Am I opinionated?   Generally I would say I am not. Opinionated means thinking that ones own opinions of things are absolutes without reference to the actual truth of a matter or without openness to the views of others that could modify my own opinions. For example, I would never say that I am right about healthy eating choices since I know few facts in that area, even though I have my own opinions.   

However, there is another brand of being opinionated that surfaced that I do fall into. This is generalizing from my own experience or my own knowledge of others, making that into a sentence that says “Most people in this category are like this.”

It came up in an interesting context last week. I was chatting about how cradle Catholics can’t even imagine how cradle atheists, like myself, were brought up to think.  We were so totally materialistic as to think that a human being is just a grain of sand on the beach with an id attached.

An amused listener to these outrageous confessions pointed out that most atheists are more humanistic than I was.  They certainly would think of the human being as highly valuable with some rights if not all the rights that a theist would insist on.

Generalizing from this discussion, I realize that I, myself, and many others are opinionated when we leap from our own experience to huge generalizations as in “my family was of this ethnic background. All, say, Italians, were so proud of being of that ancestry. “All”? Why not “many” or “probably most.”

I am trying to catch myself in the interests of truth being higher than freedom of bias!

     Then, if they marry, seeing the spouse as a fallen idol. 

With forgiveness of the real flaws of the other, not the flaw of just not being perfect which was an illusion, comes seeing the other as a funny little creature and laughing at the same things we used to hate each other for. 

It is easier to like to be a funny little creature vs. an idol, if we give our hearts, first and foremost, to God and love each other in God.  Then we don't expect, and fail to find, our happiness totally in the spouse's love for us. With the horizon of infinite perfect love of God for us in heaven as a possibility, our co-dependence on the spouse and anger at his/her flaws diminishes greatly.  

Watch the video imbedded below as Henri's Sartre-feline ennui muses against the thesis of a graced nature imbued with beatific potentiality.

Several years ago I wrote a book with theologian Deacon Richard Ballard and Ruth Ballard, iconographer and spiritual writer called What the Saints Said about Heaven. It has been published by Tan/St. Benedict and is also available at the Goodbooks Salon.  The Ballard’s of Our Lady of the Rosary parish in Greenville, South Carolina (the pastor is the famous Fr. Dwight Longenecker). For that book I did spontaneous prayers for each quote from the writings of the saints.  People love the book.
So, last year the Ballard’s suggested we work on a book called What the Saints Said about Suffering. Same format.  Ruth Ballard, iconographer, is in chronic terrible back and stomach pain. Her thoughts are, therefore, in a way, much more authentic than mine. I consider my prayers to be more of a bridge for readers whose pain is less dramatic and often more psychological. Here is a prayer I wrote today for this book. The prayer is about a line in writings of St. Polycarp:



Prayer:  
“That we might live in Him”… Jesus, I am struck by those words of your early Church saint. My godfather used to say that one reason we don’t like to enter into deep prayer is that we prefer to have our feet on the familiar good earth.  That is what we are used to. We prefer to live on earth. We don’t want to live in You? Nowadays we have noticed that people like to stay in their “comfort zone.” Yet You are our comfort. The Holy Spirit is called The Comforter. Well, humble little wretches that we are, of course, we like the comfort zone of our earthly environment – my familiar dwelling place, my close friends, my desk or the well-known streets of the town where I serve, say, as a policeman. “Living in Him” would mean letting Him, as it were, lift us out of that comfort zone, into His heart and mind.  There He will comfort us for all the deficiencies of our surroundings, but He will also challenge us.  “Suffer” yourself to go out into the thoughts, the feelings, the miseries of a brother or sister today, Jesus might tell me when I draw near to Him in prayer: “If you take my hand and go forth out of that comfort zone, in exchange for living in Me, I will live in you. It will be a suffering for you, but also an adventure.”  Let me live in You, Jesus, more and more.

I thought goodbooksmedia blog readers might like this prayer of mine.

