Never Say Never, A Padre Pio Miracle by Susan Brinkmann

   

 Paul Walsh was 17 years old when the car he was driving hit a tree on Chester Pike in suburban Piladelphia on an icy December night in 1983. One doctor described his head injuries as the equivalent of dropping an egg on a cement sidewalk. Not only was his skull shattered, every bone in his face was broken and there was a tear in his brain. Doctors at Crozier Chester Medical Center said he was irreversibly brain damaged and would never regain consciousness.  But as the old saying goes, “never say never.”

     On Saturday, May 14, 2005, Paul Walsh received a bachelors degree in liberal arts from Neumann College In Aston, PA. “I’d like to teach special ed,” said the 38-year-old graduate, who is employed as a full-time health care associate with Elwyn, Inc., a residential day program for the mentally disadvantaged. “I’d like to continue working with mentally disadvantaged persons.”

     Paul’s recovery from massive head injuries in 1984 was “unexplained, on a purely medical and scientific basis” said one of the physicians who treated him, Michael Ryan, M.D. In a written statement, Dr. Ryan said: “It is my feeling that without the help of the supernatural influence, Paul would today be dead or continue to be in a comatose state.”

     Although he recalls little of his four-month ordeal following the accident, his mother, Betty Walsh, remembers every detail, from the moment she got the phone call on the night of the accident. “The nurse told me to come to the hospital right away,” said the mother of ten from Ridley Park, PA.  “It was hard to even recognize Paul. His face was so swollen, like a pumpkin, and totally wrapped in bandages. It didn’t look very good but he did recognize my voice because he moved when he heard me.”

After ten hours of surgery the following day, during which Paul lost four and half times the amount of blood in his body, he was transferred to Crozier-Chester Medical Center where his condition remained critical.

     At first, he seemed to be improving and was even talking a little, but there was a suspicious fluid dripping out of his nose. Everyone thought he had a cold and a month went by before doctors discovered the fluid wasn’t from nasal congestion - it was spinal fluid. A cat scan revealed a tear in Paul’s brain.

     “That’s when they realized he was worse off than they thought,” Betty said. 

     Doctors tried to repair the tear but the inside of Paul’s head was too shattered. They resorted to draining the fluid with spinal taps and then a catheter, but Paul’s condition continued to deteriorate. He began slipping in and out of consciousness.

     Another cat scan revealed that he had hydrocephalus and the ventricles of his brain were filling with fluid. Doctors prepared him for emergency surgery to put a shunt in his head to drain the fluid when they discovered yet another serious complication - he had also developed spinal meningitis. “At this point, there was no hope,” Betty said. “The ventricles just kept filling with fluid and it flattened the frontal lobe of his brain which one doctor told me was his whole personality.”

     Even though Paul was alive, in essence, he was gone.“They kept saying ‘you have to stop hoping. . . the way he is now is the way he’s going to be. He is permanently and irreversibly brain-damaged.’” But Betty was not about to give up on her son. Even though she had nine other children at home, she felt like the woman in the Bible who had ten coins but lost one and could not stop searching until she found it.

     “We just decided Paul needed a miracle,” Betty said. “In the end, if Paul didn’t get better, I would accept it, but in the meantime, I was really going to believe I could have a miracle and I would at least pray with faith.”

     A woman from St. Madeline’s in Ridley Park, gave her five prayer cards for people who were in the process of beatification and needed a miracle. Every day after Mass, she and her mother would go to the hospital and pray the rosary over Paul, then say the five prayers. “Whenever I came to the Padre Pio prayer, Paul blessed himself, even though he was totally unconscious,” Betty said.

     Several people witnessed the phenomena, including a few nurses. Betty decided to call a local group of Padre Pio devotees and report what was happening. They decided to send someone to the hospital with one of the gloves worn by Padre Pio over the bloody stigmata wounds in his hands. On Monday, March 12, Paul was blessed with the relic and within days, one of his many serious ailments had miraculously vanished.

     Betty called the group again and on April 6, 1984, the glove was once again brought to Paul and laid on his head.  “I knew immediately something happened because it was like an electric shock went through him,” Betty said. “He opened his eyes and looked around the room, very clear-eyed. Then he fell back into the coma again but I just knew something had happened.”

