Posts Tagged ‘prayer request’

Prayer and Probability

Posted: June 20, 2009 by datechguy in catholic, opinion/news, personal
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People often laugh at the idea of prayer imagine a grown adult asking an invisible power to adjust something for them. Prayer is also attacked as an assault on free will. For example the reporter who attacked pro-life people for praying that president Obama have a change of heart.

I have a theory on prayer, this is not to my knowledge based in specific theology, so someone who knows the church better than me can tell me if I’m committing heresy but consider the following:

How many things in life are actually certain? Very few. Spock’s example of letting go of a hammer and not having to see it to know has fallen not withstanding everything is subject to a certain amount of probability.

The medical field is a great example, you are always dealing with a level of probability on recovery from operations, risks from behaviors and so on. An excellent example is that we all know people who have avoided cancer and non smokers who have gotten it. This is a function of probability. Haven’t we all had close calls of one type or another? Or bad luck that has come hitting that one stone that was loose to trip and break a leg etc?

In my opinion this is where prayer comes in, I believe prayer can alter the probabilities on situation and actions. Since the actions are indeterminate (we don’t know for sure how they will go) it seems simply a function of luck. I believe that the power of prayer is basically channeling the intrinsic link between God and man and the community of saints to nudge probability. The stronger the link of the individual to God or the number of people involved prayer the better the chance of the odds moving.

That doesn’t effect the idea that God is a part of it, for example because a wind comes to help a becalmed ship and the wind is a natural phenomena that doesn’t mean that God allowed it to come.

This is in contarast to direct action by God that would be classified as a miracle. In that case you can have either objectively impossible action (Joshua and the sun) or an action so improbable that it seems to be no odds take place. (Curing of the blind man). Those are solid miracles.

Anyways that’s my theory. What do you think?

Update: Corrected awful spelling and grammar in post as it was rushed due to the party today.

It’s Lou Brock for Ernie Bogglio all over again Cuite for Steel

Posted: June 9, 2009 by datechguy in baseball, catholic, opinion/news
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Well as you might recall we lost Fr. Cutie a few weeks ago and I wrote this:

Over and over when I read about Anglican priests becoming Catholic we hear about the study of doctrine and the conclusion that the Church is true and right. On the other side we hear the I wants. The church doesn’t allow something that the person whats or objects to a sin that the person does, so they find a different church.

One group looks for truth and goes toward it, the other has sin and wants justification to allow it.

Well here is a case in point:

Though my time in Rome had quite a bit of emotion as I prayed, what I actually came to see was the end of the wrestling with these questions in my mind and heart. It was now time to act on what my conscience was saying to me for some time. It was time to surrender myself and submit to Mother Church knowing in faith that God would open doors. Here I saw the connection of what communio meant and how the union with Mother Church was now bringing me closer to Jesus where I am no longer to be in a party that is merely catholic-minded but am coming into communion with the Church of Jesus Christ which is in union with Saint Peter. This is my salvation. What I mean is that though I have continually been drawn closer to Jesus through worship, sacraments, and the cure of souls, this decision to move is a conversion to Christ that I have not yet experienced. I am now beginning to see how closely this final decision has drawn me to Jesus where what began ten years ago as a love discovered within the ceremonial beauty of worship has been God’s instrumental means of uniting me to the Catholic Church.

Finally, this leads me to my vocation to the priesthood and the cura animarum. I realise that I do not come to the Church making demands. I come offering my life to Jesus and to the Church as I seek his will for my life. For the time being, I am simply giving up being the teacher and am now becoming the student of Mother Church. What she does with me is in the best interest of her and God’s kingdom. As I said, the family is preparing to move to London in the near future to begin a new life of ministry and service. There will be more details forthcoming as things become confirmed to me.

Compare this to the Cutie story:

This charismatic priest famously took his secret girlfriend, a divorced mother, to a public Florida beach and frolicked with her on the sand. This was a month ago, the scene was illicitly photographed and the images published on the pages of a Mexican tabloid. Before you could say “vows”, Fr Cutie, 40, was forced to give up his Miami Beach parish.

Barely had the Catholic community of south Florida recovered, when a surprise press conference was called on Thursday by Bishop Leo Frade of the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Miami. Fr Cutie was switching sides, leaving the Catholic faith to join the Episcopal Church, which is part of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Episcopalians, of course, don’t mind their priests canoodling, marrying even. Saying he had gone through a “spiritual and deep ideological struggle,” Fr Cutie said he was “continuing the call to spread God’s love” and paid tribute to the spiritual home he was fleeing. “I will always love the Catholic Church and all its members who are committed in their faith and have enriched my life in so many ways,” he said.

I’ll take this trade any day of the week. You have to go back to the 64 Cubs for a trade that lopsided.

All via the Curt Jester who rejoices.

Breast cancer at 10.

Posted: April 30, 2009 by datechguy in oddities
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I’ve been getting more and more cynical over the years but this story really is a sad one:

“They told me it was not breast cancer, because breast cancer does not happen to children,” said Carrie Auslam, Hannah’s mother.

In mid-April, test results came back with a shocking diagnosis – Hannah has Stage IIA Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, an adult form of breast cancer. The rest of the tumor, which had grown around blood vessels in Hannah’s breast, would have to be removed.

Her uncle’s blog chronicling her fight is here. You can donate to give the family a hand here.

Update: Welcome if you are coming from the our little sweetpea blog. Feel free to take a look around. May I suggest that if you are looking for two charities that are also worth your time check out Marriage Encounter which help people strengthen their marriages:

The First Mate has a great suggestion: try taking a walk through a local cemetery. Read the inscriptions on the markers or headstones. You won’t find any that say: “Drove a really cool car.” “She visited the French Riviera.” “His suits were all tailor-made.” “Got broadband Internet connections before everyone else on his block.” You’re going to see what people will really remember you for: “Beloved husband.” “Devoted wife.” “Loving father and mother.”

It’s all about building families, and that starts with the marriage.

My second suggested charity is called Soldiers Angels. It helps and supports troops deployed overseas in a number of different ways. You can send care packages, adopt a solder or through their project Valor IT help pay for a voice operated laptop for a disabled soldier.

I can believe it aparently you can’t…

Posted: April 10, 2009 by datechguy in catholic
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…at least if you work for CNN. If you do apparently that basic Christian belief that prayer makes a difference and can change hearts and minds is not something that you can handle:

ROESGEN: A spokesman for the university says there no plans to un-invite the president, but protesters say they will say one million rosaries until graduation day — praying that the president will become pro-life.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROESGEN: Can you believe that, Wolf, they’re actually praying that God will change the heart and mind of President Obama to make him pro-life?

Oddly enough after confession today I was chatting with my confessor and we talked about how we are laughed at by society today. He was very distressed and adamant about it as he was born in Vietnam and had to deal with a dictatorship. He commented that compared to US society it was easier to keep the faith there.

Ms. Roesgen should rejoice in the freedom that America gives to her to publicly ridicule Catholics’ on national television and be well paid for it. She has the rest of her life to continue to do so…

…after that she is on her own, but before that point I think a prayer or two for her is in order. They apparently are very much needed.

By an odd coincidence here is an excerpt from the Pope’s sermon yesterday:

‘Jesus is humiliated in new ways even today – when things that are most holy and profound in the faith are being trivialised, the sense of the sacred is allowed to erode,’ he said.

‘Everything in public life risks being desacralised – persons, places, pledges, prayers, practices, words, sacred writings, religious formulae, symbols, ceremonies. Our life together is being increasingly secularised.

‘Religious life grows diffident. Thus we see the most momentous matters placed among trifles, and trivialities glorified.

‘Values and norms that held societies together and drew people to higher ideals are laughed at and thrown overboard. Jesus continues to be ridiculed.’

The Pope, who turns 82 later this month, prayed that Christians would respond to the problem by growing in faith.

‘May we never question or mock serious things in life like a cynic,’ he said.

Good advice.

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