I'm a Catholic and I'm Frustrated with Pope Francis

As you probably already know due to the social media and news explosion, Pope Francis was in America this past week. As a Catholic myself, I anticipated the event with much curiosity. I know some people who were waiting with baited breath for the pope to announce some of the Church's teachings to be invalid. I am so sick of people who call themselves Catholic thinking that the pope will do this!

Nobody, absolutely nobody, can declare "oh, well, {insert issue here} is actually okay to do. We've been wrong for 2,000 years and Jesus was wrong, so yeah." Nope. Not a thing. The Catholic Church is never going to be okay with abortion, birth control, same-sex marriage, etc. (I feel like I should note that the Church still loves and accepts people who practice these things...love the sinner--we're all sinners--hate the sin, and all that.)

And why is that? Because Jesus founded the Catholic Church and Jesus designed the human race for perfection. Sin takes away from perfection and distances us from Him. The things that the Catholic Church (and Jesus) doesn't allow us to do is for our own good.

SO I don't have an issue with Pope Francis and I don't doubt His spirituality nor loyalty to the Church or to Jesus.

THAT BEING SAID.

I had MAJOR issues with the pope's speeches at the White House and to Congress. Everything he said was so...easy. One of my friends commented that he was basically throwing cotton balls. Nearly every single person in America would agree with the majority of the things he said...

But it wasn't necessarily what he said that upset me. It was what he didn't say.  He did say that human life is to be valued, but that was it. He did say that marriage is under attack, but that was it.

What he didn't say was that abortion in this country needs to stop. What he failed to mention were the thousands upon thousands of babies that are being murdered in their mothers' wombs in the United States. What never escaped his lips was a cry to defend the unborn. He had the opportunity to explicitly defend them, and he didn't.

What he didn't say was that marriage is between a man and a woman and cannot be redefined.

I have a huge amount of respect for Pope Francis and the papal office. But I was disappointed, disheartened, and perhaps a little angry at the missed opportunity.

I know that he did a lot of good while in the United States, and brought up these themes while he spoke to the bishops and other Catholics. I'm not discounting that.

But what frustrates me is that he could have boldly proclaimed the truth with love to the president, the congress, and the nation and that he merely glossed over important facts without taking a solid stand. The bishops already know that the Catholic Church is against abortion and that homosexual unions are wrong. It's awesome that the pope brought this up to them! But how much more needed were these truths to be told to the rest of the nation?

I have stood up for the Church imperfectly, but I have still striven to make known her truths with love to those who do not understand. I, and countless others, have been discriminated against and hated for believing what the Church teaches. I felt so let down that the pope did not make a declaration of support of the unborn and traditional marriage to the United States government, when both are in jeopardy.

But, you know what? I am at peace. Even though I was definitely disgruntled...the Catholic Church is more than one man. The people that make up the Church are only humans and we sin. We do not always lead perfectly, and we do not always love perfectly.

I do not hang the truthfulness of the Church on the pope, nor do I hang it on any nun, priest, bishop, or lay person. But I follow the Church's teachings because they were administered by Jesus Christ, and that's who I am striving to follow.

I know a lot of people have left the Catholic Church because they have been let down by those entrusted to lead her. I know many who have been disappointed by the leaders of the Church. I'm sure that I have some ex-Catholics who read my blog. And, in the name of the Church, I am so, so, so sorry. I am sorry for the ways that the people of the Church have hurt you have mislead you, have failed you in any way. I hope and pray that you will find it in your heart to forgive whoever wronged you, and the Church as a whole.

And please remember...the Church is not defined by the failings of its members, or it would have died long ago. The Church is defined by our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Since we're on the topic...does anyone have any questions about anything the Catholic Church teaches? So many people believe things about the Church that aren't true, and I'd love to dispel some of the rumors for you.

(ALSO...if you're a teen doing NaNo and would be interested in joining an email-based NaNo support group, please email me: 11anniem@gmail.com! Don't know about NaNo? Visit ywp.nanowrimo.org or nanowrimo.org.)

Have a great week, everyone! May the peace of Jesus reign in your hearts.

MHMMM CAN I GET AN AMEN?!

I'm a Catholic Christian. Hence the blog description.

I love my Catholic faith. I love Jesus Christ and I want to love Him more. Truly, above everything else, I want to serve Him in all I do. I want to lead people to His infinite, everlasting love and to the knowledge that, because of His love, each and every person is priceless and beautiful.

That is literally all I want. To be used to lead the world to Him.

I am bumbly, I am awkward. I am hurting and I hurt people. I am a sinner. I mess up. I don't always have the words and I rarely have the answers. I've felt alone, I've wondered why certain things happen. How can someone as messed up as me be used by God? I feel this often when I am writing. How can anything I--a sinner--lead anyone to Him? The answer is simple.

There is nothing I can do to lead anyone to Jesus. It's what He does through me, what He alone can accomplish by sending down His Holy Spirit upon me. By the grace of God, I can be love to others.

God created me in His image and likeness. He gave me gifts and talents.  I read somewhere (probably Pinterest) that our talents are God's gift to us and what we do with them is our gift to Him. Personally, I just want to give Him everything. Most especially, I long for Him to completely take over my writing and use it for His purpose.

This is hard for me, though. I struggle to communicate His message in my stories when I don't even write Christian fiction. And I don't want to write sappy fiction that involves a whole lot of cheesy church and praying. What I do want is to convey God's unconditional love to my readers. I want to write like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and even J.K. Rowling to some extent.

I just realized that all those authors go by their initials. Maybe I should publish under A.M.J.  Schlueter. Sounds legit.

ANYWAY.

What I mean by that is that all those writers all have themes of Christianity woven so deeply and intricately into their story. You may have to think a little to make the connections, but they are pretty plain. Those writers convey messages of Christianity without even using the word "God".