     She was right. The next day, when she returned to the hospital she was shocked to find her son sitting in a chair and watching television. He turned and said “Hi Mom.”

     The nurse rushed in and told Betty: “He’s been talking all day!”  When she called the neurosurgeon to tell him Paul Walsh was talking, the doctor said, “It’s not possible’ and hung up on her.”

     But it was true. “They gave Paul another cat scan and all the doctor kept saying was, ‘I don’t believe this. I don’t’ believe this.’ The frontal lobe of his brain wasn’t smashed anymore.”

Even more inexplicable was what happened days later, on Easter Sunday morning, when Paul and his roommate woke up to find a man standing at the foot of Paul’s bed. Described as “an old priest in a brown robe,” Paul thought it was Betty’s brother, Charley, who bears a remarkable resemblance to Padre Pio.

     “I remember being very certain that my Uncle Charley had been in to visit me,” Paul said. “I did see him. He was very happy and smiled at me. And then he left the room.”

     Betty knew it couldn’t have been Charley because he lives in Boston. She folded up a picture of Padre Pio, hiding the name, and showed it to Paul. “That’s who visited me,” he said. “Isn’t that Uncle Charley?”

     Weeks later, Paul Walsh walked out of Crozier Chester Medical Center, completely healed.

     If there was any doubt in their minds that Padre Pio interceded in Paul’s healing, those doubts were put to rest a year after the accident when the family received an unexpected phone call from Bill Rose, who lived on the property where Paul hit the tree. Rose claimed he heard the crash the night of the accident and ran outside to find Paul laying on the ground with his face in a gutter. He knew the person was dying and while someone called for an ambulance, he held Paul’s head up out of the gutter and prayed for his soul.

     “Within three to five minutes of your son’s accident,” he told Betty, “I dedicated him to Padre Pio.”

     To this day, Paul admits he still wonders “why me?” But that doesn’t stop him from telling his story whenever he can. “I’m not doing this for myself,” Paul said. “I want to give other people hope.”

http://www.pattimaguirearmstrong.com/2013/07/never-say-never-padre-pio-miracle-by.html

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This story written by best-selling author Susan Brinkmann was one of the collection of survivor stories in Amazing Grace for Survivors

For more inspiration check out:  Big Hearted: Inspiring Stories From Everyday Families , a collection of  22 stories, that share a glimpse inside the triumphs, struggles, joys, and sorrows of ordinary families with generous hearts. 

Dear God, I Don't Get It  blends drama, humor, and inspiration in a fictionalized story to address questions faced when prayers seem not to be  answered―most importantly, “Is God even listening?”  

True Religion Is An Interaction Between Heaven and Earth

It Is Not A Set Of

Meaningless Rituals and Fellowship!

One of the most disturbing things about the modern age is the fact that for many Christians religion has ceased to be religion. That is to say, it has ceased to be about a transaction between this world and the next and has denied the next world altogether.

Come Holy Spirit

Religion, if it is religion at all, is surely about man’s commerce with the supernatural realm. In this sense Paganism is a real religion. A priest sacrificing chickens or virgins to a monstrous deity in hope of supernatural protection and power is what I call religion. An animist, high on the fermented juice of the tropical tree, dancing around the campfire and cutting himself to satisfy the spirit of the river is a real religion. So is a Buddhist monk sitting in a snowdrift in his underpants humming his mantra and transcending the cold. For that matter, even the Mormon baptizing someone for the dead or a televangelist praying down the Holy Spirit fire to heal, mightily heal is practicing real religion. It may be a false or misguided religion, but at least it is religion.
All of this is in contrast to the milk and water that much of mainstream modern Christianity has become in most Western cultures. There is no religion there because the modernists no longer believe in the supernatural. Their religion is not a transaction with the other world for they do not believe any world but this one really exists, or if they do believe in the other world, they do not believe that is is possible to interact with it. Instead what was religion has been reduced to three things:

1. a meaningless ceremony;  2. a set of mild moral principles; and 3.  an inclination to make the world a better place. While these things may be laudable in their way, they are not essentially religious. They are the bland leftovers from what once was religion.

