Ask Me Another ~ Pride, A Father’s Faith, Divorced Man, Gambling, Personal God

My internet was down for days so thus the interlude in the posts.☺️ Today I am sharing with you some great tidbits from Father Daniel Lord!

ASK ME ANOTHER

By Daniel A. Lord, S.J.

💮💮How important is pride in the process of one’s losing the faith?💮💮

Someday we may be able to stage some such debate: Resolve that lust has caused more men and women to lose their faith than has pride.

I am quite sure that in the long run the affirmative will win. Certainly of the men and women that I have known who have lost their faith, nine out of ten have done so because of some illicit love. As a wise old Irish pastor once said, “When a man loses his faith, if it isn’t punch, it’s Judy.“

Pride does however very frequently enter the picture. A man is convinced that he has a very brilliant mind and that what he knows is right and that what he cannot accept is necessarily wrong. The Pharisees were probably scrupulously pure men, but they were too proud to believe that a carpenter could teach them anything.

So many a young man has gone to a secular university, received an excellent education-during the course of which his faith was ignored or derided-and at the end has felt that be knew a great deal more than did the priests of his acquaintance and much too much to accept the teachings of the “antiquated” Church.

One famous apostate, Conan Doyle, is reported to have said that he had mercifully outgrown the religious superstitions of his adolescence. Later on he swallowed – sheet, tambourine, and ouija board-the superstitions of spiritualistic seances.

One of the most brilliant students of the Catholic university where I taught left the Church shortly after he was graduated because there were so many things that the Catholic Church taught that he “could no longer believe.“

But aside from this pride of mind there is another pride which is much more frequent in its undermining of faith. There is the pride of the man who makes a lot of money and who, conscious of his power, finds it annoying to have to kneel in the confessional or be one of a congregation made up largely of the day laborers in his plant.

There is the society woman who recognizes that Catholicity is a social handicap, sends her sons and daughters to fashionable non-Catholic schools, and dislikes to attend the devotions at which her cook and her upstairs maid are present.

There is the author who refuses to submit his books for the censorship required by the Catholic Church, and the banker who regards the Church’s laws on honesty as a handicap to his success in business. There is the young man who finds that success in business goes oftenest to the man who sports the Masonic pin; in his anxiety to rise to power and fame, he gives up his faith, of which he has grown ashamed.

Pride has a great deal to do with the losing of one’s faith, but I still believe that in the long run passion causes more men to turn their backs on their religion than does pride.

💮💮How can I get my father to receive Holy Communion? He receives only once a year.💮💮

Sometimes it is more difficult to get a member of one’s own family to practice his religion than it is to get a stranger to do so. Would it be possible to interest your father by having one of his Catholic men friends invite him? Couldn’t a friend get him to join the married men’s Sodality or the Holy Name Society or some other Catholic fraternal organization that receives Holy Communion frequently? Couldn’t you get one of his friends to invite him to make a retreat, in which Frequent Communion would certainly be discussed?

As for yourself, it might be that if you invited him to go with you to Communion he would go. Pick some important day, Mother’s Day for example, and ask him to go to Holy Communion for mother’s intention. Or pick out the anniversary of some family death and ask him to go for the repose of the beloved soul.

Or if you know that there are going to be Eucharistic devotions, like the Forty Hours, ask him to go along with you to these devotions. Plan to go to Confession, and suggest his going with you; then take it for granted that he will also go to Communion with you at Mass the next morning.

Sometimes these things are best handled without too much discussion. Just take it for granted that the occasion calls for Holy Communion and that you would love to have him with you, and he may come of his own accord.

💮💮A Catholic friend of mine is going to marry a divorced man.

What attitude do you think I should take?💮💮

I think that in all honesty you ought to tell her what a mistake she is making and what a serious sin she is committing. Don’t you think you could do this, not sternly, but in as friendly a fashion as possible?

Tell her that in most dioceses, St. Louis for instance, not only would she be excommunicated by her action but her bridesmaid and groomsman would be excommunicated too. Many Catholics pretend that they don’t know this. Perhaps they don’t know it, but they should. They might then take the whole performance less casually and a little more seriously.

Of course if she persists in going through the civil ceremony with the man, you cannot attend such a wedding. Tell her that in advance. And remind her that despite the civil character of the ceremony she is not married in the eyes of Christ or the Church and receives none of the rights and duties of a married person.

She must realize that after the civil wedding your social relationships with her will necessarily be curtailed. It is possible however that you will be her only remaining link with the Church. So I think you would be wise to keep up some sort of contact with her after her marriage. You can see her occasionally, for example at lunch, when her husband is not present; you can even invite her sometimes to go with you to church or to some parish affair. She may thus retain some slight connection between herself and the Church.

But you should let her know that if at any time she does want to talk with a priest, you will be happy to help her towards the beginnings of a return to her faith.

💮💮When does gambling become a sin?💮💮

Gambling becomes a sin when a person risks money which is not his own, money which he should rightfully use for other purposes-such as the care of his family; when through the excitement of gambling he neglects his duties-for example by failing to work properly at his own profession; and when gambling brings about a nervousness that unfits him for normal life.

There is in all of us a strange gambling instinct which makes us like first of all to take chances and then to lay our hands on a little money that came to us with apparently no effort on our part. The gambler is always convinced that easy money lies within the next turn of the card or the next click of the roulette marble.

For that matter we are gambling more or less all the time. Every new business venture is a gamble. If a man writes a book, he gambles on whether or not it will be a success. If we make a new acquaintance, we gamble to some extent on whether or not the friend will prove faithful and trustworthy.

Some of the evangelical religions have pronounced all forms of gambling sinful. I remember a minister who wrote to me, denouncing Catholics because they did not list gambling as one of the greatest of sins. I retorted by asking him where in the Bible gambling was explicitly forbidden. Since he was an evangelical, he believed that the Bible contained all articles of faith and morals. Where in the Bible was gambling forbidden? I never received an answer from him.

But though a certain amount of pleasant risking of money – money that we do not need for other purposes – in friendly companionship over a card game in the living room is surely harmless, still gambling is associated with real perils.

A gambler makes a terrible husband. A youngster who acquires the habit of gambling may later on become a thief or a wastrel. The sad leading man of Show Boat is merely typical of the professional gambler, who usually succeeds in wrecking too, too many lives.

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