Scrolling around...August 13, 2013

Are You Needed in Your Church?
...My husband and I started attending our church nearly eight years ago. We were there just a few months before people were volunteering us to serve in various areas. We found ourselves part of a newly formed “Greeting Ministry,” I was working in the nursery, we were teaching kids on Wednesday nights. It was a little overwhelming. We didn’t know how to say “no,” so we “served” begrudgingly. Truth be told, we were both pastor’s kids and were unsure how to be normal church members.

It was easy to think, “Well I’m not sure this is my gifting. Maybe I should find something that uses my talents and abilities better.”

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to use our gifts to serve our church family. But then again, who would say they have the spiritual gift of changing diapers? Holding doors open? Setting up chairs?

Thankfully the Lord revealed to me the selfishness of my heart. I wasn’t serving anyone, really. I was performing needed tasks, but my heart was not in it. Even still it’s easy to slip back into this. It’s the mentality that thinks my service on the Sundays in which I sing with the worship team are more valuable that those in which I am a substitute teacher in the preschool department...

Mystery Priest Who Showed Up at a Crash Scene Then Vanished Has Been Identified

The mystery priest who recently showed up at a crash site, anointed a victim and then vanished has been identified — and he came forward by posting his identity in the comments section of a Catholic news site. The story began on Aug. 4, after Aaron Smith, 26, struck Katie Lentz, 19, in a head-on car crash. In the days that followed, the tale of a faith leader who disappeared went viral.

 

But now the individual, who brought calm upon the situation and who rescue workers have been hoping to find and thank, has been found. A press release provided to TheBlaze from the Diocese of Jefferson County confirmed that the Rev. Patrick Dowling, one of the priests who works with the diocese, is the individual whom they have been seeking...

Benghazi Was About 400 Surface-to-Air-Missiles Stolen by 'Some Very Ugly People,'
Former U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova, who now represents one of the Benghazi whistleblowers, told a Washington radio station Monday that the real scandal in Benghazi is the theft of 400 surface-to-air missiles by some "very ugly people." The Obama administration fears those missiles will be used to shoot down an airplane or blow up one of our embassies, he said.

Speaking to WMAL on Monday morning, DiGenova blasted President Obama for revealing, at his Friday news conference, the existence of a sealed indictment against a Benghazi suspect or suspects.

‘Abortion Doula’ Professor Posts Video, But Catholic College Defends Employment
A professor at The College at Mount St. Vincent in New York recorded a video blog detailing her work as an “abortion doula.”

In 2011, The Cardinal Newman Society first reported on the scandal of Bianca Laureano teaching a course titled "SOC OF HUMAN SEXUALITY" for the Catholic college while volunteering as an “abortion doula.”...


Skateboarding Friars

The maniacal mind of Mark Steyn
...I had the opportunity of interviewing Steyn a couple years back when I did freelance work for The Jewish Independent. Steyn was coming into town to speak at the Hillel gala, and a few of us were going to have lunch with him a day or so prior to the event. As I asked him questions for my Independent article, I decided to throw in a question about abortion, just out of curiosity.

“Why does anyone think Europe needs huge numbers of Muslim immigrants?” Steyn replied, “Supposedly to keep their welfare state in business, because they are the children that Europeans couldn’t be bothered to have themselves. One third of German women are childless. If you just take your average, dopey Western feminist at a university campus in North America today, and she’s concerned about patriarchy, [she thinks that by] forming a pro-life club you’re forcing your backwards, patriarchal views on her. If she thinks you’re the big, stern, dominating patriarch, she ought to wait twenty or thirty years in the average Canadian city. She’ll be figuring out what the people in Amsterdam and Brussels and Malmo and Paris are beginning to figure out right now—that there’s a whole, far more motivated breed of patriarch that’s going to be walking around those cities. That’s what the dopey, clap-trapped, cobwebbed 1960’s feminist doesn’t get—that abortion is an indulgence and the indulgence only works for a generation or two before a bunch of other people take over and rebuild the future you weren’t interested in building for yourselves.”

And suddenly, abortion is put in context. It’s not simply killing—although it certainly is that. It’s cultural suicide. It’s emblematic of the bloody, narcissistic tailspin of the West at twilight. It is, as Mark Steyn refers to it elsewhere, Big Government’s back alley...