are the soul of intimacy
    • We must risk being vulnerable if we want to be intimate.  However since we can never gather enough data to trust anyone absolutely, we must take the risk of trusting them at some point.  We also need optimism in our lives; with it we see all reality as ultimately having positive value

 

HOW TO DATE

  • Let God set up the relationship
  • Learn, get feedback from confidants/mentors e.g.:
    • Let ladies earn your love
      • You want a lady that’s actually interested in you, if she’s not that’s actually interested in you, she’s not worth it
      • You are your own man with strong conviction; you will not compromise nor be controlled by her; you can love her because you love yourself
        • Have detachment
        • Don’t be trying to earn people’s love
  • Dating, start with friendship, your goal is to get them to heaven
  • Friendship is not always necessary but there needs to be good potential.
  • Dating is getting to know somebody
  • Ask women on a date
    • Girls, give guys a chance
  • Give girl time to think
  • It girls say no, respect it
  • If you cant remain friends after an interest in a girl that said no then it’s use i.e. you’re not being authentic
  • Don’t lead other people on
    • Don’t have “non-date” dates
    • Be clear to say if it’s a date or not
  • Have detachment in dating
    • You can have dates with a few people since you are not being physical.
    • When you think it could really work make it exclusive
  • You will have peace and joy when you have found your vocation. Anxiety otherwise.
  • Affection is good but arousing another is a sin.
  • Both people have to be on the same page.  Don’t have only one person be the chastity cop.
  • Questions before getting Serious? (link)
  • Ideas/sample questions to ask
    • http://www.buzzle.com/articles/deep-questions-to-ask-a-girl.html

EXAMPLE PREPARED RESPONSES

  • “I had a great time, maybe we can have lunch another time.”
  • “You know, i had a great time, but i wont be asking you out on any more dates.”
  • “Thank you for being honest”
  • My own personal examples:
    • I’ve always been honest with you and I really enjoy our friendship
    • I want the best for you
    • Unless God wills or unless you stop me, I will never abandon you
    • I really enjoy our friendship, but I don’t know if it is just me, but I feel that there is kind of an akwardness; I don’t want anything to get in the way of our friendship
    • I have to be honest and say I am attracted to you and your beauty.. yet I will be glad to have our friendship to be totally platonic
    • Again, I want the best for you and I know we are both healing; I want to give the space you need to heal
    • I feel like I can read your soul sometimes and I think I know how you feel.  I’m here for you if you want us to heal together

DON’Ts

  • Don’t just wait around; prepare
  • Don’t be so picky that you don’t end up with anybody
  • Don’t be self-seeking
  • It’s more about them
  • “how am I going to affirm them?”
  • “how do I make the other person happy?”
  • Don’t sin
  • Don’t lose heart

DO’s

  • Have faith in God and trust He cares
  • Do follow God’s laws; God will bless you through obedience
  • Do talk about your relationships with God
  • Be totally honest with yourself
  • Do communicate with the other person the whole time
  • Get your life in order, you can’t give what you don’t have. No one is perfect, at the same time, would you date you if you knew yourself?

STAGES OF RELATIONSHIP

  • Like
  • Friendship
  • Love proclaimed
  • Proven love
  • Commitment

REFERENCE MATERIAL

RECOMMENDED BOOKS

LINKS

  • 5 Questions to ask before you say ‘I do’:
    • 1. Are You and Your Fiancé Willing to Work at Premarital Education?

    • 2. Are You and Your Fiancé Willing to Hear From Your Relational Community?

    • 3. Are You Willing to Look Honestly at the “Red Flags”?

    • 4. Are You Willing to be Ruthlessly Honest About Your Own Brokenness?

    • 5. Are You Ready for Unconditional Commitment?

