Learning that love is multiplied and not divided is crucial to what we do as fathers.

Finally, I am getting some time to blog here. Two weeks ago we welcomed our second child into the world – our first boy. He was born, is doing quite well, and we are overjoyed at the addition.

I haven’t gotten to post in a couple of weeks due to the craziness that is the run up to a baby. We are pretty laid back people when it comes to that sort of thing, but living in Alaska makes life… interesting, to say the least. I plan to update regularly again, so I wanted to make sure I got an update here for my weekly (as it is supposed to be) feature.

The biggest change in our life so far is that everything is multiplied. Diapers, food, time spent “managing” different situations, tiredness, sleeplessness, but most importantly Love. I wrote a post over at Ignitum Today about love multiplying. I think this is important to understand as a father. As men, we are often very competitive individuals, who sometimes have a hard time “understanding” our feelings. I worried that I was going to have favorites, or feel some sort of unfair feelings towards one child or the other. I have found out quickly, that this isnt the case. God is a loving God, and has made it possible that within our hearts, we can multiply the love we give… and receive.

As Catholic fathers, the concepts of self-sacrifice, dying to self, and the greatest of loves… are not foreign to us. They are the definition of who we are as Catholics. Living these virtues is not only heroic, but it is Christ-like. It is our calling as fathers. Having children shouldn’t be something that makes us, or anyone for that matter, think that we are some how dividing anything. More children does not divide time, money, resources, and most importantly it does not divide love.

Instead, it does the opposite. It multiplies. It makes everything better, and not just by one or two. It makes everything double, triple, quadruple, etc… Wrapped up into the mystery and beauty of life, is the opportunity for us, as fathers, to be something more. We can love more, give more, die to self more, and ultimately love God more.

In the end, isn’t that what this pursuit of life is all about? To love God, serve Him, and pass on that love by creating new life through love? I look forward to learning to multiply my life and my love. I look forward to being a fuller person, through an actualization of my vocation. This isn’t to say that more children makes you a better person, but when God grants life – it isn’t luck or coincidence. Our goal is not to have the most kids possible, but to discern for our families what God wants, and to use our will to get out of the way and let HIS will be done.

Also, it allows us to follow in the footsteps of St. Joseph. During this Advent season, we often hear of Mary’s Fiat. Important not to forget is that St. Joseph also said ‘yes.’ He stoically, and faithfully committed himself to God. His love multiplied, but most importantly he lived by the rule that we all must learn to live by, especially us fathers:

He must increase, we must decrease.

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Joe writes daily at: Defend Us In Battle. This featured column: Battle Ready, appears every Tuesday. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. He writes for IgnitumToday and does freelance work, if you are interested in his work please email him at his blog. 

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“Finer Things” are aspects of our leisure that define our ‘culture’ by being illustrative of our values and the virtues that are at their core.

This is a subject that I have talked about before, and seems to be gaining a little bit of traction in Catholic circles. The concept of “finer things” is teaching our children about more classical aspects of culture. Things like classical music, poetry, a fine art of some type, and etiquette. As cultures ebb and flow, the one constant is “modernization”. Every culture experiences it, because every culture moves forward. Ours is being defined by technology and sex. So, if we have any hope of imprinting some aspect of traditional culture on our children, we need to do it ourselves. For some of us that means that we have to experience and learn some of these things for ourselves. It becomes a learning process for us as well as our children. These “finer things” are important because as a culture, what we do with our “leisure time” and how what we do for hobbies and enjoyment not only define our culture, but they shape our values, and influence our virtue.

What are we talking about?

As I said, the types of things I am talking about are culture and leisure based. These are elements of our lives that add to how we see live in the abstract.  Poetry for example not only helps us read in a new way, but makes us think. You know the type of thiking I am talking about, alliteration, allegory, illustrative metaphors, etc… It forces us to analyze things based on our life, as well as trying to discover the authors intention. It is the “preparation of a meal” rather than going to “McDonald’s.” (See how that worked? Just talking about poetry is influencing the way I write and think .)

