St. Joseph’s Vanguard And Our Lady’s Train

A new book!

I haven’t read it, but I love it already.

Just check out the subtitle: “The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate”

From our recent visit to Katie’s extended family in New Mexico:

With our niece, Ava (or perhaps Addi):

With nephew Adam:

…unscrupulous persons will commit evil actions.

In Guatemala, which has thankfully begun investigations to overhaul their adoption system, people have been abducting babies to put them up for adoption.

Why?  From the article:

Before the reform, foreign couples, mostly from the U.S., paid up to $30,000 to adopt children.

The previous system was so quick and hassle-free it became the second-largest source of foreign babies to U.S. couples after China.

$30,000 for a baby, while 4,000 are aborted everyday here in our country, and it leads to kidnapping in poor countries like Guatemala.  I don’t have a magic solution, but surely we can see that something is wrong with this situation.

It’s tough to find clothing that is feminine, fashionable, and modest, and I was delighted yesterday to stumble upon the website for Shabby Apple clothing. It’s featured in the newly published Eliza magazine, which, from what I understand is an initiative of young women who are members of LDS. They did a great job with the magazine; it’s hip, chic, and features really cute clothing.

Check it out and consider subscribing. And, thanks, Mormon sisters, for helping to promote good fashion sense in such a spectacular Audrey Hepburn way.

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd training. All day. Fabulous. Lovely. I felt like I was at a retreat all day and am amazed by the beauty and wisdom of the Montessori method applied to catechesis. This is going to change me, and I’m glad of it.

New screenshot:

I have created two new tower types

Poison towers: the green ones, poison enemies which drains their life for some period of time
Stun towers: Brownish-red ones, damage enemies and have a chance to cause them to not move for some time

in addition to the old ones:

Der Basic towers: white ones, can be upgraded to become obliterators (more on this in future posts)
Ground Pounder towers: Orange ones, powerful towers that upgrade to fire rapidly

The blue and red rectangles are the enemies.

My mom wanted to inspect the bees with us, so she bought a bee suit!

The inspection went well; our Ambrose hive is doing well: They are still very gentle bees; they are bringing in some nectar, though it looks like there won’t be much of a harvest this year (we think it is due to the lack of rain this spring and summer around Central Texas).

They have lots of brood, so the queen is laying well, and there are very few small hive beetles.

Mom enjoyed inspecting them, though she lamented afterwards when we got inside that it felt like a sauna in her bee suit–I totally agree.

Sen. McCain has put up a video of Sen. Obama’s multiple contradictory statements about the war in Iraq.

I don’t plan to debate details but rather just want to point out that, whether or not beginning the war was just, we now have a responsibility to help them establish a good government and peaceful nation, which we have had significant success in doing in the past year or two.

The course that we should take should be reasoned through and wisely decided; Sen. Obama, as you can watch in the video, clearly contradicts himself flatly multiple times on the Iraq war; it seems clear that he has been changing his positions for political expedience and doesn’t have firm reasons that would support a steady position.

A brief example is the first section of the video where multiple clips are shown of him saying that the surge would not work, then later, after it worked, saying that he knew it would work all the time and had always said so.  It’s okay to change your position and admit that you have come to believe that you were incorrect and explain why you changed but acting like you never made a mistake and reversed your position is something that seems all too common in our American politics, both Republican and Democrat.

I’ve been reading the Getting Started manual for Regnum Christi over the past several months and wanted to share some things I read recently in Module #10, which discusses a central trait of Regnum Christi: Love for the Church and the Pope:

Regnum Christi is not its own thing.  And it doesn’t do its own thing.  Regnum Christi is a battalion of dedicated, enthusiastic apostles within and for the Church.  It does the Church’s thing: it spreads the Kingdom of Christ.