  • How to make the most of a bad breakup?:
    • 1. Reinvent Yourself

    • 2. Deal With Your Junk

    • 3. Forge a New Path

    • 4. Outgrow Loneliness

  • 6 ways to avoid Toxic Relationships (link):
    • Recognize the Rebound
    • Avoid Controlling and Possessive People
    • Don’t Tolerate a Flake
    • Abolish the Myth That Physical Chemistry is Everything
    • Unmatched Values and Priorities are a Recipe for a Broken Heart
  • How to Know You’re Ready for Marriage (link) – This is from Dr Laura, I’m not entirely endorsing her though a lot of stuff she says makes sense; she has a lot of real world experience and I think it is more important than some [fluffy i.e. “academic”] degrees
    • You share similar goals.
    • If you and your guy have different priorities, you’re going to end up being disappointed. For example, a woman called my show the other day complaining that her husband had moved their family 13 times in as many years to satisfy his appetite for wanderlust (which is a HORRIBLE thing for kids).  Before you consider marriage, ask yourself and your partner about where you want to live, if you want to have kids, and religious views.  Find out what the deal breakers are.
    • You don’t want to change him.
    • Similar to buying a dress from the store, when you get married, you take your man “as-is”.  Sure, you might be able to tweak him a little bit, but you can’t fundamentally change him.  If you don’t accept that, you’re going to end up frustrated and bitchy.  You don’t have to adore everything about him, but you do have to make peace with the fact that on Sunday afternoons it’s him and ESPN, and you’re not going to change that. (I don’t agree on the ESPN part though)
    • You connect on more than just a physical level.
    • A very small percentage of marriage is spent in passionate lovemaking.  You need to know that you can have fun together and enjoy each other when your clothes are ON.
    • You can see past your wedding day.
    • Many women are bridezillas: They are so focused on their wedding and being the center of the universe in their stunning white gown that they lose sight of their fiancé and the whole concept of marriage.
    • You can talk to each other.
    • You know you’re ready to get married when you can talk things out rationally (without yelling or screaming) and not let issues get pushed under the rug without being resolved.
    • Everyone you know says your guy is fab.
    • It’s fine if a few family members or friends aren’t huge fans (you can’t please everybody), but if everyone you know hates this guy, they might be on to something.  Your family and friends know you, and they can look at the situation objectivity. If they’re reasonably nice people, pay attention to them, otherwise your marriage is going to be a constant acid drip.
  • How to go on an actual date (link)
    • 7 Ground Rules for a proper date:
      • Is inspired: Art is original, not copied nor recycled. Going through the motions is cheap and disrespectful.
      • Is asked by name: Be open to getting to know someone as friends outside of a proper date, but reject the “sneak-a-date,” which is the lowest form of pursuit.
      • Is asked in person: If you are not ready to ask in person, then you aren’t ready for anything that follows anyway.
      • Is asked well in advance: You have no obligation to respond to last minute hang out requests and lazy nondescript invitations. See #2.
      • Is asked one at a time: No good can come from trying to cultivate romantic feelings for more than one person at a time.
      • Is a three part date: This means “coffee” is not a proper date and never was. Sorry. If there is no plan the date is void. See #2.
      • Is followed up the next day: The rest is up to you, but let nothing stop you from at least thanking the person for their time, no matter how the date went.
  • Secular info – I don’t necessarily endorse all the secular information though I’ll put references to links that I largely agree with:
    • 3 things all women want in a real man (link)
      • Leadership:
        • taking initiative
        • having my own life in control
        • show that you can take care of them
      • Integrity:
        • man of your word
        • follow through
        • Personal responsibility
        • reliable demonstrated through actions
      • Fun side:
        • Risk taker
        • wild sexy side – not boring
        • be, do, or have something they would enjoy spending their precious time with
    • Key things to make a relationship sucessful (link)
      • Self Love: The happiest couples always consisted of two (sometimes more) emotionally healthy and independently happy individuals. These people practiced self-love. They treated themselves with the same type of care that they treated their partner… or at least they tried to.
      • Emotionally healthy people know how to forgive, they are able to acknowledge their part in any disagreement or conflict and take responsibility for it. They are self-aware enough to be assertive, to pull their weight, and to give love when it’s most difficult.
      • Commitment: After that emotional health came an unquestioning level of commitment. The happiest couples knew that if shit got real, their significant other wasn’t going to walk out on them. They knew that even if things got hard – no, especially if things got hard — they were better off together. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
      • Establish that foundation, and you’re in good shape.
      • Intentionality: This is the icing on the cake. There’s a difference between the couple who drives through the rainstorm and the couple who pulls their car to the side of the road to make out in the rain. (Yes, that’s a true story.) There’s a difference between the couple who kisses for 10 seconds or longer when they say goodbye to each other rather than just giving each other a peck… or nothing at all. There’s a difference between the couples who encourage each other to pursue their personal goals at the expense of their own discomfort or inconvenience… even if it means their partner has to stage kiss another woman.
      • The couples who try on a daily basis to experience some sort of meaningful connection, or create a fun memory are the couples who shattered my perception of what was possible in a loving relationship.”
    • Gottman seems pretty secular to me though since it is “evidence-based”, concepts or conclusions here may suggest deeper supernatural phenomena:
    • 10 Ways To Know You’re Dating A True Gentleman (link) – warning: this is from a secular humanist and not a Christian; the ideas on surface seem good though remember not to love the ideas and philosophies more than he who created them i.e. Jesus; don’t disregard his teaching i.e. the teaching of the Catholic Church
      • A true gentleman values more than just your looks.
      • A true gentleman will never be intimidated by your motivation.
      • A true gentleman will have more interests than just you.
      • A true gentleman will give you answers.
      • A true gentleman is direct.
      • A true gentleman will trust you.
      • A true gentleman is cool, calm, and collected.
      • A true gentleman will show you respect.
      • A true gentleman will put effort into your relationship.
      • A true gentleman will make you want to be the best version of yourself, without changing who you really are.
    • Unsorted:
      • http://www.drlaura.com/b/Why-We-Stay-in-Bad-Relationships/-275676505856164203.html?utm_campaign=0807Why-Stay-Bad-Relationships

