Month: August 2013

Catholic Dating: Friends First

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Continuing our discussion concerning the Christian dating scene, today I would like to talk about “Friends First” dating. I would like to ruminate over some of the advantages of this approach, but I would also like to discuss some of the potential pitfalls, at least as I see them.

In Christian formation and catechesis, you often hear praise of romantic relationships which were first based on friendship, before the addition of a romantic component. This is what is known as “Friends First” dating.

FriendsThe approach certainly has much to commend itself. After all, it makes sense to get to know someone, that person’s character, personality, interests etc., prior to the big rush of hormones and emotions that come with dating. The “high” that comes from being in a relationship can leave one blind to the warning signs. It’s not hard to find examples of what happens when someone rushes headlong into dating and becomes so emotionally entangled with the other person that it becomes extremely difficult to deal with problems in the relationship, or even to recognize when problems exist.

I know plenty of people who have got together through physical attraction and initial chemistry, only to find out a month or two down the line that there isn’t really anything else on which to base the relationship. To their shock, they realize that the other person is not the person they thought at all! After all, it’s not too hard to “hide the crazy” for the first few months… 😉

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Happy Feast Day of St. Dominic!

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Q. What is similar about the Jesuit and Dominican Orders?
Well, they were both founded by Spaniards, St. Dominic for the Dominicans, and St. Ignatius of Loyola for the Jesuits. They were also both founded to combat heresy: the Dominicans to respond to the Albigensians, and the Jesuits to respond to the Protestants.

Q. What is different about the Jesuit and Dominican Orders?
Well, have you met any Albigensians lately?

Dolan-Laughing

The article Happy Feast Day of St. Dominic! first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net

TOT: How to pray with confidence!

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Fr. Jacob (Andrew) Bertrand, priest at Santa Sophia, recently gave a talk at Faith On Fire, an event in our San Diego diocese much like Theology On Tap, but specifically targeted at those in their late teens and early twenties.

Fr. Jacob was scheduled to speak at another Faith On Fire series at the end of last year, but was unfortunately sick on the night of his talk, meaning that I had to do my best Fr. Jacob impression and cover for him at the last minute. Fortunately, this time Fr. Jacob ate his Wheaties and took all his vitamins so he was in tiptop, fighting form for his talk on prayer.

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The lecture was entitled “How to pray with confidence”.  You can either listen to it using the embedded player or download it in MP3 format using the link below:

(Download Main Talk)

There was also a brief period of Q&A and that audio is available here:

(Download Q&A)

At the end of his talk Fr. Jacob gave a quiz, awarding prizes to those with the most correct answers. Here are the questions he asked:

1. What are the three stages of the spiritual life?
2. What are the four forms of prayer?
3. How many petitions are there in the Our Father?
4. The illuminative way is also known as spiritual adulthood. True or false?
5. Name one of the kinds of evil the Father will deliver us from.
6. God leads us into temptation to see if we will sin. True or false?
7. What is the one conditional petition in the Our Father?
8. The Our Father is considered the ______ of our desire.
9. St. Therese said that prayer is a ______ of the heart.
10. What is Fr. Jacob’s middle name?

If you would like to listen to more of Fr. Jacob, his homilies are available on Sound Cloud.

The article Fr: Jacob: How to pray with confidence! first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net

Catholic Dating: Not wanting to be “that guy”

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In recent posts I’ve been sharing my thoughts about the question often asked by Catholic females, “Why doesn’t that nice Catholic boy ask me out?”

In my last post I wrote about how the fear of rejection plays a significant part in the answer to this question. In addition, I suggested that a warped sense of Christian masculinity contributes to the problem and that all this is exacerbated by the close communal nature of faith groups.

Today I’d like to continue looking at this issue and examine briefly another of the reasons why Catholic guys tend not to ask out Catholic girls as often as they perhaps should. In today’s post I would propose that guys sometimes fail to do so because they don’t want to be that guy.

In each Catholic community I’ve belonged to, there has always been that guy. You know who I mean? I’m talking about the player. He’s the guy who’s always scanning the pews at the Young Adult Mass or Bible Study, keeping an eye out for any new arrivals. As soon as a new girl turns up, you can guarantee he’ll be the one jumping in to offer her a warm welcome to the parish…which’ll quite likely involve a dinner and a romantic drive by sunset beach…

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The “brothers” of Jesus

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A friend recently sent me a Facebook message asking about a passage from the Bible she had heard at Mass:

“Can you shed light on the “brothers” of Jesus in the gospel today for me? James, Joseph, Simon and Judas…” 

The passage referred to was from Matthew’s Gospel:

They were astonished [at Jesus] and said, “Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds? Is he not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother named Mary and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas? Are not his sisters all with us? …”  – Matthew 13:54-58

So what do we make of these guys, these “brothers” of Jesus?

Mary, Mary, quite contrary…

The Catholic Church teaches that Mary was not only a virgin at the time of Jesus’ birth, but also that she remained a virgin for the rest of her life. However, doesn’t the above passage mention the “brothers…[and]…sisters” of Jesus? Doesn’t that prove that Mary had other children after Christ?

As you can imagine this issue is often raised in Catholic-Protestant dialogue, since the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary found in Sacred Tradition seems to many Protestants to obviously contradict Sacred Scripture.

There’s a lot which could be said on this subject, but in this post I would like to offer a brief response and explain how Catholics understand the mention of Jesus’ “brothers”.

Mary

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