The ceremonies they practice are meaningless because they have denied their meaning. The modernist goes through all the ritual. He uses all the words, but he doesn’t believe the ritual matters, nor does he believe the meaning that the words carry for he has learned to ‘de-mytholigize’ and ‘re-interpret’ for a modern age. Subsequently the miracles of the gospel are explained away, the gospel of grace is turned into a gospel of good ideas and the sacrifice of the Mass is turned into the ‘fellowship meal of the people of God.’

The second part of this religion that is not a religion is the replacement of clear moral teaching with mild mannered morals. There is no longer a congruent and consistent set of beliefs which are divinely inspired, but there is one over-riding moral principle: “We must all be nice to one another.” There is not reason why this should be so, but we insist that it is so because without it we would have no religion at all. What they have done is replace religion with a set of table manners.

Finally, this religion which is no religion has eliminated dogma. That is to say, it has eliminated all but one dogma and that is,  “We can make a difference. Yes we can!” The followers of this false religion, having thrown out any idea of a transaction with the supernatural have replaced the idea of getting ready for the next world with the concept of making this world a happier place.This is simply the religion of good works.

What is paradoxical is that this ‘religion’ of meaningless ceremony, social courtesy and good works is practiced by the descendents of the Protestant reformers who inveighed against a religion that was no more than empty ceremonial, social standing and good works. They who were so opposed to a religion of works have turned their religion into nothing but good works. The only difference is, they don’t believe their good works will get them into heaven because they don’t believe there is such a place as heaven.

Unfortunately, this religion which is no religion, has influenced, invaded and infected much of modern Catholicism as well. Too many Catholics have also swallowed the idea that religion is essentially about being nice to one another and helping others. While this is certainly the fruit of true religion, it should not be confused with real religion itself.

Instead, full blooded Catholic religion engages in an interaction with the other world. Through the celebration of Word and Sacrament we believe that the once for all sacrifice of Christ on the cross is brought into the present moment and applied to the needs of human souls for their eternal salvation. This essentially religious act is the ladder between earth and sky. It is the linkage point between heaven and earth. God comes down as he always does, and transforms the human soul. Through this miracle in the heart of ordinary life the soul is opened to something called ‘grace’ which is God’s own power poured forth. This action of faith and love defeats the powers of darkness, brings Christ’s forgiveness and healing into the here and now and plants the seeds of hope that will transform the soul, transform the family, transform the church and transform and redeem the world.

This is real religion. Everything else that is great and good springs from this, and nothing–not even that which is great and good can ever replace it.

Father Dwight Longenecker

http://www.courageouspriest.com/ascension-heaven

Stage III colon cancer cured

Stage III colon cancer cured - survivor Chris Wark lives on to help others through his powerful testimony

Saturday, May 31, 2014 by: L.J. Devon, Staff Writer
Tags: Chris Wark, beating cancer, natural cures

(NaturalNews) If the American Cancer Society was interested in bringing cancer cure protocols to the people who struggle the most, then they would invest their time and money into interviewing and broadcasting important testimony from cancer survivors like Chris Wark.

Chris Wark is a stage III colon cancer survivor, alive and kicking in 2014, ten years after being diagnosed, bringing real healing information to the light. Through hisdown-to-earth testimony, Wark reaches people right where they are and interviews others who have survived similar experiences.

American Cancer Society misleads many, while real answers remain in the shadows

Sadly, the American Cancer Society (ACS) fails to hear from people like Chris Wark; instead, the fundraising conglomerate props up the cancer industry's one-size-fits-all chemical approach to cancer management. Investing in and projecting barbaric cut-poison-burn approaches to cancer, groups like the ACS neglect real, integrative healing approaches that rally around energy production at the cellular level.

Sounding well intentioned, the ACS is really just misleading many, while siphoning the generous donations of caring people through fundraising campaigns. The funds ultimately get funneled into more pharmaceutical research that focuses on chemical toxicology treatments rather than immune system empowerment.