MEDITATIONS

  • We need to redeem dating
  • Chastity = whole
  • Stages of interior life (not exclusive):
    • Purgative
    • Illumitive – do things out of love for God – be light for people
    • Unity – mystic – see God in everything
  • You can’t love anybody you don’t know
  • What does “Equally yoked” mean?
    • What should I look for? In my experience I didn’t know what to look for at first, it now seems like you will know when you know, when God lets you know
  • To me it seems like relationships should be more about what you can give, than what you can receive
  • Who am I and who should I be? What duties does a man in a relationship have?
  • What have I initiated? How am I leading?

ACTION ITEMS

  • Build friendships:
    • Develop trust
    • Don’t try too hard
    • Listen more talk less
    • Meet friends like old high school friends
    • Put God first, don’t even worry about getting in a relationship
  • Know people’s love languages e.g.:
    • People who love scripture may have affirmation as their love language.
    • Quality time – these people may rather spend time with a few people, not a bunch of surface conversations
  • Know your worth.  If they can’t respect you, they don’t deserve you
  • Pray
  • Daily Examination
    • How did i love and how did i fail?
    • I need to love myself more and really believe in my worth
  • Create a non-negotional list e.g.:
    • must be Catholic
    • must be honest and open
    • must be pro-life not because I said so, but because they truly are
    • must love God first
    • must be willing to learn and change
    • I cannot change her and she needs to realize she can’t change me either, but we both want and do change to grow in love of each other for God
    • I cannot not expect anything from her that I don’t expect from myself for her
    • I must be able to and do make her happier
    • if she’s not fully happy, she must be at least content without being in a relationship with someone
    • she must be independent enough to be secure in herself
    • she takes care of herself spiritually, emotionally, physically, and mentally
    • she must understand the challenges in the world and the Church; if not she must naturally want to learn about it and do something about it
    • she has high standards but recognizes she is not perfect and thus able to love me with my imperfections
    • I must be compatible with her family, if not there must be some strong alternative support structure for her and me
    • we have compatible love languages
    • be equal in the relationship
    • mutual respect
    • mutually help each other get to heaven
    • someone I can laugh and play with; best friends
    • someone who wishes to be a mother
    • healthy relationships will have conflicts; must be able to resolve conflicts without totally warping each others sense of self-worth; i.e. there is inherent trust each other has each others’ best interests
  • Be passionate
    • if you are with the most amazing person in the world, i.e. Jesus, Mary, or your wife/girlfriend, why not be passionate?

