• Calibration to grace and for recognizing sin will increase as you journey with your halo.

• Be amazed: what was written by Saints hundreds or thousands of years ago so often seems written for me, today, with what is happening.

#Halo #Marriage #Parenting #Catholic #Shepherding #SpiritualDirection

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Every wife and husband are joined by God to reveal God's love to the world, bear new life into the world, and provide, protect, and defend hearth, rearing their children to come to know God's breath in them and breath it into the world. Wives and husbands, each in their own way, reveal Christ to each other and are called to be humbly obedient to Christ in each other, running toward Jesus our sweet Christ hand in hand, sharing the delights and challenges of this pilgrims' journey. For each married person the path to salvation is their marriage, serving each other in Christ ... their primary halo, their marriage.

#Halo #Marriage #Parenting #Catholic #Shepherding #SpiritualDirection

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Heavenly Father,

Forgive me for being foolish! Help me see how ridiculous (name the temptation) is!

Jesus,

Grant me the humility to accept your gift of the grace of (name the counter virtue for that temptation’s deadly sin), which always defeats the temptation of (name the deadly sin that tempts you).

Holy Spirit,

Guide me to see and immediately take the one next step to breathe my Breath of God into the world. Specifically, my next step is to (name the immediate next step). Give me the fortitude to go and do it now. In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen! ____

A few notes

God always answers this prayer.

“If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7).

Asking for the weapons of the Salvation Arts always remains in God, making His words remain in us. The prayer to the Father asks for the Salvation Art of Mindfulness to see how ridiculous sin is. The prayer to Jesus asks for one of the virtues, another Salvation Art. And the final prayer to the Holy Spirit asks for the gifts needed to breath our inner breath of God into the world.

The Father’s Gift

Freedom and laughter. If you don’t feel light and free immediately after calling Satan’s temptation ridiculous, you didn’t name the temptation clearly or specifically enough. Satan fights us in this prayer and does all he can to hide behind rocks on the battlefield that he may attack us with renewed vigor when we arrogantly think we’ve won. As long as Satan remains hidden behind a rock, we aren’t able to accept the gift of wild freedom God the Father always offers us. We have to exercise our will against Satan and name with clarity the temptation — not the detailed circumstances, but the flavor of the deadly sin.

Thus, “help me see how ridiculous my sin is!” fails because it isn’t specific in naming the deadly sin, leaving lots of rocks for Satan to hide behind. Likewise, “help me see how ridiculous it is when Sam is praised at work and all my hard work, which was hours and hours and which Sam needed to do his work, for which he was praised … is!” fails because rather than being prayer that simply names the temptation it repeats and deepens the sin itself.

Instead pray: “Father help me see how ridiculous it is when I am jealous of Sam for succeeding!” This removes all hiding places without entering into the turmoil of the sin, inadvertently repeating the sin anew. Instead, it is short, simple, specific and clear.

If you pray to the Father and do not immediately experience the gift of wild, jubilant freedom, you prayed it wrong. Dig deep, examine how to name the specific deadly sin without repeating the sin, and pray it again. Like using any weapon, the more you wield the Trinity Sword Prayer, the more effective you will become! This is spiritual warfare, you are exercising your will to trust God over Satan, to choose your inner Saint over your inner Sinner. Satan attacks where you are weakest, so naming where his attacking frees you to accept God’s abundance, and graces (weaponry). Fight to get this prayer right, and you will be stunned by God’s loving abundance!

Jesus’ Gift

Courage. Being emboldened. Again, if we do not immediately feel emboldened on praying it, we are allowing our Sinner to hide in how we are praying, preventing us from being able to accept the gift Jesus freely offers us. One way this happens is in our asking for something that isn’t a grace. If it isn’t one of the seven heavenly, life giving virtues, it may not be a grace. As long as what you ask Jesus for is a grace, it will be given and you will feel emboldened.

The Holy Spirit’s Gift

Action. If you don’t immediately find yourself with your first two gifts (wild abandon and and courageous) doing the next step to breathe your Breath of God into the world, free of the burden of temptation, you prayed it wrong. Take some time to get to know your Breath of God. Understand that it is through everyday ordinary tasks that miraculous things happen to transform the world, to help build God’s kingdom here and now. Make your next step simple and specific and something you can do right now. Open the gift of the Holy Spirit by going and doing it, right now!

Pray without Ceasing

Saint Paul extolls us to “pray without ceasing.” A powerful way to do this is to realize all activities worth doing ought to be prayer. Promote that way of seeing the world by praying the Trinity Sword Prayer, changing the prayer to the Father to:

“Father, thank you for your wild abundance in the beauty of today. Help me build your kingdom!” Then continue with the prayer to Jesus and the prayer to the Holy Spirit.

Suddenly, your value, meaning, purpose as a gift of wild abundance from God is clear, as is the single thing you need to do next to breathe God’s breath into the world! Go get ‘um!

As seen in Scripture!

Is there reference to any of the Trinity Sword Prayer in scripture? Yes! It appears in the Gospels is concept, John 21:15–19. Peter, called Simon again in these versus by Jesus to point out how his sin (how ridiculous he has been), has fallen for the sin of cowardice in the face of his fear during Jesus’ trial — denying Jesus three times. Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him three times — to directly counter and overcome the bigger Sinner Simon Peter has because of his sin. Each time, Jesus then tells him the next concrete action he is to take: “Feed my lambs … Tend my sheep … Feed my sheep” — aka: be Pope and take care of my Body, the Church! What other scriptures reveal this pattern of seeing how ridiculous sin is, asking for grace, and concretely moving forward?

Ask and it shall be given you: multiple places in the Gospels Jesus says if we ask for things in union with God they will be given. As referenced above, John 15:7 is one of these.

