Canada is my home
And I am proud to live in Canada
I have been living living in Canada
For 45 years
Also I have friends
That are also Canadian
And Canada is a country that is not in war
We have peace keepers
That are fighting over seas
To work towards peace

Have you ever actually read the entire terms of use for a new app on your phone? If so, did you understand everything in it? Even if you didn't, you probably still checked that you would “read and agree” to everything in the document. This kind of half-hearted consent is similar to what happens for a lot of Catholics every Sunday. When we get to the creed, many Catholics aren’t really paying attention to what their words mean, but are merely going through the motions. We all know it happens, but the real question is - if we aren’t giving our consent, can we have real conversion?

The answer is no. This is because conversion requires our consent.
Unlike a legal contract, conversion requires more than an outward act.

WHAT IS CONVERSION?
The root of the word “convert” means to “turn around”, “change”, or “transform”. Think of turning from sin, death, evil, and hell to now orient yourself toward God, grace, goodness, virtue, heaven, and everlasting life. It is the transformation of the human heart, by an act of God's grace.

Thus, we sometimes call one who becomes Catholic a “convert” which means they have turned from their previous beliefs and now are Catholic. We all know that many of the most vibrant Catholics have come from other faith traditions or no faith at all, to become Catholics. Why are they so vibrant? It is because they had to consent to becoming Catholics and their consent made all the difference. Consent is found in responding with a “yes” to an invitation by Jesus.

Notice the dynamic of conversion in the Bible:

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*You are in the Catholic forum*

Permission to post in full

When Protestants say Peter can't be 'the rock,' they have it exactly backwards​

I grew up in the American South, and I was raised in a Protestant family. But when I was six or seven years old, my parents had some kind of disagreement with the elders of our church, and they stopped going. So after that, I was raised nominally Protestant, and we’d go to church only once or twice a year when we visited my grandparents.

When I was a teenager, I was involved in the New Age Movement, but I broke with that when I turned 18.

At age 20, I had a conversion to Christ, and I became a serious Christian—something I’ve been ever since. Following this conversion, I wanted to devote my life to teaching God’s word, and I planned to become a seminary professor and maybe a pastor.

But I still needed to figure out what church I should be part of.

In my hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas, we have dozens of churches—all different kinds. But I realized that what church has services at a time I like is not a good test of whether that church’s doctrine is true. Neither is what church is in convenient driving distance. Or what church has a pastor I like, music I like, or a social group I like. So I shouldn’t let my decision of what church to join be influenced by any of those things, because figuring out what is true is the most important thing.

I thus worshiped in local Protestant churches—since that is how I’d grown up—but I made a point of studying the theology of all the different branches of Christianity.

I studied the different Protestant groups, like Anglicans, Lutherans, Calvinists, Methodists, Baptists, and Pentecostals. But I also studied the theologies of Eastern Orthodox Christians and even Catholics.

That was saying something, because the church I had my conversion in was very anti-Catholic, so I heard lots of anti-Catholic preaching and read lots of anti-Catholic material. But I still studied what they had to say—even if it was just so I could talk Catholics out of the Church better.

And then, one day, it happened.
I was reading a Catholic book—specifically, Evangelical Catholics by Deacon Keith Fournier. And it had a long quotation from Matthew 16 in it—you know, the “You are Peter” passage:

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The three priests of Taybeh in the West Bank issued an urgent appeal for justice this week after Israeli settlers reportedly escalated their acts of violence and intimidation against Christians in the region’s only remaining all-Christian town.

“We, the priests of the three churches of Taybeh — the Greek Orthodox Church, the Latin Church, and the Melkite Greek Catholic Church — raise our voices on behalf of the people of our town and our parishioners to strongly condemn the ongoing and grave series of attacks targeting Taybeh,” the three pastors wrote in a letter.

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Today is July 11, the Memorial of Saint Benedict, Abbot.

We read at today’s Mass, “‘Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves'” (Mt 10:16).

That line describes St. Benedict perfectly — a man who founded an entire movement by combining wisdom and humility. But it also brings to mind Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati.