God inspired the Movement’s charism (a Christ-centered spirituality and an effective apostolic action) for the same reason that he inspires every new charism: to help renew and build up the Church….The redemption that Christ won at so high a price reaches the world through the Church.  It doesn’t reach the world through Regnum Christi or any other ecclesial movement, except in so far as they are rooted in the Church; it reaches the world through the testimony and the sacraments of the Church.

The chapter continues with catechesis about Christ establishing his Church, St. Peter’s primacy and apostolic succession, then explains how we as Regnum Christi members live out our love and dedication to the Church and the Pope: “The Pope is the Vicar of Christ, the visible head of the Church on earth, so then–if we want to serve the Church–we need to be always in step with the Pope, neither ahead nor behind, but always right beside him.”

The excellent National Catholic Register has an exclusive response that Fr. Neuhaus made to Doug Kmiec, who is publicly supporting Sen. Obama and claiming Catholics can support the senator.

Here is a good passage from the beginning:

Mr. Kmiec argues that we can’t rank abortion as greater evil or a more pressing social and legal concern than racism because they are both intrinsic evils. But Mr. Kmiec has misunderstood the meaning of the term intrinsic evil, and the nature of our political moment.

That two actions are both intrinsically evil tells us nothing about the relative gravity of each action. Telling a lie is intrinsically evil. So is rape. They are not equally grave. Except for instances such as perjury or libel, lying is not a crime.

Racism is an attitude that may lead to acts we call racist. But nobody pertinent to our political life today advocates racism or racist acts. The intentional killing of a member of the human family — which is what happens in every abortion — is the most pressing social justice question of our time. Mr. Kmiec’s candidate advocates an unlimited right to abortion.

The question is that of justice for unborn children. When one candidate supports the unlimited abortion license and another wants the abortion question returned to the states, it is disingenuous to suggest that they are equally pro-choice. And to say that the first candidate’s position is closer to a Catholic understanding of subsidiarity is, I am sorry to say, risible. Catholic teaching and the mandate of justice is that all members of the human family, born and unborn, be protected in law. To deny that protection is a grave injustice.

Buy the Register to get the full story.

After more thought and prayer, I decided to remove this video. Let’s encourage people to make humorous yet non-vulgar or uncharitable videos and such!

The Pope is learning the l337 (”leet” short for “elite”) speak:

The Pope sent out his second daily text message to pilgrims - “The Holy Spirit gave the Apostles & gives u the power boldly 2 proclaim that Christ is risen! - BXVI”

Pack it up, pack it in, let Pope Benedict and World Youth Day begin!

Isn’t it newsworthy when hundreds of thousands of young people from all over the world convene in Australia to celebrate and grow in their faith, led by an 80-year old theologian from Germany?

Apparently not, because none of the major news sites I watch each day even had a blip on it–maybe they’re waiting for BXVI (that’s “B-Sixteen” for Benedict the sixteenth) to make his appearance.

However, even though Sen. McCain doesn’t use email (how uncool, right d00d?), Pope Benedict has already sent a text message to the throng of young Catholics filling up Australia! (”Young friend, God and his people expect much from u because u have within you the Fathers supreme gift: the Spirit of Jesus - BXVI.”)

“But I thought human life-destroying embryonic stem cells were the ones that were going to help people!”

Nope.  Embryonic stem cells have helped–get ready for it–0 people.  That is zero, goose-egg, none.  Not one person on this green earth has been helped by a treatment from embryonic stem cells, because scientists have not been able to come up with even one treatment.

Adult stem cells, however, have helped tens of thousands of people and continue to do so, even curing once-incurable diseases like sickle-cell anemia.

As a side-note, I quit grousing briefly about Wikipedia, registered as a “Wikipedian”, figured out how to make edits, and edited the entry on sickle-cell anemia to add the proven fact that sickle-cell anemia is being cured by adult stem cells, but hours later another Wikipedian removed my factual addition based on an objection to the reference I used.

Don’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia: certain people have more power in it than others, like with any human organization, and thus they are able to control what people read and think to be true.

We as Christians believe that people can change, even radically, and turn from evil to good.