It really is “Digital”!

Either our faith is “on” or it isn't (just like the zeros and ones in the digital world). One of the amazing gifts of the Trinity Sword Prayer is it helps us discover areas where we aren't trusting God as much as we might think, giving us the opportunity to exercise our will and choose to trust where trust seems impossible. “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!”

One question I've received about this prayer is what about (soon to be) Saint Mother Teresa's years of despair? Surely there must be more nuance here to the “pray right and these gifts will be given”? If a Saint, like Mother Teresa or Padre Pio experiences despair, surely they know how to pray right?

First, Saint Ignatius in his two “Discernment of Spirits” appendices to his 30 Day Retreat, reveals there are three causes of despair (desolation), all of which have some form of sin at their root. Somehow, some way, if we are in despair, there is someplace in our soul we don't yet trust God with wild abandon. This is true for all of us, Saints included.

What is amazing about Saints who experience desolation in their prayer life is they understand it is part of their purgation, or purgatory, and challenging as it is, they embrace it, trusting God to heal them even as they anguish, and they continue to persist in their ministry despite it all. This is what Jesus calls us to do, because faith bears fruit in all seasons, including desolation. In the Gospel of Mark (11:11-26), Jesus curses the fig tree because it is not bearing fruit out of season. To the eyes of the world, this seem unjust. But this is Jesus, who defines justice. Through faith, we are called to bear fruit in all seasons, even the season of despair.

Learning from Praying it “Wrong”

One of the powerful gifts of the Trinity Sword Prayer is that praying it “wrong” is an invitation to examination of consciences, as well as a guide map to discovering where we are deaf, blind, dumb, and stupid — where and how our inner Sinner is hiding. The more we discover this, the more we are able to open ourselves up to Christ's light, which always abolishes the Sinner, and receive the abundant gifts God has already given but we have yet to unwrap! Even in our despair, God is a God of wild abundance!

#Halo #Marriage #Parenting #Catholic #Shepherding #SpiritualDirection

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Weird as all this looks to an outside observer, everything seems normal to us nibble-wits on the inside, even if most other people are doing things that make no sense.

Imagine how foolish we must look to everyone else! Moving about in odd ways to a distorted vision of the world only we see. Now imagine how a bunch of us look, each with our own differently distorted pair of glasses.

“Help me, please!” I call out.

“I’m right here, how can I help?” you offer, concerned.

“No you’re not,” I respond in frustration. “You’re not near me at all. You’re by that tree.”

“What?” you reply confused and a bit agitated. “You’re crazy. There is no tree.”

In reality, we both stand together, trying to hold each other up.

“Oof! Hey!” you holler. “Why’d you punch me?”

“I didn’t. I was getting the sliver out of your eye.”

Absurd as this interaction may seem, it represents the type of miscommunication that happens so easily between two people, even if they’ve known each other for years, even if they have the best of intentions, even if they are married and deeply love each other. Strife often enters relationships because of sin’s fun house glasses.

Strife, however slight, in relationship always indicates the presence of sin. Sin makes us deaf, blind, dumb, and stupid. Join a Halo. Start a Halo. Halo together, lose the fun house glasses, and run toward Jesus our Christ, with clearer sight, together.

#Halo #Marriage #Parenting #Catholic #Shepherding #SpiritualDirection

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Sex outside sacramental marriage is a primary plot device and source of conflict in modern stories. So much so that we have come to think of extra-marital sex as normal, at least on the screen and perhaps even see it as a sign of health and freedom. That's not healthy or holy. In truth, sex outside marriage is inherently selfish and prideful and lustful. Sex outside marriage thus encompasses at least three deadly sins, severs souls from God, shatters right relationship with all they know, and risks pregnancy out of wedlock, which puts a modern woman in the near occasion of choosing murder and calling it healthcare, another mortal sin.

What if, instead, characters chose chastity? What would change? How would the story be different? Would it develop or end differently? How?

Discuss with your halo.

#CurrentlyTimeless #Halo #Marriage #Parenting #Catholic #Shepherding #SpiritualDirection

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To understand this shepherding moment of centuries, this article builds on the understanding provided in these two articles: Living in a Catholic Monarchy and Mass Confusion.

If shepherding occurs in moments, different moments require shepherding differently. Again, good Catholic fathers inherently know this, shepherding a preschooler in temper tantrum differently than a willfully rebellious teen differently than a dutiful teen, even if the issue in each case is poor performance in school.

Shepherd's Examination of Conscience

The good shepherd begins with an examination of conscience, recognizing Saint Augustine's point that all shepherds are ever also sheep first (Letter to Pastors, Office of Readings). As a shepherd, we are called to ask questions such as: Do I see this moment clearly? How did we get here? How is/might my own sinner blind me and how do I ask Christ to heal it and have the faith to receive it? Do I need to grow more into this office of being a parent, deepening in faith and virtue and salvation arts?

Like a good daily examination of conscience or one prior to making a good confession, self assessment of one's capacity to shepherd may be brutal, if honest, yet also reveal clear steps to heal my deafness, dumbness, blindness, and stupidity that comes to light. Confession may be one of the steps to move forward.

Sheep Assessment and the Crux of the Cross

Next, having prepared to be the best shepherd he knows how to be, the good Catholic father assesses the sheep entrusted to him by Christ. A great many errors of shepherding occur here.

We are called to shepherd from the crux of the cross, where the horizontal beam and vertical beam meet, at Christ's Most Sacred Heart; not false compassion out on the horizontal beam where “admonishing the sinner” doesn't occur nor up on the vertical beam brow beating with false justice absent Love and Mercy.