We also have to intentionally choose the types of things we partake in. Music is an area that there is a wide variety of choice, but we often succumb to the lowest common denominator. We listen to the radio and whatever someone else tells us is good. We do no exploration of what we actually like. If we don’t do these things, how will our children learn to do it? I like much of the music I do, because of the influence of my parents.

So try listening to something new. Listen to the entire album. Check out The Vitamin String Quartet  and listen to some of your favorite songs done in a classical format. This is especially important. We need to teach our children about forms of music that have shaped where we are today. In our world, if it isnt new it isnt good, but these things have not been created ex nihilo, they came from somewhere and that somewhere is important. Discover the roots, and show them to your children.

Why it is important

These ‘finer things’ are important because they are both reflective of our culture, but it also informs our tastes and values. As Catholics, we are virtue based moral beings. Our values, are supposed to be the fruits of our morality mixed with our cultural inclinations. We value time with our family, because we are supposed to be a culture of life. Do we watch movies, read books, and participate in cultural things that reflect that belief? If not, what does it say about that core belief? What does it do to shape and sharpen our virtue?

What about virtues like patience and diligence? Sewing and taxidermy are things that children would learn at a young age. Now, girls learn to shop for the best deal, and boys go hunting… well, they kill zombies on video games. Not that sewing and taxidermy make you a better person, or Catholic for that matter, but they do instruct us in virtue. They show us diligence and patience. They make things a process and not an event.

If we can teach some of these ‘finer things’ to our children, if we can have our family’s culture defined by things that are “finer” and more intentional, we will help to make our values more aligned with the virtues that instruct them. It isn’t about the superiority of one type of “thing” over another, it is that some things have at their core something intrinsically good. It is figuring out how to do this as a family, so that what we do from a leisure standpoint makes an impact not only on the “pleasure” portion of our brain, but also on our heart. What we do for “fun” should be symbolic of, and illustrative of, what we find appealing about life. Ultimately all these things should point back to God.

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Joe writes daily at: Defend Us In Battle. This featured column: Battle Ready, appears every Tuesday. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. He also writes a weekly piece for VirtuousPla.net every Thursday. 

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My family is in Michigan right now visiting family and friends. We originally flew in for a wedding, and stayed a bit to visit. While here, one of the things I have tried to do, is to expose my daughter to various “Sacred” things. While she isn’t quite two (2) yet, I think that it is important to let them experience things because we honestly don’t know how such experiential encounters affect them. So as a parent, I am taking it upon myself to let her encounter as many different aspects of our faith as she can. Considering where we live is rather limited in such things, I figure this is a perfect opportunity to take advantage of such things.

We have visited Churches, a Monastery, A Chapel, a Perpetual Adoration Chapel, a Grotto, a Cemetery, and attended Mass in the usus antiquior as well as in the Ordinary Form. In the course of 10 days we have done more than we could ever dream of doing in our Alaskan town. The point was to do such things in the ordinary course of our visit, and we seem to have accomplished that fairly well.

This isn’t to say that it is “Catholicly Better” here, but there are just more things to experience. Our faith is something to be “experienced” with all the senses. So often in our modern churches we remove those sensory details which have such a profound affect on us. Statues, altars, side altars and chapels, fonts, marble, paintings, wood carvings, and other visual “treats” that once captured our mind’s eye have now been taken away in many places and the spaces left void, so that we can focus on something else. But what is that something else… We need to place ourselves, but especially our children, in the midst of things that speak to their soul and to their heart. They are “fertile” ground, and the seeds we plant must be rooted in truth – in God.

Now you can say, “But your daughter isn’t even two, none of this really matters.” To that I would say false. Two examples of what happened while we were here. First, one morning my daughter awoke and was running around the room we are staying in and grabbed “Jesus of Nazareth” by Pope Benedict. I have not really showed her this book, or the like. She grabbed it and pointed to the picture on the cover and said, “Chezus”. I was floored. How did she know? It didn’t make sense… or did it. Then, we stopped at an adoration chapel, and the Monstrance is much smaller than she is used to back home, but she pointed and said the same. She get’s it. The experience has shaped her mind. Now granted, these might simply be conditional responses to certain images… but isn’t that how we learn. We name, we describe, and then we extrapolate.

