When Truth doesn't cut it

For almost twenty years, I have operated under the assumption that souls generally come to God through a hearing of the Truth. After all, that's how my own faith was awakened -- by an exercise of the intellect. I read and I studied and I compared and I examined, and everything Catholicism claimed made beautiful sense to me. It was reasonable, logical, cohesive, coherent, and consistent. On the basis of that coherence, I changed my actions, my beliefs, my heart, and my soul, and I have never looked back. The Truth of the Church was, to me, the essence of her appeal. One of my favorite sayings when it comes to evangelization is "Truth comes with graces attached" -- and yes, it does.

However, I have recently come to understand that I and those like me are not the norm. I have learned that most people do not come to Christ and the Church through an exacting and exhilarating exercise of the intellect. For most people, Truth is not what initially propels them toward Christ.

Well, knock me over with a feather.

But don't get me wrong: Somewhere in my brain, I knew that already. Every human being is unique by design, and I'd read that different folks are drawn to God in different ways: Some are drawn by the fact that God is Truth, for sure, but others by His Oneness (unity), or by His Goodness, or by His Beauty, etc. I've referred to these different "voices of God" when discussing the call to conversion, but I don't think it truly sank in until recently.

First came the election of Pope Francis. For those of us who live mostly in our heads, adoring Truth, embracing intellectual order, craving clarity, and swooning at doctrinal precision, Pope Benedict XVI was our dream pontiff, following on the heels of another beloved papa, the philosopher Blessed John Paul the Great. We Truth-groupies had two popes in a row who nourished our souls by feeding our minds as well. Then suddenly, Pope Francis burst into our comfortable neatness and encouraged us to "make a mess" -- by leaving our books and debates and pristine doctrines for a time and going out into the streets and byways to meet our fellow human beings exactly where they are. Francis had impromptu, non-authoritative exchanges with journalists, secularists, and atheists, chats that were off-the-cuff, even sloppy -- not at all the polished and carefully weighed words of his predecessors.

And the world went nuts. And folks like me readjusted, mentally.

The world "likes" this pope, not for the doctrine and morality he teaches and preaches (which is no different from what came before), not because of ordered thought and careful words, but because he seems to care and listen and love. He seems relatable and real, and more like a loving grandpa in the neighborhood than a Supreme Pontiff on a throne.

But let me stop right here, lest anyone misunderstand: It's not that his predecessors did not love and care for and ache for every soul on the planet! Oh, how it boils my blood when people misunderstand the mystical, saintly JPII who embraced all mankind, or when they malign the shy and kindly Benedict, a quiet and gentle introvert. It's simply that Francis moves the world in a different way, and I think it's that he makes people feel something first, before he makes them think something.

For so many reasons, the soul of modern man is desperate to feel, and feel profoundly.

Francis instinctively operates on an understanding that I needed to learn: Most people do not come to Christ through Truth first. Most people come to Christ prompted by an encounter with Beauty or an experience of Goodness. Love and Truth cannot be separated, of course, but in this era of disconnection, isolation, and despair, Love must precede Truth or Truth won't get a hearing, much less an understanding. They will not hear our Truth if they do not first feel (and believe) our Love.

The next step in my broadened understanding came when I started pondering what I do on this blog. My whole shtick is debating and dissecting and raking over ideas for Truth and clarity. I know from the combox and from my email inbox that this approach is helpful to many, especially those Catholics who, due to poor catechetical formation, need to understand the tenets of the Faith better. I have something to offer in that area, it's been the main goal of the Bubble all along, and I've absolutely no intention of changing what I do on this blog (so don't worry, truthoholics!).

But I have noticed something other than the intellectual debates (and the insistence on Truth) quietly at work here.

You cannot imagine (heck, I would never have imagined!) what goes on behind the scenes of a blog like this. I don't want to reveal anything personal or betray confidences, but trust me when I say that many of the most challenging and even exasperating commenters are the nicest folks off-screen. I love them, truly, and I think they know it. I've been quiet friends with some of them for years, and a few have asked my advice or poured out their hearts, sensing that for all my doctrinal rigidity, I really do care. I've even had one hit-and-run Church-hater email me later to apologize and tell me the heartbreaking story behind the rage in her comment. I was able to pray for her and her family, and both our hearts were changed.