Jesus on the road to Emmaus is our Good Shepherd, revealing we are called to meet our sheep wherever they are and interact with them (the horizontal beam of Love and Mercy) and then, lest the horizontal beam, being detached from the vertical beam of Truth and Justice, never be lifted out of the quagmire and miasma of sin's filth, admonish them to drive home the need to turn away from sin and live faithful to the Gospel: “Oh how foolish you are!” (Luke 24:25) so as to motivate them to hear with fresh ears God's Love (Truth, Justice, and Mercy), for only then can they have eyes to see Christ in the breaking of the bread and realize He was with them all along.

Just beginning to sort out Vatican II

We botched both our understanding and initial implementation of the Second Vatican Council. Our Church is beginning to see that the Second Vatican Council offered a slight redirecting without promulgating anything new or changing Church teaching. The so called “spirit” of Vatican II told us we were to largely ignore everything prior to 1960 and only their secret understanding of the Council was to be paid attention to (Manichaeism heresy, anyone?). We are just beginning to realize that the grave errors of this so called “spirit” of Vatican II are not the actual Truth (Love, Justice, and Mercy) of Vatican II. Bishop Nickless, referencing Pope Benedict XVI, explains: “The so called “spirit” of the Council has no authoritative interpretation. It is a ghost or demon that must be exorcised if we are to proceed with the Lord's work” (Pastoral Letter Ecclesia Semper Reformanda: The Church is Always in Need of Renewal).

In other words, we have no idea what Mass would look like had the Church actually obeyed Vatican II's Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. It called for a very different process and metrics for instituting change. It called us to retain Latin except in specific parts, give primacy of place to Gregorian Chant, and never called for the priest to face the people as the default posture. This confusion in the Church hierarchy and confused milieu of the faithful greatly defines this shepherding moment and what the faithful need as one next step toward Christ.

Shepherding Poverty?

With such confusion, how likely is it our current understanding of shepherding is less than what it has been in our Church's more than two-thousand-years? Do we suffer from a poverty of shepherds and thus shepherding? How goes our examination of shepherding conscience? Is our understanding of shepherding impoverished? If so, how do we invite Christ to heal it and deepen our faith, prayer, and fasting, so we more fully grow into the shepherding office with which Christ has entrusted us? Are we living up to the revealed example of Our Good Shepherd to “Love one another as I have loved you” and the two millennia of lived shepherding wisdom and experience? (John 13:34). How goes our shepherding examination of conscience?

Wayward Society

Society is wayward. No longer are the Church and her princes viewed positively, let alone as authoritative. We are dismissed by modernists of all flavors as just another voice spouting primitive religion that humanity has supposedly outgrown.

And yet...growing numbers of people in the younger generations see the poisonous fruit of twisted liberty, no Truth or authority, communism, progressivism, and liberalism surrounding them. They hunger for something solid: Truth (Love, Justice, Mercy) eternal. They are much like native peoples who hunger for truth and without ever hearing of Christ, are yet humbly obedient to the idea there is Truth (Love, Justice, Mercy) larger than opinions or feelings or any group, that marriage must be more than “love is love, while it lasts,” among other aspects of God's natural law they feel written on the human heart. This reality, and all that has led to it also greatly defines this shepherding moment.

How do we shepherd in this moment?

How do we meet people where they are, walk with them (yes, Christ's version of synodality, which is incomplete without the rest of what He did on the road to Emmaus), admonish the sinner, reveal God's Love (Truth, Justice, and Mercy) in their lives and in salvation history, and then, at the crossroads go our own way, and if they invite us to join them for it is late, break bread with them, revealing Christ is with them always and giving the instruction on how to become Catholic as we go about our shepherding way, leaving them with a choice to make...continue to run away or return to Jerusalem and become Catholic.

This gives a glimpse of the hard questions and state of shepherds, the faithful, and society. This is the current shepherding moment of centuries. How will we shepherd?

#CurrentlyTimeless #Catholic #HumanEndeavor #Parenting #Shepherding #SpiritualDirection #Symposium #VaticanII #SpiritOfVaticanII

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Saints tend came in bunches, interacting with others striving to follow Christ on this pilgrim's journey. Together, they became Saints. St. Therese the Little Flower and many of her family. St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. Sts. Francis and Claire, Benedict and Scholastica. Not to mention Sts. Peter and all the Apostles. As the hope of every Catholic is to become a Saint, following their example of meeting with other Catholics is a great way to “run toward Christ,” as Saint Benedict describes it.

A halo is simple. Like all things simple, it takes five minutes to learn, a lifetime to master.

Who do you want to invite to join your halo? Ask them, and determine what you want to read and discuss (Saint Therese the Little Flower is an excellent place to start!). Meet at home, a coffee shop, park, video conference, phone, even by snail mail. Meet with family, friends, someone new at church... whomever God and you bring together. That's it. That's all there is to starting a halo.

So, What’s a Halo?

A group of 2-12 Catholics who meet weekly to monthly to discuss their life journey running toward Jesus our Christ.

For focus, a halo may read and discuss sections of a work from a Doctor of the Church, sharing quotes that struck them and why.

How Do I Start?

Join or start a Halo. That’s it. Gather in prayer and faith and discuss life and faith and triumphs and challenges with one to eleven other people.

Don’t I need to Register … or Something?

Nope. Meet. God knows. You’re registered with God. Grin. It’s seriously that simple … which is why it’s also so powerful and life changing. May God startle you with joy!

#Catholic #Halo #Shepherding #SpiritualDirection #Marriage #Parenting

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We at Cor Sacrae Familiae, hopefully including you, dear reader, desire to restore Christ to human endeavor. To restore Christ to human endeavor, we need to evaluate if actions uphold or topple human dignity. Enter the model of Catholic social teaching, a model which can be teased from the various social encyclicals as well as the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. As with all things simple, it is easily explained and takes a lifetime to master.

