Welcome to the Catholic Fundamentalism website.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

An Important Point

about Catholic Fundamentalism: Instead of reducing our idea of God's power by believing that His accomplishments must be limited by what we think His abilities are, Catholic Fundamentalists believe that it's better to picture Him as having the ability to do whatever He wants.

When we hear people saying "God could not have created the universe in six days.", we reply, "He could if He programmed energies and particles in three dimensions. First, He may have programmed angelic programming assistants. Then, God compiled them into systems and beings. He downloaded them in what appear to be solid, moving forms. There is no reason that He could not have programmed and downloaded The Creation Program, or the necessary part described in Genesis, in six days. On top of that, He programmed it so that it would mesh so perfectly with our human programs that we'd be given the free will to freely decide to believe that He made it or that it was an accident. The Creation Program was written and downloaded just to separate sheep from goats. "

Catholic Fundamentalism does provide a little wiggle room. There are a couple of places in Scripture that say "To God, a thousand years is like a day." So, we could say that writing and downloading The Creation Program could have taken six thousand years, which may be easier to believe than that He programmed and downloaded it in six days of twenty four hours. But, why? If we just accept Scripture as it was written and handed down to us, we don't need to waste a lot of time on a detail that isn't very significant.

If nothing else, believing Scripture rather than the ongoing generations of experts and our own desires is a lesson in humility that, in itself, helps us draw closer to He Who lovingly programmed us to do just that.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

We Count Our Birthdays Backwards.

When someone asks "How old are you?", they're asking for information that's basically history. When we are asked how old we are, we usually answer conventionally, saying that "I am ___ years old." We expect others, when we ask, to give similar answers.

To do the best job we can of keeping a perspective on ourselves and our progress, it's better to be more concerned with, "How many years do I have left?"

This requires some actual, and actuarial, thinking. We need to figure out our parent's and grandparent's life spans, average them together, leaving out any accidental deaths, and apply that to our own life expectancy. Then, when someone says "How old are you?", we can reply "The more important information is that I have approximately ___ birthdays remaining. What I do with those years determines how I spend all eternity. How many birthdays do you have left?"

Psalm 90; 12 confirms that this is the way we should think about how old we are: "Teach us to count how few days we have (left), and so gain wisdom of heart." So, this Catholic Fundamentalism teaching is confirmed in Scripture. Every day that passes leaves us one less chance to better do His will for us. I hate writing this, knowing as I do that I am setting myself up for harsher Judgment: "You KNEW that you should do better every day, and you did not. What possible excuses could you have for your ongoing failure?"

My only excuses, and yours, are that we thought something else was more important than obeying Him. That's not a very good excuse, but it does lead to one helpful conclusion: I know that I can't make excuses, but can only ask The Judge for mercy. We are all agreed on one theological point; where our own sins are concerned, mercy is vastly preferable to justice and there is no end to the mercy He may give to those who ask for it.

Love is realizing that we should ask that our neighbors be shown the same mercy we know that we need to be granted for our own eternal salvation.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Jupiter.

Jupiter, the largest of the planets, is now very visible an hour or so after dark. By ten or eleven at night, it's about where the sun was at ten o'clock in the morning. It can be seen clearly. Jupiter is the brightest thing in that part of the sky. A small telescope, one with 40x or so magnification, such as those used by hunters or bird-watchers, is easy to set up on a stable tripod. Then, aim it at Jupiter and focus carefully.

If you take the trouble to do so, you will see the same magic that Galileo saw on a clear night: a few of Jupiter's moons hanging miraculously in the sky as they circle around it. Remember where the three or four moons were, and look again a night or two later. You will see that the moons have moved. It's very similar to what the planets look like, revolving around the sun.

Making it all the more fascinating: Jupiter's moons are all on the plane of the ecliptic, the fairly flat plane on which the planets revolve around the sun. When we see three or four moons revolving around Jupiter, we are seeing what the three or four nearest planets look like as they circle around the sun. We are seeing a reflection of the huge forces going on in our own lives, duplicated in miniature, hundreds of millions of miles away.

Galileo confirmed the Copernican conclusion that the earth went around the sun by seeing how Jupiter's moons revolved around it. Suddenly, we can see right before us how his mind worked. We are made aware that we, too, can make similar conclusions from things that we see. Getting in the habit of doing so may not make us geniuses, but it will extend the reach of our minds.

That's why we should look at Jupiter's moons. The tiny, tiny orbs can have a disproportionately large effect on improving our ability to think and imagine. Seeing those miniscule dots of light can bring our own minds to the lofty orbit of a brilliant scientist even as reflecting on the experience expands our own horizons.

