The Catholic Perspective

God’s Gift

2008-07-26T04:00:01Z

God has created everyone different and presents different blessings to each person. From my personal life, I would like to talk about my own struggles, and about a comment Michael Savage had made recently. Let me start out by presenting some background.

Five years ago, I was a sophomore in college struggling with many of my classes. My major problem in my classes were completing exams. It took me two times longer to read passages and organize my thoughts to write it down. As well, the many times it took me just to concentrate on the task of completing the exam. After about twenty years, struggling through classes, having people incorrectly interpreting what I’m trying to describe to them, and not being able to understand why I cannot hold back my thoughts, I was formally diagnosed with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder.

Looking back further, my mother took me to many psychologists for years. In that time, they all diagnosed me with attention deficit disorder, and all were partially correct. I remember, as a child, feeling inferior to other children. In elementary school, I was placed in special education courses for English and Writing. As for the other courses, I was in normal classes. Many children saw I left the classroom during those times, and teased me because I was absent. I remember it took me twice as long to read and analyze the reading assignments at school. Eventually, I stopped placing effort in all school related activities.

In fact, ran away from my problems with school, and I didn’t want to attend school any more. After graduating from high school, I enlisted in the United States Navy. Eventually, that was cut short because after boot camp I received a medical discharge. At this point I had no other choice but to go to college.

Let’s fast forward to my sophomore year of college. My fiance and I were at Barnes and Noble, she was looking through a medical psychology book and found a description of the many problems she saw me struggling with in school. It indicated that I was dyslexic. At that point, I wanted to investigate the possibility of being dyslexic. I used school resources to examine if I was dyslexic. At the end I was discovered to be dyslexic with attention deficit disorder.

For a long time, I felt that God had cursed me. Why can I not function like everyone else? I found that I had a high intelligence quotient, but I am only processing at 2/3 of my full potential. After getting more time on my exams and some projects, my grades improved. I went from a B/C student to a A/B student. It was great, but I still felt inferior; the fact that I needed the extra time and a special room to take my exams did not help my self-esteem. “God has given me a curse”, is what I would think for a long time. Eventually I graduated from college and started to work.

More problems have came up from my disabilities. People look at me and think I am a “know it all” or an arrogant person. In business, it is not enough to only be competent in the work given, but also learn to interact with people. WHY, GOD? To learn to be humble is what I have learned. I had the guts to start going to confession after ten years and now I have to suck it up and go to the doctor. Today, I am now on some medications to help me with my attention deficient disorder and he recommended a book to help me with my confidence and self-esteem. In the last few days, I have had more restraint and am trying to focus on holding back from freely giving my ideas out. I am already having some change in my interaction with others.

I write this post for people to try to at least understand the problems that people face with learning disabilities. I found some positives to being dyslexic that many people may not know about which are:

Perception: the ability to alter and create perceptions;
Highly aware of the environment;
Highly curious;
Great intuition and insightful;
Thinking and perceiving multi-dimensionally (using all the senses);
A lively imagination;
Can experience thought as reality;
Creativity;
Easy adoption of change;
Holistic, see the big picture, don’t get lost in details, get to the important aspects;
See patterns, connections, and similarities very easy;
Concentration;
Can be very driven, ambitious and persistent;
Superior reasoning;
Capable of seeing things differently than others;
Love for complexity;
Simultaneous multiple thought processing;
Not following the crowd;
The ability of visual, spatial and lateral thinking. [1]

Although I have a lot a positives, I also have quite a bit of problems such as:

Have difficulty taking notes or copying
Difficulty with planning and writing essays, letters, and reports
Tendency to read inaccurately, or without comprehension
Inconsistent spelling
Tendency to confuse verbal instructions
Confuse phone numbers
Severe difficulty with learning a foreign language
Difficulty with perception of spoken language, e.g. following instructions, listening comprehension
Low self-esteem. [2]

God has shown me that I need to be humble and to know that I need help. Today I have received help and am relying more on others to help me. Today, I found only through working with others will make me successful, more so than any “normal” person. Since I need people to read or repeat or scribe what happened in the meeting.

The other reason I created this post was to comment on Michael Savage[3] thoughts about people with learning disabilities as being a shame. It made me think about myself and how hard it is for me from day to day to function at work or school. As Catholics, we learn that with adversity comes understanding. I hope from this small example of my life and problems, people will understand what people with learning disabilities go through in life without having knowledge as a child.

