Family Feud

I recently came across the following on a forum and liked it so much I got the author's permission to post it here! The author and his family have been having a back and forth debate on Protestantism and Catholicism and when he finally decided to speak his mind this was the result:

Dear [redacted]

Please don’t take anything I say personally. When I heard you two fell away from the Church I was sad and disappointed, but at the same time I was also glad you were taking the life’s journey so seriously. I respect a bold decision, even if I feel it’s the wrong one. The worst thing a person could do is treat the question of God\heaven\hell with indifference (God spits out the lukewarm). Furthermore, I don’t know the crosses you bare, so what right do I have to approach you with a condescending tone? St. Francis once said if anyone else was given the same graces he received they would be a greater man; I feel the same way about myself and so I am more worried about my own failures then looking for yours. I also remind myself that Paul murdered Christians and St. Augustine was committing sexual sins IN Churches late in their 20s and in the end they both became saints. So who really knows the path God has for you? I sure as heck don’t know! But I do want to express my thoughts on all that has been said so far. Take what good you can find in it.

Where Reason Fears To Tread

Saturday night I joined the Catholic Church and partook of the Blessed Sacrament for the first time. It was... amazing. I hesitate to use the word because we overuse it so much, but I can think of no better description. Jesus is present in the Eucharist, there is no doubt in my mind about that. Not only because of the things I have learned from RCIA and from Sacred Scripture, but from my experience Saturday night. I ate God. It was the most tangible He has ever been in my life. I can't describe it and I don't know that I could ever explain it. Honestly, it doesn't make much sense.

And that's okay.

One error that I am often prone to, and that my series of posts on RCIA attests to, is that I tend to put logic and reason first to the exclusion of all else. Things have to make sense to me before I believe them. I have to wrestle with ideas before I can accept them. This is good, it is far better than blind faith, but it can be taken too far. Reason is not the end all be all of human knowledge. It is vital, it is necessary, but it is ultimately insufficient.


There is, after all, a supernatural element to all of this. If we ignore that we do God great injustice. For how can we bind the creator of the universe to the merely natural? Reason can take you quite far, but it stops at the realm of the supernatural. Being a good scientifically minded westerner, I am often afraid to leave my reason behind and cross that threshold. Saturday night the Catholic Church compelled me to do so. I cannot deny that there is more to God than systematic theologies and arguments over Sola Scriptura when I am ingesting Him. I ate Him. I felt Him in a way I've never felt before.

Systematic Theologies didn't die on the cross for my sins. Doctrine didn't die on the cross for my sins. Christ did.

"Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles"

And why the creator of the universe chose to redeem his creation through such folly I'll probably never understand in this lifetime. However, the point I am trying to make here is that if we focus solely on reason we neglect the power of Christ to our own peril. We become like the pharisees, too busy arguing over the lawfulness of healing on the Sabbath to stop and consider the miracle of the healing!

And perhaps this is why until I was in college I had developed the assumption that God had stopped doing miracles. It was never a conscious belief. I never saw one and and my church never talked about them so they just didn't figure into my worldview. For all I knew miracles ended when the twelve died. Then I went to college and heard stories of logistical miracles mostly from people who went on short term mission trips. Those stories were never very compelling as the consisted mostly of getting from point A to point B in a time no one thought possible. There wasn't any unmistakable divine intervention there!

But, dear reader, there are honest to God miracles taking place in this world. Even today. But for some reason we never talk about them! So why do I favor arguing over the translations of individual Greek and Hebrew words when I could mention the miracles of St. Padre Pio? Why do I dwell on the role the magisterium when I can talk about the Incorruptibles?

Reason is great until it blinds you, and I suppose to some extent I have been blinded to the supernatural side of the Church. We set our sights too low. We ask God for a textbook when we could be asking miracles. 

"I believe and profess...

 ...all that the Holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God."

I'M CATHOLIC NOW!!!!!!!!!