Cancer healing rallies around the production of ATP energy at the cellular level

Approaching cancer realistically involves rallying the immune system through the production of ATP energy at the cellular level. This journey is not a silver bullet approach. Chris, along with others interviewed on his site, detail a holistic journey to healing that minimizes stress and maximizes energy. This approach challenges individuals to be strong in mind and spirit and be willing to follow precise protocols in their daily life. These protocols may mean the complete elimination of refined sugars and sodium from daily eating habits.

When cancer is diagnosed, fear and panic can set in, especially when medical professionals pressure patients into undergoing chemo treatments. Many patients toss and turn with the decision, ultimately giving in to the philosophy. A holistic lifestyle change that targets an underlying cause of acidosis, fungus, heavy metal toxicity and cellular edema, is the only real way toward immune system empowerment and ultimately cancer healing. By utilizing nutrients, oxygen and fruit and vegetable sugars at the cellular level, ATP energy can be produced in the mitochondria of cells.

By neutralizing excess hydrogen in the body with alkaline-forming foods, OH^-molecules can convert excess hydrogen to water, cleansing the cells and reducing edema, welcoming greater energy production.

Chris Wark's story brings hope to many

The body doesn't have to be irradiated, with hair falling out and weakness setting in. Cancer is not the end. The whole body does not have to be ravaged with chemicals in the fight against cancer.

When Chris was diagnosed at age 26, doctors told him that he was going to need nine to twelve months of chemotherapy following surgery.

For Chris, "the idea of poisoning my way back to health did not make sense."

While under pressure by medical professionals and family members, Chris and his wife prayed and looked for another way. That's when Chris received a book in the mail from a stranger in Alaska called God's way to Ultimate Health. The book was an answer to his prayers; Chris began reading and implementing new strategies toheal his body with whole foods.

Now, 10 years later, Chris speaks of his remarkable recovery and life change, which didn't require chemotherapy and radiation.

"Cancer is the body's brilliant attempt to save your life," said Wark.

Chris didn't waste any time and incorporated new habits. For example, he began to eat a giant salad every day that was full of cancer-fighting phytonutrients, which includes broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, kale, red cabbage, onions, garlic, turmeric, oregano, cayenne pepper and apple cider vinegar. In addition to eating changes, he got rid of chemicals in his everyday life.

"The other factor that is really hard to control is the toxins in our environment. There's 80,000 plus man-made chemicals in our environment, and it's tough to stay away from those," said Chris at a recent health event in Branson, MO. 

"That's why it is so important to feed your body raw nutrients, keeping your immune system strong, so that you can detoxify." He mentioned environmental pollutants like car exhaust, mercury and lead and other heavy metals.

"So the diet's important, cleaning up your household is very important, so we got rid of all the toxic chemicals in our house. The toxic hair care products, body care products, cleaning products, that's got to go."

Chris credits a lot of his recovery and energy production to his daily smoothie, which contains copious amounts of fruits, vegetables and superfoods like amalaki berry.

To learn more about Chris's testimony, and learn how cancer can be overcome naturally, visit ChrisBeatCancer.com.

His site is doing what the American cancer society should be doing -- sharing practical knowledge and testimony used by naturopaths, chiropractors and survivors of terminal cancer.
http://www.naturalnews.com/045385_Chris_Wark_beating_cancer_natural_cures.html

http://www.chrisbeatcancer.com
http://www.cancer.org
http://www.chrisbeatcancer.com
http://www.youtube.com
http://science.naturalnews.com
http://science.naturalnews.com

Our Moral Obligation to Vote

Catholic education played a vital role in the founding of our nation.

Among the signers of the Declaration of Independence was Charles Carroll, a Catholic landowner who had been educated in Catholic schools in Maryland and in France—even receiving a Catholic legal education in France. Charles Carroll was one of the earliest advocates for American independence. In the early 1770s, he began writing newspaper columns supporting independence. He funded the early tea-protests against British rule. And while many revolutionaries were content writing pamphlets and columns against the King, Charles Carroll was among the first to call American patriots to armed revolution.

Charles Carroll signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. After the war, he became a United States Senator, and he spent the remainder of his political career fighting for the abolition of American slavery.

