Must-have conversations for dating and engaged couples

I really like this Web site from USCCB for Catholic marriages, especially this article on must-have conversations for dating and engaged couples:

http://foryourmarriage.org/dating-engaged/must-have-conversations/

Made me think of where I am with me and my beau.  Let me know if you have thoughts/comments!

Video: Meet Mary

Ever wonder where our collection money goes each year for the Bishop's Annual Appeal?  This is a good chunk of it and more insight in my work with the Catholic Campaign for Human Development with the USCCB.

Pope Benedict XVI on love

 Love is indeed “ecstasy”, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God: “Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Lk 17:33), as Jesus says throughout the Gospels (cf. Mt 10:39; 16:25; Mk 8:35; Lk9:24; Jn 12:25).

 -Pope Benedict XVI in his Encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est (God is love), 2005

Video: Fatherhood and the epidemic of fatherless homes

Virtually every major social pathology has been linked to fatherless children: violent crime, drug and alcohol abuse, truancy, unwed pregnancy, suicide, and psychological disorders—all correlating more strongly with fatherlessness than with any other single factor, surpassing even race and poverty. The majority of prisoners, juvenile detention inmates, high school dropouts, pregnant teenagers, adolescent murderers, and rapists come from fatherless homes[1].

---

[1] Stephen Baskerville, “Is There Really a Fatherhood Crisis?”, The Independent Review (Spring 2004) 1.

...this is the stuff is what my soul speaks to.  We men need to step up and find ourselves, become alive, so we can become the men in our homes we're meant and called to be.

Quote of the Day

 “We can no longer judge anyone who is living poor in America as someone who is lazy or who has made a series of avoidable bad choices. Such pat indictments and stereotypes obscure a fundamental truth; there is a poverty of opportunity in America.” (emphasis added)


http://uprisingradio.org/home/2012/05/21/the-rich-and-the-rest-of-us-a-poverty-manifesto/

2 A.M. Rant

It's two o'clock in the morning....and thoughts fill my head.

And instead of try to orchestrate an organized, well-thought out, well-planned post, I'm going to freestyle on this one.

Stream of consciousness if you will.  Eat your heart out William Faulkner.

Another Quote of the Day

"God’s best microphone is Christ, and Christ’s best microphone is the church, and the church is all of you.  Let each one of you, in your own job, in your own vocation – nun, married person, bishop, priest, high school or university student, day laborer, wage earner, market woman – each one in your own place live the faith intensely and feel that in your surroundings you are a true microphone of God our Lord."

The Violence of Love

Archbishop Oscar Romero

January 27, 1980

Quote of the Day

Preach the Gospel at all times; if necessary, use words.

St. Francis of Assisi

Back from the dead, "Airplanes" by Chasen

After spending a date-weekend with my toilet enjoying the symptoms of food poisoning, I'm up and running again (well, maybe not yet running yet, but a fast-paced walk if you will.)

On a unrelated note, check out this song "Airplanes" by Chasen, it means a lot of different things for me (the first lines always get me, as I've been there), but particularly this time, the song reminds me of who we're called to be to friends in need:

Cardinal Dolan's commencement speech at CUA

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential Men this year, and a man many suspect could be the first American pope gave a commencement speech at CUA last weekend.

Among many shout-outs, he praised our Catholic Marines and nurses out there serving the world.

I'm proud to be lead by a man with such character:  Check out the video of his speech here:

http://publicaffairs.cua.edu/releases/2012/dolan-commencement-speech.cfm

Quote of the Day

"Yet if they have one overarching conclusion, it is this: The poor often stay poor because of the stress of daily survival; but given enough hope of a better future, they respond like everyone else"


from: What the world's poor can teach us on jobs

Video: 1 in 6 Americans live in poverty

I've been taking in a lot of information at work, and a lot of it boils down to this with the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.


CCHD | Tour Poverty USA from Crosby Marketing Communications on Vimeo.

Video: Stations of the Cross at CUA

Today at work, I came across these videos taken by the USCCB.  They're from one of my favorite traditions at my Alma mater CUA---our annual campus-wide stations of the cross during Lent.  USCCB apparently video taped one of them in March 2009 (which, now that I think of it, I do remember a video camera there).

Watching these brings a lot of memories, especially in the last video when my House '08-09 (student ministers) passed the torch to the new House '09-'10.  I remember that being an emotional moment, as the eight of us had gotten pretty close that year, and this event signified the beginning of the end of our run together.