TIPS

  • Allow for intimacy: respect, trust, communication, no yelling
  • Protect her emotionally
  • Make her feel safe
  • In a relationship, spiritual journey needs to be together
  • Add communication to decision making process
  • Reflective Listening

 

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Beauty necessary to restore culture

Beauty must play a central role in our efforts for evangelization and cultural renewal, because it is a gift from God to lead us to him, Bishop James D. Conley said in an address at a recent apologetics conference.

“Our New Evangelization must work to make truth beautiful. By means both ancient and new, we must make use of beauty – to infuse Western culture, once more, with the spirit of the Gospel,” the Bishop of Lincoln said Sept. 28 in his keynote address at the Catholic Answers National Apologetics Conference in San Diego.

“By means of earthly beauty, we can help our contemporaries discover the truth of the Gospel. Then, they may come to know the eternal beauty of God.”

Bishop Conley told CNA on Oct. 1 that his decision to focus on beauty and culture at an apologetics conference was well-received, and that Catholic Answer’s development director, Christopher Check, “thought it was a real sort of game-changer,” because apologetics efforts can often be rejected by those with a relativistic mindset, who are not even open to entering into a standard apologetics discussion.

But to lead with beauty “opens (others) up to consider the argument” in a way they might not otherwise, the bishop reflected.

Bishop Conley opened the address by sharing a story of his first session of spiritual direction when he entered seminary. Spiritual direction typically involves a detailed discussion with a priest.

When he arrived for his first meeting, the priest, Fr. Anton Morganroth, who had fled Nazi Germany, was playing a Mozart sonata, and proceeded to finish it.

“After a few moments of silence, eager to get started,” Bishop Conley shared, “I broke the silence and said: ‘so are we going to have spiritual direction, father?’ Fr. Morganroth turned and stared right through me and said: ‘son, zat was your spiritual direction, you can go now.’”

This example of being caught up in beauty is a demonstration of how the transcendental can open minds and hearts to “the realities of the spiritual life,” the bishop said.

He emphasized that evangelization is concerned not only with individuals, but with transformation of culture as well.

“We’re starting to get a sense of our cultural mission,” Bishop Conley said. “Catholics are working to recover our traditions, and to build community … to foster a way of life that is true, good, and beautiful.”

He added that faith “is meant to be the basis of culture,” and explained how he was converted to the Catholic Church through the Integrated Humanities Program run by professor John Senior at the University of Kansas, which exposed students to the beauty of Christian culture.

This experience of beauty, he said, allowed him to be open to the great philosophers and theologians of the past, rather than assuming “that truth was found in the dictates of popular culture.”

“Senior was not an evangelist, in the traditional sense of the word: he did not preach from a pulpit, or write works of apologetics. His goal in the classroom was not to convert us, but to open our minds to truth, wherever it might be found. And he did that primarily through the imagination.”

Despite not being a traditional evangelist, the bishop said, Senior “was a remarkably gifted evangelist,” and through his sharing of the beauty of historic Catholic culture, hundreds of University of Kansas students became Catholic in the 1970s.

Their conversion “was not the result of proselytism in the classroom nor was it engaging in apologetics,” Bishop Conley said. “It occurred because we became lovers of beauty, and thus, seekers of truth. Beauty gave us ‘eyes to see’ and ‘ears to hear,’ when we encountered the Gospel and the Christian tradition.”

Senior and his colleagues “knew that students had to encounter beauty, and have their hearts and imaginations captured first by beauty, before they could pursue truth and goodness in a serious and worthy manner,” the bishop explained.