We are planting seeds in our children, with everything we tell them, with all that they hear, touch, see, feel, and smell. They are experiential beings… so we must let them experience those things which will grow to be flowers and not weeds. We need to let them “Soak in the Sacred.” They need to experience things so that they can learn them in their hearts. It is never too young to plant a seed. Not only for the practical mental and cognitive effects, but also for the spiritual. We have no idea how those work, the mystery of it all is that we are supposed to do these things as Catholic parents. We help plant the seed, and God makes them grow. We have to do our part, so the He can do His.

In just a few short years our children will be grown enough to soak up all the world throws at them. What they will be inundated with will not be very good, and so we have to start the preparations now to form them in Christ, and to plant good seeds before the weeds work their way in.

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Joe writes daily at: Defend Us In Battle. This featured column: Battle Ready, appears every Tuesday. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

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One day, at daily Mass, my daughter was being quite… chatty. She is a loud kid, but fairly well behaved. We have tried many techniques to keep her quiet during Mass, but sometimes she gets loud. She is 20mos right now, and so things are a tad difficult for us. After this particular Mass, a lady came up to us and said, “Don’t worry about her making noise, she has more of a right to be here than anyone else.” Now, theologically speaking … well, I won’t dissect it too much. But her point was that God places a special importance on children, and rightfully so.

If you have ever read a post about “Kids at Mass” you know the com-boxes look like French Countryside circa 1915. Everyone has a different opinion on the matter, and in reality, I don’t know if their is a “right” answer. Yet, we are looking for ours. “Cry Rooms” put me off for some reason. I use them, occasionally, but I dont know if they “solve” anything as much as they deal with the symptoms. There is the option of “staying away” from Mass, the mother has a legitimate ability to care for Children, and while good in theory, doesn’t work well in practice.

While look for “solutions” I found a post by Diane at Te Deum laudamus!, about the subject. It is interesting for a lot of reasons. It is philosophical as well as practical. It is also based on observation and not necessarily just theory and success. I know theories and practices of child-care are different for everyone, and there aren’t fullproof solutions, but let me highlight some of her observations.

Her main premise is this:

If you give a baby attention in any way during Mass, barring something very serious needing your attention, the baby will demand more and not be able to sit still.

Her point is that our main focus, as well as our children’s, at Mass should be Christ. This is true in both a theological sense and a practical sense. In other words, we need to model what is important to them. This will quiet them practically, (over time) as well as quiet their soul theologically. Now I know this takes effort, and Diane admits as much. Trust me, my daughter isn’t going to quickly learn to quiet down… for we have tried this technique, although we haven’t done it with the intent, in the deeper sense, as it is presented.

Now, I know this doesn’t answer the question of whether “chatty” kids should be at Mass, or where at Mass, but if you are like me and think they should, how we treat them and act with them is important. I think it is important for their growth as well as our own. As Diane points out:

Many families at Assumption Grotto send a clear message to their children from a very young age: This is God’s time, not yours sweet one. It’s a gentle message, but one that works when used early.

This is God’s time. We have to try and make it so for our family, as well as others at Mass. This is sometimes hard, but we can take tough situations and turn them into good solutions, and beneficial lessons.

There are lots of factors in this, and each family is different. I wont pretend that personality doesnt come into play, because it does, but there is definite weight to the conditioning aspect. Another factor in all of this is the “Sacred Nature” of the Mass. Each parish is a little different, and I think the more solemn and “Sacred” the essence of the parish is, the easier this becomes.

What do you all think? What are your thoughts as Dads on this subject, what is your experience, and do you have any tips or suggestions? Do you think Diane is right, that “this is God’s time…” and by treating it as such we are teaching our children a two-fold lesson?

