The Hell You Say?

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People often ask about how a loving God can allow hell.  Since tonight is supposedly “Devil’s Night”  (though I much rather think of it as “The Baptized Stick a Finger in the Devil’s Eye Night”) I thought I’d share a little reflection on how I make sense of these two seemingly diametrically opposed concepts of a loving God and Eternal Punishment.

When the question of Hell comes up, I suggest to people that Hell is nothing more than the fire of God’s love licking at the hearts of those who can’t melt.

Huh?

Well, nothing exists without God or outside of God.   When we die, we will be utterly dependent upon God for our continued existence.  Being utterly dependent upon the one being you have spent your life hating, ignoring, and rejecting and simultaneously having nowhere to run, no way to hide, and no way to reject at least a minimum of his presence, represents, to my mind the fires of Hell: a constant torment of being surrounded by the flames of an all consuming love you cannot recognize, cannot accommodate to, and cannot escape.

St. Augustine was once asked what God does to the souls in  hell.  His reply?  “He loves them.”  The above represents my attempt to make sense of his reply.

Happy Halloween

All Hallow’s Eve. Be Not Afraid.

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It’s been a pleasure to see more Catholics discovering the truth about Halloween over the last few years.  Namely, that it isn’t a pagan holiday, but a Christian one–and primarily, a Catholic Christian one.  The always illuminating Mark Shea  points us to a great summary of why Christians don’t need to avoid Halloween like some satanic plague.

For my part, I think Halloween is a fascinating celebration.  While the popular traditions around the holiday aren’t Church-sanctioned per se, I think that they represent a powerful statement of popular piety and a belief in the power of infant baptism.  What do I mean?

Just this.  The truth is, the smallest baptized baby is more powerful than Satan because that child has Christ within him.  Recognizing this, Catholicism is the faith that inspires people to let their children run around in costumes that make fun of the devil!   How badass is that, really?  Let the pagans fear the devil (and our Protestant brothers and sisters who do not avail their children of the gift of baptism).  Christ has conquered! And because we know Christ has the victory, we have so little fear of Satan that we can even let our children taunt him without fear.

As far as I’m concerned, Halloween is just a celebration of one more reason it is awesome to be Catholic.

“Marriage Isn’t Easy, But It’s Beautiful,” Says Pope Francis.

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Regular listeners to More2Life Radio know that our regular marriage contributors, Frank and Julie LaBoda, serve on the Pontifical Council for the Family and are currently in Rome for a Council meeting.  In his address to the Council this past weekend, Pope Francis had some truly inspiring words for married couples.

The Catholic Church must help young people understand that marriage isn’t always easy, “but it is so beautiful,” Pope Francis said.

“There are problems in marriage: different points of view, jealousies, arguments, but tell young couples to never let the day end without making peace. The sacrament of matrimony is renewed in this act of peace,” the pope said Oct. 25 during a meeting with members of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

 “This path is not easy, but it is so beautiful,” the pope said. “It’s beautiful. Tell them that.”

For the Catholic Church, he said, a family isn’t simply a group of individuals, but it is a community where people learn to love one another, share with and make sacrifices for each other and “defend life, especially of those who are more fragile and weak.”

The family as a special community must “be recognized as such, especially today when so much emphasis is placed on the safeguarding of individual rights,” he said. “We must defend the rights of this community that is the family.”

Defending the family also means defending the basic fact that it is a community founded on the marriage of a man and a woman, he said.

“Spousal and familial love clearly reveal that the vocation of the human person is to love one other person forever and that the trials, sacrifices and crises in the life of the couple or the family are stages for growth in goodness, truth and beauty,” he said.

I have to say that this is exactly why Lisa and I wrote Just Married:  A Catholic Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the First 5 Years of Marriage.  Our oldest kids are in college and we host a lot of their friends for dinners and other things and we’ve been blessed to have so many conversations with them about their concerns about relationships and marriage.  There is so much fear out there and so little confidence among young people that they have what it takes to form healthy marriages that can last a lifetime.  Lisa and I are so glad that Pope Francis has offered these words of encouragement for married couples. We hope Just Married will help get the word out about the beauty of marriage and what it takes to make love last.

Is Your Child Being Cyber-Bullied? Would You Know? Study says, “Probably not.”