The ideas about freedom and justice Charles Carroll encountered in Catholic schools led him to envision the American quest for democracy, and for liberty. When he saw injustice, and tyranny, and greed, it was his Catholic formation, and his Catholic conscience that impelled him to support fights for freedom—first the fight of the American patriots, and later, that of the American slaves.

Charles Carroll’s cousin John—the first Archbishop of Baltimore—was also an ardent supporter of the American Revolution. So were thousands of Catholic Americans who fought valiantly to support the American cause. Some of the Revolution’s most successful generals were Catholics. And Catholics disproportionately volunteered to serve in the Continental Army. In fact, the very first Mass celebrated in the city of Boston was a funeral Mass for a Continental soldier, a French volunteer killed during the Revolutionary War.

From the very beginning, Catholics have played a vital role in the success of the American experiment.  And our involvement in public and political life is still essential to the well-being of our nation.  After the Revolution, Senator Charles Carroll spoke to the importance of religious faith in public life.

“Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time;” he observed, “they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion…. are undermining… the best security for the duration of free governments.”

Charles Carroll—and all of the founding fathers—built a nation that reflects Christian principles of human dignity and personal freedom.  But our nation’s founders understood that unless people of faith participate in public life, our democracy could become a very dangerous tool.

Our nation depends, said Charles Carroll, on “the solid foundation of morals.”

Faith allows us to discern the common good.  To make good choices about the best policies for our communities.  To understand the importance of living in accord with who God made us to be—the importance of making law which respects the dignity of every human person, created in the image of God.

Without the influence of truth on public life, the rights of the unborn, the poor, and the marginalized can be discarded.  Without the participation of religious believers, the principles of justice and freedom are replaced with reckless pursuit of comfort and pleasure.  Without active protection of rights, religious liberty—and indeed, all liberty—stands perilously close to being lost entirely.

Our democracy can serve the common good. But only when believers, capable of discerning the common good, participate in public life.

This election year, we’ll consider candidates for state and national offices.  And, if we want our state and nation to serve the common good, we have a moral obligation to vote.  And when we do vote, we ought to consider the candidates and their position in light of the received teachings of our Church. In light of justice.  In light of truth.

Catholics helped to form our nation. And over the past two centuries, Catholics have bled and died to protect it. Their legacy is in our hands. To be faithful Catholics, we’re called to be faithful citizens.  May each of us work to build a just and free nation.  And may we bring the principles of our faith to the public square, and to the voting booth.
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/moral-obligation-vote

Editor’s note: This column first appeared May 9, 2014 on the website of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska. The image of Charles Carroll above was painted by Michael Laty ca. 1846.

Most Reverend James D. Conley, STL, is the bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska. Before his appointment by Pope Benedict XVI to the see of Lincoln in September 2012, he served as auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Denver under Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap. He earned his Master's of Divinity from Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., in 1985 and a licentiate in moral theology from the Accademia Alfonsiana, part of the Faculty of Theology at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome.

St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi

St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online

It would be easy to concentrate on the mystical experiences God gave this saint, rather than on her life. In fact, it would be difficult to do differently, so overwhelming were those gifts from God. The temptation for many modern readers (including the author) would be to see little to identify with in these graces and walk away without seeing more. The other temptation would be to become so fascinated with these stories that one would neglect to dig deeper and learn the real lessons of her life.

But Mary Magdalene de Pazzi is not a saint because she received ecstasies and graces from God. Many have received visions, ecstasies, and miracles without becoming holy. She is a saint because of her response to those gifts -- a lifelong struggle to show love and gratitude to the God who gave her those graces.

In fact Mary Magdalene saw her ecstasies as evidence of a great fault in her, not a reward for holiness. She told one fellow sister that God did not give this sister the same graces "because you don't need them in order to serve him." In her eyes, God gave these gifts to those who were too weak to become holy otherwise. That MaryMagdalene received these gifts proved, in her mind, how unworthy she was.

Born in Florence on April 2, 1566, Mary Magdalene (baptized Catherine) was taught mental prayer when she was nine years old at the request of her mother. Her introduction at this age to this form of prayer which involves half an hour of meditation did not seem to be unusual. And yet today we often believe children incapable of all but the simplest rote prayers.

