Great interview questions from Keri Lenartowick; highly long-winded answers from yours truly. One reasonably sensible part: Kerri asks about teaching millennials about NFP. My answer:
I think that people of that age are in the habit of questioning reality. When something is presented as true, they just automatically question whether it’s ‘really really true,’ or just ‘fake-true,’ so I think it’s very important to be very clear with people that this is not a trick – this is not some kind of illusion that we are talking about.
… It’s one thing to be a sucker if you’re sitting in a movie theater and you got tricked into thinking that that guy’s guts are getting pulled out or King Kong really is on the Empire State building or whatever, and then you realize, ‘oh that’s not really true, ha ha I got fooled,’ but if you’re a few years into your marriage and you realize, wow I got fooled – that is a whole other thing, and that is a really serious disturbance, especially when it’s being done in the name of religion. When people are presenting something as God’s teaching and it turns out not to be true, that’s incredibly damaging.
I would rather err on the side of scaring people a little bit, as long as you also present the beauty of it. I think that’s extremely important to present it as something that is hard but beautiful – and I think people are going to be up to that challenge, but people are not – and rightly so – going to be up to the challenge of being lied to and getting over it, because that’s too painful and humiliating and damaging.
I also make a comparison between “prosperity Gospel” Christians and NFP cheerleaders who promise sunshine and lollipops as your just and guaranteed reward for foregoing contraception — but I fail to come up with a snappy name. Anybody?
It’s been released from the nebulous realm of “pre-order,” and now you can just plain order it:
from Audible.com, the full text of the Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning, read by me. The perfect gift for a really weird commute!
Advent and Christmas aren’t meant to be only for children. Here are some ways adults can participate in the season of preparation.
Or maybe not. Who cares? Oh man, we love Godzilla. Anyway, it has Bryan Cranston, who, I don’t know if everyone’s saying this or not, but he plays pretty much the same character on Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad. Right? Good for him for cashing in.
The only thing that could make me more excited right now is if they used that magnificent Godzilla theme music:
Take note: This is what I want played at my funeral.
This was tons of fun to do, so I’m glad the’re rebroadcasting it. If you hear “Catholic radio” and think “borrrrrr-ing” then you need to listen to the live hour on WNGL. These guys are hilarious. There was shouting. Shouting about NFP.
The show I was on will air tomorrow, Tuesday, Dec. 10 from 7-8 a.m. CST and again at 9-10 p.m. CST. You can listen online here.
Most of my Facebook friends are Catholic, so I often see quotes about spiritual matters on my feed, often with the comment, “Needed to hear this today!” And then the quote is something like, “We must strive to love each other always!” Okay, sure, fine, I guess I needed to hear that. Or sometimes it’s like, “You say to me, ‘I wasn’t feeling up to putting on eyeliner today!’ and I say to you, ‘You weren’t feeling up to glorifying God in all things. Shape up, loser.’”
BUT, sometimes I hear something that is genuinely helpful and seems to apply to my actual life, with a combination of compassion and realism, and with encouragement to do better because God knows me and loves me. And every single time, it turns out to be a quote by Francis De Sales. So I finally broke down and bought one of his books,Introduction to the Devout Life. It just came this morning. I am seriously looking forward to this book. There’s still plenty of Advent left!
How about you? Reading anything good for Advent? What’s the most helpful spiritual reading you’ve done?
File under Things Jesus Would Be Okay With:
[E]very year, a colony of feral felines seizes control of a nativity scene organized by two Brooklyn sisters. As soon as the creche comes out, with its hay bale and warm lights, the cats take up residence.
PIC nativity scene with cats
more photos here
Almost a thousand of the perfectly preserved documents, scratched on the bark of birch trees, have been recovered from the deep layers of Novgorod’s anaerobic clay soil over the past century… The birch-bark documents date from the 11th to 15th centuries and include tax returns, school exercises, wills, IOUs, marriage proposals, prayers, spells and curses … The most charming, however, are a series of 13th century drawings by a boy named Onfim, who was about 7 years old when he drew them around 1220 AD. Onfim was supposed to be learning to write, but his daydreams got the better of him and his spelling exercises are mixed with doodles. In this example, Onfim has diligently copied out the first eleven letters of the alphabet in the corner of the page, but got bored and drew a picture of himself as a warrior, sword in one hand and impaling an enemy with a spear in the other – he even labelled the figure on the horse as ‘Onfim’.
PIC Onfim the warrior
In another example, he drew a picture of himself as a wild beast (which he identified by writing “I am a wild beast” over it).
Onfim the Wild Beast would have gotten along just fine with my son Elijah — who, when he was two years old, came down the stairs in the morning growling to himself, “Here – come – wi-ld – Ji-jah . . . ” Here is something Elijah (now 9) recently doodled, apparently while taking a break from making a Christmas wish list:
New technology, same old boys.
