New Theme
I have decided to update the theme on this website. I was getting a little tired with the previous colors. This new theme will also allow me to put up a picture to fit the time of year. For example, we are currently in Lent, so I found a picture of a nail (royalties are paid for the image!) and cropped it to fit with the top and bottom of the site.
To any extent, I’m going to leave it currently and see how you all like it. Let me know!
In addition, if you notice that you can no longer post anonymous comments, it’s because my site has been getting slammed with spam comments. I have temporarily disabled anonymous comments. Sorry to have to do that.
Youth Group Discussion
One topic that came up this evening at youth group was homosexuality. While I do not condone some of the comments made during discussion, I felt I needed to put together a post on the subject.
First off, as with all sins, we are called to hate the sin but love the sinner. For example, just because someone is an alcoholic doesn’t mean that they get drunk every day. It is fully possible through different recovery programs that someone could acknowledge themself as an alcoholic but stay far away from alcohol. In other words, they have distanced themselves from the act.
Keep in mind that we are talking about two different things here - the person and the act. There is the act of getting drunk and there is the person who has an urge to drink. There are alcoholics out there who have succesfully stayed away from drinking for a number of years and there are people out there who aren’t alcoholics but are more than fully capable of getting drunk. So, an alcoholic is not necessarily a drunk and a drunk is not necessarily an alcoholic.
The same goes for people who are homosexual. There are people who are attracted to the same sex, and there are people who actually engage in those acts. These are two separate distinctions and it’s important for people to understand that fact. Just because someone is homosexual doesn’t mean that they necessarily give into their urges. Once again, we must hate the sin but look on the sinner with compassion and charity.
The Catholic Church even mentions this. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2357-2359, we see the statement that homosexuals "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided." This means that we are obligated to treat people with compassion and respect. In fact, I think that we can even extend those two sentences out to the entire world. Any unjust discrimination to anyone should be avoided.
People who are homosexual are called to live a chaste lifestyle. Chastity is not a bad thing, in fact, you are probably practicing chastity right now. Everyone is called to be chaste during their life - singles, religious, and yes, even married couples. Most of marriage is an act of chastity.
So once again, we are left with the idea of hate the sin but love the sinner. Is this not a philosophy that we take with other sins in our life? With regard to alcoholics, no one should say "I hate all alcoholics, it’s a choice and anyone who is an alcoholic is wrong." Rather, we should look on people with love, compassion and respect - this is the Christian ideal, this is the Christian response that we should have to those people in our lives.
For more information about this topic, I refer you to the following websites:
Pure Love Club - A question and answer format on homosexuality
Catholic Answers - A more in-depth treatment of the topic with references to the Catechism and scripture
Reading
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. Over the weekend, I finally got some time to sit down and finish the Rule of Saint Benedict. It’s pretty impressive and a lot of what he wrote spoke to my heart. Last night, I started reading Christ the Ideal of the Monk by Dom Columba Marmion. My spiritual director mentioned that I would like it and he was right (as usual. Now, if I could only heed his advice about cutting things out of my schedule!)
I can’t remember the exact passage, since I’m at work posting this, but in the first chapter, Marmion talks about goals. What are your goals during the day, for your life, etc? He specifically looks at people in a big city. Each person is busy rushing themselves around, trying to accomplish something, perhaps running to lunch and back, rushing to the next sales call, rushing to catch the subway. He then mentions that each of these people have little to no interaction with each other and hardly notice the world and what is going on in it. He then mentions one other thing that is going on during this chaos - that of service. Perhaps in this mad dash to the next thing, people don’t realize the Sister of Charity taking care of a poor man on the street, or the priest who has the Eucharist tucked away in his front coat pocket, on his way to serve the weak who couldn’t make it to mass that day.
When I read this, I thought first about films. Think of those scenes in the movies where one person is moving at normal speed but everyone else around them are a blur. Then, I thought about how in my own life, there have been times where I have been in a hurry and someone needed to talk with me or attempted to share something serious with me and I hastened on by. One thing that I have been working on is to become more present in conversations. I don’t like to be the person who pretends to listen but doesn’t hear anything. I know it’s very frustrating to talk to someone like that.
In other news, I had a good weekend and a nice spring break. I spent most of it hanging out with junior high kids. We even went bowling one day and I proved to the whole world that I can’t complete a spare to save my life. It was very humbling. This weekend, I was invited to a Blue October concert, which was very good. I’m definitely going to buy a cd or two of theirs. Funny, they aren’t listed on iTunes. Go figure. Now, it’s back to work for me. I should probably be doing something productive rather than sitting here, posting stuff on my site.
Have a great Tuesday!
Google Pages
I just received a Google Pages account. Interested in seeing my handiwork? Check it out here.
More Juggling
Well, it seems that I can’t get enough of juggling lately. Here’s a video I found that parodies the Chris Bliss video below, but the person uses five balls for juggling rather than three. It’s pretty amazing.