It's in the relationships forged, not so much the technical debates, that real human connections are made, and the fruit I've seen is that an opponent finds some respect for the Church and gives consideration to Christ where before there had been no such thing. I've even witnessed small miracles that have come through the heart-to-hearts and not through the doctrinal debates.

At some point, l will be able to tell you specific stories. Today, I will just remind you that behind every comment, query, challenge, and curse is a person who has a story -- and wounds that we cannot see. Be gentle and kind with everyone you meet and everyone you debate, because for most people, if they can't sense your authentic love for them, they will not want anything to do with your Truth.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. -- 1 Corinthians 13

Thank you, Pope Francis, for reminding us that Truth is not
always the first way to introduce Christ to the human heart. 

Thank you, Papa Bene

I'm struggling to find words as Pope Benedict leaves us. So, here's an excerpt from Thomas L. McDonald:

Non-Catholics can’t possibly understand the connection truly faithful Catholics have to their pope. He’s not magic, he’s not a god, and oddly enough he doesn’t even need to be holy or even particularly inspirational … What he is, is this: a promise. He is a promise, made by the Incarnate Lord, of a visible leadership that will last for all time, beginning with the flawed, hot-headed, cowardly fisherman who sat at His right hand, and stretching down through the millennia to us today. “Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam.” 

Final Angelus

Papa Bene, we will miss you terribly. Your ascent to the Throne of Peter eight years ago soothed our sorrowing souls after the crushing loss of Blessed John Paul the Great. You restored our joy! We thank you for your fatherly care, your gentle spirit, your keen intellect, your love of truth, your faithful service, your imitation of Christ. As you take your leave to pray for us and for the whole world, we will pray for you, too. We love you so.

"Well done, good and faithful servant."

Thank you, gentle Papa. Be at peace.





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Quick Takes, including the Benedict prophecy

This Quick Takes was published before the horrific Connecticut shootings. JoAnna's post speaks to the evil that we cannot fathom: The Question of Evil. Lord, have mercy.

1) All eight kids are home tonight (the oldest two back from college), and that means all ten of us are together under the same roof! I know it will start to feel crowded soon, but for now, it is heavenly, and I am so very grateful.


2) Here's something that never crossed my mind for the first 27 years of my Catholic life: Christmas literally means "Christ's Mass"! It's a feast of the Catholic Church, a holy day on her liturgical calendar.

It's also one of the only feasts of the Church that has been retained by Protestants (the other being Easter). I hope one day Christians will be reunited again, and that we will all celebrate the Christ's Mass at holy altars around the world, as the Lord intended.


3) Did you know that the Twelve Days of Christmas are not the twelve days prior to December 25? In fact, the Christmas season does not end on Christmas Day, that's when it begins! Catholic families should live out the true Christmas season (as opposed to confusing it with Advent), and here is a beautiful way to do just that. My dear friend, Rebecca Even, has worked lovingly for years to put together something special to celebrate those twelve days and reclaim the season:

Our Father Gave to Us

The 12 Days of Christmas

A new take on a familiar song, and so much more for the family to enjoy!

4) I am so, so, so excited. Remember when I told you about the book that changed my life, because it introduced me to the three traditional stages of holiness? Well, I went forth on that path way back then, and made progress. However, it's been a full ten years since I briefly hit a height of prayer that allowed me to glimpse what the prayer masters (Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross) were talking about -- and through my own slothfulness I have failed to get back to that point on the path. Spiritually, I have been treading water for a decade.

But today I took concrete steps to forge ahead again, in a disciplined program of prayer ("Plan of Life", through the Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity) that bore great fruit for me all those years ago. I will be sure to share my insights as I go along this time.

