If you need a break from politics, I was received into the Catholic Church on Sat & I'm super happy about it :D pic.twitter.com/eICAE1oONw— Chelsea Shields (@Chels4LifeWI) March 29, 2016
Showing posts with label Conversion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conversion. Show all posts
If you need a break from politics
Cardinal Burke and the 1998 conversion of one of "Wisconsin’s most outspoken gay activists"
... but, to give some technical advice, Google does cache lots of stuff. A person could go to their cache search and say enter in something like this to perhaps see if the page was still available online: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/ search?q=cache: http://www.clmagazine.org/article/index/id/OTI2Mw/
Recently we posted a story that has circulated on the internet about Cardinal Burke and the conversion of an active homosexualist.
Thanks to a gracious commenter, I found the true story of the gay activist's conversion.
You can read the story "Coming Out of Sodom" by Eric Hess in Celebrate Life Magazine 2011-09-29 www.clmagazine.org/article/index/id/OTI2Mw/The story is from 2011 but the actual conversion happened in 1998 in the La Crosse Diocese. There may be other stories like this one but this seems to match the details of the original.
I would recommend reading the whole thing, I'll highlight a few details.
The full story is just as amazing. Unfortunately, we find in this story that same spirit that pervades even Catholic institutions in the West.
What a terrible end to such a beautiful story! We should remember that when speaking with people who suffer from same sex attraction. Is there any group of people that is any more lied to than "gay" people? I know "gay" people who don't believe in civil "gay" marriage. But they cannot talk like that, they are even more viciously attacked by the homosexualists than ordinary Christians are!
Like Pope Francis, Cardinal Burke is one to reach out to common people. I won't dive into it now, but for those who think that "Cardinal Burke lives in an ivory tower" say that because you "know people like him" not because you know him. There are hundreds of stories like this which exhibit his loving pastoral approach. I would recommend learning a little more about him before condemning the man.
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WI Cong. Sensenbrenner becomes Catholic; +Dolan, Listecki, Morlino attend
continue at JSWisconsin Congressman James Sensenbrenner (R-Menomonee Falls) converted to Catholicism in a quiet ceremony at Milwaukee's St. Francis de Sales Seminary on Monday — a private affair reportedly attended by at least two Wisconsin bishops and Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York.
Sensenbrenner's office confirmed the conversion in an e-mail. But it turned down an interview request, saying the congressman "sees this as a private matter."
The ceremony was first noted by Mark Silk, professor and director of the Greenberg Center for the study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Connecticutt, on his blog, Spiritual Politics. In addition to Dolan, Silk said, Milwaukee Archbishop Jerome Listecki and Madison Bishop Robert Morlino were on hand.
A spokesman for Morlino confirmed Wednesday that he attended the ceremony. Listecki's chief of staff, Jerry Topczewski, said, "We don't comment on his private calendar." A representative for Dolan could not be reached.
The Republican lawmaker had previously identified himself as an "Anglican Catholic," Silk noted, "so jumping the Tiber was for him not much of a leap religiously."
"Sensenbrenner seems to have been traveling this road for awhile," said Silk.
Welcome Cong. Sensenbrenner! To quote Fr. Groeschel, "come on in, the water is terrible!" LOL
I think Silk's article is a little over the top as far as how Sensenbrenner now needs to change his policy on immigration.
HT AC
An interview with Pro-Life Wisconsin's Sam Guzman
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| Pro-Life Wisconsin's Sam Guzman |
You recently moved to Wisconsin. Where did you relocate from, and why?
My wife and I moved from Colorado, specifically the Colorado Springs area. I grew up in Wisconsin, but moved to Colorado after meeting my wife online, as that is where she lived at the time. I never seriously considered moving back to Wisconsin until I heard that Pro-Life Wisconsin was hiring a Communications Director. While I thought it was a long shot, I submitted my resume. After going through the interview process, they offered me the job! I was surprised and happy. We moved back January of this year.
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What parish do you attend?
I attend St. Stanislaus in Milwaukee. Yeah, Latin mass!
Who's your favorite saint, and why?
