Spoiled brats Somewhere around age fourteen or fifteen, I became aware of a phenomenon that I had been previously undisturbed by; namely that, as a Roman Catholic Christian and firm believer in my salvation through the saving blood of Jesus Christ, I am considered to be less than Christian by a great percentage of protestants. Had I been properly catechized this might not have been such a shock, but like so many of my contemporaries and our parents, I was not. I think exposure to this prejudice had a great deal to do with my leaving the Christian faith altogether for the better part of a decade. In early adulthood I returned to the faith, and I took great measures to understand this prejudice, its origins, and its impact on inter-Christian relations. I have made my peace with its existence and deal with it on a case by case basis, the best way I know how. We (Catholics) are ever being accused of lacking some sort of undefined Christian resolve or ability to understand grace, or something. Perhaps as I develop this thought I will be able to better put my finger on it, but I have not yet had it explained to me in any clear terms, apart from sarcastic comments that seem to vaguely disparage my ability to understand forgiveness. The other day though, I had a thought. The “lack-usations” seem to typically take the form of statements like: “Well Catholics just say a couple Hail Mary’s and they think they’re forgiven” or “Oh it’s easy for Catholics, they just do whatever they want all week, then go to confession and it’s all good”. I don’t have room to bother with all of the things that are wrong with these types of statements; suffice it to say they are completely erroneous. Perhaps I’ll develop that later, perhaps not. So the accusation is, I believe, that Catholics think they have to do something to affect their forgiveness, and therefore we are stupid assholes who don’t understand that it is free, and we don’t therefore deserve the mutual respect afforded REAL Christians? Those protestants who feel this way, and it is a LOT more than you might believe, seem to me to be an awful lot like a spoiled child. Picture if you will, the child of an affluent family, the only child of an affluent family, who wants for nothing. They have never conceived of the idea of working for the things they need because they have never been exposed to this reality of life for most people. Dad comes home clean and well-dressed from wherever he goes during the day, and his disconnected, unappreciative family, who ignores him apart from hitting him up for money, is virtually unaware of where he’s been or how he even got the money. He is certainly not at fault, and only wants to give his family all of the advantage he can, but they can’t conceive of the sacrifices he has had to make throughout his life, to be able to provide so generously for them. This is the same kid who gets five speeding tickets, wrecks three cars, and knocks up his girlfriend in high school, all without remorse or regret, because mom or dad is right there every time to bail him out, without so much as gratitude as a prerequisite. That good old “Catholic guilt” that has long been deemed worthy of so much ridicule, stems I think, from a deeper understanding of what Dad had to go through to provide, what He has provided for us. It is remorse. It is a deep love for the one who comes and bails us out when we’ve screwed up, and a true sorrow for His having to. Our sins are not without price any more than our wrecking dad’s car is without price, just because he foots the bill. Imagine your dad’s reaction to having paid for your wrecking his car, only to see you instantly running around happily, and belittling your friends who are ashamed, or trying to do chores, because they wrecked their dad’s car and they feel HORRIBLE about it. What would he say, if he saw you flaunting the fact that you don’t hold yourself accountable, and demeaning others who do? That other kid knows his dad, knows what his dad gave up and what he had to go through to provide for him. He knows how much his dad loves him, and is sick to the core about what he has done in spite of his dad’s love. This is the source of “Catholic guilt”. This is why we feel the need to confess our sins to our brother, that we may be healed. Grace is not a commodity for us, reacted to differently depending on whether or not we have to pay for it; it is unwavering love in the face of betrayal. When we sin, we have betrayed the one who died a humiliating, horrific death, for our benefit, out of love for us. He is our perfect and blameless spouse that we have cheated on. We know He forgives us. Do you understand that we get this? We know it, and we don’t deserve it. If we didn’t understand that His forgiveness is free and undeserved, we would not be so sick and disgusted over our sin. We are pulled by the pit of our stomach to repentance, and sorrow. How can you mock this? Don’t get me wrong, the mockery is appreciated and truly helps us to be more Christ-like, but what I DON’T understand is how you can react to your sin as if you are entitled to your forgiveness, like He owes it to you, as if it was YOU on that freaking cross. HOW DAMNIT, HOW? Why am I the “non-Christian” and you are the righteous? Why am I a stupid asshole for regretting my transgression and taking measures to try and stop them? The question isn’t why do I act this way, the question is WHY DON’T YOU? Because your pastor told you I’m an idiot? Because his piss ant little church was there at the cross, and so he knows how I should believe? BULLSHIT! You are undoubtedly Christ’s child, His spoiled, rotten, nasty child, and you need to understand that it was me who killed Jesus. IT WAS ME WHO KILLED JESUS! And it was you. I killed Him in cold blood, as He looked up at me, begging to be loved back, the way that He loves me. And I kicked Him in the face, and I spit on Him. I tore His shoulders out of their sockets, and I put Nails though His hands and feet and I hung Him up to asphyxiate under His own weight. He tried to catch a deep breath, but only by pushing against the nail I put through His feet, AND I LAUGHED! And you did too. You are not the woman who wiped his face, you are not the man who helped carry His cross, you are not the good thief who offered Him love, you are the executioner at best, and Judas at worst. And so am I. This is the point of the story, not so we can stand together feeling self-satisfied that would have helped Him if we were there, but that it was US who carried this out against Him. We did it. Every day, every time we sin, that is us. Why do I go to confession, and beg for His forgiveness, and communion with His Church? Because He asked me too, and because I am disgusted with what I have done to their Savior. Why do I pray prayers of love to His mom? Because I murdered her baby right in front of her, and she loves me anyway. I want to love you like He commands me, and no matter how much I want it, I fail. I am in a constant state of reconciling my sins against you in my own heart and mind, and cataloguing which instances are so grievous that I have to bring them to the Church and expose my soul, my sins, and wear the full weight of that guilt before another man, knowing full well that my sins were forgiven before I ever got there. Still sound like a short-cut to you? You people who mock us, who mock your elders in the Faith, are always in my heart, scratching and gnawing, and irritating and hardening it. And yet you continue, with your little comments, and your smug self-satisfaction, convinced that I am a laughable fool, an idiot for thinking I ought to do something because He has forgiven me. I couldn’t be anything but a fool right? And certainly not worthy of a moniker like Christian, why no, that’s reserved for those of you who understand how salvation works right? Real Christians, Bible believ’n Christians? That’s what the pastor said last week right, ya gotta be a real Bible believ’n Christian? Not like those Catholics, those mopey, down-trodden, sad-sack Catholics. If they knew The Word they’d be happy all the time right? This divisive ignorance has got to be ridden from the Body, and I can’t do it for you. A solid start would be for us to stop mocking one-another and begin making effort to understand.

dating and mating, God and the world

I had to write this for a psych class and i'm not displeased with how it came out.

We live in a world that says one thing, made by a creator who says another. Namely, that we deserve to be happy, and deserve so at the expense of even the very building block of society, the family. Our new world is growing steadily more insistent that reality is relative and that the truth behind all things ethereal is completely subjective. We have taken and applied from the Gospel, not Christ’s message, but Pontius Pilate’s message “what is truth”(Jn 18:38, D.R.B. 1582) In all this we continue to undermine the fabric of our Christian society as if on a kamikaze mission to bring about the end. I intend to present a fair and expository view of what the world generally teaches on the topic of dating and mating, though there is neither enough space to discuss their view in its completeness, nor a common reference of the worlds belief system that can be accessed to present every corner of everyone of their doctrines. Beyond that I intend to spend significantly less time presenting what God has to say about the matter, because it is rather concise, and is contained in a single source that is a common reference to be accessed when forming an understanding of His will for relationships.
“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone-it, people like me” was the daily affirmation recited by Stuart Smalley at the intro to his sketch on Saturday Night Live, entitled Daily Affirmations. This was Al Franken’s sarcastic commentary on what he identified as a ridiculous new trend in the world, self help, and by relation the heightened level of importance being placed on one’s self image and sense of self worth. Why in the nineteen eighties did we as a society, after thousands or billions of years (depending on whether you ask a fundamentalist or an atheist) of development, realize that what we were missing was a system of convincing ourselves that we have value, and that we matter? We were experiencing a wave of fallout from the sexual revolution and the redefinition of what it means to be a human in existence. Now this was in no way the beginning of the problem, rather we see it’s origins as far back as Martin Luther’s “sin and sin boldly” (Luther), a product of the reformation, and Nietzsche’s “Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”(Nietzsche). When women started contracepting, aborting, and burning bras, the work of these men and many many like them was coming to fruition. Obedience to God had been replaced with revolution against oneself, and God had been replaced with our own moment to moment gratification, to put it succinctly things were looking up for our old pal the Devil. His hard work had really taken form and found solid ground for growth, right here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Now what does that mean to us in the here and now? Marriage is no longer forever or for everyone, and in many cases marriage is not even marriage anymore, it is a right not a covenant. It is a tool of equality as opposed to a picture of our creator. It is a non-issue in the mind and heart of so many of my generation. We marry for status, we divorce for happiness, we sit in public talking loudly to our lawyers about just what we want from our former spouses on our cell phones drinking lattes, because it’s our right. The world says “do whatever you want, whenever you want, to or with whomever you choose, and when you’re done, then exercise your right to happiness”. Whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame; who mind earthly things.(Phil 3:19)
Agape and Eros, these are Greek words translated into love. While eros, the root from which we derive the word erotic, seems to be the prevailing idea amongst the lovers of this day, the intended love with which we would preferably seek, find, court, marry, and bed our mates, is described in the word agape. Agape means benevolent affection, giving without expectation, a desire for the best, highest, and greatest for the object of our love. If eros is a “taking love”, (and it is) agape is a “giving love”. Agape is the word translated to love in Ephesians 5:25-28; Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the church and delivered himself up for it, and so forth, whereas the word eros is not found in the passage or for that matter the new testament in its entirety. What love would our Lord have us seek? Agape. God wishes for us to find the woman from our rib, the one he created for us and placed in our path. The one who we would lay down our life for, and never forsake, and who would accept our love without reservation, and without self interest.
Unfortunately we poor banished children of eve continue to lust for the fruit, that is not for us, because the world says we ought to, and we seek to serve our bellies, not Him.

