Veritas Young Adults

the calendar

February 2015

the blog

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Modern Pharisees

Jesus did not come for everybody. What a scandalous statement to make. If I were important, I would hear an unbiased news reporter somewhere saying “Noe the half-mexican from California has just made one of the most intolerant,...
Saint Stories: St. George and the Dragon

Patron of no less than three countries, St. George is no doubt amongst Christendom's most beloved saints. He is the model of duty, humility, and service. Less well known than his fight with the dragon, is the heroic story of his...
Be at Peace - On the Synod, Homosexuality, and the Dignity of Man

Christ our Lord says to us "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you" "Do not allow your hearts to be troubled and do not be afraid." (John 14:27).I was asked by a friend today what my thoughts were on the document...
Other

To be a Christian is to be fundamentally other. The problem with our culture is that it tends to suck out any difference that we have and make us all into SAMEBOTS. We all are tempted by this force to like and act the same way as everyone...
Why The Giver Isn't Pleasantville: a Catholic Movie Review

In what might be the most Catholic movie to hit theaters since The Dark Knight Rises, The Giver is a movie worth seeing. If you can get past some mediocre acting (Bridges exempt) and a few campy flashback scenes, including one misplaced...
The Contemplative Struggle

So much noise. So much noise that we choose to enchant us away from the day to day grind. “Oh, I should pray the rosary. Naw….. I’d rather look at my tiny colorful tyrant for a few hours instead.” Prayer is always...
The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force

“From the days of John the Baptist until now the Kingdom of Heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” (Matthew 11:12) From the Gospel of Matthew comes one of my favorite scriptural passages. In this...
Practical Atheism

Practical Atheism: A way of life in which a belief in a higher power is held, but the holder of this belief acts according his or her own dictates, emotions, and sensibilities without consideration of that higher power. I don’t...
Defining Terms: Liberal and Conservative, Heterodox and Orthodox

Defining Terms: Liberal and Conservative, Heterodox and Orthodox In many conversations about church life and teaching, people often carry over terms from civil political discourse: Conservative and Liberal, Progressive and Traditional...
I'm Catholic, but...

I’m Catholic, but… If you have heard that before, you understand on a whole new level what Jesus meant when he said, “Weep not for me, weep for your children.” The Church has gone through trials such as the...
Mercy, Smallpox & Maximos the Confessor

"He that loves Me, saith the Lord, will keep My commandments; and 'this is My commandment, that you love one another.' He therefore who does not love his neighbor does not keep the commandment. Nor is he that does not keep the...
Put On The Lord Jesus Christ

I don’t want to serve Our Lord. I don’t! With my actions, I constantly show how much I don’t want to. I love myself more than Jesus. There, now that I am being honest, be honest with yourself. Are you confident that at...
Begin Lent with Forgiveness

"Do not let the sun go down upon your anger" says Saint Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians (Eph 4:26). But how often do we go about our day as though nothing were amiss after having been gossiping about someone we know. Or...
Why Do They Care So Much?

As I was standing in front of an abortion clinic the close of the Fall 40 Days for life campaign, a group of bicyclists rode by and one of them said something that got my attention. He turned to his bicyclist companion and said, “Why...
Advent: A Practice in Charity

Charity is often viewed as interchangeable with the word, Almsgiving. However, the latter term is narrower, referring to the giving some of material thing or need. Charity on the other hand is tied to the Greek word, Agape. C.S. Lewis...
Mary the New Eve

A Blessed Feast of the Conception of the All-Holy Mother of God to all of you! Before I was Catholic, the person of Mary seemed so strange. Who is this woman whom Catholics adore so much. Why do they speak of consecrating their hearts...
Saint Nicholas - A Model for our Lives

A Happy St. Nicholas Day! It's really sort of funny to see how a 4th century Greek bishop became the ruddy nosed gift giver of European Christmas folklore. Yet the real life of Saint Nicholas is still shrouded in mystery to most....
Advent: A Return to Abstinence and Fasting

Do not be conformed to this World “The interior penance of the Christian can be expressed in many and various ways. Scripture and the Fathers insist above all on three forms, fasting, prayer, and charity, which express conversion...
Preparation: The Spirit of Advent!

