The American Catholic Church

It should be pretty obvious to just about all Catholics, if it hasn't been by now, that we've got a serious problem in the American Catholic Church. When 54% of us voted for Obama and his radical culture of death agenda, that shows something. When Notre Dame had Obama give the commencement speech and receive an honorary degree from the Catholic institution, while bishops, priests, and faithful around the country raised their voices against that, some people may have seen a problem. When Obama met our Pope and newsweek has a big enough pair to publish the "Is Obama more Catholic Than the Pope?" article, then there might be a problem. One of the commenters in that article sums it up nicely.
IL Girl posts: We who voted for Obama ARE CATHOLICS. WE represent Catholics, NOT YOU and your extreme views. WE DON"T follow your Chauvanistic, blind following of doctrine that is centuries old that represses people. We don't think that saving a mother's life by aborting a fetus is murder. We don't think that using birth control to limit having 10 babies is a sin.

I need to stop there. When i read that, the first thing I thought was "Ok, you're Catholic, except you refuse to believe what the Church teaches.."

This article says that Obama represents American Catholics better than the Pope. That may be true. The Pope doesn't represent American Catholics. The Pope is here to represent one person, and only one person. The Pope represents Jesus Christ. There is a reason Benedict the XVI is Pope, and Obama isn't..

For me, I am a Catholic first, and an American second. If abortion has been considered murder throught the history of the Church, and still is today, then it is murder. A human fetus is still a HUMAN.

We have some great religious leaders in our country, but we have a very shrewd and intelligent man as president. Some of us might not have noticed, but he has been surrounding himself with Catholics, who support his views, which go against the faith. I know he will use this in the future.. "I have more Catholics in my administration than any other president in recent history!". And we'll all say that he's right! Wow! We should all follow this guy! This is interesting, because i'm willing to bet that a lot of us Catholics don't own or have even read the Catechism.. We don't know what the Church teaches, and when one of our leaders speaks out about evils like abortion, homosexual acts, embryonic stem cell research and this kind of serious matter... many of us say, yeah, but that's not important, as long as health care and the economy are in the tubes..

I will not follow Obama, our God-King down his road to Hell.

You're done now, right?

I have noticed something. If your family keeps increasing in size, you will invariably get the comments or stares from people when they see your whole clan out and about. Even among fellow Catholics, you still receive those comments. I'm not talking about the "you have such a beautiful family" comments. I'm thinking more about the "You're done now, right?" or the "Jeez, you must have your hands full", and my favorite - "I think that's really selfish."

How far have we come in our society when we have people who are astonished/appalled that we have more than the standard 1 or 2 children? I've seen in plenty of sites, such as digg, where whenever the discussion is about the quantity of children, that a majority of them say the people shouldn't be allowed to have more than one, or even worse, "China has a solution for that". How did our society get THAT negative towards large families? That kind of mentality is frightening, that somebody should decide for me the number of children I can bring into the world. Society seems to think that these children will be a burden placed on the very same society.

Also, our government seems to be on the path of destroying the Christian aspect of our country. Our God-King Obama has a plan, and is given a pass on everything he does by the media. I don't think it will be too long before some "overpopulation" law will be written into effect.

Living the faith.

Lately, I have found that my thoughts have frequently turned to how I am living the faith. I suspect that a great many men attend Sunday mass and leave their faith at the door when it is over. I know that I have done this. I suppose part of this is that there is such an opposition to Catholics and Christians in general. Our secular society does not want us to practice our faith openly, because faith is our "private" and "personal" beliefs. This isn't what we are called to do.
We aren't just supposed to believe, we are supposed to evangelize. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states this in paragraph 1816 - The disciple of Christ must not only keep the faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it: "All however must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow him along the way of the Cross, amidst the persecutions which the Church never lacks." Service of and witness to the faith are necessary for salvation: "So every one who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven."
Are we witnesses to our faith? Is that just one of the jobs the clergy is supposed to do? Do we hear the bible verses and the homily, receive Jesus, and then go back to our lives as if nothing has happened? We have priests on the TV, radio, and internet. They can bear witness to the faith better than we can. After all, they went to to school for that. This is one way of thinking, but it is not how it really should be. We are supposed to listen to the Bible verses and the priest's homily. We are supposed to receive Christ, and then WE are supposed to go out and evangelize. That is our job. We can do this. You don't NEED to go door to door to door to talk about Jesus. You don't NEED to shout it from the rooftops, although maybe we should be doing that... We can be a witness in little ways. When you go to a restaurant, even if it is McDonalds, say the blessing before the meal out loud. Say it so the people eating in the next booth can hear you. Help somebody out. Volunteer for some sort of service to your community. Maybe somebody you know is in the hospital. Bring them food. This stuff is easy to do.

John 13:35 - This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

This blog

I've been debating creating a blog for a while now. One of the things that has stopped me from blogging for so long is the notion that nobody is going to want to read my blog. I have decided that somebody might benefit from it, so here I am.
My hopes for this blog is that it will be a weekly/biweekly blog about the average Catholic man. From current events to daily struggles to things we all must face, I will throw in my two cents here.

I am not a professional writer. I will make grammatical errors. I will do a basic spell check on my posts, but that is about it. I may post my thoughts about controversial topics. If you take offense to anything I write in my posts and want to write a scathing comment, feel free to do so. At the same time, be aware that I will feel free to moderate the comments as I see fit.

At any rate, I hope this blog will be interesting to some of you out there.

Kevin