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Joe writes daily at: Defend Us In Battle. This featured column: Battle Ready, appears every Tuesday. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

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This post is a little “late” in terms of when I usually post and that is for a couple of reasons. The main reason is because I have been working on two pretty big blog events over at Defend Us In Battle. The second is because my family was given 5 chickens to “process” today, and having never done chickens before, it was a longer process than I thought it was going to be. So I have decided that for this weeks post I would do a round-up of various topics that have to do with spiritual warfare and preparation, in order to give you some tools to face this week’s battles:

A Blog Series on Spiritual Warfare, Angels, and the Church Militant

Over at my blog, Defend Us In Battle, I just started a nine day long blog event, that I am calling: “A Blog Novena to the Holy Angels.” It isn’t only a nine day prayer, but it is actually nine days of posts dedicated to Angels, Spiritual Warfare, and the Church Militant. It culminates on September 29th, the Feast of the Archangels with my second project. On the 29th, I will be announcing a blog project that I am going to be doing, in honor of my blog’s mission, a certain devotion I have, and in honor of my blog’s 2nd anniversary. It will include other blogs, bloggers, and you the readers. I hope you will swing by to check out the Blog Novena, and stop in for the special announcement on the 29th. It is so important to me, I even made a promotional video for it: Holy Angels Blog Novena Celebration Promotional Video

Bright Maidens Widsom

Trista, over at not a minx, a moron, or a parasite, and at VirtualPla.Net, posted a really reflection on feminine desirability vs. sexuality. This post, while it seems off-topic for a CatholicDads site, I think is extremely relevant for those of us with daughters. Our job is to raise daughters that think like Trista, and also to raise daughters with a sense of understanding of what it means to be a woman. Check our Trista’s thoughts, and in fact, keep tabs on all the Bright Maidens, they really are a powerful and delightful group of bloggers.

When is Morality Just a Toy?

Ok, I don’t mean to stay on the slightly tangental posts, but something really interesting popped up in my feed reader. A post over at Tech Crunch is talking about the morality of 3-d printers. If you don’t know what a 3-d printer is, know that it is a new printer that essentially creates 3-d models of programed in designs. They all work in various ways: plastic molding, injection, cutting, etc.. but the end product is a 3-d form of some inputed image. So far the experiments have been really cool and there is a whole tech culture/circle that is currently pushing the boundaries of what these printers can do. Well, I say boundaries, because the Tech Crunch article reports of someone producing a plastic “piece” of an assault rifle that when sold at market in metal form, requires a license or background check. It is essentially the “piece” of a certain type of gun that is the regulated part when sold separately to “make your own.” I think this discussion has implications beyond just weapons, and even 3-d printers, and goes to the crux of what morality is, and how it functions in our culture and world.

A Reflection on Posture and the Eucharist

Father Ray Blake has a post from a few days back about some comments the Pope made about the Eucharist and our physical posture towards it. I wont get into too many details, and will let you read for yourself. I think it is important to have an understanding of why we do what, and what we should be doing in the presence of the Eucharist.

I hope you don’t mind this rather odd post, but I did want to get some stuff to you that was on my mind. I think a lot of this is better than anything I could say anyways!

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Joe writes daily at: Defend Us In Battle. This featured column: Battle Ready, appears every Tuesday. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

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My dad always used to say that our actions reflected directly on them as parents. As a parent, I nowunderstand that a bit. My daughter is a bit too young to really do anything that makes me “look bad” but I am beginning to understand how the way our youth act is a reflection of their virtuous (or lack there of) upbringing. So I realize how important it is to raise virtuous children, not so that they dont “reflect badly” but so that they reflect the virtues of their parents and thereby the Catholic faith. What my dad was telling me, in his humorous way, wasn’t that he didn’t want to be embarrassed by my actions, but that he taught me and instilled in me a virtuous way of living and if I were to go against that, it would make it appear to others that we didn’t have these as a moral foundation.

When I came across a post on the Opinionated Catholic about an all boys Catholic school in Ohio chanting “We’ve Got Jesus!” after winning a game, I was curious to know the rest of the story. It appeared that this was one of those situations where kids act a certain way, and reflect the virtues and values of their upbringing.  So I went to the story he linked at the Houston Chronicle, but it seemed to leave out certain elements and missed the point of the story. So I went to the original story in in the Cincinnati Enquirer. 