Friedrich Nietzsche, The gay science, 1882
Let Your Sins Be Strong: A Letter From Luther to Melanchthon Letter no. 99, 1 August 1521
Douay Rheims Bible, Philippians 3:19, New Testament, 1582

an apple got us into this mess, maybe an Apple will help us out

join me in lifting steve jobs, and apple computer company up in prayer.

now as of ten minutes ago i would not not have thought of apple computers as synonymous w/ morality, i viewed them, as i think alot of us do, as being yet another part of the new world, trying desperately to take us into the brave new world of post modern secularism. not because of anything they have done but because of their proximity, chronologically, to so many new world evils.

imagine my shame to read this story about steve jobs correspondence with a pro porn critic, wherein the critic accuses jobs of imposing his morality on the world of mac users, to which jobs responded essentially, you want porn? get a pc.

wow and to think how anti mac i've been all these years. i see the error of my ways and in this public confession of my own bigotry against them, i ask mac for forgiveness. i'm quite aware that they were unaware that i even exist and i wont likely receive any spoken forgiveness, but thats not what this is about, this is about exposing my hate, and pledging my penance. I will purchase mac products as long as they maintain this standpoint on morality.

see the article here- http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/may/10051811.html

Forgiveness for who?

Now I apologize in advance for the non timely nature of the subject matter i wish to discuss today, this will be my first blog and in lieu of succumbing to writer's block I chose rather to go with the first subject that came to mind. you see earlier today while riding around in the truck with a good friend of mine named A.J. Drewsen, and discussing our favorite blogs, i made the comment "i wish i had a blog". it was at that very moment that i realized that in fact i do have a blog. this one. another good friend of mine named Julia Morbo set it up for me as a means of disseminating information to members of a group i formed that is called the Underground Apostolate, though we have yet to successfully implement it as a regular medium for this task.
nevertheless i do have a blog, and intend to start using it as a creative outlet and a way to feel that i have said what i must to the general populus. the fact that there is no visitor count will surely help spare my feelings in light of the fact that noone will likely read it.

so on to the thought i was having as i sat down to write.