That's what I want to do.

I want to be able to fearlessly proclaim the name of God. But some of my target audience may be turned off by the use of His holy name, so I have to be sneaky...and my battle plan is this.

All that I want to do, that I need to do, is present the truth about good and evil. I don't need to make truth look appealing, I just need to show it as it is. The truth is beautiful and it is what we were made for.

All that is true is of God.

I just need to present the truth, which we all long for. The Holy Spirit can take care of the rest.

I would like to leave you with this thought, from the amazing J.R.R. Tolkien:

"We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God." 

So true. MHMMM CAN I GET AN AMEN?!?

Are there themes that you struggle to convey in your writing? How do you weave your passions into what you write?

Life: Lessons and Ramblings

Life.

What comes to mind when you hear this word? Or in this instance, read it?  What does the word "life" mean to you?

Right now, I'd say life as meaning a crazy-wonderful-unexpected-heartbreaking-courage-building-making-me-fearless adventure. 

I'm a stubborn person. In one of my earliest posts, I wrote about a lesson one of the characters I wrote about taught me. A lesson I refused to learn for a time. I'm that way with a lot of things in life, I guess. For example, I constantly think that I know what will happen next. I think that I know what is going on. I think I am in control. 

Well, guess what I constantly have to remind myself? 

Number One: life is unexpected and one usually doesn't know what will happen next. Example? Many of you (if not all of you) know that I am moving to Toledo, Ohio. Well, our house closing was on Friday, April 5th and we didn't have a house to move into. (That's a long story in itself-- we thought we had a house, but it fell through upon the inspection.) So, we are now living with my wonderful grandparents about two hours away from Toledo, where my dad is working.

Number Two: more is usually going on with life than meets the eye. Many of you also may know that I've had a really rough year school-wise. This has been the first year since second grade that I have attended a "brick-and-mortar" school (I was homeschooled for third grade through eighth grade). So, that was a pretty big change in itself; I was learning in a whole new way, dealing with homework, teachers, and kids my age on a daily basis. 

Needless to say, it was hard. It was difficult. It was heartbreaking and left me feeling so worn. At times, I felt  lonely and it took all my strength to get out of bed each morning and plaster a smile on my face. It was so hard to just keep going through the motions, pretending that I was ok with everything, when I totally wasn't. And then add the whole "surprise-we-might-be-moving-to-Toledo!" drama.

But God was at work through all that. On my last day of school before we moved, many people shared stories of how I touched their lives. The story that touched me the most was an email that one girl sent me. She told me how much my openness about my faith encouraged her to be open about her faith. She told me that I encouraged her to have a stronger faith in Jesus.

Of course, I believe it wasn't just me who encouraged her. I believe God used me to encourage her. But this story really struck me because I probably spoke to this girl five times, at most. And our conversations were never at great length, but consisted of a "hey" in the hallways. This stuck me so much though because so many times this year, I have cried out to God in desperation. I have begged Him to show me the purpose of what I was going through. So, although I thought that I was pointlessly at school, "suffering," I was not at all. People were touching me, I was touching them, and God was strengthening my own faith and trust in Him.

Number Three: I am not in control. God is, and His plans are so much greater than mine. God so knows what He is doing. My mom told me once this year that God never allows us to go through anything that we can't handle. I truly believe this. I believe that everything we go through, we go through for a reason. Whether it is a bad year at school, a broken friendship, a death, or a rejection by a publisher, there is a reason. We are growing stronger and learning so much about ourselves.

So what is the sum of my ramblings? I know this isn't really a religious-y blog, if you will, but I really want to share this with you, dear readers. I don't write these things to make you feel bad for me or to pat myself on the back. I simply hope that perhaps my "ramblings" will touch you, with whatever you are going through in life.

Remember: life is unexpected and one usually doesn't know what will happen next, more is usually going on with life than meets the eye, we are not in control. May God bless you, my wonderful blog readers. You all mean more to me than you will ever know. Thank you for giving me the chance to express myself to you=)

Between Shades of Gray

Book: Between Shades of Gray
Author: Ruta Sepetys
Rating: PG14 for mature subject content and some sexual content

Summery via Goodreads:
Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously--and at great risk--documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.

Review:
This book left me with an array of different feelings. Feelings of awe, of shock, of sadness followed me for days. I was so moved by many factors of this book. As a big fan of World War II historical fiction, I really enjoyed reading this untold side of the war. Both the Soviets and the treatment of Catholics during WWII are rather untouched subjects in the historical fiction world. This book contained both topics and I really enjoyed that.

Between Shades of Gray contained so many different themes that completely changed the way I look at some things. One of favorite themes is this-- is it better to be the one leaving or the one left behind?

The question is proposed by my least favorite character, but it is nonetheless a good question to think about. Because we are in the process of moving, this thought has entered my mind more than once. Is it better to be the one leaving? The one going to a new school, a new town, knowing no one? Is it really better to be the one who leaves everyone s/he knows behind? Or is it better to be the one left behind? The one who continues to live his/her usually life, only with a piece taken out of it? Is it better to be the one who has gone to heaven and left loved ones behind? Or the one who is still making his or her way through life on earth?

I'm not quite sure what I think about that. I feel like it's probably worse to be the one left behind, as hard as it is to be the one moving on. I think we've all had the feeling of being left behind, whether we were left behind by a friend who was not loyal, a loved one who has passed on, or a friend who has had to move. But on the other hand, sometimes I feel terrified of living in a new place without everyone who has been so dear to me my whole life.

So, though I haven't been through nearly as many horrors as Lina has, I understand a bit of what she was going through. Ah, sometimes I feel like I can relate more to characters than actual people!

I'd love to hear your thoughts=)