Do I have to go to Church? Nope. And yep.

Today I was working on a project while listening to Catholic Answers Live on their podcast.  They were asked if it was true that if a Catholic skipped Sunday Mass, would they go to Hell?  And Tim Staples the host, dutifully answered "yes,"  with a lenghty explanation.  

The trouble was, I think that explanation would be mostly OK if you were a Catholic already, but the broadcast was overheard by a good friend(and non-Catholic) who commented out loud, "... and THAT is why I will never be a Catholic."

Seems pretty unreasonable, to condemn someone to hell just for sleeping in on a cold Sunday morning, doesn't it?  Especially if you are a 'model Catholic' in every other way in living out the gospel.  One misdeed cancels everything out?  How capricious of God is that?  

The problem with asking the question 'Why' is that the answer is usually much much longer than anyone has patience for.  Especially for something that seems pretty unreasonable right from the get-go.  While I could probably drone on for a very long time about this topic, I thought that an analogy might work better.

Imagine that today is your Wedding Anniversary, and you have made plans to go out to dinner with your wife.  But instead of celebrating your anniversary, you choose to hang out with your friends.  So on the day of the celebration of the most important event in your life together, you choose to ignore your most important relationship and do something else.  You are probably pretty darn cognizant you will be sleeping on the couch that night.  Or with the fishes if there is any justice in the world. 

Now if you are sick, or your job forces you to be out of town -- you likely get a pass on that Anniversary dinner until another time -- just like with Mass.

That is sort-of what happens if you deliberately choose not to go to church.  Just like it doesn't much matter if you won't be in the right frame of mind at that anniversary dinner -- the choice of NOT going to Mass says to God -- "you aren't that important to me."  But it isn't God that condemns us to Hell.  It is our free choice.  When we do things like this we freely decide something is better than God.  If you died just then, God would respect your choice to have something other than Him.  Which begs the question, what is Hell?  I'll save that for another day.

But, as with your marriage, you do have a chance to fix this screw up.  If you are genuinely repentant, and try to not repeat such an act of selfishness again, you can make up with God through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Personally, I do not want a faith that only affirms me when I'm right.  I want a faith that tells me when I'm in the wrong too.

Tempus Fugit

As the title implies,  Time is a-waisting.  I made a New Year's resolution to post more often, and yet here we are, February 15th and no new posts yet this year.  I'm going to try and keep this more active by focusing on the areas where I see God at work in my life or in the lives of those around me as I continue to discern a vocation to the Permanent Diaconate.  

Incidentally, I found out that the new class will not start until as early as Spring of 2016.  This in particular I found a little hard to take, as I had my hopes built up that I might be able to apply this winter.  As in now.  Sigh.  God's time is not my time.

Around the parish, I am still in my role of Pastoral Council President, and I had been looking forward to rolling back my involvement in the Parish as the potential of involvement in the Diaconate proceeds.  I have recently concluded an introduction to the Neocatechumenal Way,  become involved in Deliverance Ministry, as well as helping out our First Annual Diocesan Men's Conference in a very limited way.  And since the Diaconate progaram has been pushed off for another year, a good friend invited me to a Weekend silent Retreat at the Opus Dei headquarters in New York.  I'm particularly looking forward to that.

I'll have updates on all this and more in the upcoming posts.  I want to try and keep it light so I stay motivated to carve out some of my very busy time to blog about my progress down this very bumpy road.