LIVE YOUR FAITH!

Are you being called to a deeper faith in God?

If you think so, maybe you're being called home to the Catholic Church, as was former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair! Do you live in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area and want to learn more about the Catholic faith? Are you interested in being baptized, or simply exploring what it means to be or to become a Christian? Or are you already a Christian (baptized or not), or a Catholic Christian seeking First Communion and Confirmation? As Catholics, we find renewal, hope and freedom in following Jesus Christ. We find joy in being part of a Christian community that serves one another. Are you or someone you know hungering to grow closer to God?

If you or someone you know are interested in learning more about what it means to be Catholic, you are invited to join in the RCIA of the Catholic Church. Every year, adults are welcomed into the Catholic Church at Easter as part of the Right of Christian Initiation for Adults ("RCIA") - it is the process by which people grow as disciples of Christ, and are received into the Catholic Church at Easter.

The RCIA process is both an individual and community experience for each participant. It begins with growing in your relationship with Christ, and learning more about the basics of the Catholic faith. It continues on with group Scripture study, as well as journeying deeper into the teachings and Tradition of Catholicism. For those who are not baptized, the height of the experience is the reception of the sacraments of Baptism, First Communion and Confirmation at the Easter Vigil. The formal process finishes with a period of settling into life as a Catholic during the Easter season.

Throughout the process, participants are nourished by prayer, Scripture, and the love and support of their parish family, and of the worldwide Church. Participants have a sponsor who walks them through the process. I went through the process myself in the 2005-2006 season, having converted from being a long-time Protestant. It was an eye-opening experience for me, with no pressure or "hard sell" to become Catholic from anyone involved in the process. The atmosphere was relaxed and it didn't cost me a penny (in fact, we all enjoyed free snacks and beverages at the meetings)! The bottom line is that it was an invaluable opportunity for me to learn so much that I didn't know about Christ and His Church, and it dispelled the many misconceptions and points of historical inaccuracy that I had always believed before about the Catholic Church.

Then, for the 2006-2007 year, I was an active team member in the RCIA program in my parish on Milwaukee's East Side. I was lucky enough to be graced with the privilege of sponsoring a man who was confirmed in the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil in 2007, and I was blessed again in the 2007-2008 process to have the same privilege Easter of 2008 for a bright young man who was a senior at Dominican High School in White Fish Bay! Graced again by God in 2009 to be of further service to the Church in this way, I sponsored a woman of Jewish ancestry into the Church at the Easter Vigil.

Usually starting in September of each year, my parish meetings are Tuesdays from 7:00 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. We attend Mass together on the weekends and normally take at least one field-trip retreat somewhere of spiritual and historical significance in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee (ours is the only archdiocese in all of North America that has two basilicas!). Anyone who is interested in more information, or who may just have some general questions, may feel free to e-mail me at seabrite @ execpc . com (or post a private entry in my guest book below with your name, contact info and any questions you might have).

Also, I have found the following web site to be very helpful and informative about the Catholic Church and our faith in general:

(Click banner for THE answers!)

Specifically . . .

The Church's role in the Inquisition (false and exaggerated!)

Witch hunts - almost entirely Protestant

Call no man "Father"?

Myths about indulgences

Catholicism is NOT Pagan!

Celibacy and the Priesthood

The Sabbath and Sunday

Purgatory - true and correct doctrine!

The Myth of "The Rapture" - FALSE DOCTRINE

Abortion = MURDER (not "freedom")

And how about all the priest sex abuse?

Many think that is the best reason why they should stay away (and even abhor) God's first Christian Church, the Catholic Church. Nobody is perfect. My parish priest says that "We are a Church of faith, not of perfection." Well said, indeed! As Christ entrusted Peter with the keys of His Church to serve as Its foundation (more on that below), He basically gave It to a bunch of imperfect sinners - remember that Peter denied knowing Jesus three times before the cock crowed? But what choice had He? So, as the Church is founded on and ran by imperfect, fallible sinners, there will always bound to be some problems, difficulties and even big trouble, like the sex-abuse scandals.

But, contrary to how the news media and so many people out there appear to be acting about it, clergy sex abuse is not limited to the Catholic Church. Click HERE to read a New York Times article published in June of 2007 evidencing that there are at least 260 reports of abuse yearly in Protestant churches (a number estimated to be far below the actual number of incidents of sex abuse in Protestant congregations).

As a matter of fact, child sex abuse sweeps sadly throughout many walks of life and is not just limited to religious organizations and their clergy. Click HERE to read a 2004 Newsmax article about how wide-spread sexual abuse of children by their teachers and school staff is.