He observed that in the midst of intellectual and moral confusion, beauty can break through to hardened hearts, and that “every instance of real beauty points beyond itself” to God, who “invested this world with many forms of captivating beauty, so that created things would lead us to contemplate the transcendent glory of the Creator.”

While God “speaks to our souls through intellectual truth and moral goodness” in addition to beauty, “these forms of communication have become problematic. Many people, especially in modern Western culture, are too intellectually and morally confused to receive such a message.”

Because of this confusion, beauty may be the transcendental which “can get through, where other forms of divine communication may not,” the bishop taught.

“When we begin with beauty, this can then lead to a desire to want to know the truth of the thing that is drawing us, a desire to participate in it. And then the truth can inspire us to do the good, to strive after virtue.”

Bishop Conley said that “clearly, beauty has a major role to play in the New Evangelization” and enumerated three ways in which this can be done: through liturgy; appreciation of historic Christian culture; and openness to beauty in all its forms.

He called beauty in liturgy the “most essential” point, noting that “worship … is the basis of Christian culture” and pointing to examples of great converts who were struck by the solemn rites and extraordinary chants of the Catholic Church.

The bishop’s second recommendation was to become familiar with the beauty of historic Christian culture, such as Gregorian chant, in order to help others who appreciate it to understand the Christian beauty that inspired it.

Finally, he invited Catholics to “open our own minds to beauty, in all its manifestations” in both nature and culture, which will help us to understand beauty as “an earthly reflection of God’s glory.”

Concluding, Bishop Conley quoted famous Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who wrote in “The Idiot” that “beauty will save the world.”

“It will,” the bishop added. “When it points to God’s enduring love.”

“There are many souls to rescue, and a vast cultural wasteland to restore. Both tasks will require fluency in God’s language of beauty,” he said.

“To speak this language, we must first begin to listen. And to listen, we must have silence in our lives. I pray that God will open our eyes and ears to beauty, and help us use it in the service of the Truth.”

 

Source: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/beauty-necessary-to-restore-culture-says-bishop-conley/

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Love is war

“No, God is a lover who is a warrior. […] Love is at war with hate, betrayal, selfishness, and all love’s enemies. Love fights. Ask any parent. Yuppie-love, like puppy-love, may be merely “compassion” (the fashionable word today), but father-love and mother-love are war.”

(http://www.integratedcatholiclife.org/2011/11/dr-kreeft-how-to-win-the-culture-war)

Read the whole article; it’s well worth it.

I wanted to add: the enemy is within; it’s a spiritual warfare and it ties into the second greatest commandment – Love one another as you love yourself:

  • you can’t give what you don’t have
  • you can’t love what you don’t know, if you don’t know yourself, you don’t really love yourself
  • to what extent can you love others if you don’t know yourself?
  • always be free of mortal sins; you can’t be sure you are thinking clearly if you are not in the state of grace
  • find a good spiritual director and pray the rosary often
  • ask God to let you see yourself as He sees you because humility is seeking out the truth; let the Holy Spirit lead and work from there

Fight for Love, be not afraid to suffer for love!

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How to Win the Culture War

How to Win the Culture War

To win any war, the three most necessary things to know are: (1) that you are at war, (2) who your enemy is, and (3) what weapons or strategies can defeat him.

You cannot win a war (1) if you simply sew peace banners on a battlefield, (2) if you fight civil wars against your allies, or (3) if you use the wrong weapons.

Here is a three point checklist for the culture wars.

1. We Are at War

If you don’t know that our entire civilization is in crisis, I hope you had a nice vacation on the moon. Many minds do seem moonstruck, however, blissfully unaware of the crisis—especially the “intellectuals,” who are supposed to be the most on top of current events. I was dumbfounded to read a cover article in Time devoted to the question: Why is everything getting better? Why is life so good today? Why does everybody feel so satisfied about the quality of life? Time never questioned the assumption, it just wondered why the music on the Titanic sounded so nice.