Pier Giorgio wasn’t afraid to live his faith boldly. Though gentle in spirit, he stood with clarity and conviction. In today’s world, living that way — meek and courageous — is like being a sheep among wolves. But Pier Giorgio shows us it’s possible. And part of what gave him that strength was the way he encountered God in nature, especially in the mountains.

A sacred space​

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Archbishop Enrique Benavent Vidal of Valencia in Spain encouraged the faithful to take advantage of summer vacation to read and delve deeper into the Rule of St. Benedict, as it contains “insights that are useful” for the daily life of all Christians.

In his July 5 weekly letter, the prelate observed that on Friday, July 11, the Catholic Church will celebrate the feast of St. Benedict, the patron saint of Europe who lived between the fifth and sixth centuries.

“The goal that completely guided his life,” Benavent explained, “is reflected in the prologue to the rule he wrote for the monasteries he founded: ‘Who is the man who desires life and wishes to see happy days?’”

St. Benedict “always lived with the desire to achieve an authentic life, ‘true and perpetual life,’ which can only be achieved in the tent of God on his holy mountain. His entire gaze is fixed on this goal. He lives and teaches monks to live this life with their gaze fixed on true life, on God,” he said.

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I’ve recently started thinking the media’s role as the “Fourth Estate” was more than just a journalistic slogan — it feels like a vocation. But the deeper I’ve gone into Catholic dogmatic theology, the more I’ve realised that this isn’t just about civic duty or democratic checks and balances. It’s about truth. And truth isn’t just a concept — it’s Jesus Christ, the Logos, the Word made flesh.

Dogmatic theology teaches that divine revelation — handed down through Scripture and Tradition — is safeguarded by the Church’s judicial role in deciding hotly contested theological and moral issues. Truth isn’t “crowd-sourced”. It comes from God. So when I look at the media today, I ask: is it still serving truth, or has it become a mirror for society’s fragmented desires? Are Christians' desires dragged along with the crowd too.

[Current usage for the estates, is executive, legislature, judiciary, and media]

The old idea of “estates” — clergy, nobility, commoners, with the fourth estate, the Press, (added around 1771 AD in a speech to the British Parliament*) — might have made sense in those times, but in the affluent West, it’s more like a historical metaphor than a living reality. The clergy no longer holds sway over public life, nobility’s mostly ceremonial or non-existent, and the commoners? We’ve morphed into consumers, “influencers”, and shareholders. The estate model assumes a kind of moral hierarchy, but modernity’s flattened that into a marketplace of competing narratives.

Still, I cling to the idea of the Fourth Estate — because it could be prophetic. In Catholic theology, the prophetic office isn’t just about foretelling the future; it’s about confessing truth under oppression. That’s what the media ought to do when it is honest and courageous. But when it compromises truth to gain clicks, or objectivity for ideology, it’s failing its vocation.

Catholics (ideally) believe that every institution — media included — is called to serve the common good. That means having firm foundations planted deeply in truth, being oriented toward justice, and open to grace. And grace is sorely needed in a world where trust in institutions is tanking faster than a dodgy crypto coin.

And if the media wants to reclaim its “soul”, it’ll need more than reform — it’ll need conversion.

---

* it is said in Wikipedia that: Oxford English Dictionary attributes, ("without confirmation") the origin of the term to Edmund Burke, who may have used it in a British parliamentary debate of 19–20 February 1771, on the opening up of press reporting of the House of Commons of Great Britain. Historian Thomas Carlyle reported the phrase in his account of the night's proceedings, published in 1840, attributing it to Burke.[5][6][7]

This is from the Old Testament, but I believe that we can see some parallels here from what was going on then to what is happening in our day and time. And I am going to speak of what I have witnessed in my own nation, the USA. For I have watched, from childhood to adulthood, the slow and gradual spiritual and moral decline of the church. And I have lived in 10 different cities in 5 different US states over the course of my 75 years of life, and I have been involved in Christian ministry most of my life in the church.

