I took a group of teens from my church to 6-Flags this week. We saw a sign advertising “Super Funnel cake Sunday,” which begs the question: “Are funnel cakes considered unleavened bread?”

Since part of our job is to teach people about our faith, it is imperative that we constantly study the Church’s teachings. You can’t be a good teacher unless you’re a good student.

Father Oscar Lukefahr runs a free Catholic Home Study Service (he does of course accept donations). He’s written several excellent books about our faith, and he offers them to anyone at no cost. These are high-quality books, so I’m impressed that he can afford to keep this amazing ministry available. Each book also comes with a test booklet, and you can submit your answers online where it will tell you how you did on the test and keep track of your scores. When you finish a book, they send you a nice certificate. We used one of his books, “We Believe: A Survey of the Catholic Faith” for an adult study group a couple of years ago.

I’m working my way through Acts and I like following maps because it helps me visualize what’s going on.

A Map of Paul’s First Journey

An Outline of Paul’s First Journey

Here is a spread sheet of trivia questions that I use with my board game. These questions are designed for 7th and 8th graders.

Catholic Bible Trivia Questions

One question teenagers ask me regularly is: “Why do Catholics believe we have to go to Purgatory even if our sins are forgiven?”

Here is the simple answer I give them:

(I begin with a question.)

“When your sins are forgiven, are you, at that moment, perfect?”

(Take a dramatic pause and let the teenager think about the question.)

“Before you answer, let me read a verse from the Bible.

(I have two reasons for cutting the teenager off before they answer the question: 1. If I’m having this discussion in a group, I don’t want anyone to feel embarrassed for giving the wrong answer—yes, there is a wrong answer. 2. I’ve found that when some people give the wrong answer they will argue their point-of-view endlessly and won’t listen to the simple logic behind the Catholic Church’s theology of Purgatory.)

“Matthew 5:48 says: ‘So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.’”

(Sometimes I add another short dramatic pause here.)

“When your sins are forgive, are you, at that moment, perfect? . . . no, we really aren’t. What keep us from being imperfect? Well, one example is, after we’re forgiven we still have an ‘inclination to sin’ (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1426). We still have selfish desires: greed, lust, arrogance. If we were perfect . . . when we are perfect in heaven, we won’t have those sinful desires anymore.”

“So, after we’re forgiven, we still aren’t perfect.”

“Now what does that have to do with Purgatory? The second thing you need to understand comes from Revelation 21:27 which says: ‘nothing unclean will enter it.’ ‘It’ is heaven. Nothing unclean will enter heaven.”

“The Church takes this Bible verse very seriously. In heaven, there won’t be any more selfishness, greed, or jerks.”

(Here’s the Catechism’s quote, but I usually don’t read it because this point is pretty much universally accepted: “She [the heavenly city of Jerusalem] will not be wounded any longer by sin, stains, self-love, that destroy or wound the earthly community” CCC 1045.)

“That’s not because jerks don’t go to heaven. God forgives jerks to. . .if he didn’t, I’d be in big trouble. But before he lets them into heaven, he will strip away their jerkyness.”

“We can’t make ourselves perfect, only God can do that. You die, you face your particular judgment, and you’re forgiven for the last time. Before you enter into God’s full presence, he has to purify you; he rips all of you selfish desires out of you so that you will never sin again. That experience of God purifying you is purgatory.

(One last dramatic pause.)

“All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven” (CCC 1030).

(There are several other characteristics of Purgatory that cause questions, but you can’t have those discussions until people understand the basic necessity and logic of Purgatory.)

Here is a board game I drew to go along with the trivia questions I made.

Here’s a couple pictures of the star projector I made that looks like a death star.

The Story: Sometime in December, we were snowed in, Gina and the new baby were taking a nap, Isaac and I were bored, so I decided to set up our tent in our living room. That was a ridiculous amount of fun all by itself, but when I was done I started thinking of ways to make indoor camping more fun . . . fire? Maybe not. Stars . . . doable. That night I poked some holes through a sheet of black construction paper and that was good enough, but I couldn’t quit there, so I build the awesome star projector. It took me two months (because I have a family and a full-time job) but it works great so it was totally worth it. Now I can find 5 constellations, and I know why Sirius Black (from Harry Potter) turned into a big dog.

Check out this fun freeware: www.stellarium.org/

It will show you an image of the sky (day or night) where you are at. You can turn on or off lines and pictures that help you find the constellations, and you can zoom in on anything, such as the surface Pluto’s moon.

I stopped by Radio Shack this morning and picked up the last parts I need to finish my star projector. I painted it a couple of days ago and it looks kind of like the Death Star . . . so that’s pretty sweet. I’ll post pics and a write-up of the project when I get it all done. I’m super excited. I put my maglight in the projector to get an idea of what the final star-projections outcome would be, and it looked pretty sweet. Isaac liked it too. He kept running around the room trying to touch all the stars he could reach.

If you have any interest at all in looking at stars, check out this freeware at www.stellarium.org

It has about a million fun features such as, it allows you to change your view to match your location on the earth, you can zoom in on various objects like the surface of the moon of Pluto, etc. It’s a lot of fun.

If you happen to be reading my blog right now, stop and go look at the moon. Well, actually, go look at Mars, which is right next to the moon.

Here are a couple cool astronomy sites I like:
www.skypub.com
www.space.com

It’s kind of like burn-out, only with a blog. But I found some new motivation, so away we go.

I haven’t looked forward to a Christmas as much as I am right now since that year I knew I was getting the RC Hovercraft (6th grade - I pealed back the tape and took a peak, which, by the way, totally ruined that Christmas).

Isaac will be bombarded with Bob the tomato.
Lillian will probably sleep most of the day (in Grandma Jeane’s arms this time :)) (no that wasn’t a smiley face with a double chin, it was a smiley face and I still had to close the parentheses so it just looked like a double chin).

Isaac knows about a million words now. My favorite are please and thank you. Yep that’s right, we’ve already got him using them . . . but not always at the right time. Today I was cutting his toe-nails and he randomly said “Thank you, Daddy” . . . eh . . .you take what you can get. And I know that what he was really saying was “I love you Daddy.” (I’ll pause for your “awwwwws” . . . done? Good.)

The only news I have about Lillian is that today we had to wash her car seat, twice. Poop. Thank you Pampers, I’ll stick with White Cloud When I started buying diapers for Isaac I had a hard time remembering which generic brand to buy, White Cloud or Parents Choice-we had decided we liked White Cloud a bit more, although I can’t remember why-anyway I eventually found a trick, every time I buy diapers I think about baby Jesus floating on a white cloud, and that does it for me: I thought this an appropriate side-note since it’s Christmas