That is a hard one! There are so many saints I love and admire. But if I had to choose, I would have to say St. Louis de Montfort, who is my patron saint. Coming into the Church, I struggled with Catholic devotion to Mary. After reading “True Devotion to Mary,” the light bulb went on and I embraced devotion to Mary as my spiritual path. Of course, St. Louis is mostly known for his teachings on Our Lady, but there is so much more to his spirituality. He was a poet and an incredibly deep and mystical saint. He writes about Divine Wisdom with such a fiery passion, and after reading him, I always go away inspired to live a more holy life.
You're a convert to the Catholic faith, right? What's the story of your conversion, and when did it take place?
Yes, I am a convert to Catholicism. It is difficult to share my story briefly, but I will do my best. (Someday, God willing, I will write a book!) While attending a fundamentalist Baptist university in college, I began to feel a strong disconnect between the faith I knew and the faith of the early church. Would St. Augustine (my hero at the time) really have gone to Victory Independent Fundamental Baptist Church and ended each service with an altar call? How did the earliest Christians worship? Baptist worship just didn’t seem to fit with the little I knew about church history. I began to delve into the history of Christianity and to read the early church Fathers as much as possible.
Also, at the same time, I was a guard at the school’s art museum. Ironically, this virulently anti-Catholic Baptist school had an art gallery filled with priceless Catholic art. It spanned the 2nd to the 19th centuries. It was incredibly beautiful stuff. I would spend the hours of my shift browsing the paintings and trying to translate the Latin inscriptions. I looked up some Latin prayers online, and was actually memorizing the Hail Mary in Latin, just because I thought it was cool to pray in Latin (a dangerous thing to do--Our Lady is the most effective evangelist!). Again, though, I felt distant from the Christians who created this art work. Obviously, they had strong faith. Yet, according to what I believed, they weren’t true Christians. What did they really believe, and why?
In short, I was drawn to the beauty, depth, and richness of historic Christianity. The impression grew that the Protestant Christianity I knew was missing something essential, and was actually foreign to the faith of Christians through the ages. The search for a more historic faith lead me to the Anglican tradition. I thought, “Here is a middle way between Catholicism (which I would never consider) and Protestantism.” I considered the ministry and becoming an ordained Anglican priest. However, in choosing an Anglican denomination in which to pursue ordination, the division that characterizes Protestantism really hit home. I always knew Protestants were divided, but it never really bothered me. But when I saw dozens of Anglican “churches” all claiming to be the true Anglicans, co-existing with whacked-out liberal Anglicans like the Episcopal Church in the USA, I knew there was a deeper problem. Jesus’ prayer for unity in John 17 told me this shouldn’t be. Why such confusion in the name of Jesus? So I began to study the break with Rome that had started the chaos.
For about three years, I studied church history and theology in my spare time. After graduating college, I began to study more earnestly. I vacillated between repulsion and attraction, fascination and disgust. After much internal struggle and turmoil, I eventually came to the conclusion that the Catholic church was the one True Church that Jesus had founded in 33 A.D. It was the body of Christ, and if I wanted to be true to Jesus, I would have to become Catholic. I decided to convert around mid-2011 and was confirmed Easter of 2012. There’s so much more I could say, but that is the short version!
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| Sam, Laura and Peter Guzman |
You and your wife Laura have a one-year-old and another little one on the way. What has fatherhood taught you?
Being a father has been one of the greatest joys of my life. More than ever, it has taught me the beauty of each human life. My little boy is so full of a personality all his own, and it is great fun watching him explore the world, learn, and grow. I can’t wait to meet our new baby soon, and see the ways in which he is uniquely gifted.
One way being a parent has challenged me is in seeing how much Peter looks up to me. He wants to do everything I do. It’s very cute, but it also reminds me of my great responsibility to be holy example for him. More than what I say, he will learn from what I do. I strive to be a good man and a saint for his sake.
Tomorrow, we'll be back with part two of our interview with PLW Communications Director Sam Guzman.