How?  By turning to the God who loves them and finally accepting His love and forgiveness.  What a great story this is to bring that truth home.

No.

A scarce majority of people know that Sen. Obama is pro-abortion, and less than a majority know that Sen. McCain is pro-life.

Well, let this be one more webpage that helps people know the truth:

Senator Barack Obama: Pro-abortion.
Senator John McCain: Pro-life.

Senator Obama has changed his position, especially recently, on many issues.  Why?

His flip-flops have largely been ones that are positioning him more towards “the middle” rather than “radically leftist”, which obviously is beneficial toward trying to appeal to a broader portion of the population to get elected and become the President of the United States.

But the question then is: What does Sen. Obama really stand for, what principles will he not back down from?

I certainly would like to know the answer.  And perhaps we can find out if Sen. Obama will step up to Sen. McCain’s challenge to town hall debates, something which he said he wanted to do but hasn’t actually done.

Sen. McCain is far from a perfect candidate, but at least from his long record of service to our country we know where he stands.

Katie and I have been considering adoption, as she posted about recently–thank you for your kind words of encouragement with it–and I wanted to share some thoughts I’ve had with regard to adopting children from foster care.

Sometimes, when I think about adopting,  I think of how heroic an act of love it would be and how much these children need parents to love them and how we can adopt them and love them, giving them a family in which to be healed of their past wounds.

At these times, adopting seems not just possible, but almost inevitable: “Why wouldn’t we adopt?!”

Then when I am feeling particularly tired, or a bit selfish, or lazy, which is some good portion of the time, I consider adopting and think about the instant change that would be wrought in our home, in our daily life, in my comfortable routine and abundant time for myself. I also think about the possible “problems” our children might have that would cause us grief.

At these times, adopting seems scary and the feeling of impossibility that I am able to be a good father and a husband is very strong. Then I think, “Why would I ever want to adopt?”

Then I see parents with adopted children and how beautiful their families are, as well as parents with birth children and how beautiful they are, too.  They all have difficulties and challenges and headaches and frustrations, and some parents with birth-children with “problems” that are as severe as the most challenging children from foster care.

There are no guarantees, so I must believe that God chooses each child for each parent and vice-versa; He knows that this particular child, with all of his gifts, virtues, and faults, is perfect for this family–not to make their life “easier” but to make their life holier, to give them the opportunities every single day, to become more like Christ.

Katie found a page on the Texas foster care site detailing success stories from many adoptive families and their adopted children; these really inspire me. Almost every one of them talks about God and faith and how they have been blessed by our Lord by “letting love in” when they adopted their children.

These families have given me hope for our country, in knowing that there are Americans willing to sacrifice out of love for another, and have also given me hope that Katie and I could adopt and be blessed, too.

We’ll see what our Lord has in store.

I’m wanting sugar. Pie. Cake. Muffins. Ice cream. A big fizzy cold Coke. But, I can’t have any, well, much of it. It’s this darned insulin resistance I’ve got, which is tied to our fertility issues, so we’re working on keeping my blood sugar levels down in the hopes of helping our fertility.

My dear husband has helped me create a list of our most common foods and their corresponding Glycemic Index numbers. We were encouraged by this exercise because, due to my organic foodness, it turns out that we already have very few sugars in our diet. So, really, not much is changing, but I like to gripe about it. The drama helps me feel better, you see.

A few things are changing, however. First, I’m trying to cook with all the buckwheat flour I can, since buckwheat has a low GI number, as well as producing a lovely compound in the body called D-chiro inositol when digested. I’ve made some muffins that turned out well, but I need to use strong flavors to mask the buckwheat flavor, so I’m perplexed regarding how to make things like pancakes. In addition, where before I might have more easily bent my organic rules and eaten ice cream (after all, it’s Haagen Dazs, which is, after all, all natural), now I’m being really strict about sugars; I’m only allowing myself to eat sweets on Sundays…and, maybe sometimes, when I really feel the need, I’ll buy a tube of cookie dough and eat it in hiding, so that Devin can’t scold me.