Dear readers,
Quite a few readers liked very much the quotation from my upcoming book: Toward a 21st Century Catholic World View (new title).  Since Goodbooks Media plans to publish it,  Jim Ridley suggested 
I start a new blog with chapters from that book. You will find that in a separate blog from now on.

Here I will continue with less organized thoughts. 

The one on my mind today is how much affirmation means.  We used to call it simply encouragement. When someone expresses delight, joy, or gratitude for something I said, did, or wrote, I feel such happiness.  This is not an ego-trip, it is simply that we all need to complete the circle of love with affirmation for gifts received. 

If you don't usually affirm people verbally for their good deeds, try and see what a difference it makes to do so.

From Marti’s chapter: During this century of great material advances, great conveniences and comforts, pain, especially spiritual and emotional pain, has become more intense and pervasive. As we look around us, and even within ourselves, we see unprecedented material blessings, yet astounding widespread spiritual, mental, and emotional wounds.  

Sean: “This is something I really observed coming back to America from Malawi (where Sean was in the Peace Corps) There is an incredible woundedness here, so much fear, hostility and competition. This lack of human solidarity is unknown in a Malawian village. In our places of work we employ empty phrases like “professionalism” to mask our ruthlessness. In our personal relationships we stay cool and keep our distance instead of drawing ever nearer. We are so used to treating other human beings as means unto ends that we fail to see the pain it causes.

 “How do we cope with this pain? It seems to me, many of us learn to put on a “thick skin”, but in doing so we numb our humanity because we cannot selectively numb parts of ourselves. When we numb one piece we numb the whole.

Marti quotes from an atheist: “It is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions”.    Similar ideas are being perpetrated by other aggressive atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens.”

 Sean: “I remember the first time I entered a Catholic church when I was in my early twenties and a professed atheist. I’d never been in a church building prior to that day. It was not an event I could easily forget—it was dark inside at the end of the day, but little rays of light shone through the stained-glass and hung in the air thick with incense smoke from an earlier mass. There was a sense of stillness, of vastness, something now I recognize as holiness that I could dismiss, then, but could not ignore. The only sound to disturb the mysterious stillness was from a woman crawling on her knees praying the Stations of the Cross and I could do nothing more than perpetually glance over and think, “This woman is insane, these people are insane.” But still there is something you cannot ignore. 

“I don’t think these atheists are any different. The mysteries of the church are at the same time incredibly compelling—yet seemingly insane. I think of the many disciples that abandoned Jesus when he revealed to them the necessity of eating his body and drinking his blood. They could not believe that teaching. Rationally, it’s nonsensical, but something, nonetheless, draws you in. 

“At some point in our journey of faith, I think we all have to deal with this notion of insanity. I draw strength by recalling the saints and holy people and their works of mercy that may well have been dismissed as mental illness. In my own story of conversion, they might say my religious beliefs are insane, but we judge by the fruits and the fruits of my conversion paint the opposite picture: of one saved from mental illness, from addictions, wounded relationships, consuming anger and resentments.

“If God offers us hope and we choose despair; if He offers us joy and we take sorrow; if He offers life but we prefer death then, that, I think, is insane.

Marti: The decision to forgive, not necessarily the feelings of forgiveness,   yields a significant and often energizing experience of freedom.  

Sean: Before my conversion I was probably the most unforgiving person I’d ever known. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, it was a form of self-made bondage. If you are hardhearted and unforgiving of other people’s shortcomings, inevitably you end up holding yourself to the same hard-hearted standard. Forgiveness allows you to accept your own faults and love yourself for what you are (which is a glorious creation of God).”

Marti: In the Eucharist, sometimes simply opening up oneself to the Presence and divine healing of our Lord is all that is needed for extraordinary grace, growth and personal inner healing or comforting of past and present pains in life.

Sean: “I can’t agree with the author more in terms of the healing that Christ offers. In the first few weeks of my conversion I came to know that healing very well. I won’t go into detail, but just say that Christ came in glory into my life, healed my heart of many years of pent up anger and resentment, healed many of my relationships and swept away a couple harmful addictions that had plagued me my whole adult life. I can say that, in the first few weeks of conversion, I experienced Christ mostly as a healer.”

