7/18/2008

Immigration President Bush and the Economy

I think I figured it out. Since President Bush and Congress can't seem to figure out a comprehensive immigration policy they did the next best thing.

They mismanaged the economy such that nobody will want to immigrate.

7/17/2008

MLS Soccer player to Catholic Priesthood

I came across this news story and thought I would share it.

You often hear that there is a shortage of vocations to the priesthood. I don't think so however. I think there is a lack of answering the call to a vocation as a priest. Why is there this lack of answering the call? I think there are several reasons, I will give one here.

Parents don't embrace or promote the priesthood for their sons. This is done both directly and indirectly. A subtle way that this lack of support for a vocation to the priesthood is exhibited is in the way parents talk with their children and others about their children's future. Here is an example of a typical conversation between parents and their son.

Mother: "Johnny, when you grow up and have a family of your own, then you'll have the same rules for you your kids"

or

Dad: "Andrew, you need to go to college so that you can have a good job to be able to support your wife and children"

I've heard it thousands of times. There is an underlying assumption that a sons vocation is to the married life. It pervades a persons speech. It generates assumptive language when discussing the future of their children. It isn't a direct hinderance to following a call to the priesthood. But it creates a manner of thinking about the future that excludes the priesthood for young men. This in turn causes young men to reject those thoughts about being a priest when they begin to appear in their conscience because, the only normal thing in all their discussions with family is being a husband and dad.

Whenever I talk with my son, I consciously make a point of including the priesthood as a possible part of his future. Here is an example of my coversation with my son.

ME: "When you grow up and have a parish of people who depend on you, or a wife and kids that depend on you, you'll be glad that I tought you that a person needs to do their chores everyday."

Me: "It's important to learn how to talk with people and to learn how to listen to people because if you have a wife and kids, you need to be able to do those things. And if you are a priest, you have to be able to give people really good advice during confessions or spiritual direction."

I think if people would just make that subtle contextual change in their speech, there would be a dramatic increase in young men following their call to a vocation to the priesthood.

7/14/2008

World Youth Day

The Pope is in Australia for World Youth Day. I offer my prayers up for this to be a blessed event for everyone. I was reading through several of the news reports off the wire. For the most part the coverage is fairly typical; "The Pope has his questions screened", "...sexual abuse scandal...", "the Pope is old...", "the Pope doesn't hang out with the rest of us in the back of the plane". "the Pope wears red shoes". ad. nauseum...

I think the issue is that people try to fit the Pope, (and with him, the Church) in to a tidy little partisan political box. All other world leaders are of some particular political ideology. But the Pope, to most main stream media, is an enigma. One minute he is defending and promoting the traditional model of marriage being reserved to one women and one man. Then he goes and exhorts people to care for the environment and to fight against global warming. It brings about a type of journalistic schizophrenia. So, they try to ignore the things he says which conflict with their secular philosophical sensibilities (or misrepresent and attack them) and concentrate on shouting out to the world that, "EVEN THE POPE PROMOTES ENVIRONMENTALIST ISSUES".

For jounalists it must be like when Charlie Brown's teacher talked. They hear "blah, blah, blah blah whaah whah", when the issue cuts against their grain. Then they're surprised that the Pope actually gets it right when he is on the same side of an issue as them!

Truthfully I would suggest to everyone that when the Pope and you agree on an issue (specifically one that involves faith and morals), that means that you have somehow come to know the truth. When you and the Pope are on opposite sides, you should rethink your position.

You see, the problem isn't that the Pope teaches that certain things are right and wrong, regardless of public opinion (contraception, abortion, euthanasia, homosexual relations...). The problem is that all the other "Popes" don't like the real deal. Some creatures can't stand the light!

HABMUS PAPAM!!

7/13/2008

Christian Voter

Another presidential election is upon us and news stories of the two candidates and their faith frequently find their way on the air and on the page. Typically the "news" centers around polling numbers. How candidate "X" is doing with demographic "Z" and so forth. I feel it's lazy journalism to constantly focus on polling and demographics. I think it leads to a lazy and uninformed electorate. Kind of a "Democracy for Dummies" thing.

"You don't want to study issues and make an informed decision? Just study the polling numbers (statistics) and find out how much support a candidate has from your demographic group(s) and vote along with the majority of them!" What a dumb way to decide how to vote. I think investigating poll numbers has a place in the decision making process, but only so far as it leads you to investigate the issues that are attributed to the numbers revealed by the poll.

In my opinion, political polling is simply an instrument used by the political parties to generate momentum for their candidates with individual demographic groups. The news media (CNN, FOX, MSNBC, ABC, CBS) use their polling data to influence the election in favor of their favorite candidate.

All that being said... how is a serious Christian supposed to approach this election? I'm not going to get bogged down by declaring what a Christian is or isn't. That's not the focus of this post. I'll let the individual's self identification stand as the yard stick. The focus will be on the candidates stance on issues that afford only one legitimate position based on fundamental human rights and right moral principle. There are issues that afford serious Christians the opportunity to legitimately hold divergent positions such as immigration policy, tax policy, education...

Here is my list of issues that only afford one legitimate position consistent with Cristian faith and morals. In the following weeks I will explain what the one legitimate position is for the Christian voter.

1. Legalized Abortion
2. Embryonic Stem Cell Research
3. Euthanasia ("Mercy Killing, "Assisted Suicide", "Death With Dignity")
4. Human Cloning
5. Homosexual "Marriage"
6. Torture of Prisoners
7. Contraceptive Education