“Up until now, no one in the United States has dared to promote the maxim that everything is legitimized in the interests of society, an impious maxim which seems to have been invented in an age of liberty simply to justify every future tyrant.” (Democracy in America, de Toqueville, 1840)

I like this guy. He sees the danger in the false notion so frequently referenced by scientists these days that, because we have the capacity to do something, we ought to do that thing so as to gain knowledge and better ourselves. I heard that notion professed at the Capitol often by scientists who were asking for funding for embryo-destructive research, and it’s dangerous dangerous dangerous. Because, if we should do everything we can for the sake of scientific research, then every American becomes a potential research subject, if they don’t have the wealth or physical age or intelligence to protect them. And, then, science does become a tyrant, subjecting everything in its path to dominance.

Democracy in America, published in 1840:

“America is still the country in the world where the Christian religion has retained the greatest real power over people’s souls and nothing better shows how useful and natural religion is to man, since the country where it exerts the greatest sway is also the most enlightened and free. [Americans] believe religion necessary for the maintenance of republican institutions…they so completely identify the spirit of Christianity with freedom in their minds, and this is not one of those sterile ideas bequeathed by the past to the present nor one which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live. I have seen Americans coming together to dispatch priests to the new states in the West in order to found schools and churches. Their fear is that religion might disappear in the depths of the forest and that the people growing up there might be less fitted for freedom than the society they had left.”

This conviction regarding the necessary link between Christianity and freedom makes sense. Christianity is the only religion which teaches equality between every person and promotes respect for individual conscience. Freedom is safe when citizens follow the teachings of a God who tells them that they cannot treat other citizens in certain ways because those other citizens are made in God’s image; in Christianity, certain rights are completely protected–the right to life, the right to seek Truth, the right to educate one’s family without coercion, and so forth–and citizens are free, therefore, from the tyranny of government upon their persons. But, when the ideas of a nation and its government are not influenced by Christian principles, no one is safe. The government decides which rights belong to persons and families and can take them away if it wishes.

I’m not sure what factor is responsible for the change in our country from the notion that Christianity is necessary for freedom to the notion that Christianity threatens freedom and must be silenced from the public square. But, I don’t like it.

A very honorable gesture, returning the Order of Canada medal given to their founder, (Servant of God) Catherine de Hueck Doherty, in protest of the awarding of the honor to the father of abortion in Canada, Dr. Morgentaler.

Learn more about the Madonna House Catholic community.

The Church of England has approved women bishops.

I have great respect for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and this was sad to read:

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, who urged generous provision for opponents [those against women’s ordination as bishops], sat with his head in his hands as a proposal for “super bishops” for objectors to women bishops was defeated.

I received in the mail today a letter with no return address, postmarked from Austin, containing a Christian tract (a small pamphlet) entitled, “The Terrors of Hell”, by William C. Nichols.

The above link takes you to Mr. Nichols’ site, I believe, that contains the tract’s contents. I don’t know who sent me this tract, nor why they didn’t want me to know who they were, but I conjecture that they are an Evangelical Protestant who found my blog and wanted to help me see that my faith is in vain, being a Roman Catholic, and that I needed to become a true Christian so I can be saved and avoid Hell.

I think that this person has very good intentions, and I thank them for caring about the salvation of my soul. I care about theirs, too, and have said a prayer for them. I would like to make a blog post about this incident, however, as I think it provides a good opportunity to discuss the critical questions that every Christian should ask themselves concerning their faith.

From Mr. Nichols’ tract:

Why should we be so concerned about hell? Why should we spend time reading about hell? There are several reasons why it is profitable to do so:

1) Hearing about the terrors of hell may shock your conscience and awaken you out of your false security.

2) Hearing about hell helps to deter men from committing sin. Both the godly and the ungodly are persuaded not to sin as much when they are regularly reminded of the terrors of hell.