God is so good, as it took the profound sorrow of Obama's reelection to hammer home the fact that the only answer to the darkness of our times is growth in holiness. We are all (yes, all) called to be saints. Whether we like it or not, we were made for this age. It's time for us to get crackin'!


5) This breathtaking prediction needs no commentary from me:

“The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.

She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes ... she will lose many of her social privileges…. As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members….

It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek…. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain…. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.”

-- Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), from his book Faith and the Future

(Pope Benedict has started to tweet! Follow him, here!)


6) God speaks to us through Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. An ode to Beauty:

San Chapelle Cathedral, Paris

Ahhhh……balm for the soul!



7)  Sweet, beautiful Lilly!

She has been waiting for so long, and yet she doesn't have time to wait. This precious five-year-old has a heart defect that needs surgical correction. The sooner Mama is found, the sooner she will get the medical attention she so desperately needs.

Click my photo for more info! Single moms and Canadian families welcome!

The good news is, Lilly has over $10,000 in her adoption grant just waiting to be used to bring her home. More good news? She is sweet and calm, and full of affection.

Is she your daughter? And if she is not your daughter, will you share her face and name with your family and friends? You may very well be the instrument that connects her to her family!

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Also, many thanks to everyone who has done their online Christmas shopping through the Amazon link on this blog! I have earned over $140 in commission this month so far, and 100% of what I earn goes to the RR orphans and families. You guys are amazing! Group hug!! Keep those orders coming!



Thanks to Jen for hosting, and although I missed the streaming of the first episode of her reality show, it can now be seen for a short time on YouTube, and right here!

I'll be back next Friday, as I'm doing only Quick Takes during Advent.






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From "awesome" gay lifestyle to Catholic: Marie's story

I am very grateful to a reader of the Bubble, a young woman who wishes to go by the name of "Marie", for writing her personal reflections on the issues of gay marriage and true love.

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“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Whenever I discuss my position on gay marriage with people, I’m usually asked, “Why does it matter as long as they’re happy?”, “What’s wrong with love?” or “What do you have against gay people?” It’s hard to briefly answer these questions without getting into a philosophical and theological discussion, but I’ve come to notice that if you ever have the time and your debater has the patience to listen, do it. It can help.

In answer to the questions, I want people to be happy, and I also don’t see anything wrong with love. More importantly, I don’t think I can hate gays considering that during a very important part of my life I was actively living an “awesome” gay lifestyle. I had a hot girlfriend and partied as if my wallet were a basket of fish and loaves. I loved her endlessly, even if my love confused me and led me to sabotage our relationship. I knew she was the one I would spend my life with. Yet something said no. It was Christ calling my heart. I finally answered and gave in, but it wasn’t easy.

I’ve been asked before why I would pick Catholicism as a convert when there were more “friendly” religions out there. My response: I didn’t choose to become Catholic, Christ told me I was Catholic. “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction."(i) Faith is not about picking and choosing. If that were the case, I’d choose not to believe. But my heart clears up the conflicts that my mind has.

I have a few friends that are gay. I use to have a lot of friends that are gay but I lost most of them when I decided to let go of lady-loving attractions and pursue my real purpose in life, which I felt was more likely connected to my relationship with Christ. They felt I was trying to be something I wasn’t and that I was judging them. Honestly, for a time I was. But I realized that by God’s grace alone I had walked away from where they were. I was not a better, smarter person because I had said yes to God. In fact, I was humbled to realize that more was expected of me now because I was no longer blissfully ignorant. I knew I could never go back, no matter how tempting.

I’ve always been attracted to men, which would label me as bisexual, but I think that sounds selfish. (It kind of says, “I just like everything out there so I’ll take it how I can get it.”) So am I gay? Am I straight? Still don’t know. Do I believe that you can “pray away the gay”? Nope. I believe you can pray to have the humility to handle the desires and behaviors that come with being gay, but it’s hard to stop loving someone just because you’re told that you shouldn’t love them.