Falling off my horse: The conversion of a Daily Kos Progressive to Devout Catholic
For the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul.continue at Laetificat Madison
Up until shortly after I returned to the Catholic Church in 2006, I used to be a very involved political progressive. I was truly not important nor specially influential. But in no particular order, I marched in a peace march in DC next to Cindy Sheehan and Al Sharpton. I canvassed door to door for John Kerry through MoveOn.org, and at Madison’s biggest rally ever I was right up front. I went for jaunts in the countryside with marijuana and free speech activist and perennial political candidate Ben Masel. I interviewed John Edwards. I begged journalist Bill Moyers to come out of retirement, and when he did, he told me “your message made the difference.” I was so much a part of the big progressive website Daily Kos, that founder Markos Moulitsas-Zuniga offered to pay my airfare to their national convention, and was a founding member of the religiously pluralistic Daily Kos “faith & politics” spinoff site, Street Prophets.
Now, none of this means I was someone important, and though there are a lot of “name” people in this post it is mostly because it’s such a crazy story. I was having a good time (progressives are all about having a good time), I was an obsessive enough internet user to become well known on these online communities, I was trying to do good and to be a loving person according to what I believed then, and oh boy I was more than just a bit confused about some things, for instance an unborn child is a person from the start and marriage is between a man and a woman.
And now, I’m a daily Mass going pro life Catholic, deeply concerned about religious freedom–and yes, still concerned for the poor. Look at my blog. But believe it or not, God was forming me through my experience with the progressives.
For the feast of the conversion of St Paul, I present the illustrated story, which is highly condensed to the most interesting parts and the parts I have photos of.
Masterminds behind chart-smashing nun’s Advent album credit pro-life conversion with success
The angelic voices of a new order of young nuns has taken the world by storm, surpassing Rod Stewart, Taylor Swift, and One Direction in sales last week at major retail outlets such as Amazon and Barnes&Noble.continue at LifeSite
But behind the astonishing success of Advent at Ephesus lies the amazing story of the Catholic masterminds behind the album, couple Kevin and Monica Fitzgibbons. LifeSiteNews managed to reach them in the midst of their busy schedules and convince them to tell their story.
Once upon a time Kevin and Monica were both highly motivated individuals working at the top in the music entertainment business for mega companies like Sony and DreamWorks. And both were Catholics from large families who had gradually abandoned their faith in their journey to the top.
An entertainment project brought them together in 1997 and they began dating. Each discovered that the other was a non-practicing Catholic. They decided during the penitential season of Lent to go on a Mass date. Something happened to them during the service.
“We immediately felt that God had put both of us together because we were numb-skulls and he wanted us both to figure things out,” Kevin confessed.
Modern Commentaries: Why I'm Catholic
I’ve talked pretty openly about my conversion story, but here it is again you’re unfamiliar with it. I was baptized and raised WELS Lutheran. I was confirmed in the WELS church when I was in 8th grade. Up until high school I went to services pretty regularly with my father, a life-long Lutheran, but I’d also attended Mass with my mother, a life-long Catholic. My brother and I were baptized Lutheran because my father was the regular church-goer. When I got into high school and college, my church attendance waned. I did, briefly, consider converting to Catholicism in high school but didn’t want to hurt my father’s feelings on the subject, so I put it on the backburner. I also stopped attending services at the church in which I grew up.continue at Modern Comments
In college, like most 18, 19, 20-somethings, I became pretty liberal both religiously and politically. I bought what my professors said about conservatives and Christians, and especially Catholics. They were backward, oppressive, stupid and unwilling to change, thus perpetuating a cycle of oppression and ignorance among followers. I think the low point was when I wrote a letter to USAToday blasting the Church for refusing to change the matter of the Eucharist to accomodate those with gluten intolerance (teaching says the Host used for consecration must be made of water and wheat flour, anything else renders it invalid).
Then I met Dave. In our initial discussions, he described himself as a “Papist”, which I learned meant Catholic. Well, I was okay with that because my mom was Catholic. But our discussions on faith and politics soon revealed a gulf between us – he was pretty conservative and orthodox; I was pretty liberal and heterodox. I was pro-choice, pro-contraception, feminist, in favor of gay marriage, and a believer in AGW and the platforms of the Democratic party.
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