3) Hearing about the terrors of hell may help to awaken those among us who may think they are saved because they believe in Christ or the facts of the gospel, but who are not really saved and are on their way to hell, but don’t know it.

I believe in Hell. I also think that fear of Hell, while not the most perfect reason to turn to God and love Him, is a good reason to turn to God, so I think that reasons 1 and 2 are true.

Reason 3, however, is different, and I want to focus on it in this post.

The reason listed indicates that there are people who think they are saved but really are not (a dangerous situation to be sure). Why do they think they are saved? Because they believe in Christ or in the gospel.

Clearly, Mr. Nichols uses the word “believe” here to mean something different than the meaning of the word from the Bible. Belief here indicates intellectual recognition or understanding without that understanding translating into a change of life or actions (i.e. the person’s will is not altered to change sinful behavior), rather than belief being a person intellectually understanding the faith and putting it into practice through their will, receiving God’s grace to do so.

I will return to this idea that someone thinks he is saved because he believes in Christ but really doesn’t later.

First, a later passage from the tract:

One of the greatest preachers that ever lived, Jonathan Edwards, wrote, “The glory of God is the greatest good; it is that which is the chief end of creation; it is of greater importance than anything else. But this is one way wherein God will glorify Himself, as in the eternal destruction of ungodly men He will glorify His justice. Therein He will appear as a just governor of the world. The vindictive justice of God will appear strict, exact, awful, and terrible, and therefore glorious.”

Jonathan Edwards was a Protestant minister who believed in Calvinistic teachings. I read his “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” as an atheist my junior year in high school as part of our required reading.

The first question that strikes me here is: Why should I believe Jonathan Edwards? What authority does he have to say what is true and false with regard to God, the Christian faith, sin, Hell, etc.?

I am not objecting to the contents of the specific passage quoted above, as there is truth in it, but more generally to the fact that Mr. Nichols decided to use Jonathan Edwards’ writings as authoritative.

The tract begins its conclusion, which returns us to the first point:

Do not think that simply because you go to church, or believe in God, or believe intellectually in the truths of Christianity that you will escape hell. The majority of those who regularly attend churches every week, all over the world, will go to hell…

You who profess to be Christians, but do not read your Bible much and pray little: how shall you escape the damnation of hell? You who are not especially bothered by little sins or troubled by the vain and filthy thoughts which you have: are you ready to go to hell? You who think the kingdom of God consists in a verbal profession of Christ or intellectually believing that Jesus died for your sins, but who are not concerned with living a holy, godly life and give little or no thought to God during the week: are you prepared to endure the torments of hell, day and night, forever and ever?

You had better be, because if these things are true of you, you are headed straight for hell, unless you repent. Do not delude yourself! Christianity does not consist in words, or pious statements, or mere intellectual belief, but in a new heart and a new life dedicated to not sinning and living for the glory of God.

From these passages, it is clearly seen that the “belief” that leads a person to Hell is not belief but rather an intellectual understanding only that does not affect our will (actions).

A problem with these statements is that being a Christian does involve professing our beliefs verbally and believing that Jesus died for my sins: Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Also, in Matthew 10:32,33, Jesus says that every man who acknowledges Him before men, Jesus will acknowledge before the Father.

Notice that when St. Paul uses the word “believe” here he means belief that translates into action, into a change in life, rather than the false belief that this tract condemns.

The tract says Christianity “does not consist in words”–well, as we have seen, this statement is a bit inaccurate; it would be better to say that Christianity “does not consist in words only.”

This tract reminds me of my days as an Evangelical Protestant and the paradoxical lack of security I felt about my salvation even while believing in “eternal security” or “once saved, always saved”. The problem is this: You think you are saved because you believe in Christ and in the gospel and are seeking to follow Him in your life everyday, but, you still commit sins, sometimes the same sins over and over again. Are you really saved? Or do you only think that you are saved, as this tract points out again and again?