Apparently what happened is that a Catholic Boys School was playing a public school rival and ended up beating them in a pretty close football game. From reading the various reports, this was a pretty heated rivalry between Colerain and St. Xavier’s, and the game ended pretty closely in favor of St. Xavier’s. The Enquirer said that there were reports that after the game, the St. Xavier fans were chanting: “We’ve got Jesus!” after the win. This infuriated the Colerain Coach, Tom Bolden, and he went and shouted at the student section of St. Xavier. This report made “headlines” and it appeared that the St. “X” boys were out of line. Good thing the media was there to keep them in check, they shouldn’t be flaunting their faith, or using it as a “banner” of winning and victory. So what would you say to your child if they were part of a crowd shouting “We’ve Got Jesus!” After a win?

But wait… there’s more. Apparently this isnt the WHOLE story. Would your reaction to your child’s actions change if you knew that the chant, after winning, of “We’ve got Jesus!” was in response to the Colerain chant of: “We’ve got Chicks (girls)!”?  Whole different story now… isn’t it? What about the coaches action? Or the action of the paper writing this story in the first place? Do you think if the ENTIRE story was known to the reporter, that they would have even bothered to print it? So what about all these actions towards a Catholic school who (I knot his from personal experience) faces all sorts of chants and actions against their faith, and they simply respond with a little bit of snarkiness and clever wit? 

Who is in the wrong here? Where does virtue lie? Personally I have no problem with St. Xavier’s actions. Are they a little sarcastic and snarky? Sure! Could they have taken the “High Road” and not responded with anything? Sure could… but these are teenage boys, and honestly the fact that they responded in this way, shows that they are embracing their cross and bearing it. That Cross is Christ, and they are happy to do so it seems. We know the world will HATE us because of Him, so we might as well get used to it. There is no doubt the “We’ve got Girls!” chant (After a loss) came as a Gay-Slur. There is no other reasonable explanation, the whole “All Boys Catholic schools are full of Gays” is as old as time itself, so to respond with something positive like “We’ve Got Jesus!” is probably the best way they could respond.

What about the Coach on the opposing side that yelled at them? Has the paper sought an apology from him once the whole story came out? Of course not. Or how about the paper? They issued an “Update” but still left the original story as is. Like I said… I have no problem with the St. Xavier chant. Just another example of the world attacking Catholics… and occaisionally we have to respond to those attacks. These boys did that in a clever way, that both accepted and defended their faith.

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Joe writes daily at: Defend Us In Battle. This featured column: Battle Ready, appears every Tuesday. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

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The topic of community is a hot one where I live, especially as it relates to the Catholic community amongst those of us that live in the small neighboring cities in our remote and vast state. Without getting into the tangles of the Catholic climate here, it suffices to say that there are factions, fractions, and problems where we live. I am not naive to think that this is somehow unique to only our area, but because the area is so small everything is magnified to an n-th degree. All that being said, there is still a desire and requirement that those of us committed to an orthodox understanding of the faith, to “build” a Catholic community for our families.

The idea of a Catholic community is essentially a group of people with similar virtues, beliefs, and understandings of the culture and world around them that all live and interact together in a fairly committed way. The center of this community is Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, and the virtues stem from the true and authentic teachings of the Catholic Church. It is Catholicism 101 meets “Living the Catholic Faith 201″. This doesn’t mean that it is an exclusive community to non-Catholics, but that the primary focus of cultural and social interaction occur within this group. It only makes sense. Doesn’t it?

Normally I wouldn’t hesitate or question my own theories, but a group of us in our area have found ourselves in that conundrum: second guessing our firmly rooted beliefs of Catholic Living because of the difficulty in achieving results. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t some defeatist group of people, or a group that only does something when the weather is right. This is a situation where decades have passed, attempts of all scales and kind have been made, and yet there is still a lack of any real “forward movement” that has been made toward the ultimate ends.