Catholicism 101: Intro

You all ask too much from my last post, methinks. The title was "Problems with Protestantism," not "Problems with Protestantism and how they are answered by a concise and accurate Catholic Systematic Theology."

Taken together, the comments seem to indicate a demand for a more detailed look at Catholic doctrine, and while I would love to meet that demand, it is something I feel neither prepared nor qualified to write at this time. However, I would loathe to leave these questions unanswered, and so I have arrived at the following solution: I will serve as an aggregator.

It is my intention to pick a doctrine and compile a list of sources that you can read to learn more about it, along with a brief summary of the sources, each week. Whether or not I will stick to that schedule is a different matter entirely, but I'll try.

For now I offer you this, leave me a comment with ONE question on ONE topic and I will do my best to answer it.

Problems with Protestantism

So the question remains, what is my problem with the Protestant church? Well, there are several, one of which is illustrated by the problem with the question. There is no such thing as the "Protestant Church." There are Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican, Baptist, Methodist, Seventh Day Adventist, and Pentecostal churches, to name merely a few. All of these are real things. You can walk into their buildings on a Sunday (or Saturday) and discuss their beliefs with a pastor, but you cannot do that with a Protestant. You cannot talk to a Protestant. You can only talk to a Baptist, or a Methodist, etc. Protestantism is an idea that encompasses many different churches, but there is no "Protestant Church" the way there is a Baptist church. The Protestant Church is a non-thing, and I cannot be satisfied with a non-thing.

Gun Control is Dead

Defense Distributed has been working on a 3d printed AR-15 lower for some time now. Their early attempts saw the lower fall apart under the stress of firing. Today this video was brought to my attention:
 

This is huge, and in my opinion is the first nail in the coffin of gun control. This is probably the most significant development in firearms technology since the invention of gas operation.

To give you a little bit of background, the AR-15 consists of two main parts. These are the upper and lower receivers. The upper contains the bolt group and the barrel, and the lower contains the stock and the trigger. Legally speaking only the lower is the firearm. This is one reason ARs are so popular, its really easy to buy an upper, have it shipped to your door, slap it on your lower (with the push of two pins) and change the caliber, barrel length, or even gas operating system of the firearm. ARs are very versatile and very modular.

In the video above, the white part of the firearm is the lower. That is the part that is legally the gun. While I can buy an upper and have it shipped to my door, to buy a lower I'd have to go to a gun store, fill out an ATF form 4473, pass a background check and depending on the state, register the lower. Defense Distributed has figured out how to print this part using a 3D printer.

It has always been legal for a citizen to build their own firearm for their own use. You just could not sell it unless you were an FFL. While legal this practice has been limited to a select few with the necessary skills. But now we can download a simple file and print off a firearm. This is the death of gun control. Gun control depends on distribution control. If you cannot control distribution, then you cannot control firearms.

I will probably discuss this more later, but for now I just wanted to share this extremely exciting development!

I just want to be left alone

A quick note on gun control:

You know, I didn't ask for this. I didn't want to be as vocal about this stuff as I have been. I'm a quiet guy and I like to live a quiet life. I'd like to be left alone and don't like drawing attention to myself. But I don't seem to have a choice anymore. There are people who think I shouldn't enjoy the things I enjoy and that I shouldn't own the property I own. For whatever reason they believe they need to intervene in my life and deprive me of these things.

I don't understand this. I never hurt anyone. I've never bothered anyone. I keep to myself. Why do they have to stick their noses in my business? Just leave me alone! Let me be!

But that's the reality of the gun control "debate" today. You have one side that thinks mere things are evil and need to be removed from society. And the rest of use like our mere things and would like to keep them please and thank you. I don't think there's a single one of us who enjoys this discussion, but we're stuck with it.

Its like the worst kind of homeowner's association. Dictating to you what you can and cannot do with your property. Only you never joined the HOA, and they have no right to tell you what to do, but they are anyway. That's how I feel. And I'm tired of it and I really just want it to go away.

But the people who want to take away my rights and my property won't go away. So I can't be silent. That's where I stand.