Friends, Rejoice! For we stand before Advent once again! What does this mean for us though? Why is Advent such a big deal? “Advent” says Pope Benedict: “Is the liturgical season that we have just begun and that...
Forming a Prayer Rule

The Necessity of Having a Prayer Rule Like all relationships, the one which we share with Christ has both a public and personal dimension. One cannot truly exist without the other. By listening, by conversing, and by living, we deepen...
Pope Francis Reaffirms Church's Mission

If you read the accounts of Pope Francis’ interview in the secular press, you would think that Pope Francis is chastising people who speak out against abortion, the redefinition of marriage and contraception. I can’t even blame...
Guard your Heart

Why should we guard our Heart? “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) The prophet Jeremiah laments the human condition, that our heart along with all of our...
4 Ways to Be a Better Intercessor

"There is nothing more worthwhile than to pray to God and to converse with him, for prayer unites us with God as his companions,” says Saint John Chrysostom. Prayer is the center of the Christian life. In fact, without it, we...
The Laity and the New Evangelization

I believe the decline in numbers of priestly ordinations over the last fifty years is due in part to blurring the distinction between the ordained priesthood and the priesthood of all believers. To put it another way, we Catholics have...
What Makes Popes Great

Today the Church celebrates the feast of St. Gregory the Great, the last pope to be officially remembered as Magnus. 1,409 years after Pope Gregory's death, we are on the cusp of Blessed John Paul II's canonization and the organic...
The devil's greatest trick

I don't have the exact quote handy, but the eponymous Uncle Screwtape from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters told his nephew Wormwood that demons find it great sport to have human beings knee deep in one sin while putting them on guard...
The New Monicas

All of modernity’s problems share a common symptom: a reversal of order. Wives ruling husbands, the flesh dominating the spirit, the consensus of the public overruling the truth itself, man seeking to be “as God” (Gen. 3:...
Give Yourself Away

Self-love rears its ugly head in many forms. When we are surprised at our supreme ability to fall, self-love is the cause. When we think our sins are unforgivable because of the number or gravity, you can be assured that self-love is...
With God in Russia

My parish had a guest celebrant today: Fr. Michael Shields, missionary to Siberia. Today's Gospel reading was the account of Jesus being served by Mary and Martha. Traditional exegesis holds that Martha represents the active apostolic life...
Taking Back Charism

What does it mean to be a "charismatic Catholic"? Chances are, this phrase conjures images of Pentecostal-like hysteria and over-blown emotionalism. As a young man, I attended a certain "charismatic Catholic conference...
Really Holy

The pious old, Rosary-rattling woman who never misses daily Mass, the busy priest who never has two seconds to himself, the cloistered nun who spends her entire day everyday in prayer. When we think about holiness, these are often the...
Lessons Atheists Can Teach Us About the New Evangelization

If I had a nickel for every Catholic who has told me, "I fell away from the Church right after high school," I could buy myself a fancy steak dinner. Some of them, thanks be to God, come back. Many of them have not yet returned to Holy...
Why do we go to Mass?

Two of the precepts of the Church are that we must receive Holy Communion at least once a year, and we must attend Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation. If you regularly attend one parish, you quickly notice that hardly anyone goes...
Jesus is Amazing. No, Seriously...

The reason why I didn’t care much for religion growing up was because I thought it was boring and stupid. Boring because of the lack of enthusiasm on the part of anyone who tried to teach me the faith and stupid because my questions...
Just A Good Teacher?

Jesus was not just a good teacher. He claimed to be God. If I went on the street corner and told everyone, “Before Charles Darwin was, I AM,” then you better believe I would be ignored, or if I persisted enough… locked...
Lost and Found: My Not So Uncommon Testimony

I was born and raised Catholic. I was baptized as a baby, did my first communion, reconciliation and in 8th grade I was confirmed. I went to mass EVERY Sunday with my family. EVEN on Vacation! I used to have check off parts in my head....
The Fideist's Anathema

It's been said that St. Thomas Aquinas as knew the objections to the faith better than the objectors themselves did. Thomas regretted the medieval Church's tendency to burn heretical books, because he believed that by refuting the...
Wise as a Serpent, Not Heartless as a Cynic

How are we supposed to relate with our fellow companeros? Do we assume the worst in them so as to protect ourselves from physical or moral danger? Or do we excuse their actions so as to protect ourselves from pride thus enabling us to...
Until They Have Faces...