Friday, September 3, 2010

Veins

Getting older causes us to think more about our veins and arteries. They are utterly different in structure. Arteries are tougher, veins are weaker, almost "baggier". If we let our hands hang down, we can often see the veins on the back of our hands fill with blood. Then, after raising them higher than our heads for a few minutes, they're immediately back to normal size, almost like emptying a bag. Try it. Sometimes, the vein empties so quickly it's almost audible.

Smoking constricts veins and arteries. When we stop smoking, it takes awhile for them to get back to normal, if, in fact, they ever do.

Sitting, standing, or sleeping in odd positions restricts blood flow. It helps our health to keep that in mind. If we think about the endless miles of blood-filled tubes inside us, we may become more conscious of the need to stand, exercise, and straighten out our fingers, hands, arms, toes, feet, and legs more frequently. And, we want to keep our spine straight. If we don't, we end up with"bags" full of blood. These can strain and stress our vessels, causing weak points that break.

We've seen garden hoses kink, so we know what sharp bends do to flow. The same thing happens to our vessels. It stresses and weakens both the "kink" area and similarly stretches and weakens that portion of the vessel immediately upstream. It happens most frequently with veins. They're nearest the surface, so they end up being blocked more readily by bending, constriction, and uneven compression caused by sitting in ways that impede circulation.

In the same vein, there are very good reasons to stand up straight, not the least of which is stopping the bad effects of blocking blood vessels. Standing in a swimming pool puts pressure on our veins, and keeps them compressed. When we get out of the water, they quickly sag back to normal. It may be that if we kept our bodies in water for a week or so, that our veins would rebuild themselves, slowly making repairs without the endless stress of having unequal pressures applied to them.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

The Best Laid Plans

have, today, gone astray. I had my brush-clearing machine (a 40 year old piece of equipment called a "Hydro-Ax" that's half the length of a school bus) fixed and greased. I'd fully intended to spend a couple of days over the Labor Day weekend clearing small trees and scrub brush from an overgrown five acre knoll that I'd about two-thirds cleared. About twenty minutes into the job, the big machine slid sideways, and I ended up with a cherry tree about a foot in diameter up against the cab, between the front and real wheels. While trying to work myself free, something broke in the transmission, and the machine now sits, awaiting a repair crew after someone with a chain saw removes the cherry tree. Fortunately, it's in a place that the repair truck can be driven to, but, still, it's a pain. As I left, some sort of fluid was dripping from the transmission, so I can assume that it is serious.

I have broken the machine (or, preferably, the machine has broken while I, coincidentally, was operating it) so often that I no longer feel embarrassed about calling the very nice repairman, to whom I will say on Tuesday morning, "Jim, the ongoing plan to provide full employment for the Knight Equipment Repair Company is succeeding beyond our wildest dreams."

But, after I got home, I realized that spending an entire three day weekend cutting brush is my preferred form of hedonism. The great pleasure I get from looking at a newly cleared patch of land is, I hope, one reason I was put on earth. There is some justification in my joy of land-clearing in Scripture, so I have had no trouble convincing myself that my joy is Biblical in origin. Genesis 2:15. "And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to prune it."

So, I do, and am rarely happier than when so doing.

Last month, I wrote a few columns about money, and what it isn't. The first thing it is is impermanent. Good, healthy money changes in value like a thermometer. Instead of measuring temperature, the value of money is a reflection of a society's honesty, integrity, love, military strength, courage, and freedom. The more negative a society is in any of these areas, the weaker its money becomes.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

We Are to Love our Neighbor.

Many of us say that we love our neighbor. As we get older, we better understand how terribly destructive some of our neighbors are. That growing realization makes it increasingly hard to love some of them. Those who encourage suicide bombers, for instance, are very hard to love. It's still harder to reconcile the need to love them with the proven fact that it's difficult for those who don't share their beliefs to survive their depredations.

When Jesus said: "Do good to them that hurt you.", He knew, far better than we, the damage that those in The Culture of Death desire to do. Still, He gave us the command "Love your enemies."

What else can we do?

Monday, September 6, 2010

Unhappy People Abound

Most on the Left have chosen to become willing supporters of The Culture of Death. The degree to which they support it indicates how unhappy they are. The most unhappy, like abortionists, are filled with murderous hate for both God and their neighbors. A few days ago, one such person took hostages, insisted that there were "too many" people on earth, and was finally shot by police. To those similarly miserable souls on the far left, he is a hero, much as the Uni-Bomber several years ago.

