I’ve recently been involved in a number of conversations about Christianity and swearing.
This week, a Catholic friend whom I very much respect suggested the possibility that it might be okay to “swear intentionally in the proper context”. I took some time to write a substantial reply on social media, so I thought I’d share it here as well, as I think it sums up my main thoughts on the subject…
Objections To Swearing
1. Biblical Baseline
The first objection I see to swearing is the clear motif from Scripture concerning Christian speech. To begin with, we are told that the words of our mouth are important:
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
So, a while back, my fiancée (back in the days when she was just my girlfriend) said she wanted me to record the rosary onto MP3 for her.
Well, our anniversary is coming up this week, so I thought now would be a good time to finally do it. So today I’m going to do four posts, one for each set of mysteries. Here’s the RSS feed:
Last week I received an email from Beverly from StandupForCaregivers.org asking if I would share some information about helping the elderly, particularly during this time. Here’s what she sent me…
Want to Help the Elderly? How the Church Can Learn About Their Daily Challenges and Take Action
The church has a long history of helping the elderly. As times change, however, we must stay on our toes and always be willing to learn new ways to help the seniors in our communities. This is especially true for the elderly who do not have relatives or friends nearby to help them navigate the challenges of daily life. The first step we should take is to learn about some of the difficulties they face. Then, we need to take that knowledge and actively engage in the caregiving village.
If you’re part of a local church, these resources might prove useful to you as you set out to help improve the lives of seniors in your area:
Common Challenges
Many seniors face a variety of physical, mental, and emotional challenges on a daily basis.
Whether or not a senior is a Christian, you can offer to connect them with a local church community or another type of organization that holds social events and meetings.
One practical way to help seniors in your community is to ask them if there is anything you can do to help make their home safer, more comfortable, and more accessible.
Even the smallest of gestures can mean the world to a senior who needs assistance. Continue to learn about the challenges that many elderly people encounter each day, and use your knowledge to help the seniors in your community who need it most.
Following the retirement of one the priests in our Eparchy (the Eastern name for a Diocese), our Bishop reassigned many of his priests. As a result of this shuffle, our Pastor was sent to Denver and our parish given to a new priest.
This kind of situation occurs periodically in the life of a Catholic parish. A few years after I started attending my Byzantine church, the Bishop assigned our Pastor to the role of Rector at our Seminary in Pittsburg. Fr. Robert had been at the parish for many years. He had been our spiritual father for a long time and had married and baptized many in our parish. As a result, his transfer was quite a wrench for us.
Although these periods of transition can be rather painful, on the whole, I think this is good for the spiritual health of the parish. By having our priests changed every few years, we are taught a certain level of detachment and are given some inoculation against a cult of personality which may form around a particularly charismatic minister. It also offers us periodic opportunities for parish renewal. Most of all though, it reminds us of what is transient and what is unchangeable. The man standing at the altar may differ, but the Eucharist remains the same.
For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord of hosts
I’ve had a three different conversations recently related to voting for pro-choice politicians. Each time I’ve had these conversations, I’ve been told that pro-lifers shouldn’t let a politician’s opinion about abortion be a deciding factor as to whether or not one can vote for that candidate.
The argument is made that a candidate may indeed be in favour of “reproductive rights” (a delightful euphemism for something quite so barbaric), but I’m told that this is okay if that candidate is in favour of some social programme. I’m told that this is what it really means to be pro-life…
A game you can’t win
The real advantage of this position for the pro-choice advocate is that he can play this game ad infinitum. He will always be able to come up with another social cause which he’ll say demands our attention before we can get around to looking at abortion directly.
Even in some utopian future where there are state-funded programmes for every possible social ill, the pro-choice advocate can still postpone protecting the unborn by demanding first that more money be devoted to these government programmes.
The unanswered question
Each time I’ve had this conversation, I’ve asked a question:
Would you mind engaging in a thought experiment? Let’s say that there was a party or candidate which was onboard with all of your desired social programmes…but they also campaigned for the right for parents to have their child killed up until their first birthday. Would you vote for that candidate or party?
Question posed to pro-choice advocates
I’ve used different versions of this question, sometimes talking about a party which supports slavery, rather than infanticide. Either way, I have yet to hear an answer to this question.
Questions like this put the pro-choice advocate in a bind. After all, very few people could countenance supporting a politician who supports infanticide or slavery. This intuition points to an important truth, that one cannot vote for a party which endorses something obviously intrinsic evil.
I explain that I cannot vote for a candidate who endorses the killing of the unborn for the same reason that my interlocutor would refuse to vote for someone who endorses slavery, regardless of the candidate’s economic issues.
This past week was the March For Life in Washington DC, so I thought I’d do a post on the subject of abortion…
A couple of weeks ago, I published a brief post a blog post related to Martin Luther King. Earlier in the week, I had been speaking to someone on Facebook about abortion. The pro-choice advocate had been arguing against any legal restrictions against abortion. He said that ethical behaviour isn’t brought about by the law, it only cultivates fear of being caught. I responded with a quotation from Dr. King, to show why laws which protect people are necessary:
The other day I was looking at the management panel for the Restless Pilgrim Facebook Page and noticed that someone had left a response:
