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'Evangelizing Each Other' an essay by author Donal Mahoney

2/27/2016

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Evangelizing Each Other


Just as Protestants are told to rescue Catholics so they can be saved, Catholics are told to evangelize Protestants to bring them into the fold. Catholics are also told to do their best to bring lapsed Catholics home. 

Lapsed Catholics aren’t too difficult to approach if a practicing Catholic wants to do that. Lapsed Catholics know what you’re talking about so you hope that if you can plant a seed, Jesus Christ will one day flood them with grace and bring them back to the Sacrament of Penance before they die. ASAP is preferable but a death-bed reconciliation with Jesus also works.

Evangelizing folks who aren’t Catholic, however, is another matter, especially if they happen to be Protestant. But Protestants, depending on their denomination, have some common ground with Catholics. It’s not as difficult as it would be starting from scratch with a Buddhist over a cup of tea. 

A Protestant believes what a Catholic believes about the Trinity, three Persons in One God; Jesus as Savior and Lord as a result of His crucifixion and resurrection; and the Holy Spirit indwelling in the soul of the believer as well as in the Church. Protestants and Catholics believe many other things in common as well but the two groups also have a passel of disagreements. Most Protestants, except perhaps for some Anglicans, do not share what Catholics believe about the Blessed Virgin Mary and that can be a problem in trying to evangelize them.

I have always enjoyed listening to Protestant preachers on television if only to learn what they tell their congregants. It gives me some idea what I might want to talk about--and not talk about--should I ever fall into conversation with a Protestant about Catholicism. Certainly enough Protestants have evangelized me and I appreciate their sincerity. I have long thought Catholics could use more than a little of their energy and devotion to bringing others to Christ. But then I’m a believer in spite of myself and we have that in common. 

I have found over the years that Protestant preachers run the gamut from the outspokenly anti-Catholic to those who seldom make any reference to Catholicism. At either end of that spectrum, however, the Blessed Virgin Mary is not a factor for Protestants except occasionally among a few anti-Catholic preachers who like to take a swing now and then. 

There is one preacher out there, long of tooth and beloved by his followers, who always talks about “Marian idolatry.” I understand that he is only doing his job based on his belief. The problem is that he and his associate pastors are basically wrong about many of their contentions involving Catholicism. I could give them some good stuff Catholics moan about among themselves but they probably wouldn’t listen. This particular preacher, however, after six decades in the pulpit, still thinks Catholics worship Mary as well as statues. Completely wrong.

As a result of listening to Protestant preachers I've also learned that talking about Mary is not a good marketing tool unless a Protestant brings the matter up. Personally, I wouldn’t mention Mary at all until a Protestant has become serious about Catholicism but is still bothered by Catholics' veneration of the Blessed Mother and invariably the saints behind those statues. Then I’d begin talking about the difference between veneration and adoration if that needed to be explained. 

From listening to Protestant preachers, I learned as well that if I talk about Jesus and the Holy Spirit the conversation might last for awhile. If I do it right, the Protestant may begin to think differently about Catholicism. I might even mention God the Father now and then although I don’t hear God the Father mentioned often during Protestant services on TV. But then I seldom here about God the Father in Roman Catholic homilies either. And except on Pentecost I don’t hear the Holy Spirit mentioned as often as I think the Third Person of the Trinity deserves. In many Protestant services I’ve heard the Holy Spirit is mentioned often, sometimes more than Jesus.

Not all Protestants may understand that Catholics agree that when Christ ascended into heaven He sent the Holy Spirit to protect the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. The Church was bruised before, during and after the Protestant Reformation due to faults in the Catholic Church and due to various personal interests of Martin Luther not conducive to his life as an Augustinian monk. 

I’m not concerned about who bears the greater fault, if any, with the splitting up of the Church during the Reformation. Nothing doctrinally essential was stripped away from the Catholic Church at that time and over the centuries a great deal of tuck pointing has helped to repair some of the other problems Luther rightly complained about. So now one of the challenges is to explain to Protestants why it’s important to come back to the Catholic Church, to put it bluntly and simply. For me, the most important reason is to receive Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist rather than a symbol of Him represented by a cracker and grape juice. 

I don’t think it will become any easier to evangelize Protestants until the Catholic Church begins publicly to talk about the Holy Spirit and God the Father more than it does about the Blessed Virgin Mary. I am not saying Catholics should decrease their veneration of the Virgin Mary. I am saying that perhaps their veneration should become more private while their adoration of the Holy Spirit and God the Father becomes more public. Let Protestants hear Catholics speak about the Holy Spirit and God the Father as much as they now hear them talk about Lourdes and Fatima. 

I’m not saying that for the sake of converting Protestants we should ever deny that Mary is the only perfect, sinless human being who ever lived and who ever will live; that she is the Mother of the Son of God, and that she is the most important intercessor for us with her Son. At the same time, I think it’s important for us to tell Protestants that Catholics are as free as they are to pray directly to Jesus Christ, the one and only mediator with God the Father. 

In order to help Protestants understand Catholicism better, I believe that Catholics must talk more about the Trinity--the Father, Son and Holy Spirit--or Catholics will not reach Protestants in what is said to be as many as 30,000 Protestant denominations. There will be plenty of time later to tell Protestants interested in Catholicism about Mary and her role in salvation history. But first we must prove to them that Catholicism is based on the same faith they have in Jesus Christ, His Death and Resurrection, and in the Trinity. And that will not be easy to do but certainly worth trying. 

I hope I have said nothing blasphemous or heretical here. I simply want to see more Protestants receive the Eucharist and the other sacraments and to do that they must become Catholic. For reasons too numerous to go into here, Catholics do not have a communion table open to all. One has to accept Catholicism in its entirety and be in the state of Sanctifying Grace to receive the Holy Eucharist.

I started thinking about this when I became aware that Pope Francis plans to go to Sweden in 2017 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation with the Lutheran Church of Sweden. 

Privately, I can’t celebrate the splitting up of the Church 500 years ago. It’s the biggest trauma Christianity has suffered since the crucifixion of Jesus. The Mystical Body was torn asunder and still lies about in many parts. Many good surgeons are needed to put the Body together again.

At the same time, I realize the Catholic Church did much that was wrong that led to the Reformation and that Luther accurately pointed out many of those errors before he left the Augustinian order and gathered his followers. And I wish all those who will celebrate the anniversary of that earth-shaking and heaven-shaking event all the best. 

Meanwhile I’ll do what I can, given the opportunity, to tell anyone who will listen about the difference between the reality of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist and the symbol of Him represented by a cracker and grape juice. As a Catholic I would never leave church without the Eucharist.


Donal Mahoney

———————————————————--
Donal Mahoney, once an editor with U.S. Catholic Magazine and Loyola University Press, has many times in his life been approached by Protestants seeking to help him save his soul. He wishes he had had the gumption to approach half as many Protestants in an effort to explain why he is still and always will be a Roman Catholic. 
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'Caseworker, 1962' by Donal Mahoney

2/27/2016

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Caseworker, 1962
 
In 1962, I was a caseworker, not a social worker, in the Cabrini-Green Housing Project in Chicago. In that era, the difference between a caseworker and a social worker was simple. A social worker had a degree or two in social work and was qualified to work with the poor. A caseworker usually had a degree but not in social work. And a caseworker usually had too many clients to have time to do social work even if he or she had a social work degree and knew how to apply it. 
 
To be hired by Cook County Department of Public Aid as a caseworker in 1962, all one had to have was a degree in anything and the ability to pass a test. I passed the test and was assigned as a novice caseworker to Cabrini-Green, perhaps the “toughest" housing project in Chicago at that time. I was assigned to two high-rise buildings with 458 families. I remember their addresses as clearly today as the address of my childhood home. Some things one always remembers.
 
