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ay appease their consciences by not voting at all or voting for a third party this simply moves the sin from complicity to passivity i will grant that if there is any remote realistic chance that a third party candidate might win then go ahead and campaign and contribute and do all you can to give him or her a chance but as it becomes perfectly clear prior to the election that this will not under any circumstance actually occur then you are doing the equivalent of standing by idly and doing nothing about evil occurring right in front of you sometimes it s not good enough to just not participate in evil sometimes you need to stop it period my other disclosure is that i am in the same diocese as father altman i know him casually he probably doesn t even remember me i spoke with him at a friend s house one day at a party i have been to mass with him when he was in his previous assignment but i was not a member of his parish i have gone to confession with him here is my insight about the man from those few occurrences one for someone who is as forthright and at times scathing as he can be towards the targets he feels deserves rebuke i have never experienced a more gentle compassionate and joyful confession one might think his fire and brimstone homilies indicates a no nonsense guy with little patience for imperfection nothing could be further from the truth in fact he loves hearing people confess because he believes in the power of the sacrament his issue like jesus is not about the average person struggling in a world of sin and falling for various traps stumbling and falling his rebukes are for those who are leading people into that sin especially those who should be doing just the opposite going to confession takes courage and he loves courage my other takeaway is that at the heart of everything he says it s because he wants people to go to heaven you can critique whether or not his approach works but it is his firm belief that milquetoast sermons and spineless priests and bishops who are afraid to call a sin a sin are making people feel good in the here and now at the potential expense of eternal salvation of souls as a parent i feel a desperation of sorts to make sure i am doing everything i can do to see my kids grow up and have not only temporal opportunities but to know god at times i may switch gears from gentleness to firmness i may even yell and punish but don t hold that against me father altman i believe feels a desperation of sorts for his spiritual children which is all of us countless priests talk about all the comfortable and nice things about faith and god which is fine as far as that goes but can lull people into a false sense of security you feel pretty darn good about yourself feel no need to challenge yourself to grow in faith tend to be less introspective and recognize your faults etc so father altman i think feels a strong need to counter this and get real with folks our modern politics politicians and unfortunately many bishops and clergy are failing us and they need to wake up and the flock needs to recognize that they are not being fed and they need to wake up and the only way to wake up is for a jarring bell or buzzer that is extremely uncomfortable to go off that s my view so even if you side with those who believe he is being too political too harsh too judgmental i can say with confidence that he fully understands the gravity of his own words and he is prepared to take them and lay them at the savior s feet and if jesus tells him he went too far he will humbly acknowledge it and accept his fate but don t question his heart his motives and his love for all he wants souls saved and right now too many are being lost we see it on our screens every single day if you want to complain that he dare say that hell exists and if you support infanticide then you re at risk well i might suggest you take a moment and think about who will have more to explain on judgment day and if you take it to heart you can thank him personally when you arrive share this email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x like loading filed under catholicism and tagged catholic catholic church catholic democrat catholicism christianity church father altman father james altman politics politics and religion leave a comment jun 11 diatribical idiot posted on june 11 2018 by the diatribe guy standard hey peeps as is obvious i don t spend time blogging much anymore i still enjoy commenting on stuff so i pretty much just share comments on twitter if interested just search for diatribical idiot toodles share this email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x like loading filed under catholicism leave a comment feb 28 we are not to worry but what does that mean posted on february 28 2017 by the diatribe guy standard god is in control god is my co pilot god is the navigator not my will but your will be done i was reflecting on the gospel reading from this last weekend matthew chapter 6 verses 24 34 i won t quote it all here but among the text are a couple key quotes can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life span why are you anxious about clothes can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life span why are you anxious about clothes do not worry about tomorrow tomorrow will take care of itself the bible is an amazing thing because it is all true and authoritative but at the same time it is quite easy to take things out of context and in isolation the bible has counterbalancing messages throughout one of the classic examples is the admonitions to feed the poor and then paul s statement that says that if a man doesn t work he doesn t deserve to eat it is easy to pick one side and dig your heels in and apply that to everything when in fact jesus is talking about the less fortunate poor who either can t work or would likely desire to earn a wage if offered whereas paul is focused on a community of able bodied people who all need to do their part after mass this last weekend a friend of mine who knows i scrutinize finances and try to make sound financial decisions and plan for the future and he is the same way smirked a bit when asking me how d you like today s gospel i could tell he was tweaking me a bit and we engaged in it he was conflating planning with worry i disagreed with him and i think by the end of our talk he was agreeing with me i think to read jesus words here as some instruction to forego any and all planning is not only incorrect but it s actually counter to what he s trying to get people to do here which is to not worry as in don t be anxious my friend as we talked had the personal revelation that his planning is his way of actually not being anxious i agree with that perhaps more important good planning will help your loved ones not have to worry as much if i didn t plan for the future and didn t have my affairs in order it would cause grave headaches for my loved ones if something happened to me stress anxiety and probably a bit of exasperation and anger would follow i always remember a personal example from our homeschool group my wife was getting frustrated because they would schedule events and then they wouldn t plan them the leader of the group at one point remarked about how they didn t need to because the holy spirit just made it all come together