Many of us continue to pursue this goal for many obvious reasons, first and foremost though because our Faith is central to our lives, and if we really wish to live out an authentic Catholic life and have any hopes of heaven let alone canonization, we need one another to be “Our Brother’s Keeper” for our own sake. So we try, try, and try again to forge something out of some rather shoddy stock.

The reason it is so important to have a true Catholic community to interact within, isn’t to isolate ourselves from the world out of fear, but to create a community home much the way we create a “Home” out of our domestic houses in order to center and solidify our family virtues with society. The parallels between our Catholic community and our domestic home are many. Most significant in these similarities is that we aren’t constructing something to shelter and keep hidden that which we are, but to strengthen, grow, and solidify who we are so as to best prepare our family to go out into the greater world and culture and be an example of the Gospel through our actions and who and how we are as individuals.

The problem is that sometimes you aren’t always living in a location that is conducive to creating this type of community, at least not to the extent that you would like. Sometimes the hard decision is leaving somewhere that seems ‘GOOD’ in order to find that community, or the sense of it, in order for the betterment of your family. While talking with another Catholic Dad recently, we acknowledged that things like childhood Catholic friends, an immersion into the culture of Catholicism, “crushes”, and other experiences with similar minded friends is important. There is a loss of Catholic ‘Culture’ in this world and the only way to foster it, is to create communities where it can flourish and grow.

For those of us that aren’t currently in that situation, which I would count myself, our job is to then try and create this community. Parishes used to be in walking or commuting distance for families. If you moved somewhere new, you moved NEAR the Church so that you would be around the community of Catholics. Again, this isn’t about exclusionary thought, it is about including the faith into every-day-life. We must be intentional and mindful of how we pass the faith on to our children. Teaching the faith isn’t only about Catechisms and Canons, but it is about living the gospel in a specific and methodical way. It is about creating a culture of the Gospel through our actions.

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Joe writes daily at: Defend Us In Battle. This featured column: Battle Ready, appears every Tuesday. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

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This week I have decided to cross-post a video I recently made. It has gotten some positive responses so far, so I figured I should share it with the CDO community.

Hope you are inspired, filled with hope, and feel some joy while watching it.

Please feel free to share it, repost it, and use it for educational and evangelization purposes.

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Joe writes daily at: Defend Us In Battle. This featured column: Battle Ready, appears every Tuesday. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

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We are all familiar with battery “problems” I am sure of it. Whether we have encountered them with a cell phone, laptop, or some other device, we know how frustrating it can be to expect something to always work only to find that the battery is dying when we can least afford it to. I have a perfectly good laptop sitting, almost unused, just because the battery died. It is a most frustrating experience.

I don’t know how many people know this, but even the best Lithium Ion batteries need a sort of “conditioning” to last as long as possible. This usually means letting the battery run down completely, and then charging for a full 24 hours. Even with the best treatment, the battery will some day just stop holding a charge, the trick is to make it last as long as possible.

I got to thinking about batteries because I feel a little sluggish the past few days. I cant quite get into blogging. It has been raining here for the past few days, so I have had lots of inside time to read and write. I usually would find this beneficial, especially since Catholic Blogging is a spiritual outlet, but I just feel like I am a step or two behind where I want to be. Now I don’t write for a large audience  and that is probably good on days like today, where I just dont feel that I have it. It, as in that mode of operating where things just click and flow in the smoothest possible way. Sort of the way a pitcher who is throwing strike out after strike out, just seems to effortlessly pick the right pitches as well as locating them in the right spot. On days like that, a pitcher is un-hittable. As for me, I am the pitcher that is doing the same thing I am used to doing, but for some reason my fastballs are being crushed by the opposing batters.

··Here today…gone tomorrow…··

I was reading some of the blog posts over at a new website which is written by a slew of young Catholics. I was taken by their enthusiam, writting skill, and overall zeal for their faith. It seemed like they all had interesting and fresh topics and could pump out a 100 posts if you asked them to. I started to wonder what point my little corner of the blogosphere had – especially compared to others. That is when I realized I needed a little recharging, not just with my blogging, but overall in a spiritual sense.