Gay people do not choose to whom they are attracted, nor with whom they fall in love. As a heterosexual person, if you looked at your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, or fiancé and said that you were just going to stop loving him or her at this exact moment, how successful do you think you would be? Not gonna happen. You'd likely fall into a deep depression and obsessively pine away for your love to come back to you. You’d scream “WHY?” and ask God for strength. As a woman who has fallen in love with another woman, this is a testament to what I dealt with upon finding my faith and relinquishing the evils of my life regardless of how innocent and pleasurable they seemed.

My purpose in writing is not to defend homosexual marriage and acts, because I’d then have to try and persuade myself. Instead, I just want you all to realize that the gay desire for marriage and acceptance is misguided, but it truly stems from love. They carry a cross that you do not know. Please understand that the anger and bitterness that comes from the other side is rooted in suffering. How can suffering be so closely tied to love? Ask Jesus, He suffered because of love. It’s unbearable to be told that you shouldn’t feel what you feel but yet not have the free will to change it. It’s surreal to have the feelings that you do but yet not be able to express them. Who would purposely choose to be gay? Seriously. Being gay may not be a choice, but living the lifestyle is.

The root of this fight is not about sexuality or equality, it’s about love. Everyone wants to be loved, to feel love, to express love and to give love. The difference extends to the origin of that love. As human beings, we love on a physical plane, yet are called to something greater. It can be hard to grasp this if you don’t understand the difference and unity of love – eros, philia and agape.

Eros is the love between man and woman that is neither planned nor willed but somehow imposes itself upon human beings. Philia is the love of friendship, akin to the relationship of Christ and the disciples. Agape is divine, unconditional, self-sacrificing, active, volitional, and thoughtful love. It is the love of God, grounded in and shaped by faith. They all are the essence of God, as He is love. The problem is that man has taken these gifts and has chosen to maintain the separateness of them instead of unifying. “An intoxicated and undisciplined eros is not an ascent in ecstasy…but a fall, a degradation of man.”(ii) The love between a man and a woman has become worldly and broken, creating a disordered union between eros and philia, and a complete division from agape. That is homosexual love. It is still real. It is still love. But it is not love in its full, true being. It is a fascination for the great promise of happiness, but because it has lost its proper unity in the one reality and true nature of love, it is impoverished and loses its truth.

So here is where I ponder: How did we get to this point? How did the beauty of God’s most precious gift become reduced to a mere commodity of sex and pleasure? How did marriage become a debatable issue of rights, desires, and benefits? Why is the societal hot topic “gay marriage” when real marriage has been broken? “To love and to be loved was sweet to me, and all the more when I gained the enjoyment of the body of the person I loved. Thus I polluted the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence and I dimmed its luster with the slime of lust.”(iii) Thanks, St. Augustine... 1,600 years later, you took the words out of my mouth. Man, gay and straight, has fallen victim to disordered love. This is why the issue right now may appear to be a fight about sexuality, equality, and freedoms, when truly it’s about love. Until man unifies the fullness of love, there will always remain this struggle between those who know and those who don’t want to know; there will be no purification or healing.

So please, “Stand therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”(iv) However, with this armor please never stop loving and praying for those against you in this battle.




i Pope Benedict XVI, DEUS CARITAS EST, 2006
ii Pope Benedict XVI, DEUS CARITAS EST, 2006
iii The Confessions of St. Augustine
iv Ephesians 6:14-17



Related post: "Gay, Catholic, and Doing Fine"


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Stop moping around!

If you are like me, you've been disheartened by the vote to legalize gay "marriage" in New York.

But tonight I read Thomas Peters' excellent reminder that we Catholics aren't getting nor reporting the full picture. We tend to follow the "mainstream" liberal media's reporting habits, and the media spend far more time touting the few gay "marriage" successes, and not much time discussing the much broader support for true marriage.

For example, did you know that two blue states, Maryland and Rhode Island, shot down gay "marriage" bills recently, thanks to the Democrats? I confess that I didn't! Yes, those and other victories for marriage have been taking place all around us, and we have allowed the defeat in New York to discourage us.

