Happy 89er Day!

There are only a few things better than free land.  However, on this day April 22, 1889 the government gave away free land!  Everyone had to line up and and race to stake the best plots! It is also where the term Sooner came from.  These were people who cheated and scoped out the best areas and hid until the canon was fired and then laid claim to those spots.

12,000 Angry Men

About a week ago a man was convicted of 1st degree murder, by a jury of his peers.  Many Oklahoman's were outraged.

First here is the short of what happened.

Two men stormed into a pharmacy 15 minutes before closing time.  One was armed with a gun.  The pharmacist pulled his own gun as his two female employees took cover.  The pharmacist shot one of the robbers in the head and the armed robber fled.  Pharmacist pursued.  Upon his return he grabbed a higher caliber gun and shot the downed robber 5 more times.  He claimed the robber moved and still posed a threat to him and his workers.  Needless to say the D.A. decided to take up the case, put the man on trial, and the man was found guilty of 1st degree murder.

An anonymous member of the jury stated how upset she was to hear so much criticism on the verdict. Because as she said "it wasn't an easy decision because you're talking about a man's life but also you got to consider the laws."(Sunday Oklahoman 6/12/11)

It was the last part of that statement that prompted me to write about this topic.  What is the purpose of the jury if it is only to follow the law? If interpreting law is all you need, why not just have well educated judges?  The point I would like to make is that jurors are supposed to evaluate the law and determine if it is sufficient for certain cases as not all crimes are the same.

So the ultimate question one must ask in all cases is, was this a just decision?  Did the punishment fit the crime?  I think in answering this question we can understand the thousands of angry citizens who object to this ruling.  First, what was the crime?  The pharmacist repeatedly shot a downed robber after he had stormed in with an armed accomplice.  Would the pharmacist have shot the guy had he not stormed in with an accomplice that had a gun? No!  Was this 1st degree murder?  Murder Defined (Scroll down to the middle and click on the arrows)  I would say no this was not.  Again the pharmacist could not have planned this out.  He was obviously acting in the moment.  And ultimately he was defending 3 lives, his own included.

Now with that said I do believe five rounds is excessive even in self defense, but when you are told in self defense classes "to shoot to kill" because of the way law is written, what do you expect?

Finally,  if you look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 2263 the Church agrees that a man has a right to self defense, even to the point of killing his aggressor.  The Church goes further and explains that this is moral because every individual person has a right to protect his own right to life.  But the Church does beg that we only use the means necessary to protect our lives and not exceed those means.  In other words if you can get away with injuring someone to protect yourself the Church would prefer that over you killing that person.  I believe Holy Mother Church's stance is what is overall the best way to handle these situations, because she takes into account one's body, mind and soul!

Please pray for the this man and that justice will be done!

God Love You!

The Nuns and My Vocation

I attended a small Catholic elementary school here in Oklahoma.  There were only three religious sisters that worked there, but I only remember working with two of them.  One's name was Sister Mariam.  She had a very deep devotion to the rosary, and so one choice for an elective class was making rosaries.

Making rosaries was my second favorite school activity.  My first was the obvious number one pick, recess.  As we made them Sister would talk about how important it was to pray.  Looking back, its one of my most favorite memories of elementary school.  I still have a lot of the rosaries I made even though we were suppose to send them to the mission in Guatamala.

Now the other sister was named Sister Mary Mark.  She was an old Carmelite Nun.  Upon finding out I had her as a teacher in first grade, my friend Colleen had to reassure me that she wasn't as bad as she looked.  But I beg to differ.  She and I would often but heads and it became so bad my parents were begging me to be on my best behavior.  They even gave me tips on ways to be more nice to her than I had been.  And so during art one day I decided "I know, I'll draw a picture of her and give it to her as a gift!"  So I worked very diligently making a perfect oval head and triangle body which I colored brown.  I gave her peach skin and black shoes, but the only thing I was never very good at was perfecting the face.  And against my better judgement of drawing eyes with a pencil I used a black crown.  This didn't work out to well because her eyes were bigger than the rest of her face.  And so since X-Files was one of my favorite t.v. shows at the time I decided to change the picture into an Alien Nun. I colored her face green and gave her Antennae.  And turned the picture in.  Little did I realize that it is frowned upon to draw your teacher as an alien, especially if she is a nun.  That was an automatic ticket to counseling for a short while until it was decided that I was normal.

Another incident that happened was during a spelling test after recess and a lot of the kids were still bickering over who won in kickball.  You could tell she wasn't very happy over the fussing and said "I can't wait until the day you all learn to spell community!" And since I was so great at tuning her out all I heard was "Spell Community."  Now for a 1st grader this must have been a pretty big deal and so she had me spell community for all the other teachers and most especially for the principal at the time.  I was also given a 110% on the test and was glad to see I had the highest spelling score in the class.  This was way back in the times of healthy competition in the class, with little regard to self-esteem.   I remember I was able to win a lot of arguments by pointing to that score above the chalk board, and saying "have you ever gotten a 110% on a spelling test?"