In fact most Catholic men, especially the dads, operate like a battery. We do what we are supposed to do, when we are supposed to do it. We might take some time here or there to recharge, but we dont do that deep conditioning program that all batteries need to last longer. Men usually just go, go, go and work, work, work with little thought to the fact that they need to recharge – especially in the spiritual sense.

··A source of strength, not a weakness··

We must find ways to recharge. Whether that is Mass, Adoration, personal prayer, reading, or just reflective time doing some hobby, we need to make sure that we are not only making ourselves happy but preparing ourselves for the daily battle that our soul endures. This isnt just about feeling refreshed this is making sure that we are guarded against the toils of war we face, spiritually, as Catholic men entrusted with the care of not only ourselves, but others. So we need to be aware that over time we get worn down, that we cant do this alone, and that we need to take care of our spiritual condition. The best way we can do this is to seek God, and ask him to care and comfort us – to recharge us!

I suggest taking 10 minutes, nothing too extreme, and just sitting quietly with no distractions. Get a Bible, the Catechism, or a good book and read. Pray. Listen. Your heart and soul know what to do, and even better GOD will help recharge you. It isn’t so easy to do this sort of replenishment while we are on the constant move, so we need to make sure we take time and calm down and let the recharge work its magic. This might sound kind of “fluffy” to some guys, but this is exactly why I am writing about it – we need to acknowledge that recharging is not a sign of weakness, but a strength which acknowledges where we can improve and best ready ourselves for battle.

Lastly, you may think that what I am saying is obvious, but if it is so obvious why do these times in our life sneak up on us. Why do we wake up one day and feel blah and sluggish, only to realize that our spiritual zeal is gone. This is when we are most likely to give into temptation, to snap at someone, or to underperform. Sure tomorrow is another day, but is that how we want to live our lives? What about our family, our wife and our kids? Do you think they can simply chalk today up as a day that we just dont have it? No, they need us there for them 100% of the time, so we need to care for ourselves when we can to make sure we live up to that. Being a Catholic husband and father is a vocation, heck just being Catholic in whatever station you are in must be vocational. Therefore, we must treat it as such, which means preparing to do spiritual battle each and every day. If we dont, we will find ourselves in a dark place, when we least expect it, and that is when evil gets in.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to grab a few minutes of recharging…

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Joe writes daily at: Defend Us In Battle. This featured column: Battle Ready, appears every Tuesday. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

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Dominican’s – Prov. St. Joseph | Source

Young Catholics are embracing the faith, not of their parents or their grandparents, but that of their forefathers. This might be a little bit more of an illustrative point, than one of technical accuracy, but I think many can understand what I am getting at before I even begin to explain. There is a resurgence of tradition, and dare I say orthodoxy, amongst younger Catholics. And it isn’t just me that is saying this, in fact this message is being proclaimed not by the older generation of Catholics in hopes of maintaining a legacy, but instead it is being shouted by the youth themselves. Sometimes, they are even shouting it in defiance of what their parents and grandparents are trying to leave behind as their legacy.

Youth aren’t just rejecting the relativism of their parents to be different, they are actually trying to conform to something that transcends the ideals of rampant individualism. Take for example Anna Williams, an intern for USA Today, who wrote a piece piece today about how young Catholics (18-29yr olds) are rejecting that relativism of their parents and grandparents and embracing a more traditional and orthodox faith instead. She writes:

Sometime in the past century, a new creed emerged, saying everyone should make his own creed. This tolerant, open-minded ethos seemed to promise freedom: safe sex with many partners, drugs and alcohol galore and quick, no-fault divorce. So our Baby Boomer parents partied hard, yet in so many cases left us only the hangover: heartbreak, addiction and broken homes, plus rising rates of teenage depression and suicide.

The anything-goes religion of the late 20th century cannot prevent nor even explain these consequences. (After all, if I’m OK, you’re OK, and we can do whatever we want, why are so many people unhappy?) When every member of a society does whatever makes him feel good, the inevitable results are not personal fulfillment and communal harmony but selfishness and social breakdown.