But stop and think about it: We are talking about New York! Remember that New York City is the epicenter of the Culture of Death in America: It was recently reported that a full 41% of NYC's unborn children are aborted. Should we be shocked that that gay "marriage" would eventually come to this place?

New York has dark days ahead if it stays on this path, but most states are not this far gone.

We Catholics need to stay strong ("Be not afraid!" as Blessed John Paul II so often told us), and we must have the courage to fight for traditional marriage in the public square, as Pope Benedict XVI has exhorted us:

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable….

His list includes:

Recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage and its defense from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role.  (2006 speech to European politicians)

It is clearly part of our job as Catholics to bring back the understanding that rights are based on natural law (self-evident, inalienable rights, with which we are endowed by our Creator), and to beat back the idea of a "right" as "something you really, really want, and it would be mean to deny it".

And from here on in, I will be much more aware of the media's propensity to give "extra attention" to gay "marriage" victories while downplaying its defeats.

I hope you will too, so that we all have the fortitude to stay in the game.

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On a personal note, I am beseeching prayers for a friend, the mother of five small children, who has recently been diagnosed with stage 3B Hodgkin's lymphoma. If you could send up a prayer for her healing and her family's comfort, right now, as you are thinking of it, I would so deeply appreciate it.

The Pope and Condoms *UPDATED*

"I've often said that if a sports reporter was as clueless about his subject as the typical religion reporter is about his, he couldn't keep his job for a week. The Pope and condom story is the latest confirmation of that observation."   -- Paul Thigpen

I have been asked to address the recent statement of Pope Benedict regarding condoms.


I will throw out some quick thoughts, but for far superior analyses, go here (Fr. Fessio), here (George Weigel), and here (Archbishop Chaput).


I don't have much to add to those pieces, but I will do what I usually do, which is to take my simple mind and put things in the simplest way I know how:

• In the Pope's example, the person deciding to use a condom is already engaging in gravely sinful activity (prostitution). Using or not using a condom does not in any way change the morality of the act; the person is still committing a terrible sin, which can never be condoned.

• In the Pope's scenario, the condom is not being used for contraception, but as (perceived) protection against disease. Is condom use a legitimate way to stop the spread of AIDS? According to the Pope: "[The Church] of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution"; however, the intention of not wanting to infect your partner with a deadly disease may be "a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality." In other words, there may be a stirring of the conscience that sex is about love, and not merely "a sort of drug that people administer to themselves."

• It's as if a drug addict was deciding if he should shoot up his partner with the clean needle, or if he should just use the dirty one that's more convenient. That moment of concern for the other might be a step towards morality. It's not the use of the needle that is good; rather, the good is found in the concern for the other. Christianity is all about love, and love is all about willing what is best for the other. Pope Benedict was musing on one of his favorite topics (and the subject of his first encyclical): Love. Even in the midst of a moral hell, there can be movement toward love.

• It is expected by every faithful Catholic on the face of the earth that the media will distort the words of the Pope on any sexual issue, spewing sensational, ignorant or even intentionally misleading headlines all over the globe.

• As in the past, faithful Catholics have looked past the erroneous headlines to uncover the actual story, which is a non-story: No new teaching was given, no changes were made to the moral law. Of course.

• Finally, even if the Pope had waxed eloquent about the moon being made of green cheese, a philosophical musing by a Pontiff in the middle of a long and fascinating interview with a reporter does not rise to the level of an official Church teaching; it is not an exercise of the Magisterium. Not.even.close. 

So, here we sit, with the Deposit of Faith intact, as it has been for 20 centuries and will be forever more. But this latest papal interview sure did give the world something to talk about! I do think all the hoopla is ironic, given that the world was long ago supposed to have written off the papacy as an irrelevant, dusty old relic. Yet even the Pope's most nuanced, non-authoritative utterances seem to carry incredible weight and power, even with the secular media. Go figure.


UPDATE: Speaking of condoms, I just read this on my daughter's blog! I couldn't resist posting it here.