it occurs to me that while the majority of us are self described to one degree or another as "pro-life", and we regard ourselves as being people of forgiveness, that the one element of our society that we will always fail to forgive, are our fellow pro-lifers who take it too far, and do something about it. we fear that making statements in regards to our needing to forgive them, might somehow change others perception of us and therefore remain steadfast in our denunciation of more than just the sin, but the sinner also. now compare this to the way we treat other offenders, those who wouldn't be proud to call us their friend and it seems to me that at the moment these men who kill abortion doctors realize that they've gone too far, the moment they need someone to love them, the very people who hold the same values as them, turn and spit at them right alongside the mainstream that is also spitting at them, and the far left who are screaming for their blood.
where else is this acceptable behavior?
a few months ago i stumbled my way onto a link for a document in which a highly celebrated Catholic intellectual, who's name escapes me, wrote a response letter to convicted abortionist-aborter, in which he told the man that he was damned. i struggle to think of another situation wherein this man of great knowledge of our faith would tell someone they are damned.
so, the next time a lone wolf, blows a fuse and offs a member of the other team, lets try and retain our composure as Christians, lay down our concern for other people's opinions, and forgive the man, love him anyway, and pray for him and his family in the wake of the horrible choice he has made. remember that he did the wrong thing for the right reason, and had he had the blessing of your education and your ability to process emotions, and your self restraint, then he wouldn't have done it in the first place.

in future blogs i will have substantiating links and be able to site references for my info. this post is just to shake off the cobwebs so to speak.

Julia, lets get together and you can show me how to link other sites.

peace, timmy

one month to the day

okay so it seems that this thing is dying slowly, so here's what i propose; lets come up with a meeting time that will lend itself to more member availability. please write me with your top three preferred meeting times and we'll find the one thats most congruent with everyone's schedules. lets remember our constants; second sunday 1230pm,20 decades in front of the city hall, wed in front of the murder factory, sat night 11pm adoration at Our Lady of Mercy, and any time one feels inspired to go out as a small group or pair and talk to people in public. please start emailing or texting me with your ideas for ministry. remember this group is YOUR ministry, and i'm here to facilitate.
i love you guys and wish you all merry Christ Mass.
and please come visit and buy coffee whenever you can!!!!!!!!

here we go

so i have spoken to the agape prayer group about the posibility of joining forces for a tent pray type of ministry and they're very excited about the prospect, and about ya'lls interest. we'll meet with them on the wednesday following thanksgiving at 6pm, so remind me that we need to go to that. they've also offered to train us in healing prayer and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. pretty exciting contact we've made with them so stay tuned.
also, and i probably should've opened with this, sorry for the last minute cancellation last week. the coffee shop has got me running ragged. we are on for this saturday at 8pm at holy family and i'll have points recording sheets for everybody.
btw. i'm about to hit the 180 mark and expect to do so by our meeting!!!!!!!

get on it!!!!!!!

thanks elisabeth for the idea for the wswa colaborative, we'll make that work with a better group and i appreciate you taking the lead on that.
anybody who has an idea, let me know. we'll talk about it and you can take the lead too.

more to come.......
timmy baugh
Soldier for Christ (soon)
underground apostolate

rosary praying changes the world

anybody ever feel like praying is just wishful thinking? try this on for size; THE STUPAK AMMENDMENT PASSED!!!!!!!!!
this represents a tremendous victory for Catholic ideals in our political arena in washington dc. the stupak ammendment is a change to the proposed universal healthcare bill that is intended to keep taxpayer money from being used for abortion. now we all know that as long as these sadists are in control they will find a way to take your money and mine and fund abortions with it, but this shows that at least on paper, our message is getting through!!! this shows me that it is the power of prayer that made this change; that so so so many democratic members voted opposite of their own party's agenda. why else would they? of course satan's Catholic figurehead, nancy pelosi stuck to her guns and voted against it but her colleagues are feeling our prayer.

thank you so much to my troops who prayed with me last night, and thankyou to my additional troops who joined us today at city hall. its working. the truth is doing just what it should. no time to pat ourselves on the back, we merely dodged a single bullet this time and they have a whole lot more in the chamber. lets keep at it and keep adding to our ranks. those of you who brought friends, good work keep doing that. find those kids who are like us, we need them and they need us.

as of now we have 4 memberships paid and 2 partially paid. help me out by submitting your fees as soon as you can. if you want to meet on the inbetween and give it to me then, just give me a call or text me.

for those who couldnt join us today, we have a new goal in the midst of our others, the S.W.A.T. (which stands for special weapons and tactics) patch will be earned by doing what we call a 20X20. that is 20 times meeting with other group members to pray the full 20 decade rosary. say one set for the babies, one for the church suffering, one for the Holy Father's intentions, and one for your own intentions. keep track of them and after twenty, join S.W.A.T.

i'll get to work on the mission objectives that we discussed last night and update when i can. plan on meeting again next week at 8pm at holy family, and send me some ideas of what youd like to discuss at that time( specific areas of interest please) and i'll be happy to oblige.

God bless.