It's all serious, and it's all sad. But it's all about human beings and our weaknesses which we all have, regardless of which religious beliefs we may hold to be true. It is approximately 4% of all Catholic priests who comprise the number of the perverts who have the mental defect that has caused them to act this way. Those who are reasonable and rational should know better than to think the remaining 96% of them are as guilty.

In case you just missed it, here it is again:

NONE OF US ARE PERFECT, NOT EVEN THOSE PEOPLE CALLED TO LEAD CHRIST'S FIRST CHURCH ON EARTH. IN CASE YOU OR SOMEBODY YOU KNOW MIGHT BE UNDER THE VERY FALSE IMPRESSION THAT CATHOLIC CHURCH LEADERS ARE AS PERFECT AND WITHOUT SIN AS CHRIST HIMSELF, THEN YOU (OR THOSE OTHERS YOU KNOW) MUST GET A FIRMER GRIP ON REALTY AND GET THAT IT'S NOT POSSIBLE FOR MORTALS TO BE AS PERFECT AND AS WITHOUT SIN AS JESUS, THOUGH WE MUST ALL STRIVE TO BE AS GOOD AND FORGIVING AS HIM.

We must hate only the sins (not the sinners), and we must make do with our faith and with what we truly are until Christ comes again. Leaders of the Catholic Church should be as good and as perfect as Jesus, but that's impossible because they are only human. Contrary to the inflamed misrepresentations of an injured few, Church leadership has, in fact, tried to deal with it as best as they can. When members of our Catholic clergy offend, they are punished and attempts to rehabilitate them are made. But, like members of our own individual families, we do not just throw them out like garbage, as the unforgiving members of SNAP would have us do. It's that simple. Accept it.

Now, about my own personal journey home to the Catholic Church from Lutheranism, and some important things to note.

So what do my beliefs boil down to? I guess I would have really gotten a laugh out of what I have to say today back when I was an atheist about what I believe now and will believe until the end of time. Basically, a plethora of experiences, visions and spiritual signs that I received in both the real world and in dreams have brought me to the realization that God reigns supreme in heaven and on earth, that He is good and the source of all love and light, that He has a divine plan for the eventual and certain defeat of all evil far, far beyond our comprehension in which we must trust. I believe that Jesus Christ Himself started His church on earth, and what He started eventually became what we know today as the Catholic Church.

On the flag above is the Cross of St. George. It is the long-standing emblem of the flag of England which, along with the Crosses of St. Andrew and St. Patrick, form the Union Flag (the "Union Jack") of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland.

St. George

St. George is my personal patron saint. I took his name at my confirmation into the Catholic Church. Among many others, he is the official patron saint of England and of soldiers (I am predominantly of English heritage and I am a five-year U.S. Army veteran). His slaying of the dragon is a powerful symbol and constant reminder to me that I, being a typical sinner now, will always have my own personal dragons/demons to slay at any given time in my life. Having been an extraordinary sinner in the past for sins I profoundly regret now, I am greatly relieved to have been totally absolved of those sins through the glorious sacrament of reconciliation made possible by the apostolic succession of Jesus Christ preserved by God's grace through the Catholic Church!

If you have been walking the wrong path in life, as I once did, the right path is available to you by simply asking God to lead you onto it. Having found Christ once before in my life by the grace of God, I fell away and into a sinful existence. Then, I married a life-long Catholic who eventually received God's grace to renew her participation in the Catholic Church and to finally receive the sacrament of Confirmation in it as an adult. Through her journey home, I also received the grace from God to ask Him for some long-overdue help in steering me more in the direction of our beloved Savior and His one true Church. You can do it, too - just ask!

~ A word about "organized religion" ~

Anyone who advocates against organized religion is necessarily advocating against Christ and His Church, since His Church is, by its very nature, organized religion. Those Christians who support and defend those who advocate against organized religion are therefore not supporting and defending our Savior, Jesus Christ. Think about it.

In giving us His Church, Christ wants us to be in communion not only with Him, but with each other. His Church, therefore, is communal and social in nature - we are a family. We believers, as individuals, are not enough on our own. We need the Church that Jesus directly gave us. This I would probably never have been made aware of, but for the teachings of the Catholic Church and its magisterium (teaching authority). Amen!