Once again our country has been thrown into the “gay marriage” debate, and the stakes have seemingly never been higher now that the Supreme Court is involved. The reasons for the Catholic Church’s opposition to state-...
The Crucified Warrior

Any talk of spiritual warfare is considered by our culture to be at best naiveté, and at worse products of ignorance. It is difficult for our highly technical, rational culture to come to grasp with the reality of the supernatural world....
3 Ways to Make Your Parish Religious Ed Program Better... Now.

Let's be honest, the problem with Catholic culture in America is fundamentally a problem of education. Since the Baltimore Catechism went out of style in the 1960's, American Catholics had been without a comprehensive and...
Mad Men and a Patristic Consolation

Recently the Supreme Court was debating a ruling on the legality of Gay Marriage in the United States; we saw the CEO of Starbucks declare that anyone who upholds traditional marriage should take their business elsewhere. Have we come...
Dying to Heal

The older I get, the more places I go, the more books I read, and the more people I meet, the more aware I become of humanity’s inherent, inescapable, and almost incomprehensible, brokenness. The wounds first caused by Original Sin,...
Four Gifts of the Resurrected Body

The perfect body seems to allude us all. It's something that everybody wants but few of us have. Most of us, try as we do, find ourselves stuck with the same dying, odly shaped, drooping flesh. The situation seems...
Judas and the Secret of St. John

Tradition is the conveyance of the real; literally, the “handing on” of truth. At the heart of Holy Thursday, the young Church is entrusted with precisely this. A man who has identified Himself as the Truth itself has...
5 Things You Might Not Know About Pope Francis (besides the lung)

Besides being the first uni-lunged Pontiff, here are 5 things you might not know about the newest Bishop of Rome: #1: Why Francis? Most main stream media reports indicate that Pope Francis chose his name in honor of St. Francis of...
Prone To Wander

Everyone who has not yet reached sainthood knows the feeling of the fall. Sin is not all that its cracked up to be. Everyday God offers us this choice: My will or His. His will appears more difficult, but it is always the sure way to peace...
How to Read Your Bible

In this short essay, I intend to discuss the meaning and interrelation of the senses of Scripture. Once we have analyzed the nature of and distinction between these different senses, we will then explore how this meaning and interrelation...
Live Action and Fraternal Charity

“When I Want to do What is Good, Evil Lies Close at Hand” (Romans 7:20) No one, no Christian at least, denies that Live Action’s undercover “stings” have occasioned some great goods. Of course the problem...
Breaking Trad: Overcoming my Liturgical Double Life

If you asked me a year ago if I would ever willingly attend a Novus Ordo Mass again, the answer would have been a definitive and resounding NO. I mean, if I absolutely had to, if there was a funeral, or a wedding, or all the priests who...
Peter and the Wolves: On the Papacy and Modernity

Why have a Pope? This is a question that perplexes the modern world. This is why the press is obsessing over the whys of Benedict XVI’s recent announcement. I have never seen anything like the spectacle of our chattering classes...
The Undatables: A Crisis of Love

Ask any single Catholic in their 20′s or 30′s why they are still single and you’re bound to hear a whole host of reasons. But lately there has been a common thread to all their replies; Catholics (of the opposite sex) are...
The Dark Night Rises: Sacred Art

I am happy to announce that sacred art is back in style and if, in 200 years or so, Western civilization has been saved, we can add Christopher Nolan to the list of people to thank. Why? Because thanks to his art, the Gospel is again being...

As response to the call for a New Evangelization, Veritas is an organization of Catholic young adults working in association with existing regional young adult ministries to provide and promote a weekly program of young adult Catechesis, Prayer, and Fellowship. We are open to any adults, married or single, under the age of 39.

We are rooted in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, committed to the Sacred Liturgy and orthodox Catechesis of Sacred Doctrine, and aimed at the fullness of Christian Charity and a revitalization of the culture.

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