I also want people to understand that we have become a society that is too polarized. A society that everything is night or day. People like Michael Savage present facts incorrectly and people listen to him because it is easy. They don’t see the people like myself that could have been caught earlier and had more time to deal with my disability. I was a child that thought I needed to suck it up and school was not my thing. I later learned it wasn’t and I want to learn more everyday. His comment, even if he thought people took it out of context, was a sign that he is incompetent as a doctor (PhD). As I recall, doctor means teacher. As any good teacher one has to do extensive homework, before making comments as Savage did, only to confuse the ignorant. As well as educating the masses in what potentially can cause the problem in the first place.

I found it ironic that Savage called for parents to chide a child with autistic tendencies to “act like a man,” given that many leading researchers consider autism to be an extreme manifestation of the male brain. In fact, one theory that’s attracting attention is that fetuses that produce high levels of testosterone in the womb have a tendency to exhibit autistic behavior as young children. And it seems to me that the messages society directs toward boys about “sucking it up” could actually exacerbate any tendencies to withdraw. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest count, the prevalence of autism among boys is between 2.8 and 5 times that of girls. [4 ]

God has given me a true gift. As with any gift, one just has to learn to use it and overcome its difficulties. As we all need to grow everyday, we should understand that everyone is here for a reason.

Catholic, dyslexic, Health

The Culture Of Death

2008-07-20T03:13:25Z

In the last week, I have been debating with Mary Kochan from Catholic Exchange. In our back and forth comments, I have formed some conclusions about politics and priorities of people. If you have already figured out, I am not a theology major nor a political science major. So please excuse the verbiage since I most likely will not be using terms that may not be politically correct. I am very versed in law. Since, I was an economics major investigating some time in pre-law at one point. As mentioned before, I will place my own catholic perspective in this post. My major point in the post is as catholics we cannot stop at only abortion or just prioritize abortion first then other evils such as the death penalty later. We must be firm in our pro-life stance.

All the following comments are from Mary Kochan that I will address piece by piece:

Well for one thing your feeling that they are both wrong does not constitute Catholic moral theology any more than someone’s feeling that gay marriage is ok. The fact is that in Catholic moral theology they are not the same: one is intrinsically evil; the other is not. Feel away all you like. I will be perfectly happy to seek the end of the death penalty after abortion is ended.

AND

Chump, the death penalty is not intrinsically evil. Sorry, but it is church teaching that the death penalty may be applied in some cases. It is not Church teaching that all applications of the death penalty in the past were grave moral wrong. The Church and the pope do not use the same moral language about the death penalty as they do for abortion.

In the catechism it does state :

[2267] Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor… Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically non-existent.”

As in law, we have to look at the historical significance of the death penalty. Before jesus’s time, criminals were given death, were a danger to society and at that time had no other means to restrain that individual. As the catechism says today that is not the case. By supporting the death penalty you may today be killing an innocent life or worse a person that may repent with enough time that may be another lost soul to fall short of the kingdom of god. We should vote for people that will not support abortion, death penalty and euthanasia. Any form of death should not be over-sighted. As Catholics, we should only vote for those who hold all of our principles, not a few. As I stated in the past the few politicians such as Ron Paul are for these principles. Mary lacks the vision of the power we as citizens have as she said:

“This notion of vote for the person, not the party, simply shows a lack of understanding of the way our system works and the current status of party politics in the US. Voting for a person of any party strengthens that party regardless of that person’s own views. Pro-life Dems are completely shut out of influencing their party platform right now and have been for about 20 years. Their party is also dedicated to the judicial usurpation of power that led to Roe v. Wade and to making sure it does not get overturned.”

In America we have had many parties evolve and change from the time of the founding fathers. People have to look at the problems and rise up in the voting booths. With statements like:“Pro-life Dems are completely shut out of influencing their party platform right now” people will only steer our country into a one party dictatorship. We need to have hope just as we have faith in god. We need to hope that we can change that by voting for the people not the party. It is this thought that is weakening American and strengthening one or another party. It is this idea that people cannot see eye to eye on the issues. By making statements like this is what weakens America. We cannot think of right now, but how can we change the parties and America tomorrow. Remember it is not what America can do for you, its’ what you can do for America.

I hope this post will spark discussion and get better candidates for the future. I would like to see the incumbent party running against the incumbent in office. If that is what America wants by getting both sides standing up against the their own party to show real strength. In many cases may cause some to leave the party to run as an independent. The people need to learn not to vote within party lines but to vote for the individual who is the best fit for the job.

