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Catholic America Today supports a cleaner internet.  In a world where we are constantly bombarded by sex in almost every aspect of our lives, Catholic America Today becomes an island where clean is clean.  The creators of CAT, strongly believe it is time to clean up the last frontier and support the creation of new non profit Catholic organization that will do just that.

As a father I long for a day when my son who is seven can browse the internet without fear of some predator or smut popping into his life.  Obviously we want an internet that is cleaner for our kids.  How clean is clean and who decides what is clean?  I am not in favor of total censorship of anyone or group, I just want kids to be able to explore with out having to worry about running into a predator or pornography or even overly sexual content.  Perhaps there can be a separate internet for kids.  Who knows, the sky is the limit.  Technology is great, we can do so many things that I am sure we can come up with something.  My criteria is that it needs to be accessible to  all to use, therefore whatever solution one comes up with it must be publicly available to all, which means free.

The browser Mozilla was built for all to use at no cost to the public, so I figure someone could develop a browser just for kids to use.  This would be a step in the right direction.

Your comments would be appreciated.

Vern Paul

catholicamericatoday.net

November 25, 2008

My Dear Friends in Christ,

I am the way the truth and the life.  Jn 14:5

In the time of gift giving again I am going to focus on the gifts from our Lord.  Many Catholics forget about the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  Yesterday we talked about justification.  According to Kenneth Baker in Fundamentals of Catholicism, justification is the process by which a person, through faith in Jesus Christ and sorrow for his sins, receives sanctifying grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit.  This gift of sanctifying grace is accompanied by the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are:  wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety and fear of the Lord.  (Is 11:2-3)  Again in John 14-16 our Lord states that the Holy Spirit exist in the just.

In my life this would explain why I have made such terrible decisions in my life for the lack of the Holy Spirit.  Two marriages later I realize my mistake.  What these gifts allow one to do is to remain holy.  This would explain why people say that once you embrace the Lord’s path, that it does become a bit easier to not sin.  I understand this, although far from being Holy, I can relate to the impulse to sin.  I am a sinner and knowing that these gifts exist can be very soothing, knowing that the Lord cares about us enough to give us some relief from pangs of whatever sin pounds at our soul.  As a sinner I know that sin can sit with you like hunger.  When I embraced the Lord, those hunger pangs disappeared.  I can truly attest to that.  Is this the Holy Spirit?  Perhaps, I believe it is.  The trick is to keep your soul clean. 

Unlike some protestant faiths, Catholics believe that we can lose these gifts.  This makes sense to me.  I have had times in my life that I know the Lord was absent, not in the sense he was totally gone but I was definitely lacking the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  I can not speak for others but only from my own heart and truly living with out the Holy Spirit is like living in Hell.  It is Hell on Earth.  I went through a long time in my life where I felt God was not important.  Sure I went to Church but I went to fill a seat. I even taught religious education classes and confirmation classes. Sinning was easy and the gifts were not there.  It is a time that I want to forget.  It is a time I cried out for help.  It is a time that I am finally recovering from in my life.  I have taken back the Lord.  Although I am spending Christmas by myself this year, I am not truly alone.  I have the Lord who is filling my life with Joy.  I am happy for the first time in a long time.  It is funny many people ask me, “How can you be happy when you are alone?”  I never thought I would say this, but I am happy for I am blessed to have and know the Lord.

I pray that we are all filled with the grace of the Lord and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  What a great gift for the season.  Give it to a friend.  Join our Cause, and let us clean up the internet. Email me, at vernpaul@catholicamericatoday.net

Vern Paul

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November 27, 2008

Dear Friends in Christ,

I try to take a day off, but it just does not come.  I am so excited about what is to come that I had to write it all done for all of my friends.  My family is in all different places so it is just me and the Lord today so I have a lot of quiet time to write and to not take advantage of that, I would feel it to be a sin.  I love you all and hope you get the word out that we want to change the internet and make it safe for our young children.  We do this by spreading the word of our Lord Jesus Christ.  We use the internet for good.