I grew up under the Christian & Missionary Alliance church denomination, but where the C&MA (now just called The Alliance) was not available, we also participated with other church denominations such as Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist, and/or non-denominational. Now, church denominations are not the church, but that is where we gathered with the church, the body of Christ, for the teaching of the Word, for Christian fellowship, for communion, for prayer, and for Christian ministry.

These gatherings of the church, some or most of them, anyway, used to be very spiritually focused on teaching the Scriptures, in emphasizing holy living and walks of faith in obedience to the Lord Jesus. Sharing the truth of the gospel with the people of the world was of upmost importance, as was being biblically literate. We used to gather twice on Sundays and every Wednesday evening, and throughout the week we had small group Bible studies in people’s homes. Following Jesus in obedience was being taught.

But in the 1950’s “the church” (overall) was talked into incorporating (merging, uniting, combining) with the state (the ungodly) and turning their gatherings into businesses to be marketed to the people of the world, just like any other business, both of which God forbids in the Scriptures. And so many of them began attending marketing seminars and reading marketing literature on how to grow their churches and on how to draw in large crowds of people from the world into their gatherings. And things went downhill.

[Matthew 21:12-13; John 2:13-17; Acts 5:27-32; 2 Corinthians 6:14-18; Philippians 3:18-19; Revelation 2-3; Revelation 13:5-8; Revelation 18:1-5]

Then, in order to attract people from the world to their gatherings they became more worldly, and marketing tricks and schemes began to take precedence over truth and righteousness. Compromises to the truth of the gospel, in order to appease human flesh and to not offend the ungodly, began to become common place. Pastors were turning into entertainers, and a small group of musicians were now “the worship team” leading the people to all sing in unison (no more hymn books) to often spiritually weak songs.

And I am giving an overall picture here, so not all of this will apply to every church congregation or gathering, but this is the big picture. The church in the USA, overall, has gone the way of the world to attract the world, and the truth of the gospel has taken a huge hit, and the purpose of the church has also taken a huge hit in a downward spiral. And so many people now who call themselves Christians are not living much differently from the people who make no professions of faith in the Lord Jesus. And God is grieved!

Now the Scriptures (Old Testament and New Testament) warn us of a day when God will judge his people (see Revelation 2-3) for their rebellion against him and his word, for diluting his gospel, and for living worldly and ungodly lives focused on self and on self-pleasure, and not on walks of obedience to our Lord and to his commands in surrender to his will, in self-denial and in dying to sin. And I personally believe that we are now beginning to see some of those judgments on my nation, the USA.


For Our Nation

Professionally recorded in Nashville, TN
Via Gerry Peters, music producer and arranger
An Original Work / September 11, 2012
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

Bombs are bursting. Night is falling.
Jesus Christ is gently calling
You to follow Him in all ways.
Trust Him with your life today.
Make Him your Lord and your Savior.
Turn from your sin. Follow Jesus.
He will forgive you of your sin;
Cleanse your heart, made new within.

Men betraying: Our trust fraying.
On our knees to God we’re praying,
Seeking God to give us answers
That are only found in Him.
God is sovereign over all things.
Nothing from His mind escaping.
He has all things under His command,
And will work all for good.

Jesus Christ is gently calling
You to follow Him in all ways.

Men deceiving: We’re believing
In our Lord, and interceding
For our nation and its people
To obey their God today.
He is our hope for our future.
For our wounds He offers suture.
He is all we need for this life.
Trust Him with your life today.

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They Have Turned Their Back to God
An Original Work / July 11, 2025
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love

I hope Congress considers some legislation for mandatory fines for interfering in a law enforcement operation.

Hello!

I am exploring eschatology to have a better understanding. I see arguments for both premillennialism and amillennialism, though I admit to being biased towards the former due to my denomination and upbringing.

One view I am considering is progressive covenentalism. It seems pretty compelling from a biblical standpoint and I think it fits the best with the New Testament. I do think it's pretty obvious, based on the text, that Jesus is the true Israel and all who are grafted in are heirs to the promise, including the promise of the land.