Nonetheless, it's pretty funny watching these because I basically know 90% of the faces shown on these videos.  It's like playing "Where's Waldo?" CUA style, and could easily turn into the game, "How many people can you pick out?"

To my CUA peeps, enjoy:

Video: Is porn a drug?

I just learned about this great Web site fightthenewdrug.org that talks about the physical effects porn has on the brain.  Is porn a drug?

Check out this well-done video.

Video: Interview with porn

A friend shared this with me today...very well done.

Quote of the Day

Keep calm

and

carry on.

To date a math major turned math teacher

This morning, inspired by prayer, I texted my girlfriend Mimi.  It was a different type of text, in my attempt to be more poetic, genuine:

To her: "If God is love and love is real, my love for you must be real because it's coming from God. Whew...Have a great day beautiful!"

Her response to me: "I think I see a mathematical proof in your logic :) I love you :) Hope you have a great day, too :)"

Sigh. I date a nerd...and I love every bit.

Amén.

One woman finds her boyfriend's porn, healing, and eventual love

Recently a woman who I've never met (and who has asked to to be kept anonymous) e-mailed me concerning porn.  She wrote me this e-mail:

Dear Matt,

I recently came across your post on your blog about pornography and saw in the comments that you were looking for some women's feedback who've dealt with this issue in their relationships. I discovered my now husband was addicted when we had been dating six months and as hard as that was, I think it was God's grace in his life because he had to start facing the problem (which he wanted to be gone) or lose me. We broke up over it at one point. Even though he has been "sober" for maybe a year, I'm still very scarred by it - to discover his addiction was like discovering I had been cheated on, its still a battle sometimes to trust him. I'm so grateful however, that he has found some healing and a lot of that, I think was due to his ability to admit to himself and to others that he is weak. In my opinion that makes him strong. We've been married almost a year and we are now looking forward to the birth of our first child. I hope men realize that if they really tackle this struggle it will make them stronger men for themselves, for their wives and for their family. I know my son should be proud to have my husband as a father.

She then shared me something she wrote for another occasion.  I believe it to have a powerful message of humility, healing, and hope for both men and women:

Statistics on the Catholic Church

Nationals Stadium during Pope Benedict XVI's visit to America 2008
(And there's one.....two......three persons in one, at the old, ball, game!)

Today at work with the USCCB, I saw some statistics of the Catholic Church from our Web site.  Here's to the biggest combined charity, care provider, and educator in the country. Get big!

The Catholic Church in the United States At A Glance

(Figures Represent the U.S. Catholic Church Through 2009 Unless Otherwise Indicated)

Laity
There are 68,293,869 Catholics in the United States1 (22% of the U.S. population), and 1.1 billionCatholics worldwide2.

New Church Members³

• Infant Baptisms: 830,673
• Adult Baptisms: 42,335
• Received into Full Communion: 72,859

Religious Liberty

I'm about to be interviewed by Catholic Voices tomorrow, and they asked me to read up on the HHS Mandate beforehand to test my knowledge....watching videos counts, too right?

One of my favorite covers...

I'm not that big of a John Mayer fan, but his cover along with the other fine guitarists in this song has always been one of my favorite covers.  I love the raw acoustic feel of this song, and of course, the guitars win me over.

Responses from "48 Men's Thoughts on Porn"

It's been a week now since I put up the post 48 Men's Thoughts on Porn .

Typed millions of times across the world

There are many thoughts going on in my head.

For a first, it seems that a lot, and I mean A LOT (in the thousands) of people have read that post.  Partly definitely was because it was endorsed by Jason Evert (thank you Jason, if you're reading), but I believe definitely it's because it's a rare message from a lot of men that people are hungry to hear.

I'm humbled by the amount of praying that has been going on, especially with the 56 people who requested to join Prayers for Purity and are praying for the men and women affected by this epidemic.  Let's continue to pray!  Join the group even, if you'd like!

I've received a number of comments on this blog, Facebook messages, and long e-mails in reply to this post that are heart breaking, inspiring, and humbling.  Here are most of them:

I've got the cutest nephews...

A video my sister-in-law Mireille took of my nephew, my brother Mark's son, Nicolas.  The youngest of cute, great nephews in the Aujero clan:

How to ruin your marriage with NFP

Saw this this morning.  Love it.

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/simcha-fisher/how-to-ruin-your-marriage-with-nfp

Man Talk

http://shop.catholic.com/product.php?productid=17197

Worth a look at.  Looking to check it out myself.

Courageous

Watching the movie Courageous, any thoughts?