God just did not land and sell us a bill of goods like he did Moses.  He came on Earth and became man.  He wanted to have our feelings so he knew what it was like to be man.  Then he taught us gradually what it was like to be him and to be near him.  The teaching was gradual and over time.  We can not as a group expect people to understand what a Christian is from the get go.  There must be a time of preparation.  There must be adequate instruction.  The Holy Spirit descended on the disciples and gave them courage and understanding during what we as Christians call Pentecost.  This spirit gave them the courage to speak out against all who wished them harm.  It takes courage to be a Christian and it takes faith.

Faith however is only a part of it. To be justified one needs more then faith.  Justification, as defined by the Catholic Church in, Fundamentals of Catholicism, by K. Baker, is the process by which a person, through faith in Jesus Christ and sorrow for his sins, receives the gift of the Holy Spirit and so becomes a child of God and an heir of heaven. Pg 57.

Many Catholics are not up to speed on this process because we do not do it as a whole.  We are not professionals like our Evangelical brothers and our Mormon brothers.  Why is that?  The answer is simple.  As I read this in a book called Catholic Matters by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, he writes:

Catholic clergy and parishes seldom conduct aggressive programs of evangelizations aimed at getting new members.  One decidedly nontheological reason for this is that most priests think that they have more people then they are able to serve.

In many major cities it is not on common for a priest to have a parish of upward to 15,000 families with only 3-4 priests to serve them if that.  So we as good Catholics are instructed to lead by example.  Where as our Protestant brethren are taught from the get go on how to be aggressive Christians.  This puts us at a disadvantage.  I am currently leading my own campaign and borrowing from the Protestants.  After all it is hard to find a place to learn how to become a Catholic Evangelist. I use the website Catholic Answers, by Karl Keating and I read his books. I also have friends who were protestant and I study the Mormon technique.  Why do I do this?

I feel that there is a lot to offer Protestants.  As Catholics we have wonderful churches that are great homes to many outstanding Christians.  We have a vast array of followers already to go, who want to give their lives to Christ and want to volunteer for a good cause.  I have a cause that I am passionate about.  I am sure Jesus is passionate about it too.  I want others to be passionate about it.  I want to share my cause with millions.  I need to be an evangelist of Christ to do this.  I know, being a political student that Obama won the last election because he solicited our young people.  I am starting a movement with those same young people.  We need to change things by using them.  How were great revolutions won?  By starting with the young, Mao understood this, Hitler understood this so did Lenin and so do I.  I will be reaching out to the young Catholics of America to change our world, to clean up the internet and to spread the Holy Spirit.

Obama fooled the young, already he is breaking promises.  He told them he would change politics for all and what does he do? He is bringing in the old guard and filling positions in his cabinet with people from old administrations.  There is no change in that.  Jesus will not disappoint.  Jesus brings change.  My American Catholics we will change things.

This week I start at UNLV in Nevada.  I hope to visit many a campus Newman Center.  Spread the word.  Join our cause.  Let us clean up the internet.

God Bless Vern Paul

Pray for the following:

Mark and Ac may they heal,

Lori and her friend Rolly, may they be healed,

Cece and her school, may she finally be done,

Barbara and her family, may she be one and healed,

Pray for Kimberley that she may be strong,

Pray for all the soldiers and armed forces over seas,

Pray for the homeless that they may be fed, everyday,

Pray for the soul of Vernon Peter Hee, that he may be in heaven,

Pray for new priests and all vocations,

Pray for those aborted souls,

Pray for the 15 sisters in Kenya,

Pray for the success of Catholic America Today.

catholicamericatoday.net

Sex Is Not Love, Oh What A Concept:  A Look At Where We Are At As A Society and Culture.

Gee what a concept.  How many times have you heard the title of this article before?  If we have heard it so many times then why is sex still often confused with love?  Why do our teens pursue this as if it were the Holy Grail?   Why do Adults pursue it?  I asked myself this after comparing feelings after meaningless sex with the feelings I have after going to communion and confession or attending mass. Mind you I did not just recently go out and have meaningless sex.  I had to remember the feelings.  They can not compare.  The feelings you have when you follow our religion and reject temptation are indescribable compared to that one little orgasm.  God’s joy last so much longer and it can be spread without getting a disease.