Being a caseworker in Cabrini-Green was not a job coveted by many. But I was fresh out of grad school, had a pregnant wife, and absolutely no interest in business where salaries, of course, were higher and “careers” potentially much better. I may not have had any training in social work but I really didn’t need any formal training to keep filling out and filing new forms for the many changes that occurred in the lives of the families in my “caseload.” 
 
There are many stories of clients and their lives that I remember because they are impossible to forget. But the one I remember best may illustrate why some "poor people," even today, 50 years later, fail to climb the ladder of success as many middle-class and upper-class families wish they would, if not always for compassionate reasons.
 
My story involves a young black man, married with two children, who managed to graduate from a local junior college despite living in Cabrini-Green. I happened to see a notice in the neighborhood posted by a major grocery chain looking for a manager trainee at its nearby store. A high school diploma was required. I thought my client was more than qualified.
 
When I went with my client to the store to make his application, I thought nothing about the workers, at least the ones I saw, being all white and the customers being all black. This was 1962 and that composition would have raised no eyebrows in most stores in the neighborhood surrounding Cabrini-Green. I still thought my client had a chance to get the job. He had a degree from a junior college, looked comfortable in a white shirt and tie, and spoke “white English” in public. He seemed very intelligent. 
 
I was probably about the same age as my client but I came from an all-white section of the city, home to blue-collar immigrants, and my father paid my college tuition. My client worked to pay his tuition and feed his family at the same time. Although I thought he would get the job at the grocery store, he never thought he would. But since I was his caseworker, he went along to fill out the application. Sadly he turned out to be right. And I learned a lesson that day that made a deep impression on me as a novice caseworker. 
 
I can only hope that things are different today, and to some degree I suspect they are. Qualified minorities do get hired in many situations they would not have in 1962. Times change, in some ways for the better but not always for the better. And some things remain stiflingly the same.
 
Over the decades since, I have often wondered what might have happened to my client and his family. I thought about him again this morning when his mirror image appeared as a news reporter on a TV station in St. Louis. The young reporter looked almost exactly like my client and talked almost as well as he did. The reporter, however, looked as though he knew he would get the job at that station in 2015. My client knew the grocery store would not hire him in 1962. 
 
In St. Louis now, black reporters and black anchors are not the exception to the rule, especially since the 2014 death of Michael Brown in one of our inner-ring suburbs, Ferguson. 
 
I imagine the TV station required the young reporter to have a degree and probably the ability to speak “white English” in public. How he talks on his own time is his own business. After all, I was able talk any way I wanted to when I went home from my job at Cabrini-Green. My kids used to say I sometimes slipped into my father’s Irish brogue when things didn’t go exactly as I had planned. At times I still do. Our roots are always with us.
 
 
Donal Mahoney
 
 
————————————————————————--
Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune and  Commonweal.  Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs=
 

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NEW RELEASE! 'Resonance: A Poetry Collection' by Gary Beck, published by Dreaming Big Publications

2/23/2016

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NEW RELEASE!
Resonance: A Poetry Collection, by author Gary Beck
Published by Dreaming Big Publications

ABOUT THE BOOK:  Resonance is a collection of poems that looks at individual and cultural experiences from this complicated world in which some receive rewards but others are punished and pushed to the brink of despair.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks. He currently lives in New York City.
Resonance is available in ebook and paperback format.
 
Please contact Editor-in-Chief Kristi King-Morgan at dreamingbigpublications@outlook.com to request an interview with the author, or to request a PDF review copy of Resonance.
 
LINKS:
Dreaming Big’s “Our Books” Page: http://www.dreamingbigpublications.com/our-books.html
Amazon Product Page for Resonance: http://www.amazon.com/Resonance-Poetry-Collection-Gary-Beck/dp/1523916400/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456246095&sr=8-1&keywords=resonance+poetry
Dreaming Big’s Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/DreamingBigPublications/?ref=hl
Kristi King-Morgan’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/kristikingMSW
 
AUTHOR’S LINKS:
http://www.garycbeck.com/
 
www.facebook.com/AuthorGaryBeck
 
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6941828.Gary_Beck
 
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'Piccolos' by Donal Mahoney

2/23/2016

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Piccolos


Walking in the forest
as morning comes
I hear piccolos


of wrens and robins
offer hymns to God
some say isn’t there


and isn't anywhere.
The piccolos, some say, 
are simply fallout


from the Big Bang.
I tell the wrens and robins 
but they play on.