Last year I put 4 of my small books on love, ranging from one written in the 1970's to one written in 2012, into a big volume called The Way of Love. 
Fr. Longenecker suggested the sub-title: The Battle for Inner Transformation. It was done by Create Space and I have it for $10 so that anyone can buy it cheap. You can find it by googling The Way of Love - Chervin since Amazon has another book of the same title by someone else.

Anyhow, I did a little show about the book with Doug Keck of EWTN on his Book interview program. Yesterday a woman who is starting a retreat house came to see me to invite me to do a retreat for pilgrims coming to Our Lady of Knock in Ireland. I could start next summer.

So, I was thrilled that I can use it this way and musing on how it could be morphed into more than a book for my students, but a whole PROGRAM!

I woke up this morning however, with the Holy Spirit seeming to tell me - what counts is persons not programs!  Jesus saves, not books and programs.  

I didn't take this to mean that such programs aren't good or not His will, but that we teachers and writers prefer the neatness of our packaged courses and books to the messiness of dealing with people, person to person. 

But the Church is also made up of persons. Jesus didn't say - "Read my program and you will be saved." He said "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church." Even though the Church of sinners is much messier than His beautiful words. 

I am traveling back from family to Holy Apostles seminary today and have to work on starting the new semester, so you may not read words from me for a few days. 

Let us pray for one another, Ronda

For those happy readers who have never heard of the hedonistic calculus, it comes from one type of utilitarian philosophy which claimed that the only thing that gives any act value is the pleasure that comes from it and that what gives such an act disvalue is the pain that could come from it.  Therefore, when we make decisions, we ought to calculate the pleasures and pains and then act frankly to get whatever is the most pleasurable and least painful.  That calculation came to be called the hedonistic calculus.

This philosophy is judged to be not only erroneous but also cynical by philosophers of ethics who stress the absolute rightness and wrongness of specific acts whatever the calculable or incalculable outcomes. When it comes to doing something wrong, no amount of pleasure that could accompany or result from the act can make it good. If you think about it, when even skeptics and cynics think that something is wrong, they never calculate the pleasure involved.  If anyone thinks that rape is good because of the pleasure of the rapist, he or she wouldn’t dare say so!

However, there is a sense of the hedonistic calculus that pertains not to choosing between good and evil, but between two goods.  Sometimes consciously, but mostly unconsciously, when deciding, say, between visiting grandma at the rest home this Sunday or not, whatever excuses are given; probably the real reason for doing so or not involves a calculus of pleasure and pain such as – the pleasure of going to the movies instead is greater than the pain of a twinge of guilt at disappointing grandma.  Or, that the pain of the guilt at the thought of grandma’s disappointment is greater than the possible pleasure of going to the movies.

I find it helpful in avoiding excuses and denial to admit that the hedonistic calculus is probably behind many such decisions, even the most trivial ones. I see a piece of paper someone dropped in the garden. Should I stop, stoop down, pick up the paper and throw it in the trash bin, or proceed toward my parked car without picking up the paper?  The excuse for not doing the tiny good deed might be something like “it’s someone else’s job to clean the lawn. Let them do it.”  Is that not-wholly-invalid excuse, however, a good reason not to pick up the litter out of love for the family and/or love for the beauty of the lawn?

Probably reading these paragraphs you are praising the Lord that you never studied enough philosophy to be able to analyze such daily matters so closely!   From the angle of spirituality in our daily lives, however, the thought that occurred to me, which I preferred to write down rather than stoop down to pick up the litter by the way, (smile), was that, if I was more of a penitent, I wouldn’t have to think twice. “Ah, litter! Good, a little chance to offer something to God for all my usual pious intentions!”

Did you know you can take courses on-line for B.A. or M.A. credit from minds like mine at Holy Apostles College and Seminary?  Google it.