“The permanent principles of the Church's social doctrine constitute the very heart of Catholic social teaching. These are the principles of: the dignity of the human person; ... the common good; subsidiarity; and solidarity” (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 2004, Para. 160).

Seat of the Stool: Human Dignity

Human dignity is the innate and immeasurable value every person has because God breathed a unique breath into their clay at the moment of their conception, endowing each with an aspect of God only they can share with the world.

Thus, every Catholic has a responsibility to come to know and breathe into the world their own breath of God and to invite and aid others in doing so themselves. This is a fundamental reason for Cor Sacrae Familiae's Halos.

Why such a responsibility? Because when Jesus says to. “Love one another as I have loved you,” (Jn 13:34) and “...as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me,” (Mt 25:40), we can know we love our neighbor and if we do so out of love of God, then we obey the greatest two commandments.

Human dignity is thus the preeminent principle of Catholic social teaching, the seat of the three-legged-stool, upheld by the three legs of common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity.

Three Equal Legs of the Stool

Here is how to know if we uphold human dignity: Ensure each of the three legs of the stool is as fully present as possible. In supporting a given action, say minimum wage law and government social aid, we can evaluate if it upholds human dignity. How well does the action mutually uphold these three principles: common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity?

Common Good

The common good is the mutually shared responsibility of all individual people to corporately realize our full, individual, human potential. Life, food, clothing, and shelter are clear example of such foundational human needs. Society, and all within it, are best served when there is a safety net that provides these for those who can not provide them for themselves, including aiding those who could provide for themselves with a “hand up.” The key challenges are how to provide them in such a way that subsidiarity and solidarity are also upheld. Much is written about the common good and how we are to recognize when it is present.

Subsidiarity

Subsidiarity is the responsibility of individuals to realize the fullest potential of the smallest groupings, down to the family and individual, by placing ownership at the smallest feasible and practical level in society. Indeed, not only is it the responsibility of smaller groupings to claim and act upon their local authority, but it is the responsibility of larger groupings to encourage and support ownership at smaller levels as required. Larger institutions should not overwhelm or interfere with smaller or more local institutions, yet there is room for the higher levels, including the State, to encourage and support this ownership at lower levels.

Solidarity

Solidarity is the responsibility of individuals to realize that what happens to one affect all and thus to stand together, with our strongest helping our weakest, that we might realize our fullest human potential. Each individual owes a proportionate debt to society, for all success is partially due to society; thus, for an individual, a proportionate debt is owed to society.

Assessing if an Action Upholds Human Dignity

Assessing if an action upholds human dignity is challenging because it is subjective. Even when applying the same meaning of the same principles the same way, people of goodwill can disagree and have conversation in good faith.

Yet Satan creates a greater challenge by muddying the waters with watered down or upside-down meanings that “forget” the true meaning of terms and principles and how to apply them.

One common error is “plucking principles” out of the fabric of Catholic social teaching and holding them up as though a seeming violation of it clearly undermines human dignity. The error of logic becomes apparent when we apply this same illogic to justify abortion, claiming “choice” or free will trump sanctity of human life by only focusing on the mother and ignoring the full immediate picture that the baby in her womb is a full human life from the moment of conception.

Minimum Wage Laws

“Living wage” is a perfect example of multiple errors seeping into Catholic social teaching and into those who error in how they apply it. Proponents of minimum wage laws pluck the principle of “living wage” out of the fabric of Catholic social teaching and claim it justifies the government interference in two people establishing a contract. Such principle plucking causes a number of errors.

First, the meaning of “living wage” today as come to mean any job worked full time should provide a lower-middle-class income, be it flipping burgers or serving coffee, or sweeping the docks. This differs greatly from the meaning Pope Leo XIII gave it in Rerum Novarum, stating:

“Let the working man and the employer make free agreements, and in particular let them agree freely as to the wages.”

For Pope Leo XIII, the freedom of individuals to enter into contracts takes precedence over the idea of enforcing a living wage, which should instead serve as a moral guide for determining what a just agreement looks like. Imposing a fixed minimum contract amount undermines the principle of subsidiarity and, in practice, harms workers, business owners, and consumers by restricting the freedom to negotiate mutually beneficial terms. Experience shows that such top-down mandates often harm the very people they aim to help.

Yet, woe to the business owner who abuses his position and could pay a living wage: one that supports a “frugal and well-behaved wage-earner” to “support himself, his wife, and his children.” Pope Leo XIII's living wage is an underlying “dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man.” Yet it was likely never meant to include flipping burgers or serving coffee and other entry level positions. Unlike the “living wage” in the modernist's mind, Pope Leo XIII's worker “find(s) it easy, if he be a sensible man, to practice thrift, and he will not fail, by cutting down expenses, to put by some little savings and thus secure a modest source of income.”

In short, it falls on the princes and clergy of the Church to form business owners to treat their workers well and shape their businesses so they can provide a living wage, or as close to one as the market will allow.

Pope Leo XIII names two checks and balances on business owners, and incentives for laborers: Private property (Rerum Novarum, nos. 4-8, 46), which should be held “sacred and inviolable,” and the forming of labor unions. Private property because “its policy should be to induce as many as possible of the people to become owners. Many excellent results will follow from this; and, first of all, property will certainly become more equitably divided” (RN, nos. 46-47).

Indeed, Pope Leo XIII warns against the socialist and communist tactic of pitting the workers against the owners: “the poor man’s envy of the rich” to incite violence and tear at the fabric of society (RN, no. 4). Further, “they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present” (RN, no.18). He likens trade unions to the guilds of old in their seeing to uphold the needs of the workers and aiding them in gaining private property (RN, nos. 48-49).