At twelve years old she experienced her first ecstasy while looking at a sunset which left her trembling and speechless.

With this foundation in prayer and in mystical experience, it isn't surprising that she wanted to enter a contemplative monastery of the Carmelite Order. She chose the monastery of St. Mary's of the Angels because the nuns took daily Communion, unusual at the time.

In 1583 she had her second mystical experience when the other nuns saw her weeping before the crucifix as she said, "O Love, you are neither known nor loved."

Mary Magdalene's life is a contradiction of our instinctive thought that joy only comes from avoiding suffering. A month after being refused early religious profession, she was refused she fell deathly ill. Fearing for her life the convent had her professed from a stretcher at the altar. After that she experienced forty days of ecstasies that coexisted with her suffering. Joy from the graces God gave were mixed with agony as her illness grew worse. In one of her experiences Jesus took her heart and hid it in his own, telling her he "would not return it until it is wholly pure and filled with pure love." She didn't recover from her illness until told to ask for the intercession of Blessed Mary Bagnesi over three months later.

What her experiences and prayer had given her was a familiar, personal relationship with Jesus. Her conversations with Jesus often take on a teasing, bantering tone that shocks those who have a formal, fearful image of God. For example, at the end of her forty days of graces, Jesus offered her a crown of flowers or a crown of thorns. No matter how often she chose the crown of thorns, Jesus kept teasingly pushing the crown of flowers to her. When he accused her, "I called and you didn't care," she answered back, "You didn't call loudly enough" and told him to shout his love.

She learned to regret the insistence on the crown of thorns. We might think it is easy to be holy if God is talking to you every day but few of us could remain on the path with the five year trial that followed her first ecstasies. Before this trial, Jesus told her, "I will take away not the grace but the feeling of grace. Though I will seem to leave you I will be closer to you." This was easy for her to accept in the midst of ecstasy but, as she said later, she hadn't experienced it yet. At the age of nineteen she started five years of dryness and desolation in which she was repelled by prayer and tempted by everything. She referred to her heart as a pitch-dark room with only a feeble light shining that only made the darkness deeper. She was so depressed she was found twice close to suicide. All she could do to fight back was to hold onto prayer, penance, and serving others even when it appeared to do no good.

Her lifelong devotion to Pentecost can be easily understood because her trial ended in ecstasy in 1590. At this time she could have asked for any gifts but she wanted two in particular: to look on any neighbor as good and holy without judgment and to always have God's presence before her.

Far from enjoying the attention her mystical experiences brought her, she was embarrassed by it. For all her days, she wanted a hidden life and tried everything she could to achieve it. When God commanded her to go barefoot as part of her penance and she could not walk with shoes, she simply cut the soles out of her shoes so no one would see her as different from the other nuns. If she felt an ecstasy coming on, she would hurry to finish her work and go back to her room. She learned to see the notoriety as part of God's will. When teaching a novice to accept God's will, she told her, "I wanted a hidden life but, see, God wanted something quite different for me."

Some still might think it was easy for her to be holy with all the help from God. Yet when she was asked once why she was weeping before the cross, she answered that she had to force herself to do something right that she didn't want to do. It's true that when a sister criticized her for acting so different, she thanked her, "May God reward you! You have never spoken truer words!" but she told others it hurt her quite a bit to be nice to someone who insulted her.

Mary Magdalene was no pale, shrinking flower. Her wisdom and love led to her appointment to many important positions at the convent including mistress of novices. She did not hesitate to be blunt in guiding the women under her care when their spiritual life was at stake. When one of the novices asked permission to pretend to be impatient so the other novices would not respect her so much, Mary Magdalene's answer shook this novice out of this false humility: "What you want to pretend to be, you already are in the eyes of the novices. They don't respect you nearly as much as you like to think."

Mary Magdalene's life offers a great challenge to all those who think that the bestpenance comes from fasting and physical discomfort. Though she fasted and wore old clothes, she chose the most difficult penance of all by pretending to like the things she didn't like. Not only is this a penance most of us would shrink from but, by her acting like she enjoyed it, no one knew she was doing this great penance!

