New section added at the end (7/8/26) sorry, messy way to

---

(20260519) The Lord has been working me over lately and I’m not sure if I’m thinking clearly or at odds with his will. I have lived a Catholic life (or tried) which has been dictated by three themes. Sin, Death, Hell. Like the king who lived with a sword hanging over his head held by a thin string, that to me is the vision of a Catholic life. Conceived and born in sin, stamped by original sin even before we are born, and destined to live looking over our shoulders, lest we fall into the pit. Trying doesn’t count because we are sinners in words, thoughts, and actions. That doesn’t leave any wiggle room. I keep thinking, is that the God I believe in? And my inmost being says no, even though I’ve spent my whole life with this struggle. I can’t even explain it well but have the following scenarios to clarify for me. They revolve around the idea of examination of conscience. 

Act 1. Consider a child coming home from school and sitting down with his father. The father says tell me about all the things you did wrong at school today. Did you talk back to the teacher? Did you get mad when your paper was marked down for its error? Did you kick the ball in anger when you missed the goal? Did you shove your friend when he got in your way? I’m sure there must more but tell me about the negative thoughts you had. Did you wish the teacher lost their voice when they asked the room to be quiet? Did you hope your friend would trip and fall when they beat you in the race? Did you hope the other team would get hurt when they beat your school? You need to tell me even more, surely there must be a lot of other things you did wrong today. We need to get them all out on the table so I can decide how much to punish you. And, by the way, when we get together tomorrow after school, I expect you to do better in counting and remembering all the things you did wrong. After all I’m your father and want just what’s best for you.

Act 2. Consider a child coming home from school and sitting down with his father. The father says tell me what you learned in school today. What were some of the things that made you feel good and helped you grow stronger and wiser? What were some of the things that didn’t go well today and made you think about ways to make it better? Who helped you when you struggled, and who did you help when you had a chance? What were the most important lessons you learned today and how can they help you do better tomorrow. If there are some areas that you have trouble with or don’t understand, tell me about them and we can sit down together, and I will help you work through them. I know that sometimes the day doesn’t go well, and when that happens you need to tell me so I can try and help because I’m your father and want what’s best for you.
My struggle (and maybe yours), is which act represents your Father(God). To me the first is the god of the church, and the second is the god of my heart.

God has promised that he would replace our stony hearts with a human heart (Ez 36:26). I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. (20260414) I have struggled with this topic for some time. I have not been able to form any coherent thoughts. Why do we have hard hearts? What can we do about it? Then I thought about scripture and church related history. And I asked, can institutions/groups have hard hearts? When I consider the Old Testament I recall how God continues to tell Israel how they should act. He sent prophets and leaders and still they drifted. To the point that he had to send corrections. Then he tried again and again and still they drifted. And so on. Finally, we have Jesus and all that he said and did. One would think that the lesson had been learned and the road smoothed. Yet 2000 years and what do we see? We see a lot of progress, but we also see something else. We see a church in crisis, struggling to figure out why people are leaving it or not participating in its life. So, my question is, has the church hardened its heart? Frankly my answer is yes. I am not unaware of the good the church has done and is doing. God has not abandoned the church, and the Spirit continues to work within it and with many of its members. But I have also had many secular experiences where there are good people doing good things within institutions that do not live up to their vision. Human nature, probably. Original sin, maybe. But mostly there is a disconnect between their words and their actions. Can an institution have an ego? Can its ego lead it away from its vision. Maybe. Will God have to allow corrections? Probably. Will the institution respond? I hope so. There is food for thought here, and I’ll say more in several other comments, but I would like to soften my heart and contain my ego but fail to do so way too often. I hope the church can do better.

(20250719) It has been some time since I put down my thoughts. I have a number of previous comments that I have not yet presented but want to put them out when I find they represent my current mood. I have been wrestling for some time with how the Lord is working (or not working) in my life. As I reflect on where I’ve been and where I am and find myself trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle. What does the Lord want me to do or say, and what is my own ego doing to mess up the message? Like a jigsaw puzzle, to put it together one needs to know what the scene is. Yet that is the same as saying I would need to know God’s plan. And I really believe that’s not possible, because his thoughts are beyond my capabilities, and always will be. At the same time, he does expose pieces of the puzzle to me (us). And I try to fit the pieces together. Sometimes the pieces seem to change shape which makes it harder to see how they connect. So, here’s my current dilemma. I still believe the church is off the rails. Yet I see good people trying to do good things albeit with their own good intentions much like a beheaded duck running frantically around the yard. When the church started, it was a movement guided by the Spirit with the mission to bring souls to God. Over the centuries that movement became an organization. Many years ago, a priest said to me, “be careful when a movement becomes and organization”. What I perceive is that this organization has lost sight of what the movement was intended for. To take secular terminology, the church is a business! It is a nonprofit business that is in the souls saving business. Pope Francis is noted for saying the church is a hospital for souls. Well, a hospital is a business. As in any business one must ask, who is the staff, who are the clients, and who are the stakeholders. I’ve heard it repeatedly said that the church is not a democracy. But what is it? Is it a monarchy? Is it a community? What are its bylaws? One could fill volumes with a lot of profound thoughts couched in deep theological languages, but I’d end up back where I am. As I see it, the church has spent centuries becoming the organization that it is and still hasn’t been able to get its act together. Many people have left and are leaving. Church buildings have become empty, and parishes consolidated. This seems to have become apparent, so now the church says, what to do? Well let’s look at what it was were in its heyday. It told the laity they were sheep, and they should Pay, Pray, and Obey. It held guilt and indulgences over their heads. Maybe we should go back to that? But then we’ve spent centuries trying to educate people, and they have learned to think for themselves. It tried to show them how they should trust and respect each other and how to create human resource functions. So, society has matured in a lot of ways. At the same time, it refused to use what had been learned within the church. No continuous measurable improvement here. No human resource considerations are used here. What a dilemma. In my mind, the Catholic church has the deepest and best set of fundamental beliefs that exist, and yet it can’t seem to find a way to leverage those to help accomplish its mission. Mostly in my mind because of humanity’s fundamental inability to subvert our egos to the greater good of the Lord’s will. I find myself chasing around in circles unable to catch up to myself. So here is my nutshell. As I see it, history has shown that progress depends on crises. From the crusades to the magna carta, to the scientific revolution, to the declaration of independence, it has taken a shattering awakening to move forward. For the church to move forward and instantiate the two great commandments we need to build a community based on trust, respect, communication, and team spirit. That will not happen until the laity creates a new magna carta and declaration of independence that codifies what scripture says, and the second Vatican hinted at, that the laity are god’s children and have a share in the rights and responsibilities of the Spirit’s mission on earth.