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Confession and God's Loving Generosity

Recently I was blessed with the opportunity to speak to the parents of children who are preparing to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation. As I prayed and thought about what I would say, I decided to implement one of my fancy new evangelization approaches. I would situate my catechesis on Confession and it's importance for the family within an all-out kerygmatic evangelization.

I wanted to go beyond a catechesis on the purpose and practice of Reconciliation. I wanted to break open the whole drama of humanity to give people a renewed vision of the gravity of sin, the immensity of forgiveness, the power of mercy, and the eternal depths of reconcilation with God.

Spirituality, TheologyMichael GormleyNovember 14, 2010Confession, generosity

Pro-Life Work and the New Evangelization

The New Evangelization of the nations and the renewal of pro-life work go hand-in-hand, for at their core is what we must call the primacy of the individual human person. The person is everything. Win over just one person to Christ and you have won the world. Too often today, probably as the recycled leftovers of a tired and disgraced Marxism, we all tend to focus on what I call the primacy of Bigness, where aggregation and collectivism looses sight of the individual person for the sake of the group. As far as I can tell, this is the milieu previous pro-life work operated in and this is what cost us the so-called culture war.

Here is the still point of my website's thesis: I believe we already lost the culture war. But not all is lost! There are moral and spiritual principles that we need right now that can bring about both the New Evangelization of the world, and the revitalization of pro-life work right here at home. This website will layout Catholic pro-life moral principles and consistently apply them to four main life issues: abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty and warfare.

Spirituality, TheologyMichael GormleyNovember 9, 2010New Evangelization, pro-life

How to Find Freedom from Lust

IT'S ALL ABOUT ME!!!I was two years into my parish-based youth ministry job when we decided to do a middle school (EDGE) night on pornography. We would talk about it from a positive and life-affirming view of human sexuality. We split the guys and girls up so that we could talk more freely.

I took an anonymous poll with these 85 seventh and eighth grade boys. Out of 85 boys, 83 had seen porn at some point in their lives; 78 had seen it in the last 2 months; 76 in the last 2 weeks; and around 71 out of 85 had seen porn in the last 2 days. Talk about a train wreck!

Pubescent drives are intensely powerful, but they do not have to define us. The sins of lust are probably the most difficult to break once a habit has been established. Some young men progress from occasional use to habit to addiction to full-on compulsive behavior. My hope is to break the habit. Addictive and compulsive behaviors are way above my pay grade. But always remember the words of Pope John Paul II: "You are not the sum of your weaknesses and failures, but rather, you are the sum of the Father's love..."

Morality, SpiritualityMichael GormleyOctober 29, 2010Sacraments, fasting, pornography, prayer

Intimations of the New Evangelization

Pope John Paul II conquering this Jubilee for Christ JesusI believe in the mission of the new evangelization. This website represents my work and desire to see the Gospel of Jesus Christ rekindle the flame of faith in the "frozen chosen" scattered about in pews all across America. I have often reflected on what the new evangelization looks like. In this post I am not going for exhaustive analysis. What I want to do is toss out a brief sketch of what I think are 4 elements of the spirit of the new evangelization.

First, the new evangelization is about the "art of living" and of finding the path to happiness, which is Jesus. Cardinal Ratzinger in an address to catechists that he gave in the year 2000, taught that the new evangelization was necessary today because, in our joyless world, there is little room for God in the secularized and de-Christianized nations. In such a world that still yearns for happiness, the new way to preach the gospel must be provided that communicates this art of living.

Spirituality, TheologyMichael GormleyOctober 26, 2010Lectio Divina, New Evangelization, St Therese

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