Conclusion

As in all things Catholic, we do well to know what we know and hold ourselves accountable to it; this is a fundamental principle of shepherding. Truth is simple, not noisy. Applying Truth in a fallen world is challenging and not easy, but the yoke of doing so should always be easy and light, lest it be sin's yoke rather than Christ's.

All social actions must be held accountable to the three pillars upholding human dignity: the common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity. These form the greatest principles of Catholic social teaching. No lesser tenet can supersede them, for undermining one weakens them all.

In order to speak thoughtfully—with intellect, a fruit of faith and intelligence—about how much a given action upholds human dignity, clergy and all faithful need to be prayerfully formed, discerning, and grounded in Catholic social teaching. Only then can one examine, uphold, and most fully strive to respect the dignity of all involved.

#Catholic #CatholicSocialTeaching #SocialJustice #Shepherding #CSFSymposium #HumanEndeavor #SpiritualDirection

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Catholic understanding and terms differ greatly from that of society. Why? As Catholics, we have Christ's full revelation of Truth (Love, Justice, and Mercy), and this differs greatly from fallen society. From a Catholic perspective, freedom is the ability to choose God. For speech to be free, therefore, it must reject Satan's lies and boldly, humbly seek Christ's Truth (Love, Justice, and Mercy). As Catholics, we are called to challenge people to free their speech of Satan's lies and elevate it toward Christ's Truth.

To understand society's take on free speech, we need to reach back to the 18th century (dis)Enlightenment's proposal—that if ideas were allowed to fight it out, as in the Roman Colosseum, truth will win. This is the foundation for the “right” to free speech.

The Catholic Church is against free speech. Beginning in the mid 1800s, Popes decried the elevation of Satan's lies to being on an equal plane as Christ's Truth. Woven between the lines of these encyclicals is the lament for the faded humble deference once given to the Church as the guardian of Truth, and the decline of Catholic monarchies, which once stood as state and co-shepherds of public discourse. Though ideas might be explored and debated in universities, under the caring shepherding of the Church, in broader public discourse, people humbly stuck with proclaimed Church teaching, entrusting their souls to the care of Holy Mother Mary, the Church.

In short, the Church is against free speech because Jesus extols us to never entertain or give voice to demons, and by extension, sin. There is a hierarchy of ideas, with Truth (Love, Justice, and Mercy) on top and Satan and his lies on the bottom. We ought not give voice to Satan's lies.

Society's free speech, however, says we should allow those giving voice to Satan's lies to speak, turning all of society into what used to be the university setting for the exploration of ideas, but absent the shepherding. No. This has resulted in society's embrace of demonic attitudes, policies, and laws: abortion, gender dysphoria and body mutilation, euthanasia, the degradation of marriage and family, and loss of Judeo-Christian morals that once underpinned society—among many other evils.

Yet, as we see in Great Britain, allowing the State to regulate “hate” speech leads to tyrannical suppression of the truth, as people praying silently on the sidewalk or quoting scripture about the evils of transgender, abortion, and other evils are fined and jailed. After all, to Satan, the Truth is “hate” speech.

Now, after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, calls are emerging from both the left and the right for controls on “hate” speech, ignoring the reality that Satan's lies hate Christ's Truth and Christ's Truth hates Satan's lies. What a mess.

What is the Catholic answer? If laissez-faire free speech is abhorrent, how do we Catholics believe speech ought to be elevated to be truly free? Simple (and thus, hard): shepherding.

Ask any good, manful, Catholic father (for whom, Holy Papa Joseph is the model) if he allows free speech in his house and the instant response is, “Of course not!”

Press further and ask, “What if someone brings up one of Satan's lies (abortion, gender dysphoria, et al)? What do you do?”

Here, every good, manful, Catholic father's answer will differ in wording but not in meaning, all responding: “We have a conversation, starting with the Truth that Jesus is the answer. Then we ask the question, how do we get to His Truth (Love, Justice, Mercy) from where we are?”

A good, manful, Catholic father is a good shepherd. He knows in the depths of his soul, led by his intellect, that the error of the disenlightenment's free speech proposal is that it denies the existence of original sin and concupiscence, which makes Satan's lies alluring. To voice Satan's lies as truth is to sin and put others in the near occasion of sin—every lie rooted in the singular lie that we do not need God.

As a result, the good, manful, Catholic father at the dinner table cultivates and defends innocence and strives to turn the eyes of those in his care away from sin and toward the Gospel.

Shepherding is the Church's answer to elevating public discourse out of the violent melee of competing ideas, as if fighting to the death in the Roman Colosseum, and guiding it to a higher plane of humility and obedience to Christ's full revealed Truth (Love, Justice, and Mercy). This invites all to enter the conversation by choosing to silence lies and never entertain Satan's notions, which all reject God.

The good shepherd meets his sheep on the road to Emmaus—where they are dismayed, distraught, and on the brink of Nietzsche's abyss of Satan's despair—and through loving conversation and grace of God, invites them to see Him and return to the fold and boldly, humbly be His disciples.

We have Catholic shepherds throughout society: Fathers. Mothers. Deacons. Priests. Bishops. Business owners. Politicians. Neighbors. Every shepherd is called to elevate the conversation: “Christ is the answer. Now, let's talk about how to get there.”

Absent a faithful Catholic monarchy, no state has shepherding authority to elevate free speech, including laws against “hate” speech. Instead, the Catholic answer to not allowing speech that gives voice to Satan's lies is the leaven of shepherds infused throughout society.

Shepherding is the Catholic answer to elevating speech to be free. Which begs two questions. What does it mean to shepherd? Who is a shepherd? A shepherd is one to whom God grants authority of pastoral care over others. A good shepherd answers Jesus' call to “Love one another as I have loved you.” (ref Jn 13:34-35) Where to begin? Shepherding Quick Guide

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By: Deacon Patrick Augustin Jones

Quick Guide Rules of Shepherding

1. The soul is God's unique breath breathed into each person at their conception. The soul is aeviternal: once created, it is immortal. Likewise, the body into which the soul is breathed, will be raised either to eternal death or eternal life. God's unique breath creates the human soul, which He intends to have additional beauty and virtue and graces.

