Catholicism and Suffering

Catholicism and Suffering:

Howard Kainz on sin and suffering in Catholicism: As Jesus brought about atonement and salvation, so also individual Christians by suffering can atone for the sins of others.

For month's now I have been enduring my own suffering.  Suffering through a painful separation that sends me into fits of despair, anger and anguish.  Suffering at seeing my children hurt and confused by their mother's absence from our home.  Some days are easier than others.  Today has not been one of the easy days, though it is far from the worst.  While the difficult days make it hard to follow teachings like this, it is only being reminded of the value of my suffering, being reminded to thank God for the opportunity to serve Him so painfully that I will allow me to make it through this period of my life, on to the next, and ultimately join Him in Glory.

Consequence Free Sex? Debunking the Myth

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-myth-of-consequence-free-sex/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NCRegister%2FTheArchbolds+Pat+%26+Matthew+Archbold#When:2012-03-7

Logic and the Culture of Death

The Culture of Death has been front and center in the news this year.  From the Planned Parenthood v. Susan G. Komen spat to the HHS mandate battle, the battle against the anti-life movement in this country has risen to a new and frightful level.  With the heightened attention comes a lot more public debate and bloviating and in looking at that those fighting for the right to kill children, willfully disregarding the rights of others to free speech and free practice of religion, and pushing forward the Culture of Death agenda, I find that so many of their arguments are completely disjointed and separated from logic.  Let's take a look at a few of the recent arguments I've seen.

Blaming the Church for poorly educated Catholics

Recently I was involved in a discussion about contraception and other elements of the Catholic faith that are so poorly understood or followed by Catholics.  In the course of that discussion, one of the participants insisted the problem was entirely the Church and its failure to educate people in the faith.  As it was a diversion from our real point of discussion we sort of tabled that line of thought for a later day.  I didn't wholly agree with his attribution of blame, but it wasn't until later that I gave it a lot of thought.