It turned out, on reading the article, that every single aspect of life that was mentioned, every single reason for life getting better, was economic. People are richer. End of discussion.

Perhaps Time is just Playboy with clothes on. For one kind of playboy, the world is one great big whorehouse. For another kind, it’s one great big piggy bank. For both, things are getting better and better.

There is a scientific refutation of the Pig Philosophy: the statistical fact that suicide, the most in-your-face index of unhappiness, is directly proportionate to wealth. The richer you are, the richer your family is, and the richer your country is, the more likely it is that you will find life so good that you will choose to blow your brains apart.

Suicide among pre-adults has increased 5000% since the “happy days” of the ’50s. If suicide, especially among the coming generation, is not an index of crisis, nothing is. Night is falling. What Chuck Colson has labeled “a new Dark Ages” is looming. And its Brave New World proved to be only a Cowardly Old Dream. We can see this now, at the end of “the century of genocide” that was christened “the Christian century” at its birth.

We’ve had prophets who warned us: Kierkegaard, 150 years ago, in The Present Age; and Spengler, 100 years ago, in The Decline of the West; and Aldous Huxley, seventy years ago, in Brave New World; and C. S. Lewis, forty years ago, in The Abolition of Man; and above all our popes: Leo XIII and Pius IX and Pius X and above all John Paul the Great, the greatest man in the world, the greatest man of the worst century. He had even more chutzpah than Ronald Reagan, who dared to call Them “the evil empire”: He called Us “the culture of death.” That’s our culture, and his, including Italy, with the lowest birth rate in the world, and Poland, which now wants to share in the rest of the West’s abortion holocaust.

If the God of life does not respond to this culture of death with judgment, God is not God. If God does not honor the blood of the hundreds of millions of innocent victims then the God of the Bible, the God of Israel, the God of orphans and widows, the Defender of the defenseless, is a man-made myth, a fairy tale.

But is not God forgiving?

He is, but the unrepentant refuse forgiveness. How can forgiveness be received by a moral relativist who denies that there is anything to forgive except a lack of self-esteem, nothing to judge but “judgmentalism?” How can a Pharisee or a pop psychologist be saved?

But is not God compassionate?

He is not compassionate to Moloch and Baal and Ashtaroth, and to Caananites who do their work, who “cause their children to walk through the fire.” Perhaps your God is—the God of your dreams, the God of your “religious preference”—but not the God revealed in the Bible.

But is not the God of the Bible revealed most fully and finally in the New Testament rather than the Old? In sweet and gentle Jesus rather than wrathful and warlike Jehovah?

The opposition is heretical: the old Gnostic-Manichaean-Marcionite heresy, as immortal as the demons who inspired it. For “I and the Father are one.” The opposition between nice Jesus and nasty Jehovah denies the very essence of Christianity: Christ’s identity as the Son of God. Let’s remember our theology and our biology: like Father, like Son.

But is not God a lover rather than a warrior?

No, God is a lover who is a warrior. The question fails to understand what love is, what the love that God is, is. Love is at war with hate, betrayal, selfishness, and all love’s enemies. Love fights. Ask any parent. Yuppie-love, like puppy-love, may be merely “compassion” (the fashionable word today), but father-love and mother-love are war.

In fact, every page of the Bible bristles with spears, from Genesis 3 through Revelation 20. The road from Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained is soaked in blood. At the very center of the story is a cross, a symbol of conflict if there ever was one. The theme of spiritual warfare is never absent in scripture, and never absent in the life and writings of a single saint. But it is never present in the religious education of any of my “Catholic” students at Boston College. Whenever I speak of it, they are stunned and silent, as if they have suddenly entered another world. They have. They have gone past the warm fuzzies, the fur coats of psychology-disguised-as-religion, into a world where they meet Christ the King, not Christ the Kitten. Welcome back from the moon, kids.

Where is the culture of death coming from? Here. America is the center of the culture of death. America is the world’s one and only cultural superpower.