2. Jesus will judge each soul on the Last Day. The soul is likened to a grain of wheat. Baptism removes the grain's chaff from its meat (Mt 3:12; Lk 3:17). Sin returns the chaff and diminishes the meat, God's breath. Much as the talent was taken from the servant who buried it, so throughout life in sin or virtue are the graces removed from and given to the soul, leaving the meat diminished or plump. Come the Last Day, goats, per Matthew 25, will become as chaff, having relinquished the graces bestowed upon their soul back to God, and be cast into Hell. They forever burn as chaff, a desiccated soul, the imprint of God whom they rejected but for whom they hunger eternally, flesh ever burning, never consumed (Hell is an act of divine mercy: for souls who reject God, the only greater torment would be being eternally in His presence); sheep will enter deep, abiding, eternal relationship with God. cf.: Life of St. Teressa by Herself, Ch. XL, No. 8-9.

3. God is Love (1 Jn 4:8). As the Most Holy Trinity is Three in One, One in Three, without confusion, so with Love. Love, to our finite minds, needs to be broken open to be rightly understood. Thus, Love, synonymous with God, is: love, truth, justice, and mercy. A perfect, divine unity; each requires the others to be fully understood as meant by divine revelation from within the tidal pools of infinity(cf. Deus Caritas Est. Pope Benedict XVI).

4. Jesus extols us to “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12). This is the call of shepherding. Sacrificially love each other toward Christ and through Him toward eternal paradise.

5. Sheep, for shepherds are to presume all entrusted to his care are sheep rather than goats, that judgement being God's alone, will be judged for having fully run the race and loved one another as Jesus loves them (1 Cor 9:25). But beware! The enemy sows the wheat field of the faithful with tares, weeds among the wheat while those in the watchtowers sleep. These tares are the faithful who fall away, who do not fully run the race, who are not the predestined elect. The roots of these weeds entwine and choke the wheat unseen below ground while appearing above ground the same as wheat.

6. The journey of the soul is simple: Fear of God begets curiosity to know God; knowing God begets love of God; love of God begets desire to serve God; serving God begets the desire to unite our will to God's.

7. God's universal invitation through Jesus Christ includes the graces needed to fully run the race; however, a soul's free willed choices of virtue or sin aid or hinder its capacity to cooperate and receive these graces. The predestined elect, who are known by God from before time and space and for whom this entire universe was created, against all other possible universes, are granted reception of graces to aid them in fully running the Race. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux's cup analogy from The Story of a Soul comes to mind: some souls expand through holiness to hold more grace than others, so there is a hierarchy and diversity of holiness in heaven. These graces are the salvation arts. As faith without works is dead, grace must be exercised to be received (Jm 2:17). Like martial arts, the salvation arts must be experienced, taught, learned, practiced, and integrated into daily life if we are to wield them effectively and become, by the grace of Jesus our Christ, saints.

8. Our soul, our unique breath of God that only we can share with the world, grows as we wield the salvation arts. This is our inner saint (Gn 1-2; Ps 1-2) and growing in holy virtue (Latin for strength) fortifies our soul.

9. The salvation arts are weapons Jesus gives us through our Confirmation to defend against Satan's attacks with comparatively little effort on our part. Practicing them propels us toward Christ. The salvation arts include: Sacraments; ten commandments; prayer in all its many forms, especially Mass, the Divine Office, adoration, and the rosary, among others; devotions and sacramentals; six precepts of the Church; Virtues; gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit; Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy; Beatitudes; the Four Last Things; intellect, including mindfulness, logic, and reason; and corporal discipline (cf # 11).

10. Every choice we make either grows our saint and diminishes our sinner, or grows our sinner and diminishes our saint. Either turns us toward or away from Jesus our Christ increasing our momentum toward or away from Him (Ps 1-2). Each person's choices create the landscape around their soul, as we are each called to make choices that honor the temple God made us to be. For as Saint Paul says, “Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in your midst?” (1 Cor 3-16).

11. Correcting errors in a soul who has cultivated eyes of innocence, eyes that see the world as God sees the world, is a gentle matter. They may even self-correct or only need soft correction once. Stubborn souls and obstinate blind spots in any soul require greater action, to include appropriate corporal discipline such as time-limited vows of silence, carrying a rock for a day, extra labor, and the like. Practice that aids the soul always is doing all things practicable by human power. As Saint Teresa of Ávila explains, “It is true we cannot be free of sin, but at least let our sins be not always the same” (The Interior Castle).

12. Shepherding can be crisp, clear, blunt, soft, gentle, harsh, companionable, adversarial, sly, mocking, and many other expressions of love as appropriate. Consider Jesus as He says: “Oh how foolish you are,” “Go and sin no more,” “Ye of little faith,” “This kind only comes out with prayer,” “Get behind me Satan,” “Do you love me more than these?” “Feed and tend my lambs and sheep,” “Love one another as I have loved you.” A good shepherd's deepening wisdom aids him in discerning the flavor of shepherding appropriate to the person and circumstance.

13. A good shepherd knows shepherding requires urgency and clear direct truth, while balanced with understanding, mercy, and patience — especially for the lambs still growing and lacking the fortitude of muscle, structure, and stamina to handle the blunt. Yet to treat the entire flock as newborn lambs is a foolish way to shepherd. It weakens the whole flock, leaving it unable to repel blight, discern good pasture from poisonous tares, and recognize wolves lurking at the periphery or in their midst.