With these realizations in mind, many millennials reject the assumptions of 1960s liberationists in favor of something more substantial: the creeds, practices and moral codes that defined religious life for centuries. Unlike reductionistic scientism or vague romanticism, traditional religions propose specific, compelling explanations for the world in front of us — broken, fraught with suffering, enslaved to sin, but nonetheless revealing glimpses of beauty and greatness.

More intellectually coherent than relativism, orthodoxy is also more demanding. It makes us place others above ourselves, the truth above what we’d like to be true, the fight for virtue above the pursuit of pleasure. In a word, it preaches sacrifice.

If this is the future of the Catholic faith, we are all in very good hands. This isn’t some isolated strain of thought either, in fact it is actually backed by research and studies (which are very close to the heart of boomers – what the masses think). It seems that the young aren’t just practicing their faith in a more orthodox fashion, but also choosing to live it in a more orthodox one as well. Where did I find the report on this research? Not some bastion of Catholic thought, but the New York Times; “New Nuns and Priests Opting for Tradition“:

Sisters of Life |  Source

“We’ve heard anecdotally that the youngest people coming to religious life are distinctive, and they really are,” said Sister Mary Bendyna, executive director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. “They’re more attracted to a traditional style of religious life, where there is community living, common prayer, having Mass together, praying the Liturgy of the Hours together. They are much more likely to say fidelity to the church is important to them. And they really are looking for communities where members wear habits.” [emphasis mine]

The problem then isn’t our future. The problem is who is currently trying to lead us, and trying to preserve a legacy in order to validate their efforts. Now I am not talking about the Pope or the Bishops who attempt to lead in a manner which sees the faith as timeless. Instead I am speaking of those that seek to make a statement about the changes they made and the turn towards modernity that happened a few decades ago; those that are clinging to that which the youth are rejecting.

This split isn’t just in some theoretical and amorphous cloud either. It is playing out in very tangible and stark ways. We in the pews see it, the blogs are writing about it, and the orders, themselves, are feeling the effects. The Son Rise Morning Show recently blogged about the contrast between those orders that cling to their own ideals and those that are seeking something beyond themselves.:

The CMSWR web site, for instance, is full of news about World Youth Day and pictures of smiling young women in habits. LCWR’s web site is all about legislation, social justice, and photos of smiling older women in street clothes. The young women have voted with their feet and their lives; it’s obvious where they want to be. Yes, LCWR represents 90 percent of sisters and nuns, but size isn’t everything. Ten years from now, which organization will still be going strong? And what is the LCWR going to do?

With some estimates putting the median age of LCWR’s sisters at 75, this situation might be figuring itself out. But what about our parishes where those people with this same mentality are currently Religious Ed coordinators, instructors, and where the pastors and parish administrators share the mentality that the youth are explicitly rejecting? Should they get to rule through a theory of “might makes right?” Should their values, which are seemingly a flash in the pan, get to endure beyond their tenure simply because they ascended into power? I argue that we should not let these ideals, which have no buy in from our younger generation, have any ascendency into “power” or let them carve out any longevity.

Cruise the blogs, Twitter, and Facebook and see what the kids are saying. These are the new editorial pages, these are the new parish bulletins, the new Catholic papers, and what you will find there is an allegiance to the Pope, a fidelity to the Church, and a harkening back to the virtues and practices rooted in organic tradition. Traditional Liturgy, Chant, Polyphony, habits, sacrifice, the Catechism, and a dying of self for the faith. Of course the boomers who currently control the AmChurch wont be found reading things like Facebook, Twitter, and the blogs, not just because most of them don’t know how to use them but because they don’t like what is found there.

This isn’t just about making sure certain orders have a lasting existence, but it is instead ultimately about the glorifying of God and the proclamation of His Kingdom. If we really care about our youth, we will listen to them. If we really care about our Church, we will listen to the youth. If we really care about God, we will let the little children come to him, and not stand in their way. Let the dead bury their dead, and let the youth go and proclaim the Kingdom of God.

Joe writes daily at: Defend Us In Battle. This featured column: Battle Ready, appears every Tuesday. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+

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