Lay Evangelist
Till Christ Be Formed in Every Heart
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FOR PROPHETS AND APOSTLES

Pro-Life Work and the New Evangelization
The New Evangelization of the nations and the renewal of pro-life work go hand-in-hand, for at their core is what we must call the primacy of the individual human person. The person is everything. Win over just one person to Christ and you have won the world. Too often today, probably as the recycled leftovers of a tired and disgraced Marxism, we all tend to focus on what I call the primacy of Bigness, where aggregation and collectivism looses sight of the individual person for the sake of the group. As far as I can tell, this is the milieu previous pro-life work operated in and this is what cost us the so-called culture war.

Here is the still point of my website's thesis: I believe we already lost the culture war. But not all is lost! There are moral and spiritual principles that we need right now that can bring about both the New Evangelization of the world, and the revitalization of pro-life work right here at home. This website will layout Catholic pro-life moral principles and consistently apply them to four main life issues: abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty and warfare.
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Spirituality, TheologyMichael GormleyNew Evangelization, pro-life
Systematic Catechesis and Evangelization

Fulton Sheen addressing the Knights of Columbus in 1975Jesus asks us to become great evangelists and disciple-makers, not just amazing keynote presenters. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen once said that proclaiming the Christian life consisted of "First come then go." Only those who first come and sit at the feet of the Master again and again can be properly formed to "go, go" out into the world and not only preach the gospel, but to "go and make disciples".

When speaking about disciple-making, we need to cover the topic of systematic catechesis.

Systematic does not mean boring, mechanistic, or rote memorization. In fact, systematic catechesis demands creativity from every catechist as well as coherence. 

So let's dive into the teaching of popes John Paul II and Paul VI on evangelization and catechesis is order to respond faithfully and take seriously the call to "go and make disciples" through being systematic in our catechesis.

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Catechesis, Church LifeMichael GormleyNew Evangelization, systematic catechesis
Abortion, Aggression and Libertarianism

Libertarians would seem like natural allies of the preborn. The fundamental principle from which libertarianism is deduced is non-aggression axiom. This axiom is simple: it is never right to commit aggression (violence) against another person, except in the case of self-defense. Common sense would seem to dictate, then, that abortion, the most grievous kind of aggression, would be opposed, but that is not the case for the majority of libertarians.

The Libertarian Party platform itself is pro-choice, saying the government has no place intervening between the woman and her womb's occupant. It's a private matter, they say, and a woman has the right to her own body, ignoring the claims of the preborn person to life, liberty and his/her own bodily integrity.

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Morality, PoliticalMichael GormleyAbortion, libertarianism, pro-life
passing thoughts: reculturing parishes

I recently had lunch with a friend of mine, Ennie Hickman of the Hickman Family and Adore Ministries here in Houston. Besides playing catch up in each other's lives, we spent a lot of the time asking questions and thinking crazy thoughts about what would make ministry- especially youth and young adult ministry- better, more effective, more lasting. This was primarily a conversation about dreaming and, to steal the cliche, "thinking outside of the box."

The "box" in this case was parish-based ministries.

Why the Box may not be enough. As the priest crisis continues in the U.S. we are seeing nervous bishops doing some extreme things to keep their churches in order, sometimes making very unpopular decisions, like closing and consolidating churches. With fewer priests to go around, the Church is tasking deacons to take over more priestly functions. Rising also in this environment is lay ministry, people from the pews getting theology degrees and pastoral training in order fill in the gaps. There are an explosion of national organizations that are there to assist weary pastors in their work of evangelization and catechesis.

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Church LifeMichael Gormleyparish staff, reculturing