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WEEK 3  FROM RONDA CHERVIN

6/17/2016

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I think all of you on this blog are familiar with my book The Way of Love, a compilation of 4 previous little books about love: What is Love? Obstacles to Love, Making Loving Moral Decisions, and the Spiritual Marathon.
I teach it in my on campus and on-line classes on philosophy of love. Steve Bujno uses the Marathon with Catholic High School students.
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A new thing is starting a group of Catholic adults here near Holy Apostles who are working on the book and coming together once a week for sharings and discussion.  They absolutely love the book!
​One of them mentioned how he wished my approach was out there for high school age young Catholics!  
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It would be a dream of mine that one of you would re-write parts of Way of Love or the whole in a format that would be best for High School students, college students, and young adults in parishes.  It could have an even more user friendly format and graphics. 
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The new cover could be
The Way of Love:
The Battle for Inner Transformation

by
Ronda Chervin and ________________ ____________________________________.
Some of you already have this idea on your back burners, but maybe you want to put them on the front burner. 
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Let me know if any of you have time for this.
​Of course, we shouldn’t have 2 of you doing the same thing at once!
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Question of Faith

6/8/2016

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 Sean Hurt converted from atheism during his stint with the Peace Corps in Malawi. You can link to information about him and commentaries by him online at the Catholic World-View blog or in print throughout the pages of the book, Toward a 21st Century Catholic World-View. 

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I had a question for our Lord that bothered me for a long time. The question ran something like this:
​“Lord, I’m surrounded by so many people who do not believe in you, why can’t you hound them, come down from heaven, reveal yourself and show them the truth?
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Why don’t you perform mighty deeds and miracles and let them behold your glory?” This question dogged my soul, because I believe our Lord does not desire any one of his lambs to go astray, so why doesn’t He do more to collect us under his wings?
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In His time and providence the Lord answered me in this way: I was at mass one day kneeling before communion and fiddling with the crucifix I wear around my neck. It was my turn to go up. I took communion, knelt back down and started fiddling with my crucifix again but I stopped, suddenly noticing that it was stained red—as if with blood! In fact, the whole corpus was covered with bright splotches of blood!
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So, what was my reaction to this apparent miracle? Did I prostrate and convulse and promise never again to sin and to follow Christ in unwavering faith and holiness ‘til the day I die? Of course not! I looked at it perplexedly, brought it home, took pictures, showed it to my wife, told my friends, discussed the evidence and speculated about the causes, looked at it under a black light and a great deal of other things which amount to a waste of time in regards to my eternal soul. The miracle didn’t help turn me towards Christ nor did it increase my faith.

This apparent miracle and the tepidity that followed made question my question. Does God really need to dazzle us with heavenly wonders to help us believe?. No, of course not. He is as much the God of our interior as he is the exterior, and delights in entering silently through the back door of our minds to stand, suddenly, in our midst for eyes of faith to behold. God does not need to make a spectacle of himself to help us believe—he can work on us interiorly.
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 In the case of my own conversion, I was blaspheming the name of Jesus on a Monday and by Wednesday, I was prostrated on my knees promising to love and serve Him ‘til my dying day. So, what happened on Tuesday? Did I see a great light? Yes, but more than earthly light. Did I hear a thundering voice? Yes, but clearer than earthly thunder. There was no dazzling miracle. Rather, simply, my heart turned to Him and whispered, “If you are there God, then nothing else matters, not my life, my wife, my family, my dreams my ambitions or career. My will does not matter, but yours, alone dear hidden-Lord. I desire you more than life.”  I consented, as a spouse consents to their beloved and at that moment, he gave me a grace, the gift of faith and I beheld him for the first time with eyes of faith. We stood face-to-face: a son who so long sought his true father and a father who so long sought his lost son. There was no need now for clever arguments or dazzling lights.  

   Witnessing a miracle in earthly light without His grace doesn’t necessarily help you believe, and even if it did, belief in God does not equal discipleship. After all, God wants lover-disciples—people who will love him, do his work and sow his Word not just believers.
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Week Two: Champions of Change

6/6/2016

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Steve Bujno
With his wife, three daughters and wonderful granddaughters, Stephen lives in Adamstown, PA. He teaches Catholic morality and sacraments to juniors at Berks Catholic High School in the Allentown Diocese. Also, he instructs engaged couples on the unitive and procreative elements of marriage, along with the Church’s understanding on contraception. He presents to adults seeking catechetical certification, courses on both morality and social justice. Stephen has earned an MA in moral theology from the Graduate School of Theology at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, and at the time of this writing is a thesis short is working on his thesis (The Phenomenology of Sacrifice as Gift: A Liturgical Anthropology) of to complete an MA in Philosophy from Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, CT. He is also a professional artist and has owned and operated a pottery studio with his wife Tina for over twenty years. He writes regularly, and reads prolifically. Specific fields of interests include social justice, theological/philosophical anthropology, liturgy, personalism, Bl. Duns Scotus and recent Catholic philosophy. Pray for him!

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This was the end of finals week at the high school where I teach Moral Theology. Under the umbrella of Catholic Morality lies many topics, but as the students were given the opportunity to ‘choose’ which modules would be covered after the foundational concepts were addressed, it’s apparent that sexuality occupies their curiosity. They chose ‘The Sexual Revolution’, ‘Marriage and Sexuality’, ‘The Homosexual Person’ and ‘Love and Intimacy’…in that order.

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I wouldn’t conclude that they had a salacious interest in those topics, but rather saw an opportunity to cover a topic that fills the minds of young (and old), yet remains to be breached with any genuine love, consideration and dare I say, a sacred humility. But here's the point; our culture is the water we swim in.

Two things are typically taken for granted on that point. One, the present beliefs and values have always been this way, and the second is that people (not just the young) believe that they chose their present values. With the second thought, if their values simply line up with the present culture, they presume it is because a movement is afoot. But one can be a champion of change without every defining what one is changing from or what one is changing into. It is thought that to change is to think for one’s self.
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Never would they consider that ‘thinking for themselves’ is precisely what they are not doing…they don’t take notice of the cloudy water they’re swimming in, and for that matter, don’t really know what clear water looks like.
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I would like to think that on some level, the students chose the issues revolving around sexuality because there remains a hint of disquiet in them with what passes as truth concerning one’s own sexuality and understanding of the human person.





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​So it was a curiosity, but one that lies inherent in their nature. The artist and cultural critic Suzi Gablik said in her book Has Modernism Failed? that “in Warhol’s work there aren’t any originals—there are only copies.”
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That’s an analogous symptom to the present concepts on sexuality. Without any unique thinking for one’s self, too many students (young and old) are mere copies of their culture. The tragedy is that it’s unbeknownst to them. Each is thought to be an original, but is merely a copy. With Any Warhol, at least there was no self-deception.
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So at the end of this academic year, once again success is measured not by their final exam grades, but by how well I dislodged them from their mundane analysis and uncritical acceptance of what floats down the river of culture.
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The goal was not as apologetics purports, to show them what clear water is really like, but to offer them an ‘ah-ha’ moment where they realize how the cultural water they’re swimming in really is indeed cloudy.
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    Authors

    Ronda Chervin

    Alex Gotay

    Marti Armstrong

    Jeremie Solak

    Sean Hurt

    Jennifer Hurt

    Steve Bujno
    ​

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