Now the reason I bring these stories up is because looking back they played more of a part in discerning my vocation than I had previously thought.  And every so often in my Sociology classes, which means the study of people in groups a.k.a. the study of community, I would think back to that event in my life and just be amazed that even then God was pushing me in right direction.  And finally it was the Rosary that kept me discerning my calling.  It was my prayer life and zeal for God that gave me the courage to speak up for the Truth in my secular sociology classes when everyone was in favor of abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage and the like.

Thank you Lord for putting these religious sisters in my life!  Please pray for Sister Mary Mark and Sister Mariam as they are both alive but aging!  And one of the reasons I was prompted to recognize Sister Mary Mark in this post is because a friend over facebook messaged me not too long ago and said I should look up ol' Sister M.M. and show her how nice I turned out.  Which is actually normal for me to get messages like that.  I still have old teachers from elementary school coming up and telling me how nice of a young man I had become.

Thanks and God Love You!

(this is a little different than earlier because they erased this post and then I could only recover half of it in my drafts so please forgive me if it doesn't make as much sense as it did before)

It was Christ fixed to the Cross That Beckoned

I remember when I was a toddler, old enough to talk but young enough to be carried by my father.  We were leaving Mass and I was playing a game with my parents and older brother, where I would point to an object and ask "what is that?" And they would gladly tell me. The reason I remember this so clearly is because of the last object I pointed to.

I asked "what is That?" and my brother replied "that's a Crucifix."  And I asked "why is the man on it?" And he said "because people didn't like what he taught." And I finally remember asking "what did he do wrong?" And my mother finally explained, after stifling my older brother to prevent any confusion, that he didn't do anything wrong.  I have carried this memory in my heart for a very long time, because it was obviously one of many conversions in my heart toward our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The reason I bring this up is to highlight the importance of not just the Cross but the Crucifix as a Catholic symbol and a tool of evangelization. In Oklahoma, where it is basically the buckle of the Bible Belt, you never see a Crucifix but rather empty Crosses hanging on people's walls or in the Christian book stores.  It was not the Cross that saved us, but rather it was Christ who died fixed to the Cross who saved us! Hence the name Crucifix.

Finally, I remember hearing a talk by my personal Hero the late Great Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen and how he recounts in the scriptures that St. Paul when preaching to the Greeks in Athens gave the most profound philosophical argument in favor of Christianity, but only a few Greeks would come and follow the risen Lord.  Bishop Sheen went on to explain how Paul must have discerned why they would not come, and when Sheen reached 1 Corinthians a letter to the Greeks of Corinth he realized that Paul inspired by the Holy Spirit must have solved the riddle. For Paul cuts straight to the chase and within the first chapter preaches what all Catholics hold dear.  Paul preaches Christ Crucified and so should we! No matter who we are evangelizing, we should never be ashamed to speak of the God-Man dying on the Cross and rising from the dead!

1 Corinthians 1:23 "But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God."


God Love You!

Introduction: Why 89er Catholic?

I used to have an old 89er ball cap that I would wear anywhere and everywhere, especially while I was studying at the University.  The 89er's were a minor league baseball team here in Oklahoma and once upon a time their games were a cheap form of entertainment for many families living in the greater OKC area.  Though they ceased to exist in the mid 90s, I still enjoyed wearing their memorabilia.  I would get all sorts of reactions and could always tell who was a genuine Oklahoman based on the appreciation of the ball cap.

But I especially remember someone(not a native obviously) asking what 89er stood for?  And since it was a wonderful opportunity to evangelize on the Oklahoman Way, I stepped up to the plate(pardon the pun) and began to explain.

I told the person that Oklahoma consisted of a large Western German population and upon the collapse of the Iron Curtain in Germany and the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 we named our baseball team the 89ers.  The person accepted my explanation and went about their way.  And maybe some day, when they are discussing useless facts, they will use this little story in their conversation.

The only problem is that this is not why the team was called the 89ers.  The term 89er is derived from the Land Run in 1889 where the Government actually gave away free land to anyone who dared to race for it.  A good film to understand more of that is "Far and Away".

Finally,  I felt 89er would be a great way to say I'm Oklahoman without having to identify my blog with any one college mascot.

Now the name Catholic is hopefully a given.  Catholic is greek for Universal and I am a member of the Universal Church.  I firmly believe in everything Holy Mother Church teaches.  As St. Ambrose of Milan said "Where there is Peter, so there is the Church, and so there is God".  And so I am thankful for God keeping me close to the Church he founded on St. Peter in the Gospel of Mt. 16:18!

God Love You!