Unhappiness comes from distancing oneself from God. As the separation increases, the person realizes that he is increasingly cut off from the source of his own being. The lost soul realizes that he is intentionally helping the process that creates nothing but more misery for itself, ao the unhappiness automatically increases. This process is a key part of The Creation Program.

The unhappy leftists follow the usual steps from pseudo-intellectual agnosticism to atheist; then, to the nasty viciousness devoted to undermining the tenets of every belief in God, truth, and love. The downward spiral is reinforced by perceiving the world through increasingly dislike of all that is good and decent, so love becomes ever less visible.

Jesus and His disciples expelled many demons from those driven mad by them. While we usually think of demons as evil spirits, like ethereal termites devouring our minds spirits, and souls, there is another possibility. We may think of them as negative beings, conceiving of demons as types of spiritual anti-matter. These loveless vacuums, living vacuums of less than nothing, personify varying degrees of "No-Love" that run the gamut from mild dislike to sheer hatred. Those are what was driven out, little bits of more-than-empty nastiness thrust into the greater emptiness beyond.

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Monarchy Had To Go

In the early Middle Ages "A virgin could safely carry a bag of gold across England." It's hard to avoid the realization that monarchy could provide a remarkably efficient and inexpensive form of government. Monarchy was an attempt by those who felt they had a "Divine Right to Kingship" to make themselves an imitation of Heaven's hierarchy in their earthly realm. Duplicating Biblical descriptions of Heaven, the self-proclaimed "Lord" sat on a throne and had his decrees obeyed by men, rather than angels. This process reached a high point when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, ran an empire that stretched from Peru to Spain to Austria to the Philippines.

When kings ruled on earth as they thought God ran things in Heaven, governments tended to be efficient. Few people, outside the castle, had the power to take anything from anyone.

"It's not fair!", the Devil complained. "God said He was going to give these people free will, but between The Church and The State, hardly anyone is free to do anything wrong! He's getting all the souls and I'm hardly getting any!"

That's about the only rational explanation for why the silliness of democracies should be given political power. Now, democracy lets humanity see what it's like to be ruled by gaggles of ego-crazed nincompoops. As shown in our own Congress, virtual morons could be elected to office, and the most corrupt people in society profit greatly by putting such fools in office. "Democratic" governments in the once-Christian countries have devolved into howling lunatic asylums run by organized thieves. Everyone has a chance to steal, and most do. They are happier, for awhile.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Big Bubble & Little Bubbles

The Roman Catholic Church exists within the world's corruption. It's a lot like a clean, clear bubble floating in a

stagnant pond. Around the bubble is rot, corruption, and stench. Within its miraculous, endless refractions and reflections, the glories of God are more than visible, they actually take form and can be felt.

Each Roman Catholic is like a smaller bubble. Like our Church, each of us spends an earthly life surrounded by sin and temptation. By staying in contact with the purifying Sacraments that come to us through the Big Bubble, we keep our little bubble, our tiny soul, free from stain. If we give into sin, we can imagine the wall of our bubble weakening, then breaking, obliterating our little bit of purity with the slime and destruction that seethes around it.

The Big Bubble is self-contained. It began with a small, early bubble. It began to grow with the prophets and what appeared to be their insane utterances. As those "insane ravings" slowly began to come true, that first bubble, the Jewish faith, slowly spread around the world. People believed and lived within that bubble. The world hated it, and they did not respond to that love with hate. So, when the most bizarre ravings of all came true, they suddenly turned upon the fulfillment of their own prophets' ravings. They made every possible attempt to kill Him and have the blame thrown on the nearest, biggest government, just as those who'd hated them had frequently tried to have them eliminated.

The final Bubble came into being. Obedient Roman Catholics live in it. We are kept safe as long as we are obedient, and we are obedient as long as we believe. We cannot help but believe. We have been given the grace to read the prophets and realize that it took nothing less than a series of what absolutely had to be miracles from God that their predictions came true. Every human endeavor takes second place to that manifestation of divine power upon the earth.

Scientists do not dismay us, we know their theories are there to strengthen those who pay their salaries. Sinners do not frighten us, we know the fate in store for them. Riches do not tempt us, we know that they are programmed entities. We know that we must steadfastly move ahead, loving God, loving our neighbor, and obeying His commands.

We have but to keep our small bubbles joined with the Biggest Bubble, knowing that it will last long after all else has passed. It is our job. It is our joy. It is the best thing on earth to be doing.