Background:

http://www.catholicexchange.com/2008/07/17/113173/

Catholic, Catholic Perspective, death, pro-life, catechism

Catholic Perspective: The New Frontier

2008-07-11T16:00:44Z

New Content! Well, not yet. I am trying to add some spice to this blog. In the next month, I plan to add some new features that many other catholic blogs do not implement today. As you have already noticed I have been podcasting; the next step would be networking through social networks.

One feature that I plan to release in the next six months to a year is a bible study application through facebook and google (I don’t discriminate). It will start out simple. By simple, I mean the widget will only search through the entire New American Standard Bible. After I get that far I plan to release a means to annotate collaboratively. I hope with suggestions and a lot of hard work I can make this a reality.

Another feature I was thinking was to add a pay-pal account that would be tax deductible. If you remember a couple posts ago I spoke about Carl Anderson’s book “A Civilization of Love”. I went into a little rant about charity, if I can recall. I am a person of action, but feel that I can not be the alone in this. so I figure that I can get my readers to donate. Since this is America and not some totalitarian blog I would have a vote of the top ten charities I am familiar with and give 90%-95% of that money to the charity while leaving a little for funding this blog.

Finally I was thinking to have catholic professionals to post their thoughts not just my own. I would try to get a lawyer, doctor, and priest post something once a month. Like having a guest star on the blog once and a while. Now this is only the beginning of my ideas, but I would like some more suggestions.I need your suggestions to make this site go the next level. Please leave a comment of any ideas you can think about and we can take The Catholic Perspective to the new frontier.

Catholic, Charity, facebook, google

Institutions are perfect, people are not

2008-07-04T13:21:01Z

The Catholic (Green) Perspective

2008-06-26T00:10:32Z

America is dead last when it comes to conserving resources. I am not going to make this blog like the many about be green or else. I would like to talk about the benefits for becoming green and why as a good catholic it is in our best interest aside of the financial payback it would bring to our lives.

In the book Go Green, Live Rich the author David Bach presents us with many ways to save money as well as save the environment. I like to present this book because it provides a lot of simple suggestions to live green while not breaking the bank. I will present the benefits from a practical perspective. First what we can do at work since most of our time is spent at work or driving to work. The next section I will talk about what you can do around the house to save money. Finally I will talk about the catholic perspective of being green.

Work

At work we can save tons of money and lower our energy. The first thing we can do is make sure your tires are completely inflated it will create less drag and increase gas efficiency. Other small hints that people should already doing is change your oil every 3-6 thousand miles, accelerate slower to get to your desired speed. Some more obvious ways of saving energy is getting a hybrid car or a gas efficient car. You can also see if your work allows you to telecommute and work from home. Thus saving hundreds of dollars in gas driving to and from work. Before you print any documents at work do you really need that hard copy or can you make due and not waste paper needlessly? One final tip I will leave you with is bring a bag lunch. It will save you from eating out and the extra waste you create because of the packaging. As well in relation to my last post about health, you can eat healthier when you go to work and try to walk a half an hour especially if you work in a office. Fine, some of these tips will not personally help your wallet, but help your company save money unless you work for yourself then it will make a difference.

Home

In our homes we have a lot we can do to save us all money and stop spending needless resources. The first thing you can do is plant a couple of trees around your home. It will lower your house’s temperature in the summer and keep it warm in the winter by deflecting wind. Another thing you can do around the house is make sure you do not have a water leak in your house. A small leak on average can cost your house anywhere from 10-20 dollars or more, in extra water charges. Other things you can do is buy organic and less meat. Fact is there is many ways in the house to save money while lowing the amount of resources you use. I would recommend picking up the David Bach book and any of his other books.

Faith

In the last post I mentioned the sin of gluttony. In this post I will mention the sin of sloth for not caring about the world we live in that god created for us to take care of it. Sloth is a state of being indifference or laziness. In our lives it is a sin of putting off what god wants from us. Being green is not only helping everyone, but following the teaching the church has for us.

In our faith, we should look at taking care of the world god has given us. In general as Catholics or just citizens of the world we should take care of our planet. We should pick up after ourselves and try to recycle as much as possible. A couple a few things I learned from David Bach is:

The aluminum cans we throw away each year use up the equivalent of 16 million barrels of oil, enough to fuel a million cars for a year.
Takeout food creates 1.8 million tons of trash in the US every year.
40% of all car trips are less than 2 miles.