If I haven’t shocked you yet, I will now. Do you know what Muslims call us? They call us “The Great Satan.” And do you know what I call them? I call them right. But America has the most just, and moral, and wise, and biblical historical and constitutional foundation in all the world. America is one of the most religious countries in the world. The Church is big and rich and free in America.

Yes. Just like ancient Israel. And if God still loves his Church in America, he will soon make it small and poor and persecuted, as he did to ancient Israel, so that he can keep it alive. If he loves us, he will prune us, and we will bleed, and the blood of the martyrs will be the seed of the Church again, and a second spring will come—but not without blood. It never happens without blood, sacrifice, and suffering. The continuation of Christ’s work—if it is really Christ’s work and not a comfortable counterfeit—can never happen without the Cross.

I don’t mean merely that Western civilization will die. That’s a piece of trivia. I mean eternal souls will die. Billions of Ramons and Vladamirs and Janes and Tiffanies will go to Hell. That’s what’s at stake in this war: not just whether America will become a banana republic, or whether we’ll forget Shakespeare, or even whether some nuclear terrorist will incinerate half of humanity, but whether our children and our children’s children will see God forever. That’s what’s at stake in “Hollywood versus America.” That’s why we must wake up and smell the rotting souls. Knowing we are at war is the first requirement for winning it.  The next thing we must do to win a war is to know our enemy.

2. Our Enemy

Who is our enemy?

Not Protestants. For almost half a millennium, many of us thought our enemies were Protestant heretics, and addressed that problem by consigning their bodies to battlefields and their souls to Hell. (Echoes of this strategy can still be heard in Northern Ireland.) Gradually, the light dawned: Protestants are not our enemies, they are our “separated brethren.” They will fight with us.

Not Jews. For almost two millennia many of us thought that, and did such Christless things to our “fathers in the faith” that we made it almost impossible for the Jews to see their God—the true God—in us.

Not Muslims, who are often more loyal to their half-Christ than we are to our whole Christ, who often live more godly lives following their fallible scriptures and their fallible prophet than we do following our infallible scriptures and our infallible prophet.

The same is true of the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Quakers.

Our enemies are not “the liberals.” For one thing, the term is almost meaninglessly flexible. For another, it’s a political term, not a religious one. Whatever is good or bad about political liberalism, it’s neither the cause nor the cure of our present spiritual decay. Spiritual wars are not decided by whether welfare checks increase or decrease.

Our enemies are not anti-Catholic bigots who want to crucify us. They are the ones we’re trying to save. They are our patients, not our disease. Our word for them is Christ’s: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” We say this of the Chinese communist totalitarians who imprison and persecute Catholics, and to the Sudanese Muslim terrorists who enslave and murder Catholics. They are not our enemies, they are our patients. We are Christ’s nurses. The patients think the nurses are their enemies, but the nurses know better.

Our enemies are not even the media of the culture of death, not even Ted Turner or Larry Flynt or Howard Stern or Disney or Time-Warner. They too are victims, patients, though on a rampage against the hospital, poisoning other patients. But the poisoners are our patients too. So are homosexual activists, feminist witches, and abortionists. We go into gutters and pick up the spiritually dying and kiss those who spit at us, if we are cells in our Lord’s Body. If we do not physically go into gutters, we go into spiritual gutters, for we go where the need is.

Our enemies are not heretics within the Church, “cafeteria Catholics,” “Kennedy Catholics,” “I Did It My Way” Catholics. They are also our patients, though they are Quislings. They are the victims of our enemy, not our enemy.

Our enemies are not theologians in so-called Catholic theology departments who have sold their souls for thirty pieces of scholarship and prefer the plaudits of their peers to the praise of God. They are also our patients.

Our enemy is not even the few really bad priests and bishops, candidates for Christ’s Millstone of the Month Award, the modern Pharisees. They too are victims, in need of healing.

Who, then, is our enemy?

There are two answers. All the saints and popes throughout the Church’s history have given the same two answers, for these answers come from the Word of God on paper in the New Testament and the Word of God in flesh in Jesus Christ. Yet they are not well known. In fact, the first answer is almost never mentioned today. Not once in my life have I ever heard a homily on it, or a lecture by a Catholic theologian.