In 1604, headaches and paralyzation confined her to bed. Her nerves were so sensitive that she could not be touched without agonizing pain. Ever humble, she took the fact that her prayers were not granted as a sure sign that God's will was being done. For three years she suffered, before dying on May 25, 1607 at the age of forty-one.

http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=82

Prayer:

Saint Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, pray that we will make a commitment to seek the presence of God in prayer the way you did. Guide us to see the graces God gives us as gifts not rewards and to respond with gratitude and humility, not pride and selfishness. Amen

A Manly Voice on Matters Gay and Christian

A gay guy gets up in the morning, does something, and nobody writes about it. Now that would be news.

Will we ever see that day when we as a culture do not stare slack-jawed and unblinking—so as not to miss a single thing—at all things gay?

There’s an old joke about how many lesbians it takes to screw in a light bulb. Five. One to screw it in and four to write about it. That’s pretty much where we are now and there’s no relief in sight. A society of 300,000,000 force-fed the nanosecond by nanosecond trials, tribulations, triumphs and television kisses of a comparatively scant few.

We are running out of “first woman this” and “first woman that” but we’ve only just started with the “first gay this, that and the other.”So, there will be decades of reading about the “first trans this and that.”And since there are 58 genders and counting presumably we will have the first gender-questioning county supervisor” and the “first cisgender-female mayor in a city with a population of 1 million at or near a major body of water.” I know I can’t wait.

A writer at something called “Letters to Christopher” explores a variant of this enforced obsession and that is the insistent obsession of “gay Christians”on, well, themselves, how we see them and deal with them and speak to them and minister to them and everything about them.

In “My Cross Isn’t Greater Than Yours, or, Enough with the Whining” this anonymous blogger says, “Show me a man who doesn’t suffer, and I’ll show you a dead man. One of the more irksome aspects in the current conversation of LGBT issues and Christianity is the remarkable amount of dreary and droopy writing I hear from folks like me who grew up in the Church and realized they had an attraction to men.” He calls it the “we’re gay and Christian and you should listen to us about how to minister to us blogosphere.”

He quotes one such blogger:

“It would be beneficial for Christians and Christian traditions as a whole to consider [the] question: are we imposing sexual abstinence as an unfunded mandate with dire consequences for LGBT people who do not succeed? Especially as more people are coming to awareness of their sexual orientations and gender identities at a younger age (emphasis mine), it is irresponsible and cruel for churches to repeat ‘You can’t have sex!’and refuse to offer any additional support.”He says there are only two options, forced abstinence and a life of suffering, or sex and excommunication from Church, and family. He says “numerous young LGBT Christians find themselves crushed by the pressure from priests, pastors, parents and faith communities.”

“Letters from Christopher” hates “that sort of portrayal of what my life must have been like back when I was a teenager in the eighties, or how that must be what the life is today for a 15 year old. How fatalistic. How could that ever inspire a teenager to fight the good fight of chastity if they were to ever read that?”

He says, “Sure, it’s hard. But we are made of the stuff of God. We are made in the image of a God who willingly went to the Cross. That’s the building block of our humanity. Boys and girls with same sex attraction aren’t witless victims of the vagaries of fate if they find themselves attracted to the same sex—they have a choice, and God has promised that He will always provide his children the grace to live out the most difficult of demands.”

One word describes this column from this anonymous blogger—manly—something quite distinct from the “oh woe is me” school of “gay Christians.” He calls them back to the “buck up” school. Get on with it. Stop whining, he says.

There are plenty of folks who have complaints about feeling isolated in the Church. The typical Catholic Church is not exactly a warm and welcoming place. If a greeter ever appeared at a Catholic parish, he might get slugged. Many can barely manage the sign of peace. Father George Rutler talks about how the Church allows for anonymity, that you can walk in, walk around, check things out, look at the statues, and no one bothers you.

And don’t we all know lots of single people struggling with the fact they have not found a mate, are basically alone and probably will be for life? Twenty turns to thirty turns to forty and beyond and they have to come to the same conclusions those with same-sex attraction have to come to: no sexual expression, perhaps no affection.