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New research looks at how many parents are unaware that their children are being victimized on the internet…

Researchers found that while 30 percent of youths admit to having been cyberbullied, only slightly higher than 10 percent of their parents reported that they knew.

About 15 percent of the youths in the study admitted to cyberbullying others; under 5 percent of those parents were aware.

The study also suggested that parents of younger teens — those who believe their child is smarter than others online, or who are not able to monitor their teen’s internet use — are more likely to be unaware that their child has been cyberbullied.

Parents can take direct steps to helping protect their children online by engaging in positive conversations about internet safety, moving the computer to a public place within the house, which works to varying degree depending on the child’s access to the mobile Internet.

The best step is to open a line of communication with children so parents can increase their awareness of their online behavior.

 

For more information on ways to protect and nurture your relationship with your kids, check out Parenting with Grace: The Catholic Parents’ Guide to Raising (almost) Perfect Kids.

 

 

Emily Litella Says, “There’s NO WAY Gay Marriage Will Lead to Polyamory/Polygamy!”

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So, just last May 2012, gay advocate, Jonathan Rauch argued on NPR that the thought that same-sex marriage could possibly lead to mainstream acceptance of polyamory/polygamy was ridiculous.

Rauch:  Same sex marriage leads away from polygamy, not for it. It’s odd to argue that because children need parents, you should be against polygamy. That’s one of the arguments polygamists make – that, you know, you have more moms and a dad. Isn’t that great? In fact, the problem with polygamy is exactly what’s good about same-sex marriage, which is that everyone should have the opportunity to marry.

We are not asking, gay marriage advocates, for the right to marry everybody or anybody, just to marry somebody. We’re asking to have that opportunity. The problem with polygamy, historically, and there’s tons of literature about this, Michel – polygamy is the oldest form of marriage and the most predominant form of marriage in human society – the problem with it is that it almost invariably means one man, multiple wives, and when one man takes two wives, some other man gets no wife.

So a lot of people lose the opportunity to marry and you get societies where you’ve got a lot of unmarried young males who are very unhappy, a lot of social disruption, a lot of violence. And there’s a whole academic literature on this. Gay marriage changes none of that. In fact, gay marriage leads us away from that to a society where everyone can marry.

This weekend, CNN pulled an Emily Litella and said, “Never mind.”

It’s not just a fling or a phase for them. It’s an identity. They want to show that polyamory can be a viable alternative to monogamy, even for middle-class, suburban families with children, jobs and house notes.

“We’re not trying to say that monogamy is bad,” said Billy Holder, a 36-year-old carpenter who works at a university in Atlanta. “We’re trying to promote the fact that everyone has a right to develop a relationship structure that works for them.”

For the Holder-Mullins triad, polyamory is three adults living in the same home about 20 miles south of Atlanta. They share bills, housework and childcare for their 9-year-old daughter. They work at the same place, sharing carpooling duties so someone can see their daughter off to school each day.  MORE

Mark Regnerus: New Canadian Study Says, “A Married Mom and Dad Really DO Matter.”

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Marriage and Family researcher, Mark Regnerus (University of Texas at Austin, senior fellow at the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture) points to a new Canadian study published in the journal, Review of the Economics of the Household (click for abstract) that shows the advantages to children raised by a married mother and father as compared to children raised in other family arrangements including same sex households.

…children of gay and lesbian couples are only about 65 percent as likely to have graduated from high school as the children of married, opposite-sex couples. And gender matters, too: girls are more apt to struggle than boys, with daughters of gay parents displaying dramatically low graduation rates.

Unlike US-based studies, this one evaluates a 20 percent sample of the Canadian census, where same-sex couples have had access to all taxation and government benefits since 1997 and to marriage since 2005.

…children of married opposite-sex families have a high graduation rate compared to the others; children of lesbian families have a very low graduation rate compared to the others; and the other four types [common law, gay, single mother, single father] are similar to each other and lie in between the married/lesbian extremes.

…the particular gender mix of a same-sex household has a dramatic difference in the association with child graduation. Consider the case of girls…. Regardless of the controls and whether or not girls are currently living in a gay or lesbian household, the odds of graduating from high school are considerably lower than any other household type. Indeed, girls living in gay households are only 15 percent as likely to graduate compared to girls from opposite sex married homes.

Go read Regnerus’ article here.