Donal Mahoney
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Nonfiction Book Review for ‘Koreatown: A Cookbook’ by Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard

2/23/2016

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  ABOUT THE BOOK: This is not your average soft-focus "journey to Asia" kind of cookbook. Koreatown is a spicy, funky, flavor-packed love affair with the grit and charm of Korean cooking in America. Koreatowns around the country are synonymous with mealtime feasts and late-night chef hangouts, and Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard show us why with stories, interviews, and over 100 delicious, super-approachable recipes.
    
It's spicy, it's fermenty, it's sweet and savory and loaded with umami: Korean cuisine is poised to break out in the U.S., but until now, Korean cookbooks have been focused on taking readers to an idealized Korean fantasyland. Koreatown, though, is all about what's real and happening right here: the foods of Korean American communities all over our country, from L.A. to New York City, from Atlanta to Chicago. We follow Rodbard and Hong through those communities with stories and recipes for everything from beloved Korean barbecue favorites like bulgogi and kalbi to the lesser-known but deeply satisfying stews, soups, noodles, salads, drinks, and the many kimchis of the Korean American table.

MY REVIEW:  3.5 stars.  I do appreciate the effort that the authors went through to make the book as genuine as possible.  This is a result of many travels, and is obviously written by people who have experienced the foods personally and not just sitting behind a computer putting together a recipe.  As far as usability goes, though, I doubt I will ever make anything from this book, and that is disappointing.  The ingredients are things I can’t even pronounce, much less find in a local shop.  And although I’m glad the authors said that these things smell and gave advice on how to cut down the smell, I don’t think I want something that stinks that bad to be in my house in the first place. I also thought the placement of the pictures in the front of the book was a bit amateurish, like someone had put a print in an album and left a lot of white around the picture. 
 
I received this book for free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers <http://booklookbloggers.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review and the opinions and thoughts I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255

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'Waiting Room' by Donal Mahoney

2/20/2016

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Waiting Room
 
First time seeing this doctor,
a specialist. Took a month
to get an appointment.
The waiting room’s packed.
I grab the last seat 
next to a lady in a wheelchair
knitting something,
perhaps for a grandchild. 
 
I pull out my cell phone 
like everyone else
but just to check messages,
not into games.  
No one’s looking at magazines,
it seems, any more.
It’s a cell phone world,
messages and Tic-Tac-Toe.
 
Half an hour later the lady 
stops knitting and whispers, 
“Sit back and relax, son. 
Life’s a waiting room.
We all have appointments.
Every name is called.
Even those who believe
no doctor is in."
 
Donal Mahoney
 
 
————————————————————————--
Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune and  Commonweal.  Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs=
 

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Nonfiction Christian Book Review for ‘NIV God’s Justice Bible’ from Zondervan

2/20/2016

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Book Description

Poverty, human trafficking, abuse…all forms of injustice stir the heart of God. Throughout every book of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, we see God’s plan to set the world right. NIV God's Justice: The Holy Bible, will engage your mind and heart, and give you a solid plan to act as God's hands and feet in a world filled with injustice.

MY REVIEW:  5 stars. It’s a hardcover book with a dust jacket, typical thin bible pages.  The book contains the NIV scriptures, a brief introduction at the beginning of each book to highlight how God’s justice is addressed in the book, and includes reflections at the end of each book.  I love books like this that help the reader understand Bible times in relation to today’s world.  This book has sections that help you apply the Word of God to issues that we face today such as government oppression, human trafficking, financial inequality, and more. 
 
I received this book for free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers <http://booklookbloggers.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review and the opinions and thoughts I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255

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'Where's the Sport?' By Donal Mahoney

2/17/2016

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Where’s the Sport?