The same-sex attracted say the Church doesn’t do enough for them, does not recognize them, does not help them. And, let’s face it the teaching is rather paltry. But it is hard to believe the Church will conclude anything other than what it has already concluded; that the attraction is disordered and the act is intrinsically disordered and, well, evil.

So, what are they to do?

I think of a woman I will not name. She spent years as a chastity educator. She is beautiful and funny and never married. She is full of life, and humor, family and friends. She is not moping her life away, disgruntled, and as far as I can tell not boring folks with her unmarried plight.

I am quite sure this is not the life she envisioned. She no doubt envisioned marriage and children, probably lots of them. But that’s not what she’s been dealt. She has gotten on with a life rich in service to others. She bears their burdens and does not force her burden on others. And she knows this. Chastity is not a consolation prize.

Letters to Christopher says, “I don’t really care very much to hear about what the celibate ‘gay’ Christians have to say to me, or to the Church about how the Church should minister to people like us. Sometimes the sheep can help point out their needs to the shepherds in their care, but rarely. Most writing on the subject of same sex attraction and Christianity today seems to be the sheep shouting to the shepherds: ‘you’re idiots when it comes to this flock. Oh, and we’re the ones who can point your shepherds crooks in the right direction.’ ”

He’d rather assume your cross is heavier than his and offer to help you shoulder it.

Only one word for this guy. Manly. May his tribe increase.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/a-manly-voice-on-matters-gay-and-christian

Editor’s note: The image above titled “Christ Carrying the Cross” was painted by Titian in 1565.

Tagged as: celibacy, homosexuality, Same-sex attraction, Single Catholic

Jackie Kennedy's struggles with faith

Letters to Irish priest reveal Jackie Kennedy's struggles with faith

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1401964.htm
LETTERS-KENNEDY May-13-2014 (450 words) xxxi

Letters to Irish priest reveal Jackie Kennedy's struggles with faith

By Michael Kelly
Catholic News Service

DUBLIN (CNS) -- Newly released letters between former U.S. first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and a Dublin-based priest reveal Kennedy's struggles to keep her faith after her husband's assassination.

The letters exchanged by Kennedy and Vincentian Father Joseph Leonard, who died in 1964, are set to be auctioned in Dublin in June. Excerpts were published in The Irish Times newspaper.

Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as U.S. president as former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, right, watches in this Nov. 22, 1963, file photo. (CNS/courtesy LBJ Library)

One letter, dated January 1964 -- just weeks after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated -- revealed how the tragedy left Kennedy struggling with her Catholic faith. "I am so bitter against God," she wrote, but added "only he and you and I know that."

She explained that she did not want to be bitter "or bring up my children in a bitter way" and was "trying to make my peace with God."

She wrote: "I think God must have taken Jack to show the world how lost we would be without him -- but that is a strange way of thinking to me."

Kennedy wrote in the same letter that "God will have a bit of explaining to do to me if I ever see him."

She asked Father Leonard to pray for her and said she would pray too in an effort to overcome her bitterness against God. "I have to think there is a God -- or I have no hope of finding Jack again," she wrote.

Father Leonard taught at All Hallows College, the Vincentian seminary in Dublin, and first met a young Jacqueline Lee Bouvier in 1950 when she visited Dublin. The two struck up an immediate friendship and corresponded regularly.

The letters reveal that Kennedy often turned to Father Leonard at times of darkness. In 1956, she wrote to the priest after the birth of a stillborn daughter, Arabella, and said: "Don't think I would ever be bitter at God." She observed that she could "see so many good things that come out of this -- how sadness shared brings married people closer together."

The letters reveal that Father Leonard rekindled Kennedy's interest in her Catholic faith. In early 1952, she wrote: "I terribly want to be a good Catholic now and I know it's all because of you. I suppose I realized in the back of my mind you wanted that -- you gave me the rosary as I left Ireland."

She was 22 and told the priest: "I suddenly realized this Christmas when my sister and I decided -- after not going to church for a year -- that we desperately wanted to change and get close to God again -- that it must have been your little prayers that worked -- all the way across the ocean."
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