The Catholic Perspective

Book Review: A Civilization of Love

Saturday, June 07, 2008

About a month ago, Fr. Mike the chaplain within my consul of the Knights of Columbus presented us with the new book written by our Supreme Grand Knight Carl Anderson. The book was a very quick read, normally it takes me about 2-3 weeks to read this size of a book. In general, I read books that are usually political, technical, or financial. In the “Civilization of Love” it presents many ethical questions and new way of handling our faith in our everyday lives without shoving it down others throats (plus not looking crazy). In this reflection / review I would like to focus on three key ideas I learned from this book:

 
• Charity of spirit and life
 
• Political Identity
 
• What is love

Charity one major component to the Knights of Columbus, but should be a major component of everyone’s lives. Unfortunately is seems not to be. Lets present an example of charity in America, an average American making about 32,000 dollars a year ( avg single male salary) before taxes. That calculates about 120 dollars a day excluding weekends. If every American donated $120 every month and we will figure 67% of 300 million people could donate $289.4 billion. Today the national average is $82 per month. If you look at the numbers at justgive.org it mentions that people that make less than 10,000 dollars a year (vastly under the poverty line) give more than 5% of their income more than any other income group. Where is in my basic estimation, I ruled out the people making more than about 90,000 dollars/year and people making less than about 20,000 dollars/year. As well as the majority of the population that is not working. From justgive.org’s data, one can see how sad a state it is when people with so much less give more percentage of their income than the average middle class American, who gives a miserable 3% of their income. In Carl Anderson’s book, he really focuses on the morality of this issue in American culture. Today what he really indicated is that Americans are so into material possession and themselves. It is a call to all Catholics (and non-catholics) to reevaluate our lives and purpose and to pick up arms and give not only money but donate one’s time to charity. We all would have an impact on our society and world if we just donated one day a month in time and money to help our community to make a difference.

In today’s culture many Americans have moved from an extreme binary view of the world to an extreme relative view of the world. Carl Anderson points out our new political identity is not healthy because we are not standing up for own views and instead adopting to either extreme view. One example Anderson presents is the debate about pro-choice and pro-life. In my own life I feel that I am pro-life, but in my political life I feel that I am pro-choice. For the longest time I believed that I should not push my ideology onto others that do not believe in the things that I believe in. Looking at the debate between pro-life and pro-choice I never thought to take a middle road. Our politicians can still follow their ideology without failing the people they represent by not voting, and instead making a statement. In our country, unlike England, the people that represent the people either go with those people and maybe against their own personal beliefs or vote in favor of their beliefs and ignore the people they represent. In England people usually make a stand by resigning their position, not voting and telling their people by making a press conference explaining why. Today our philosophy has become very extreme. Even I have fallen for these extremes in my own life. The extreme that I have to keep my own views that I hold to be just mine and become silent. Now, I think that I can hold my own beliefs without pressing my own views onto others without compromising my own, while not being silent and expressing my own ideas about these issues.

All of this brings us to the idea that Anderson presents in creating the civilization of love. What I learned in this book is that love is strong enough to overcome all the hurdles we have in our lives. Love is an idea that everyone catholic and non-catholic can start to change the world by giving and understanding what views are right or wrong and what views have a sense of relativism. Love is more complex than only giving or understanding the philosophy of the world. Love is an idea that also needs to be practiced everyday in our everyday lives by donating time and money to help others. I am probably not the best at doing the book justice, but I would recommend anyone to read this book.

Posted by Catholic Chump on 06/07 at 11:08 AM in Book Review, | (0) Comments

The Focus Blog (The Catholic Perspective)

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Welcome, this is my first focused post. In the past I wrote about random topics that have occurred in my life. Today I have decided to focus my blog to illustrate my identity as a catholic. My old posts can be found in the journal section, as well as, off topic rants that I will have from time to time. What people will find in this blog is multiple ideas that focus from a Catholic Perspective. Why Catholic? Why call myself the Catholic Chump?

Lets begin why I am focusing my blog about my catholic values, my own questions, and criticisms. For the longest time, I have seen myself to be very open to all types of religions, and still am, but for the longest time did nothing really to pursue my faith as a catholic. In the last few years after graduating I found that talking and understanding the world as a catholic was important. I was a Life guide at Purdue for two years and learned more than I taught. After graduating I found myself participating more with the Knights of Columbus and listening to the catholic channel on Sirius Radio. My favorite show being the Catholic Guy (Waz up Lino!), since it is the show I listen to when I am driving back from work. In this blog, I will express my own views from a catholic perspective. Presenting articles, books, main stream media, and random blogs that make me think of how it relates to my own catholic identity.

As a cradle catholic, I will refer to myself as the catholic chump. Why you still ask, because I know that I have no formal training in theology and the last catholic class I had formally was in 8th grade. If in this blog I raise or am presented with a question I will answer it best I can, but also present that question to my local father mike or ask it on shows such as the Catholic guy.

In the last few months of listening to my own heart and listening to people such as The Catholic Guy got me to think of my life in a whole new way and that is why I am focusing my blog. I figure with Marleen McMurrary gone I can take her role in blog form asking questions that may be obvious to people like Lino and Lou. I will also talk about controversial topics that as an American Catholic I think about all the time.

Posted by Catholic Chump on 05/28 at 11:09 AM in | (0) Comments