I am on a mission of celibacy and I feel like a missionary.  I say the latter for I am going up against a huge advertising giant.  Sex is well marketed and firmly entrenched in our culture.  This is why I feel like a missionary.  I feel the same way the first Spanish missionaries felt when they arrived in this land to find a tribal culture so entrenched in their pagan ways.

Consider how premarital sex can affect relationships. One study showed that the average high school relationship will last only twenty-one days once the couple has sex. Furthermore, couples who sleep together before they are married have a divorce rate three times as high as couples who saved that gift for the wedding night.ⁱ Couples who want what’s best for their relationship or future marriage will wait. Beyond their own relationship, premarital sex frequently causes tension within families because of the dishonesty that usually accompanies the hidden intimacies. Relationships with friends are often strained, and when things turn sour, the gossip and social problems often become unbearable.  If You Really Loved Me, a new book by Jason Evert.

I often ask my friends about sex before marriage just to come up with different answers.  I found the above passage in the book so depressing and discouraging, If You Really Loved Me. I truly feel for our teens and what sex is doing to their innocence.  I am looking at what todays teens must go through to find love and I am glad that I do not have to go through what they have to.  Our culture today is way more bombarded by sex then when I was a teen.  I do not envy what they have to grow up with.  Just look at all the ways that temptation is thrown at these poor teens. I had just TV.  They have the internet, TV, Movies, Music, and Literature.  I really never had to think about sex before marriage as a teen.  It never really entered my mind till college.  My faith was not as strong as it is now.  I broke with the church in college only to get tangled up in meaningless relationships when I should have been paying attention to my studies.

I often wish I was able to with hold my virginity also I often wish I had that gift to give to someone I truly love.  Our society can put up with female virgins.  In fact I know one that is living quite happily and is very good practicing Catholic in her early thrities, but Society for some reason frowns on men being virgins.  Look at the movie the Forty Year Old Virgin.  Where is the support for these men?  There is none.  Our society is very sexually oriented and wants its men to be sexually active.  I think our society believes the more sexually active its males are the more successful society will be.

Just to make this point look at all our politicians.  Not to pound on a man that is down, John McCain is a perfect example.  Look at his wife Cindy.  He married her and divorced his ex wife because she was in an accident.  Perhaps John McCain figured that Cindy being so good looking would be his ticket to higher political office.  Where are the Barbara Bush’s and the Eleanor Roosevelt of the world?  What ever happened to long lasting marriages?  When you reach the point where the divorce rate in society is at the fifty percent level then you know the American Family is losing. 

I myself sit shell shocked after two marriages.  Will I ever find a person that I can love?  Sure I will, but I need to reevaluate what love is.  How do you do that?  Many people do not realize it but the perfect model has been with us for the last 2000 years.  The Holy family is our model.  If you want to know what love is look to Jesus and to his Heavenly Father.  This is where we should be looking for “Perfect Love”.   Instead we look for it in movies and pop culture.  Madonna and Brad Pitt know squat about love.  Madonna has been married so many times that they installed a revolving door at her house.  Oprah Winfrey, the Queen of Pop Culture, thinks so highly of marriage that she refuses to tie the knot. 

In Search of Love, Taking The Sex Out of The Equation.

Our role models should be found in the church.  We must look to Jesus first and then the Saints and our leaders. Think of this as a review of what love should be.  In the next couple of days I will attempt to define what love should be.

What is the Catholic voice I so often
talk about? Why it is all of you, my fellow Catholics from all over the
world.  The Catholic Voice is the heartbeat of our religion. It is our
faith and our prayers and our pain.  It is our strengths and our
weaknesses and our triumphs and our defeats.  It is the very core that
keeps us going as Catholics.

Whenever
we express ourselves and share our experiences, that is the Catholic
Voice, a voice from our soul.  Often you find this type of expression
in poetry.  I have found it in the many letters I get from all of you. 
Here is an example.

(oh, and just for the record I asked this person weather or not I could post the letter.)

Well, this presence, a peaceful one, as I remember it,lifted me gently, and proceeded  to carry me and hold me. As I finished praying, in my dream,