When I was discerning the priesthood in high school, the most common question I got was, “But don’t you want to have sex?” To which I would reply: Thanks for the offer. But no, I’m good. The truth is, celibacy was a big obstacle for me in discernment. The desire for marriage is natural, and in our sex-obsessed culture, saying no to that is one of the most contrarian things…
“Don’t date until you’re ready for marriage.” Every Chastity Speaker I have been dating an awesome girl, Phoebe, for about a year-and-a-half now. My relationship with her has brought me closer to God and made me a more virtuous man. If these past few months have taught me anything, it is this: I was NOT ready for marriage when I met Phoebe. I’m Not Ready for Marriage Oh my goodness,…
Alright, I’m gonna talk about sex for a minute here. Over the past few years, I’ve heard about a drop in young people having premarital sex. I first heard about this in the context of pornography, which has been shown to damage sex drive. But over the past few days, I’ve seen a few tweets linking the drop in premarital sex to female empowerment. The Economist tweeted an article blaming…
Last night, someone posted this on Twitter. Naturally, Catholic Twitter jumped on it. a lot of the replies were charitable and one even led to a DM conversation about the scandals. But some of the responses committed one of the most common sins well-meaning Catholics commit in evangelization. The wrong way to approach something like this tweet is to start dropping Catholic buzzwords. I saw several tweets along the lines…
The other day, Steve Harvey posted a video saying, “rich people don’t sleep 8 hours per day.” The video ends with him quoting Proverbs 20:13. Before I saw this video, I had no idea he had gotten into preaching, but hey, you learn something new every day. He also says we don’t “pray big enough.” As in, “Don’t pray that your junk car will be fixed, pray for a new…
Sometimes I trip myself up. I get this feeling like I’m not “spiritual enough” to speak to people. As if “feeling spiritual” is a prerequisite for preaching the Gospel. We all have excuses for not evangelizing, just some seem holier or disguise themselves as humility. Sometimes we’re too tired to talk to that person or too introverted or we’d feel like we’re imposing. We’re not smart enough or holy enough…
I occasionally get obsessed with self-help books. Not the hippy new-age stuff, but the Steven Covey efficiency/leadership books. The funny thing is, I used to HATE these books when I was in college, but I find myself getting into them now. They present me with an attractive image of who I could be. I think this is why they do so well. We all want to be a super-activated person…