Our enemies are demons. Fallen angels. Evil spirits.

So says Jesus Christ: “Do not fear those who can kill the body and then has no more power over you. I will tell you whom to fear. Fear him who has power to destroy both body and soul in Hell.”

So says St. Peter, the first pope: “The Devil, like a roaring lion, is going through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Resist him, steadfast in the faith.” So says St. Paul: “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of wickedness in high places.”

So said Pope Leo the XIII, who received a vision of the 20th century that history has proved terrifyingly true. He saw Satan, at the beginning of time, allowed one century in which to do his worst work, and he chose the 20th. This pope with the name and heart of a lion was so overcome by the terror of this vision that he fell into a trance. When he awoke, he composed a prayer for the whole Church to use to get it through the 20th century. The prayer was widely known and prayed after every Mass—until the ’60s: exactly when the Church was struck with that incomparably swift disaster that we have not yet named (but which future historians will), the disaster that has destroyed a third of our priests, two-thirds of our nuns, and nine-tenths of our children’s theological knowledge; the disaster that has turned the faith of our fathers into the doubts of our dissenters, the wine of the Gospel into the water of psychobabble.

The restoration of the Church, and thus the world, might well begin with the restoration of the Lion’s prayer and the Lion’s vision, because this is the vision of all the popes and all the saints and our Lord himself: the vision of a real Hell, a real Satan, and real spiritual warfare.

I said there were two enemies. The second is even more terrifying than the first. There is one nightmare even more terrible than being chased and caught and tortured by the Devil. That is the nightmare of becoming a devil. The horror outside your soul is terrible enough; how can you bear to face the horror inside your soul?

What is the horror inside your soul? Sin. All sin is the Devil’s work, though he usually uses the flesh and the world as his instruments. Sin means inviting the Devil in. And we do it. That’s the only reason why he can do his awful work; God won’t let him do it without our free consent. And that’s why the Church is weak and the world is dying: because we are not saints.

3. The Weapon

And thus we have our third Necessary Thing: the weapon that will win the war and defeat our enemy. All it takes is saints.

Can you imagine what twelve more Mother Teresas would do for the world? Can you imagine what would happen if just twelve readers of this article offered Christ 100% of their hearts and held back nothing, absolutely nothing?

No, you can’t imagine it, any more than anyone could imagine how twelve nice Jewish boys could conquer the Roman Empire. You can’t imagine it, but you can do it. You can become a saint. Absolutely no one and nothing can stop you. It is your free choice. Here is one of the truest and most terrifying sentences I have ever read (from William Law’s Serious Call): “If you will look into your own heart in complete honesty, you must admit that there is one and only one reason why you are not a saint: you do not wholly want to be.”

That insight is terrifying because it is an indictment. But it is also thrillingly hopeful because it is an offer, an open door. Each of us can become a saint. We really can. What holds us back? Fear of paying the price.

What is the price? The answer is simple. T.S. Eliot defines the Christian life as: “A condition of complete simplicity/Costing not less than/Everything.” The price is everything: 100%. A worse martyrdom than the quick noose or stake: the martyrdom of dying daily, dying to all your desires and plans, including your plans about how to become a saint. A blank check to God. Complete submission, “islam,” “fiat”—Mary’s thing. Look what that simple Mary-thing did 2000 years ago: It brought God down and saved the world. It was meant to continue.

If we do that Mary-thing—and only if we do that—then all our apostolates will “work”: our missioning and catechizing and fathering and mothering and teaching and studying and nursing and businessing and priesting and bishoping—everything.

A bishop asked one of the priests of his diocese for recommendations on ways to increase vocations. The priest replied: The best way to attract men in this diocese to the priesthood, Your Excellency, would be your canonization.

Why not yours?

Source: http://www.integratedcatholiclife.org/2011/11/dr-kreeft-how-to-win-the-culture-war/

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