If you still commit sins, you must not be a real Christian; you must not really believe in Christ, otherwise you would not sin anymore; when you repented for the umpteenth time of that particular sin that plagues you, was your repentance genuine; was it real, or are you truly still unconverted and therefore on your way to Hell?

When you base your salvation off of whether or not you “think” you are saved, it is a hopeless cause. We must instead turn to objective criteria by which we can determine whether or not we are in a state of grace, that is, in a state whereby if we died at that moment, we would have confidence of receiving Christ’s mercy and being welcomed into Heaven.

What is this objective criteria? It involves two things: 1) Knowing which actions are morally right (good) and which are morally wrong (evil), and 2) Knowing that if we commit an evil action and repent of it, we are forgiven by God, even if we commit that evil action for the 27,325th time.

The first criterion is important because if we don’t know what actions God has declared are good versus those He has condemned as evil, we will very likely commit evil actions and offend God, risking our souls’ salvation.

The second is equally important because we need to know whether we are in a state of friendship with God or not. If we are not, when we die He will look at us and sadly declare that He never knew us. Yes, we can tell God we don’t want Him in our lives anymore and, through a mortal sin, expel Him from our souls; He will not force Himself on us and stay within us when we misuse our freedom and tell Him to get lost.

In the Catholic Church, the faith of which was passed on from Christ to the apostles and down to us, we believe that Christ instituted the sacrament of Confession, where we can confess our sins to God through His priest and, from the priest acting in persona Christi, hear in audible words that Christ has forgiven us of our sins.

Why not just ask God for forgiveness directly and avoid going to His priest? Well, you certainly should ask God directly for forgiveness when you sin and become repentant of it, but also, as soon as possible find a priest to hear your confession because this is the way that Christ established it, and for good reason, too, as you know that you are forgiven and don’t have to live with the fear that you didn’t “really” repent but only thought you did and therefore are still under God’s wrath.

To the person who sent me this tract, I thank you again. I challenge you and my dear readers to ask themselves why they believe that Jonathan Edwards is authoritative, or John Calvin, or Martin Luther, or Max Lucado, or the Left Behind series authors.

And if you feel uncertain of whether you are really forgiven for your sins, know that Christ does not want you to be: He both does not want you to have a false sense of security that once you are “saved” you can commit any sin and not lose your salvation, nor does He want you to be uncertain when you repent of your sins that you are forgiven for them, which is one reason He established the sacrament of Confession.

Here are some websites I have been using that I wanted to pass along:

1. CatholicExchange.com: web portal, new articles each day, news headlines, etc.
2. Pandora.com: free music supported by ads; you tell it which bands you like and it plays those bands and others like them (tip: some of the ads they show are immodest (not pornographic, but women in bikinis, etc., so I keep a separate web browser open to pandora and resize the window so the ads aren’t shown)
3. Google Analytics: Web site traffic monitoring; I think J.R. Andrews turned me onto this one, and I have it monitoring blog traffic.
4. iGoogle: This is my main homepage now, and I use the Google Reader widget on it that is an RSS reader for all the blogs I am interested in. I also have stock info, news items, my Google calendar, etc.

If you have any useful or fun sites, feel free to share them. If you are especially motivated, the way that you make hyperlinks using the (somewhat primitive) comment boxes on this wordpress blog is by typing this in: <a href=”http://www.mycoolsite.com/coolstuff”>My Cool Site</a>.

“Congress was assembled in Independence Hall, at Philadelphia, when the Declaration was adopted…on the morning of the day of its adoption, the venerable bell man ascended to the steeple, and a little boy was placed at the door of the Hall to give him notice when the vote should be concluded. The old man waited long at his post, say ‘They will never do it, they will never do it.’ Suddenly, a loud shout came up from below, and there stood the blue-eyed boy, clapping his hands and shouting, ‘Ring! Ring!!’ Grasping the iron tongue of the bell, backward and forward he hurled it a hundred times, proclaiming, ‘Liberty to the land and to the inhabitants thereof.”