Before I became Catholic, I was not really keen at all about organized religion. In fact, it repulsed me! By "organized religion," I mean any formal religious, social structure with a membership and hierarchy. Though baptized into the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod), I never went to church before, and my Protestant background provided me very little instruction about Christian teachings and traditions. I took it upon myself to interpret Scripture for myself (as most Protestants normally do), thereby bringing myself to erroneously believe that all I have to do to obtain God's grace and blessings is to simply ask Jesus once to come into my heart and save me (for "whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved." - Romans 10:13), and go into a private setting every day to recite the prayer that He taught us to God and God alone (not parading my faith before others in a church or on street corners - Matthew 6:5-13). I thought that that's all I had to do in order to be saved through Christ. Maybe I should have joined a prayer group, but then how many more erroneous interpretations of Holy Scripture would I have picked up from other, then- fellow Protestants? God only knows! I was entirely missing the fact that Jesus Himself gave us His Church when he handed the keys to His Apostle Simon, whom he named Peter (Matthew 16:16-19). Jesus laid His hands on Peter and started what we call the "apostolic succession." Peter and the other Apostles then laid their hands on their successors. It has gone that way in our Church - and none other - for over 2,000 years now. Think about it.

St. Peter was the first head of Christ's Church on earth - he was the first Bishop of Rome, the first "pope." Protestants refute this by saying that there is scant, if any Scriptural evidence of this and by grasping at straws by quibbling over translations of the Greek word for "stone," "rock" or "pebble," etc., that appear in on-point Scripture. However, I and the whole Roman Catholic Church (the original Church of Christ) are convinced that this is correct because we accept and believe that teachings of Christian faith should be based not only on Holy Scripture, but also on apostolic tradition. Protestants say the Bible is the only rule of faith, meaning that it contains all of the material one needs for theology, and that this material is sufficiently clear on its own such that one does not need apostolic tradition or the Church's magisterium (teaching authority) to help one understand it. But the Holy Bible was originally compiled by none other than the early Catholic Church, with the very first list of inspired books being published at the Council of Carthage in the year 397, and it was never intended to be a stand-alone basis for understanding Christian faith. It is, in essence, a Catholic book (though Protestants later tailored it to their needs by stripping out several chapters from it that strongly support Catholic doctrines and dogma) which has always been meant to provide spiritual guidance along with and including the Church's teaching authority.

It's so nice having one, central teaching authority to hash out all the controversies and to set things straight for we believers. It unites and binds those of us who remain Catholic or become Catholic. The lack of such a central teaching authority of Christ's one true Church has divided Protestants, first from the Church, then from each other. This (and all the wars, death and suffering that have come with it in the past), lamentably, is one reason why some out there openly advocate against organized religion. The devil has done one hell of a job sabotaging Christ's Church, hasn't he? I blame him for separating our Protestant brothers and sisters from us like this.

~ Catholic Prayer ~

God wants us to pray to Him (Matthew 6:9-13; Ephesians 6:18). We Catholics, as all other believers in the God of Abraham, pray to Him all the time, both formally during the rich, active fullness of the Mass at church and informally at home or in other private settings (God is everywhere, after all). But we also ask for the help of those who are already in Heaven (1 Corinthians 1:2; Romans 1:7). Those people who have died and gone to Heaven, along with all of God's angels already in Heaven, are referred to as "saints." Just as we ask other people here on earth to pray for us from time to time (friends, family members, etc.), we ask those whom we believe to be in God's direct, Heavenly presence to also pray for us. We pray the Rosary given to us by the Blessed Virgin Mary. We worship God and God alone - we do not worship the Virgin Mary or other saints in Heaven, but we pray for their intercession with God because they are so much nearer to Him than we on earth are.

Many saints are believed to have special interests for which they advocate to God on our behalves; their special interests are believed to come from any number of origins, such as particular healings that people on earth have received after asking them for their intercessions, or from things the saints did, said or helped with while they were themselves still on earth. As mentioned above, St. George is believed to advocate for the needs of many, including soldiers. This is because he was himself a Roman soldier who was, because of his strong belief in Jesus, executed by the Roman army (this was way before Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity and invited the rest of Rome to follow suit - if that's not poetic justice, I just don't know what is!).

It is right and proper, therefore, to ask for his protection, as the soldier in God's army that he surely is, against evil and those who do evil things. Try it yourself with the following prayer . . .

Prayer for the Intercession of Saint George

Glorious St. George, the martyr,

defender of Christian faith,

who gave your life for the Catholic Church.

Protect my body from illness and my soul from evil.

Defend the happiness of my home from all those who may conspire to destroy it.

Give me the strength of your faith and fill me with hope and the love of God.

Amen.

Thank you, Archbishop Dolan, for all you've done for us in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee! We love you and will miss you, but we know what a blessing your kindness, graciousness and service to God are now to the Archdiocese of New York.

Welcome, Archbishop Listecki! We are truly blessed to have you take Archbishop Dolan's place as Milwaukee's new shepherd!

Peace be with You! Peace be with all who read this!

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Now that I've given you a little "food for the soul" above, here are some links to my recipe pages for actual food (with lots of pictures to guide you along). Try some of them out and let me know what you think - Cheers!

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