Antonin Scalia is dead, a famous U.S. Supreme Court judge who loved to hunt. He died in bed on a hunting trip, apparently of natural causes. 

There were 35 hunters in his group. They flew to a farm in Texas designed to give folks with money a chance to spend it shooting wildlife. 

I’m not interested in Judge Scalia's court decisions or who will replace him. I’m interested in what motivated him to hunt. He made enough money to buy his meat. So I have to assume he hunted for sport. 

My question has always been, where’s the sport?

Where’s the sport in hunting down and killing an animal you might not eat but want to stuff and hang over your mantel? 

I don’t hunt or fish but I would if I didn’t earn enough to feed a family. Any edible animal in season I would kill so we could eat. So killing an animal isn’t the issue. It’s why an animal is killed that I sometimes don’t understand.

I see no sport in shooting quail or duck or deer or any animal that cannot kill me and simply wants to be left alone to eat and mate. 

Nor do I see any sport in pulling a giant bass out of the water simply because it fights so hard to stay there and would make a great trophy. 

As a kid I fished for bluegill and catfish and if we caught any, someone’s mother fried them up and we ate every one. 

We didn’t fish for sport. We fished to eat the fish. Truth be told, I just went along with friends who came from families who fished but the lady who fried those fish knew what she was doing. Nothing quite like a plateful of fried catfish with hush puppies, slaw and fries.

But I still need someone to tell me where the sport lies in killing a wild animal that can’t kill me and doesn’t even want to see me. Don’t tell me they’re tough to corner and expect that to be an answer. I’d be tough to corner too if someone was coming at me with a gun. 

If I wanted to kill for sport, I'd join the army and look forward to killing people who wanted to kill my fellow citizens and me. I’d have no problem shooting the enemy provided they wanted to bomb our country or spread chemical gas in our subways. They would be fair game in my eyes. 

So would anyone coming through my bedroom window at midnight. 

But I see no sport in shooting wild animals. Except, of course, for a mountain lion jumping off a cliff and about to land on me. Or a cottonmouth in the grass ready to strike just above my ankle. But that’s not sport—that’s survival.

If someone who hunts for sport reads this, please tell us your side. Maybe Judge Scalia addressed this issue at some point in his life, and I might use Google to try to find his explanation. But in the meantime, I thought others who hunt for sport and not for food might like to explain where the sport is. 

So far, I can’t find it. 


Donal Mahoney

-------------------------------
Nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart prizes, Donal Mahoney has had poetry and fiction published in a variety of print and electronic publications in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Some of his work can be found here: http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html
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'A Moment of Life' by John Kaniecki

2/16/2016

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A Moment of Life


Rhythm a faint distant clock ticking time
Days to years the phantom threatens shadow
Withered hands cling to carnal treasure gold
Water flows to the ocean eternal
Seasons change as stars flickering at night
Put the spade to the Earth one last farewell
Smile, try your best, be brave for the children
Eyes of confusion, who understands death?
The glory of the perennial glows
A seed in a casket that is our hope
Inevitable we all share our fate
Tormented we rely upon our faith
The bugle plays taps in final salute
Somewhere there is a baby being born
Every evening is followed by morn
 
 
by John Kaniecki  

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'Victim of Love', Poetry by Christy Bozeman

2/15/2016

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Victim of Love
You decided to hurt me deeply, making me bleed,
Made me say things I surely didn’t mean.
You would call me names, and curse me,
That is not how our love was supposed to be.
 
Were you ill, or did you just not care?
How could you even dare?
You have not a clue that you ruined me for life,
That’s just not right!
 
It’s extremely hard for me to love,
Jesus I know that you can send healing from above.
I need you now and forever,
If I don’t have you, I will not love, never!
 
Never again do I want to be scarred so deep,
So many nights I lay there alone to weep.
Cleanse me from within my soul,
Please I am begging, fulfill this empty hole.


By Christy Bozeman
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