14. Patience is a flavor of virtue similar to bravery: it’s not about feeling brave in the face of fear but more about acting brave despite it. Likewise, patience is less about feeling calm as injuries fester, capacities languish, and questions come and go and more about engaging the world anyway, while we can, as much as we can, with contentment and joy. Such patience is only possible via faith.

15. Souls go where they focus their gaze. However faithful they intend to be, souls fixated on the rapids of life or the enemy, end up sucked in, churned about, and chewed up by the current, rocks, and downed trees of the rapids. Good shepherds aid their flock in lifting their eyes to Christ in all things, for he is always the way through. Notice and call out the rapids, maintain focus upon Christ. This is how the storm is becalmed through faith (Mt 8:26).

16. Saints travel in bunches, known as halos — aiding one another against sin and running to Jesus, our Christ. Peer faithful are called to shepherd one another. Faithful do well to form or join halos, in the fervent desire to accept Christ's invitation to be predestined elect at the races end. Each married person's primary halo is their husband or wife.

17. Sheep, including oneself, who are not progressing against foundational attacks by their sinner, should reflect honestly: how would a Saint respond in similar circumstances? Seek to integrate faith more deeply: guard time for prayer, create space for discernment, and act on what is already known of the faith. Listen to the halos God as placed around you — spouse, peers, superiors, and subordinates. When choosing a spiritual director or new halo, ask yourself: Who challenges me in new ways? Who do I avoid and why? Might they be part of the answer God is offering? The consequences to sin often are proportionate to the stubbornness with which it is held.

18. Shepherding is the intentional aiding of other sheep to turn toward and run to Jesus, our Christ.

19. Love the sinner (one who sins), hate the sin. To love or even tolerate the sin is to hate the sinner. As Saint Augustine of Hippo explains: “Whoever loves himself, not God, loves not himself ... he cannot love himself who loves himself to his own destruction” (as quated by St. Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea on Jn 21:18-19).

20. Give the inner sinner no quarter. A shepherd's staff is a multi-tool: a hiking staff for navigating rough terrain and seeking out the one lost; a lasso and lift for guiding sheep and rescuing the lost from hard-to-reach niches; a quarter staff and cudgel for defending the flock against wolves without and within the flock. All uses properly applied are pastoral.

21. The good shepherd corrects and accompanies, and in so doing administers Christ's love in such a way that it can be received and invites and challenges the lamb or sheep one next step toward Christ.

22. Jesus, our Christ, gave Saint Peter and his successors, and to a lesser degree, all disciples, the power of the keys, to bind and loose on earth and in heaven. Thus Christ grants the Church and her priests alone the authority and power to forgive sin —– clergy and disciples and likewise given the authority and power to shepherd souls. Moreover, in both divine and natural hierarchies, authority increases with greater fidelity to Christ: the closer one is to faithfulness to the Catholic Church, the greater one's authority as shepherd. For example, all parents have equal power and authority over their children(Eph 6:4); however, Catholic parents, who actively live the faith and receive grace from the sacraments, have greater capacity to correctly know and exercise that authority than less active or non-Catholic parents.

23. God's authority is bestowed on some of the faithful through various offices to shepherd others entrusted to them by Christ, the Good Shepherd (Jn 21:15-17). It is important to distinguish between power and authority: power is the ability to effect change; authority is the rightful and divinely granted prerogative to govern or make decisions. For example, a husband is called to be head of house and love his wife as Christ loves His Church (Eph 5:23-25). His wife is called to loving obedience, partner with her husband to shepherd their children in mutual love of Christ, and aid her husband in fulfilling his office as head of house. This mutual submission is rooted in charity and respect, reflecting the Church's own relationship with Christ (Eph 5:21). Clergy, by virtue of Holy Orders, receive authority in varying degrees over the flocks entrusted to them in parishes, dioceses, and the global Church. This hierarchical authority is not merely administrative, but is a sacred trust to serve the People of God (cf. Lumen Gentium, 18). When those in authority fail to rightly fulfill their duties, God, in His providence, may raise up faithful members of the Church to assist or correct — an example being Saint Catherine of Siena, who through her bold, humble obedience to God helped restore the Papacy to Rome. Thus authority within the Church is both a divine gift and a solemn responsibility, exercised in love for the salvation of souls.

24. Baptism washes away all original and personal sin; yet concupiscence remains ... a lingering scar of pride to reject God and pridefully make us our own god.

25. This voice of concupiscence tempts us like the serpent tempted Eve: “Did God really say ...?” (Gen 3:1.) It sparks a deep, concupiscent fear that God isn't who God says He is and thus, we aren't who God says we are and thus, God can't save us as God says and thus, death will consume us (Jer 17:5; Rom 8:38-39). Ergo, we must go it on our own and pridefully reject God and become our own god. Rarely is any of this consciously thought; instead, this temptation lurks beneath the surface like a choking weed, suffocating our divine life and capacity to breathe the breath God breathed into us into the world. Yet, by making ourselves our own god, we fall under the dominion of Satan, subjecting our small, lonely kingdom to Satan's rule for eternity.

26. Authority is God's alone to bestow. In the carnal world, for clarity's sake, power is earthly, carnal. God, of course, is omnipotent and omniscient and shares this through His authority. One's position may wield both authority and power, or one without the other, or neither.

27. All entrusted with authority bear a portion of the sins of those entrusted to them — except when they ardently strive to correct though faithful shepherding. A good shepherd can do no more than the Good Shepherd and must accept the free will of the sheep even as he fights for their salvation through sacrificial love, never abandoning them this side of death's veil (Rule of Saint Benedict, 2:1-10).

