Salty Catholic

10/02/2025

We.
Do.
Not.
Worship.
Mary.
Period.

07/31/2025

What a powerful message. In a world where it is not uncommon for health struggles to be named as cause of divorce, this man chose differently.
He chose to identify LOVE as action and a choice, not feels.

"In sickness and in health" hits different when you actually mean it.

Chen Zhenfeng and his wife went through hell together - two miscarriages that broke their hearts and eventually broke their marriage. They divorced after years of fighting over everything and nothing.

But when he found out she was dying from kidney disease, something shifted. He went to see her in the hospital, and seeing her so sick and alone just destroyed him.

She'd been too sick to remarry, struggling with treatments she could barely afford. So he asked her something that probably surprised them both - would she marry him again?

She said no at first. Who wants to burden someone with medical bills and a body that's failing? But he kept asking because he meant those vows the first time, even if life got in the way.

They remarried, and he started working two jobs to pay for her dialysis. He told her he'd give her one of his kidneys if the doctors said it would help, even if it meant he'd have less time himself.

Her eyesight started going, but he became her eyes. Through every treatment, every bad day, every moment when giving up seemed easier.

That's the kind of love that actually matters.



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05/28/2025

05/21/2025

Where SHOULD we invest in the beauty and art? At our home or His?
🤔

On the left is a "simple oak chair built by immigrant laborers and devoid of the ornate trappings of power" made for Pope Francis to sit on when he celebrates Mass at Madison Square Garden, New York during the upcoming papal visit to the United States. Sounds like a wonderful gesture of solidarity for a "people's pope", no?

On the right is a splendid Gothic revival chair crafted for Pope John Paul II's visit to the United States in 1999 by an American master woodcarver.

My friend Jacob, a woodcarver who makes furniture for Catholic churches, was taught his craft by the gentleman who made the chair on the right. His former teacher had to give up his trade in St. Louis, Missouri and move to California because there wasn't enough demand in the Church for his work. He now carves ornate cabinets and furniture for the wealthy, mainly for private homes, never to be seen or enjoyed by the general public.

The fact that we deride beauty as vain or wasteful is one of many cancers in our church and society. By insisting upon plain, "humble" furnishings for our churches in the prosperous first world, on the contrary, we make a show of false humility, prideful in our shabbiness like a well-to-do family man who calls himself "middle class" for wearing board shorts to work and then frowns on a poorer man for wearing a suit.

As Lord Grantham on Downton Abbey said when his heir was thinking of firing his valet in the name of living a simpler life: "We all have our parts to play, Matthew, and we must all be allowed to play them."

(Sept. 23 2015: I've expanded my thoughts on this with a full essay on why we hate beauty and enshrine ugliness here: http://www.onepeterfive.com/more-than-just-a-chair-rejecting-our-aesthetic-patrimony/ )

05/02/2025

How are Catholics and Protestants different?😂🤫👀

04/16/2025

03/11/2025

The empathy here is powerful. Yes, his behavior and choices are devastating, damaging, and dangerous. And can destroy a marriages
However, seeing the foundational trauma and offering hope of healing… this is the way.
Trauma destroys.
Support heals.
Forgiveness changes the future.