Jeanne Ewing
153 posts
I doubt if this will have any effect on the entrenched, but I’m going to do my best.
Whenever I hire someone who has never worked in or for the Catholic Church, I have to give them this dreadful speech.
I always have to tell them to prepare themselves for awful people.
In their work in the church, they will encounter some of the cruelest, angriest, most judgmental and manipulative people they will ever encounter.
I tell them that it’s oddly a good thing: most people who go to Church do so because some deep part of them knows they are broken. I invite them to pray for the people screaming at them over the phone, gossiping, complaining. I invite them to give Jesus the pain and let it be a fuel to never inflict that on others.
I know everyone loves to have their favorite cause as to why people don’t go to church as much, but unlike most I actually talk to people.
Whether it’s in the confessional at weddings or in supermarkets, I spend a lot of time around people who don’t go to church and for most of them it’s pretty simple: the people they know that go to Church do not appear any better to them.
They look at us and don’t wanna be like us, not because of our virtue, but because of our arrogance, our unwillingness to meet people where they are.
Being a public minister means you’re going to receive inordinate amounts of praise and inordinate amounts of criticism. The sharpest knives and the best aimed arrows always seem to come from those people who should have your back, but don’t. They’re too busy evaluating if you’re doing it right.
Like many people who are trying to evangelize, I am doing my best. There’s a fear always at work in me that I’m not doing it right, that despite my best efforts, I’m leading people to hell by accident, all kinds of things that bounce around in my head. My comfort is always the God can see my heart: he can see how deeply I love him and want to help people know him.
My challenge is that he’s the only one who can see those things. Everyone else looks at me and see their own issues through me.
Today, I am so grateful to Jesus for those who accept me as I am, who fight hard for personal holiness, who don’t spend a lot of time evaluating those who are evangelizing and who lovingly correct me when I need it.
I’m also grateful for those who choose to fight the good fight in public, knowing that the deepest pain will not come from sinners, but the righteous.
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Thanks to @carleolson and @cworldreport for publishing my essay relating my travel experiences last year at this time, reflecting on dead popes, new popes and the place of pope, generally, in Catholic life in 2026....
catholicworldreport.com/2026/05/14/my-…
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“Whoever receives the one I send receives me and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me”
-Jesus
So many here claim to speak in Jesus name or on His behalf and the Christian struggles: are they right? Am I to receive this one? Are they speaking the truth?
The easiest way to gauge whether someone is actually speaking words from Christ can be found in the fruits of the spirit.
God tells us through Saint Paul that when someone is actually working or speaking in Jesus name, we will see and experience those fruits:
“love, joy, peace, forbearance (patience), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control”
If the one claiming to speak on behalf of Christ or in defense of Christ doesn’t manifest these fruits of the spirit within you, they are not of Christ. You do not have to receive them.
It’s truly that simple.
#talkedtotheboss
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Just got word I am getting laid off July 17th. This doesn’t come as a surprise, and stems from the company I work(ed) for getting acquired this past January. Would appreciate your prayers as I continue to search for a new role to support my family.
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@Joeinblack I like truck updates better than cat updates, but I do like that you can put your mind to truck repair-!! that’s good for you, of course I have no idea about truck repair but I wish you well, & your dad, & your truck & those🤬cats!
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“Woe betide me if I should prove myself a half hearted soldier in the service of my thorn crowned Captain.”
- St. Fidelis of Sigmaringen
#talkedtotheboss
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@CardinalDolan @thegnewsroom Cardinal, do you remember giving spiritual bouquets as gifts?
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A Blessed Easter, everybody! It's a tiny Catholic tradition, but I love it. Having lamb for Easter reminds us that Jesus is the lamb of God. @thegnewsroom
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@Joeinblack Patient endurance- heard that at mass this am, oh how I need this!
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Please pray for me. Mental illness is no joke and even after 5 years it can flip everything upside down in a second.
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I just ordered 10 rose gold Teslas.
I will be giving all of these away to followers tonight at 8pm PST!
Like and comment to be entered into the raffle!
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Three Emperors, One Creed (part f) | March 19, 2025 x.com/i/broadcasts/1…
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5 Keys to cultivating discernment online aleteia.org/2025/02/19/5-k…
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@McCormickProf Thank you Professor I hope this message gets out there.