at the end and somehow some way the events turned out fine while maybe this was true in its literalness my wife s observation was that she and a couple other moms always did 90 of the work because they would have been utterly embarrassed had everyone showed up to nothing so these three moms ended up feeling like they had to continue taking on this burden while the others extolled the wonder of the holy spirit bringing it all together there was finally a push for some structure and reorganization in the group that led to some rifts unfortunately i guess my point is if you think you re living the gospel by not worrying but your lack of attention in the name of not worrying leads to the anxiety of others then you are not properly disposed to what you re being called to do in my opinion we christians have struggled with this balance forever we are in constant conflict with the opposing ideas of the necessity of what we do versus what that means about our trust in god one can actually take this all the way back to the heart of arguments about predestination here s how i see it you should plan for the future and plan for contingencies we should do what we feel we need to do in prudent and responsible ways this is not lacking trust in god in fact god is likely calling us to do some of these things but planning and taking action should ease your mind and not burden it if you are not able to do everything you would like to do but you are doing what you can then you need at that point to not worry and trust in god if you are moving past prudence and trying to outsmart god by being ready for everything imaginable under the sun by relying only on your own wisdom then you are trusting in yourself and not in god if you ve planned for x and the unexpected y happens you need to trust that god will help see you through or that this suffering has a greater purpose if you are obsessed with perfection you need to relax and trust in god this covers a lot of areas from finances to married life to health to raising kids and so on one should try to make good health choices that may mean you ve decided to eat in a certain way avoiding some foods not because they bother you physically but because you re trying to stay healthy but at the same time if you are traveling or visiting and the food choice is not to your general health standards and you become obsessed with the idea that eating that burger patty is going to take 2 years off your life then you are not in balance that s worry and anxiety and something of a lack of trust if you feel like a store of food and water is a good idea and you take some measures and you sleep well then that s a good thing if you wake up every morning wondering what you haven t done in the event that x y or z happens and you are never comfortable with what you ve set aside or stockpiled then you are out of balance my wife and i actually were talking on saturday about the responsibility of raising kids the discussion turned to her concerns about them becoming godly persons their salvation and everything we may not be doing to make that happen i was agreeing that we need to do everything we can but we re humans and we will fall short and at some point we need to simply ask god to fill in for our deficiencies and that he is not going to abandon them to the wolves just because we forgot to do this thing or that thing in the overall formation of their faith it was almost as if that gospel reading on sunday was for us so you see i may be a planner but i m really not a worrier my wife is i m not speaking out of turn here she d say the same thing in fact she may well say that i don t worry enough and i say she worries too much we re both probably right if you do absolutely nothing then that certainly can be trust in god but you should also assess whether or not it s just simple laziness and whether your lack of concern is affected others it could be argued at times that i am lazy finally i offer my preferred analogy of our participation in life with god it s fine to recognize that god is in control as long as you don t use it as an excuse to eschew your obligations i m not the biggest fan of that phrase not because i think it s false but i think it s a bit misapplied to our purpose god is ultimately responsible for everything we are he created us has granted us our very life has given us our abilities and has single handedly opened the doors of heaven to us he has all the power in the universe to control every aspect of our lives but that doesn t mean he exercises that power over all of our thoughts words and actions he doesn t it doesn t mean he moves us like pawns on a chess board maneuvering us through every situation while at the same time maneuvering those around us he may well intervene on occasion because he loves us but the very fact that some of us end up sick or injured or dead is self evidence that god allows things both in and out of our control to occur that bring with them certain undesirable outcomes i acknowledge that god is ultimately in control to the extent he desires it and that he has the power of full control to the extent he exercises it he is also a navigator but not necessarily the navigator at all times since we have a say in the direction we go the co pilot analogy is also lacking a bit since it sort of relegates god to a secondary back up position in our lives i know that co can mean partnership and equality but that s usually not how co pilots are referenced there is a pilot and a co pilot it may be a better analogy to say i am god s co pilot i prefer the navigator analogy but with a twist if you imagine a ship with two rudders one large rudder for large scale directional movements and one rudder that allows quick reactionary movements along the broader path i see god as the navigator of the big rudder and we are navigators along the path we re on i think god moves us directionally where we are to go i think we need to trust and not be anxious about that direction but that doesn t mean all is clear sailing in a straight line we may need to navigate some rough waters or around islands or icebergs and what not as we follow our path we can still crash on the path god sends us if we aren t doing what we are supposed to be doing we have responsibilities to uphold to ensure that we get where we are intended to go and even that smaller rudder can ultimately change our direction if we continually push it in opposition to the big rudder god makes it difficult for us to move off the direction he has chosen for us but not impossible so don t worry about planning share this email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x like loading filed under catholicism christianity faith god life opinion personal reflection religion theological thought and tagged anxiety catholic catholicism christian christianity faith free will god god is in control god is my co pilot gospel jesus jesus christ mass religion theology worry 1 comment feb 15 ninevah90 warning posted on february 15 2017 by the diatribe guy standard i made a comment on another blog i was a bit wary about i dared question whether or not it is wise for everyone to jump right in and do the ninevah90 program the response i received was actually not what i expected i expected to hear why everyone should be able to do it and that not...
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