Given these last tips I will leave you with some things to think about. We should show empathy for all that we do in our lives and try to think of others instead of being apathetic to the things I mentioned. God Bless.

Catholic, Save Money, Book Review

Welcome to the Catholic Chump

2008-06-24T04:10:00Z

Health In Our Society

2008-06-15T02:16:54Z

As an American most of us share the good and the bad issues that happens in our society. One major sin most American’s share is the sin of gluttony. I will admit I have committed this sin more than once. In recent years the Center of Disease Control (CDC) has named Obesity to be a disease. I am mentioning this because I am getting ready to get married to a beautify woman that is studying to be a physician. What does that mean for a chump like myself? She will yell at me twice as much not only for the normal male stupidity, woman get mad at us for, but know she will get on me for my health. I will be the first to say I have it coming.

Let me provide some background of my college years and eating habits. When I was in college I went from a BMI of 25 to a BMI of 31, or you can say I went from a medically ideal weight to obese. Between going to the bars drinking and eating Philly Cheese Steak every weekend did a whole lot to my body after coming out of the US Navy. I will admit the cheese steak was really good, but I had to give it up senior year since it attributed to really bad acid reflex and my fiancée told me, well, it will kill me. Granted the juice of the phili, leaked onto my coat and caused a button whole to be clogged within a few minutes of eating it (Steph likes to make an analogy of that being like my arteries). In my mind I still say it was somewhat worth it (Stephanie did not see it that way). After going to the doctor after graduating and being diagnosed with GRED, I can see that I was not only sinning but killing myself slowly. According the American Medical Association the U.S. Surgeon General said

“Richard Carmona, MD called it[Obesity] the greatest threat to public health today. It kills more Americans every year than AIDS, all cancers and all accidents combined. And it’s causing problems in children that were unthinkable 20 years ago. That is why the American Medical Association (AMA) is working to halt the spread of obesity.

Leaders in the field of preventive health, pediatrics, family practice, nutrition and more, convened at AMA headquarters in Chicago for the first meeting of the AMA Working Group on Managing Childhood Obesity. Their goal: to develop a set of strategies to help physicians more effectively work with families, youth-serving organizations, school health professionals, public health organizations and community groups to reduce overweight and obesity and to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in childhood obesity.”

Today I am losing weight slowly I am currently at a BMI of 30. It is to be hoped that by the end of the year I will be around a BMI of 27-28. As Americans we need to look at the problems of an overweight society. Economically it is hurting everyone with healthcare cost expanding and increasingly people not having healthcare it is hurting our bodies individually and everyone’s pocketbooks. I listen to a lot of political radio and catholic radio on my going to and from work everyday and I notice the health argument.

One side of people say it is there freedom that the government should leave them alone and we should not pay for other people’s healthcare. In the other side of the ring are people that say we should pay for all healthcare because it is too much for the individual to pay. I tend to stand in the middle of both extremes as I will explain.

We as Catholics and Americans need to take more responsibilities for our own actions. As Catholics we know that Gluttony is a sin, and basically Any kind of overindulgence is a sin. Is obesity our fault completely? I say it is and it is not. If you go to the supermarket to by food people in our country buy tons of meat and other fatty foods instead of a balance diet. Even when you try to eat healthy ( not going to bust the bank by buying natural or organic foods) foods have additives that may cause a slew of health issues. Just look up the problems associated with any artificial sweeters or High Fructose Corn Syrup. Our government should force agencies such as the FDA to monitor our food more closely and force companies not to use these chemicals or processed additives to make a product cheaper. Food in our country is too cheap. Yes, I said it too cheap. As cheap it is an other reason we have an obesity problem. In the end we should have the government regulate more and provide some form of hybrid healthcare that is not completely universal by not private neither. I will not go into by specific idea since that is not the focus of this blog entry. I will say we as Americans and Catholics need to think when we enter the confessional. Have we committed the sin of Gluttony? Is this a sin that we leave out or forget when we enter a confessional? I hope who ever reads this will consider many problems in our culture by being an overweight society. It effects everything in our body both mentally and physically. I will close with an article about obesity that I found on the CDC website: http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/ .

Catholic, Diet, Health, Medicine

Book Review: A Civilization of Love

2008-06-07T16:08:24Z

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.

Catholic, Love, Knights of Columbus

The Focus Blog (The Catholic Perspective)

2008-05-28T16:09:00Z

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. I will update this blog every Friday or Saturday at the minimum. If your interested in my just random rants check out my journal section.

Catholic, Catholic Guy