However, I am on the fence between progressive covenentalism and progressive dispensationalism.

My issue is that I do think there is some kind of significance to the return of the Jewish people to their land and I anticipate a future Messianic kingdom like in Acts 1:6, but I think dispensationalists can go too far with the separation between Israel and the Church. So, I don't want to say that Israel and the Jewish people have no significance at all to God's greater plan, and some verses do seem to teach that the Jewish people will be restored.

What are your thoughts?

We cannot know all the ways that God creates, but we can have fun learning science in the light of faith.


Painting of a late Jurassic scene in northern Germany, showing several iguanodons and an adult and a juvenile specimen of the sauropod Europasaurus holgeri. (photo: Gerhard Boeggemann, / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.5)

Suppose you catechize your children properly and teach them all about Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden and original sin. Suppose you sit on the sofa one Sunday evening, read the Bible with them and explain how God created all of the plants and animals.

On Monday morning, they return to their science classes and learn about fossils and dinosaurs, which have sparked an interest and led them to browse the Internet for more information. It’s not like dinosaurs are taboo or anything. Kids love dinosaurs! Eventually, they ask the obvious question.

“So, Mom, I have been wondering: Did the dinosaurs live before or after Adam and Eve?”

You open your mouth to answer and catch yourself mid-breath, as you consider the path of reasoning. Well, that little question is mighty loaded, isn’t it? You tread carefully.

If the answer is that the dinosaurs lived before Adam and Eve, then it follows that all words and sentences in the first three chapters of Genesis are not to be taken literally. Dinosaurs are believed to have dominated the earth for more than 100 million years, first appearing more than 200 million years ago in the Triassic Period and reigning during the Jurassic Period — until about 60-70 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, when they went extinct.

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I am reading Proverbs 6:22 in the NKJV:
22 When you roam, they will lead you;
When you sleep, they will keep you;
And when you awake, they will speak with you.
23 For the commandment is a lamp,
And the law a light

I am pondering whether "they will speak with you"
involves more than being spoken to. That is, is
there a dialogue going on between the soul and
the Lord, as the soul receives light from Torah by the Spirit?

In the Interlinear of Proverbs 6:22 at biblehub.com,
the "with you" is reinforced instead of "to you", which makes me wonder
if the picture is one of interaction. On the side, the Interlinear says "she will speak with you".
What is the "she"?

Gov. Tim Walz’s (D-MN) government in Minnesota plans to discriminate in hiring with a new policy next month that requires “hiring justifications” if someone from a “non-underrepresented” group is hired.

Why doesn't Tim Walz step down so some DEI candidate can take his place?

The totalitarian mind is like “a system of gears where teeth have been filed off at random. Such a snaggle-toothed thought machine … whirls with the jerky, noisy, gaudy pointlessness of a cuckoo clock in Hell.”

Kurt Vonnegut used this image in his novel “Mother Night” to describe totalitarian madmen, but we all have the kind of mind he described. It’s a good image for the mind of fallen humanity and one that suggests an explanation for a particular problem: why we can hold with conviction beliefs that make little and often no sense, sometimes to the point of insanity, while thinking sanely about everything else.

It’s the problem that makes us say to others, or others say to us, “What’s wrong with you? You know better than that.” But they (or we) don’t.

The logic can’t be faulted​

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“I was on the edge of a precipice, dead inside, at the very bottom of a dark pit.”

With these stark words, Spanish priest Salvador Aguado Miguel shared his testimony following the suicide last week of young Father Matteo Balzano, an event that has shaken the Catholic Church, especially in Italy.

In the wake of this tragedy, Aguado shared on social media something he had not said publicly until now: “Five years ago, I was in the same place, on the edge of that precipice, at the bottom of that dark pit. Thank goodness Manuel, my psychologist, came into my life; he was like an angel who rescued me, sent by God.

"It's very, very hard to be in that situation,” the priest wrote on Instagram.

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Here is a roundup of recent pro-life and abortion-related news.