28. Concupiscence caved into is sin. Sin makes us deaf, blind, dumb, and stupid. The more we sin, the more our concupiscence grows, becoming our inner sinner. Sin begets more sin, just as holiness begets greater holiness (Ps 1-2).

29. A simple way of understanding all of salvation history is it is God restoring right relationship, found in the Garden of Eden. Thus, a key component of shepherding, and assessing how to shepherd, is to strive to heal broken relationship into right relationship.

30. Right relationship has four elements to it: relationship with God, self, others, and nature (Gn 1-2).

31. Emotions are barometers of right relationship — nothing more, nothing less.

32. Fear that God is not whom He claims and thus we are not who He claims, is the root emotion of broken relationship. Wounds from a broken relationship may deceptively appear in others, distracting us from the true source and leading us to harm those relationships while the true cause remains hidden. All disordered emotions are rooted in our soul's countenance as a strong temptation of at least one of the seven deadly sins — each a shadowed shape of fear At the root of all sin lies the fear that the foundational truths of Faith are not true, deceiving us into sin as we try to crown ourselves god.

33. 'Busy,' in modern usage, is nearly always a sign of putting a lesser good ahead of a greater good. Working toward right relationship is neither busy nor noisy. Thus, where busy or noisy occur, we're doing it wrong and headed away from Jesus, our Christ.

34. One definition of sin is putting a lesser good ahead of greater goods (Saint Augustine's Confessions). Restore proper order and one is no longer busy.

35. Jesus said “my yoke is easy, my burden light.” If we are burdened or heavy, we bear sin's yoke, not Christ's. Set down sin's yoke and take up Christ's (Mt 11:30).

36. Fear of anything less than God is idolatry. Fear of imminent death is an expression of love for the life God has given us; therefore it is also an expression of the fear of the Lord. Phobias, in contrast, are not the same and are rooted in fear of death itself and driven by a desire to be our own god — trusting in oneself rather than in the Holy Trinity.

37. Love is the root emotion of right relationship. Love only comes from God and never deceives us, though we can be deceived by what surrounds it.

38. Good shepherds always remember they are first sheep, subject to all the foibles and failings of sheep.

39. All truth is simple and all simple things are hard. Truth can be explained clearly in less than a minute, yet a lifetime is insufficient to understand its depths.

40. The surest way to know we love God is to love our neighbor. Sure ways to love our neighbor include the corporal and spiritual acts of mercy (Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Interior Castle 5,3,7-8).

41. The crucifix reveals how Jesus bridges the insurmountable chasm between our fallen world and heaven. Jesus hangs at the crux of the Cross, His Sacred Heart reveals that true Love is the union of love, truth, justice, and mercy. The horizontal beam of love and mercy, which by itself sinks into the miasma and quagmire of sin, must be joined to the vertical beam of truth and justice, which by itself is too steep to cling to for all but a few in salvation history. Only together are they lifted upright toward heaven, sanctified by Christ's death and resurrection to become the bridge of faith across the chasm of our fallen doom (Saint Catherine of Siena, Dialogue).

42. Good shepherds not only guide their peers and flock, but also, when needed, their shepherd where his faults harm his flock. The aforementioned Saint Catherine of Siena is one example, urging the pope back to Rome, among her many other upward shepherding actions. More common are the wives who aid their husbands to manfully grow into his vocational office to provide, protect, and discipline, or the parishioners who support their priest become a true pastor.

43. All faithful are called to obey the shepherd(s) entrusted with their care, obeying all asked of them, except where what is asked clearly contradicts God's will, even in the slightest. In such cases, the good sheep continue to obey in all else, honoring the office while seeking to correct in fraternal charity. This includes, when necessary, shepherding upward, enacting Matthew 18:15-17 including appeal to higher authority within the Church.

44. In conflict, the good shepherd encourages his flock to follow Matthew 18:15-17, and does so himself when his brother sins against him. If genuine reconciliation efforts fail, the good shepherd continues to pray for all involved and quietly, humbly, and diligently returns to the call entrusted to him by Christ.

45. Our sinner strives, in many forms, to make down seem up, wrong seem right, disorder appear normal. For example, one may be tempted to take on another's responsibilities while neglecting their own — sloth hiding as prudence. These distortions come in many flavors, all expressions of the seven deadly sins.

46. The heavenly virtues wage battle against the deadly sins, always defeating them when wielded with humble love. They offer a clear and simple lens to cut through the confusion and noise of sin and deception within the soul.

47. Where there is strife, there is sin. Strife due to nature, illness, or death reveals original sin, and sometimes personal sin. Strife in relationships always reveals personal sin. The good shepherd presumes the causal sin harming relationship is his own until proven otherwise, and even then, he examines how his sin may have contributed to or been inflamed by it. In shepherding others, he counsels those involved to do the same.

48. These rules are likely to agitate your sinner. Seek shepherding to aid you in this, and ensure you wield the salvation arts.

49. Some of the topics to be addressed in the full Rule of Shepherding include conservation of truth; soulscape and its geography; physics of the soul; biology of the soul; gender issues, including male and female breaths of God; marriage; parenting; science of shepherding; cultivating eyes of innocence.

50. If it isn't clear yet: it is all shepherding. Shepherd with love and abandon in Jesus our Christ!

Post Script

All that is contained in this quick reference is offered as truth, as received through the full revelation of Jesus our Christ — given in Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, the Magisterium, and the witness of the Saints. Any error is mine alone.

As we strengthen and revitalize the practice of shepherding, these principles should be refined and added to while ensuring continuity, not usurpation, of truth entrusted to the Church.

Resources:

• Book of Pastoral Rule by Saint Gregory the Great
• “Sermon on Pastors” by Saint Augustine (Sermo 46:1-2: CCL 41, 529-530)
• Pastores Dabo Vobis I will give you shepherds: Saint Pope John Paul II

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