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The Trump ivf initiative sounds so innocent--indeed so compassionate and even life-affirming. More babies! Babies for couples experiencing the heartbreak of infertility! But if ever there were a time to recall that old adage about the paving materials of the road to hell, this is it. Please, everyone, look closely, and think deeply about this. Will it further entrench the commodification of children? Will it--further--fuel the eugenics mentality, which has returned with a vengeance? Will it mean the industrial creation of human beings and their mass destruction in the embryonic stages of human development? Will it deflect us from infertility treatments and the development of further treatments that do not create profound moral hazards? And there's more. Let's not rush. Let's think. There are profound questions here ... and a plethora of likely unintended consequences.
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@BasedMikeLee @ChristianCath1 Thank you Mike Lee, npr is a disgrace!
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@SteveSkojec I don’t believe this is real, I think it’s a feeler for trump’s aides, they seem to be checking popular opinion. But I am just an old lady, who can’t believe some of the things going on!!
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Let me put this another way: I have this rising feeling in me that the sudden urgency by the incoming admin to do rapid land acquisitions that weren't even discussed in the campaign means they know something pressing we don't.
Does that seem reasonable? I'm concerned.
Steve Skojec@SteveSkojec
Maybe I've just been too busy and missed it, but why, exactly, do we suddenly want Greenland?
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As a former protestant, I share quotes from the ancient Church Fathers and what I’ve discovered in my research over the last 7.5 years—particularly for our protestant friends—for three reasons:
#1—WAKE UP
To alert you to the fact that YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD COUNTLESS LIES about the Catholic Faith and Church, and the consequences for your eternal salvation are significant.
#2—ROOTED
To show you Catholic doctrine is deeply biblical and historic, befitting Christ’s promise to be with and guide His Church into all truth until His return.
#3—DIG DEEPER
To encourage you to explore the ancient Catholic Faith that is maintained in Catholic teaching to this day, from the Church and the Fathers directly, not just those who unceasingly hate and misrepresent Her.
I began this endeavor in the spring of 2017. I was not looking for the Catholic Faith.
But when I opened the first volume of the Church Fathers—which included the writings of men who were discipled by the Apostles themselves—the reality of it smacked me in the face.
I had no Catholic presuppositions. I had never read a Catholic case for their religion. I despised the papacy, and much in the Catholic Church. I had nothing Catholic to “read into” these Fathers.
It was simply obvious that their faith was radically different from mine, and it was fundamentally Catholic.
They said this over and over again: there is one true faith, the Catholic Faith; and one true Church, the Catholic Church; both of which will be maintained by Christ until the end of time.
The Church, they said, will not be destroyed. It will not eventually divide into irreconcilable “branches.” It will remain one and united until Christ’s return, carrying forward the same Faith, whose beauty and depth the Church would understand more and more with each succeeding age.
They also frequently described how many who called themselves “Christians” would divide from the Church, and concoct new heresies and schisms in opposition to it.
Someone who labeled themselves a “Christian,” they said, could only be one of three things: a Catholic, a heretic, or a schismatic.
Their descriptions continued to match the reality today.
When they described how heretics worked—denying Church authority, endless doctrinal pluralism, naming themselves by their founder’s name or region, etc.—it shook me to my core. I thought, as a protestant, this was normative Christianity.
It was not.
I had known deep down this was the case simply from reading Scripture, where rampant disunity in faith, worship, and Church government finds zero warrant. But the Fathers sealed the deal for me. They warned me—and I am so thankful for the warning!—that my soul was in danger if I continued to believe contrary to, worship apart from, and live without submitting to the Catholic Church, which had AUTHORITY, from God, to teach me the Faith.
When I realized this authority was real and I would have to become Catholic—despite continuing to have some doctrinal difficulties with Church teaching—I was utterly depressed for weeks. Several people I was close with, including a dear mentor, cut ties with me when they learned I was even considering it. My life would have to radically change in many ways. My worldview was shattered. Virtually all my social connections were protestant. Every earthly interest held me back from converting. If I converted, the entire course of my life would have to change.
To acknowledge that so much of what I had believed with such great conviction for so long was WRONG was a massive and humbling blow.
At first it was painful.
Then it was liberating.
Nearly 8 years in, and having the Fathers as my near daily companions in studying the Scriptures, I can say with even greater conviction, that the Catholic Faith is true; that the Catholic Church is Christ’s Church; and that I hope as many souls as possible will obey the Gospel of Jesus Christ She has preached for now 2,000 years, and come into this one Ark of Salvation.
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