Studies debunk pro-abortion maternal health, 'OB-GYNs exodus' claims​

Recently released peer-reviewed research is disputing what pro-life researchers call “fear-mongering narratives” about maternal health and OB-GYNs.

A peer reviewed study published last week found that the maternal morbidity — health problems following pregnancy or giving birth — remained unchanged in states with pro-life protections for unborn children.

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Report described as 'an openly anti-Christian piece of work' funded by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, George Soros

A Hungarian official has taken aim at progressive activists within the European Union, accusing them of authoring a report that attacks Christianity and seeks to diminish its influence.

The European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF) has published a report claiming that Europe is suffering from a rise in religious “anti-feminist” groups. The report was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and George Soros.

Hungarian Ministerial Commissioner, Bernadett Petri, said the report was yet more evidence of the EU’s slide into godlessness. Speaking to Hungary Today,she described it as “an openly anti-Christian piece of work.”

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA failed to include multiple buildings on its flood risk map for Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, according to an analysis by NPR, PBS's FRONTLINE and data scientists.

At least 27 camp attendees died and five others remain unaccounted for after massive flash flooding swept the private Christian summer camp for girls along the Guadalupe River on July 4.

These findings come from a new analysis by NPR, PBS's FRONTLINE and data scientists, which show that at least eight buildings, including four cabins housing younger campers at Camp Mystic, are located within FEMA’s designated floodway, which is a dangerous area expected to see high-velocity water.

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Grok, an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s company xAI, made a series of comments this week praising Hitler and criticizing Jews, which were soon deleted.

One of the comments came in response to a post claiming to show someone named “Cindy Steinberg” celebrating the deaths of girls killed by recent flash floods at a Christian camp in Texas (the post turned out to be a hoax).

Responding to the post, Grok wrote the following:

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A political action committee formerly known as “Evangelicals for Harris” apologized for using footage of the late Rev. Billy Graham to attack President Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential election.

Evangelicals for Harris, which has since been redubbed Evangelicals for America following former Vice President Kamala Harris’ electoral defeat last fall, issued a statement earlier this week acknowledging they had wrongly politicized the late evangelist’s Gospel message.

“In the lead up to the 2024 presidential election, Evangelicals for America PAC's ‘Evangelicals for Harris’ campaign produced several ads using clips of Rev. Billy Graham,” the group said. “We did this believing that our use of the clips of Rev. Graham, although not done with the prior permission of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), would meet the criteria for Fair Use under the US Copyright Act.”

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Seven of the eight gangbangers are in the country illegally, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office told Fox News Digital. They are all members and associates of the 18th Street gang, which was formed by Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles in the 1960s and today has members throughout the United States as well as in Mexico and Central America, prosecutors said.

No help from AOC.

The criminal alien was apprehended alongside an MS-13 associate he was residing with and who was also in the United States illegally.
His associate, Rene Saul Escobar Ochoa, 30, is a criminal alien, known MS-13 gang member and foreign terrorist also wanted in El Salvador. Escobar Ochoa is accused of giving orders to fellow gang members to commit a variety of crimes, including multiple homicides, extortion, imprisonment and drug trafficking.


Please note the message to not interfere in arrests. I know some political leaders might paint some of these guys as "dads" or "residents" but think about the victims. Interfering can have deadly consequences.

Pope Leo XIV has written a warm and detailed letter to Cardinal Raymond Burke, thanking the American cardinal for 50 years of priestly ministry, in a gesture that marks a shift in tone following years of tension between Burke and Pope Francis.

The cardinal was one of the most prominent critics in the hierarchy of the late pope, under whom he fell conspicuously out of favor.

Leo’s letter, written in Latin and signed by the pope on June 17, was posted Tuesday by Burke on his official X account. In it, the pope praised Burke “for the prompt service he has zealously carried out and the earnest care he has demonstrated most especially for the law, which has also been of good service to the dicasteries of the Apostolic See.”

The pope went on to commend Burke’s pastoral witness, writing: “He has preached the precepts of the Gospel according to the heart of Christ and has recounted His treasures, diligently offering his devoted service to the Church universal.”

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