(The Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, BJ Lossing, 1848)

Happy and blessed 4th of July to you!

What a great country we live in; for all of its problems, it is great in countless ways, and I am grateful to God for the United States of America.

I’ve been reading Original Intent, by David Barton, and I am on the chapter where he describes the “misleading metaphor” of the “separation of Church and State”.

We all know this phrase, and I think if you asked most people, they would say it means that religious symbols and arguments have no place in State institutions or State-sponsored events.  This understanding is prevalent due in large part to the success of groups like the ACLU, and it is gravely erroneous.

The result is that the ACLU has succeeded in erasing markers of religious history and influence from hundreds if not thousands of State objects with their wrong arguments, based around the deliberate misinterpretation of the “separation of Church and State”.

So what does it mean?  Who said it, and when, and to whom, and in what context?

President Thomas Jefferson said it in an exchange of letters with the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut.  The Baptists were happy Jefferson was elected President because there were groups in the U.S. pushing for a State-sponsored Christian denomination, in particular the Episcopalians and Congregationalists, and these groups interpreted the First Amendment as aiding their arguments for a national denomination.

The Baptists, and Thomas Jefferson, did not want a State-sponsored denomination because, among other things, it would indicate that the God-given, inalienable right to free exercise of religion was really a right that depended on the government’s whim.

And Thomas Jefferson and the other founders intended the First Amendment exactly to oppose a State-sponsored denomination and prevent the government from meddling in the religious practice of its people.

Thomas Jefferson in his letter to the Danbury Baptists:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.  I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection and blessing of the common Father and Creator of man, and tender you for yourselves and your religious association assurances of my high respect and esteem. [emphasis mine]

Jefferson affirms that religious liberties were inalienable, God-given rights, and that the wall of separation between Church and State was “not to limit religious activities in public; rather, they were to limit the power of the government to prohibit or interfere with those expressions.”

Isn’t it interesting that groups like the ACLU have twisted this phrase to suit their own atheistic agenda?  We must educate ourselves and turn back the tide to reestablish the true foundations of our nation and the freedoms we possess at the labor, sweat, blood, and tears of our forefathers.

Lord, please bless our country and every person in it!

the names we’ve given to our two new Buff Orpingtons:

This is just too cool.

St. Therese of Lisieux, greatest saint of modern times, female Doctor of the Church (and she died at only 24 years old), patroness of missions (even thought she never left her convent), and my patron saint, is about to have her parents beatified!

Louis Martin and Zelie Guerin:

Katie and I, while engaged, prayed a novena through the Martins’ intercession for our impending marriage. Both of the Martins wanted to enter religious life, and both, providentially, were turned away for various reasons.

God blessed them with 9 children, but 4 of them died in early infancy, and the 5 children who survived into adulthood were all girls. Personally, I am confident in our Lord that all of St. Therese’s sisters are in Heaven as well: All of them entered religious life; most of them to the same Carmelite convent at Lisieux, France.

Also, Blessed Damien of Molokai, who ministered heroically to the outcast lepers in Hawaii before finally contracting leprosy himself and dying, is being canonized! I bought the book, The Colony, for my dad this past father’s day which describes the fate of the lepers exiled to this remote island and the actions of St. Damien (Father Damien) and the other good people who brought Christ to the lepers.

The movie made called Molokai is also worth watching; it stars David Wenham, the actor who played Faramir in the Lord of the Rings movies, as Father Damien.

Maybe. As God wills. Devin and I took a very big first step and filled out an adoption interest form online recently. We are open to adoption (okay, actually, I would love to adopt), but we need to continue taking prudent steps with our fertility and will have to wait until Our Lord makes our path very clear.

We are most interested in adopting through the Texas foster care system and have already enjoyed looking at the photos of the many children waiting for “forever families.” We are excited and hopeful that Our Lord will bring us children soon in whatever way is best.

These two sibling groups especially caught our hearts: