MAKING SENSE

Sacred Scripture
Doubts about Sacred Scripture. We find them everywhere.
1) Faith is not based on doubt. Therefore, doubts are really an attack on the acts of faith if they are left open.
2) However, no one is showing how the texts should have been written in order to justify the basis "in" reality of the doubts.
3) What is going on?
4) Reality as reality does not depend on the "reality" of writings.
5) You can doubt the perfection of writings forever, but you cannot doubt reality as reality just because you doubt the way a writing is presented.
6) The reality of writing is one thing. The reality of what is written about is something else.
7) Therefore, put a doubt on the doubt and see if the doubt disappears. If it does, the doubt was only in your mind. If it does not it is probably in the way you look at reality. Take another "look" at it. Realities have a way of affirming themselves because they exist "in" their own time. You can depend on reality. The "new" look will strengthen your act of faith. Particularly about the reality of Christ as God Incarnate. He is the real center.

For a distressed soul
Our soul is in this world through a body provided to us by God. And this soul comes ready to act on the things of this world through what we call personhood, ready to be configured into a particular personality. We create the character of our own personality by the way we act with respect to the real things of this world. The model for that configuration has to be freely chosen, it is Christ, the God Incarnate.
We are always "in" God whether we recognize it or not, and at the same time God is always "in" our human reality. If we live in His presence we will be able to handle anything the world can throw at us, and at the same time elaborate our personality so that His personal presence becomes even more manifest to ourselves every day as we recognize we are living "in" Him, in His presence.
I tell you this because you must not let the things of this world unsettle you to the point of obscuring that divine spark that is always shining in your soul. That awareness is what we call "prayer" and is achieved in many ways, sometimes through words, and proper images, but others through our actions towards things in conformity with the way Christ took them. That conformity as conformity is itself a "presence" of Christ "in" us, through the images those personal actions leave in our full memory and become subject of our examination of conscience. Life becomes a prayer and prayer a life.
This is the one thing necessary.
Do not be unsettled.

Some say “Jesus always included the sexual outcasts”
Let us point out the essence of this problem.
Christ called those with sexual disobedience to full repentance before being accepted as His "followers". All sinners (disobedient to the moral divine order of things) are welcome to "listen" to Him. Those who repent and change their ways of thinking and living are accepted. Without repentance and change there is no acceptance yet. Inclusion as "listeners" is not inclusion as His "followers".
This is playing with the definition of the term "inclusion". Sophistry.
"Listeners" were never admitted to the sacraments, and to the action of Christ in the Eucharist. Christianity is not just listening to public lectures in a hall or private house, with or without music.

The Martyrs for the Faith in Spain, 1936
(Two translated brief excerpts from the article "El olvido de los mártires" (The Forgotten Martyrs) by José Francisco Serrano Oceja, Libertad Digital, Madrid, July 19, 2006)

“It is not easy to write on the Catholic Church and the Civil War without the quote, for example, of Andrés Nin* in the newspaper La Vanguardia (The Vanguard) of August 2nd, 1936: “The working class has simply resolved the problem of the Church; it has left not even one church standing”. José Díaz, Secretary General of the Communist Party said in Valencia on March 5, 1937: ‘...in the provinces we control the Church no longer exists. Spain has greatly surpassed the accomplishments of the Soviets, because the Church in Spain today has been completely annihilated’.”
(.....)
“Archbishop Antonio Montero wrote that ‘in the whole history of the Catholic Church there is not even one precedent, not even in the Roman persecutions, for the bloody sacrifice in slightly over six months, of twelve bishops, four thousand priests and over two thousand members of the religious orders’. Is this picture not enough to prevent confusion or be confused by history?”
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*Tr. note: Andrés Nin (1892-1937) joined the PSOE (Spanish Workers Socialist Party) and became an extreme communist agitator and follower of Trotsky for a while. Later he co-founded the POUM (Worker’s Party for Marxist Unification) in 1935 opposing Stalin who ordered his murder in 1937.

Judas
Many look at Judas but ignore Christ. They keep cursing Judas. That does not make them followers of Christ. Then why keep cursing Judas? To appear “good” without having to look at Christ?

Only Scripture
Some individuals believe the Bible is the fundament of Christianity. This does not make sense to me. Why? The Bible does not contain such a statement. Talking about a book is not religion. Talking about Catholicism is not Catholicism. Talking about science is not science. Talking about talking is just “talking”. Mere sounds. You have to “attach” those “sounds” to something solid. Like reality.

Authority
The eleven Apostles elected one from the disciples to substitute for Judas. This is acting with the authority of Christ as God Incarnate. All authority in Catholicism comes from Christ for sanctification through the Apostles, under the Chair of Peter and the Power of the Keys. All the rest are helpers, including the laity.

Roman catacombs
The first saints were the Apostles, the disciples and the martyrs. The first congregations in Rome met in the catacombs, legal sacred burial places for the Romans. The clergy began to celebrate the Eucharist over the sarcophagi of the saints. These were the first altars. Space was created around them and suitable decorations and inscriptions added. No adoration of pagan gods here. When the Church became legal in 313 AD these celebrations became the model for the new churches and Basilicas above ground. Saints were not invented by politicians using clever propaganda.