The Best of What We Believe... Why We Believe It: What We Believe, #2

By Joe Sixpack

Joe Sixpack is Endorsed By a Cardinal, Bishops, and Priests!

Joe Sixpack—The Every Catholic Guy is quickly becoming the "light of the laity" throughout the United States. Armed with divinely revealed truth, he is helping lay people navigate the tumultuous waters of a Church in turmoil. See what prelates and priests are saying!

The pontificate of Pope Saint John Paul II may be rightly described as a tireless call to recognize the Church's challenge to be faithful to her divinely-given mission in  a totally  secularized society and to respond to the challenge by means of a new evangelization. A new evangelization consists in teaching the faith through preaching, catechesis and all  forms  of  Catholic education, celebrating the faith in the Sacraments and in their extension by means of prayer and devotion, and living the faith by the practice of the virtues—all as if for the first time, that is, with the engagement and energy of the first disciples and of the first missionaries to our native place.

A new aid to assist the faithful in knowing and living the faith has been developed by "Joe Sixpack" with the weekly bulletin insert What We Believe ... Why We Believe It.  Each issue of the insert is  a  thumbnail lesson  in  the  Catholic  faith  that  is  attractive  to  parishioners,  easy  to understand, and faithful in every way to the  Magisterium.

Joe Sixpack is a well-trained and faithful consecrated Marian Catechist. As the International Director of the Marian Catechist Apostolate, I enthusiastically endorse Joe Sixpack's What We Believe ... Why We Believe It as an innovative means of helping parish priests promote the doctrinal and moral literacy of their parishioners.

Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

I encourage you in your mission and thank you for your labors for the Lord!

Archbishop Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia

Although the light of wisdom usually comes to the world "from the top down," sometimes it works the other way around.  What We Believe...Why We Believe It is a splendid example of grassroots evangelization.  Like spiritual wheat its message grows from the good soil of fearless common sense informed by grace. 

Abbot Philip Anderson, Clear Creek Monastery

I wholeheartedly recommend the new weekly parish bulletin insert "What We Believe...Why We Believe It"' written by my friend, Joe Sixpack…

"Joe Sixpack" is a veteran catechist with a God-given gift for explaining the truths of the Faith in terms that are clear, unambiguous, doctrinally correct and firmly rooted in Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition and Magisterial teaching. The name "Joe Sixpack" accentuates his remarkable ability to make the teaching of the Church easily understandable for the average guy and gal. His gift for story-telling and the use of concrete examples will help to provide his subscribers with both engaging and thought­ provoking  reading  each Sunday.

Pastors who wish to find new catechetical tools to help their parishioners develop a greater understanding and a deeper appreciation for the timeless truths of our Catholic faith will find "What We Believe and Why We Believe It" a valuable resource for instruction and a great little addition to their weekly bulletins.

Rev. William P. Casey, Fathers of Mercy and EWTN Personality

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cassock Media, LLC
• Release date: Nov 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386970415

Book preview

A Great Second Year!

It’s been a great second year! In fact, it’s been such a great year that I wanted to share with you this second volume of The Best of What We Believe... Why We Believe It. I’m as happy as a tornado in a trailer park to be able to tell you all that God is doing!

It’s entirely possible you’re reading this and don’t even know what I’m talking about. The full explanation of what What We Believe... Why We Believe It is all about is can be found by watching a video at wwb.gr8.com, or you can visit JoeSixpackAnswers.com. I’ll allow you to get the skinny (does that phrase date me?) on your own, but for now I’ll just say that What We Believe... Why We Believe It is the first phase of a three part system parish priests use to help their parishioners gain a better knowledge and understanding of their Catholic faith.

What I want to talk about in this introductory chapter of the second volume is how What We Believe... Why We Believe It has morphed from what I had envisioned into what God obviously wanted.

Before I actually tell you some of the things the Holy Spirit has used us to accomplish, let me first set the mood, so to speak, by giving you a few facts and figures that motivated Joe Sixpack—The Every Catholic Guy to do what he does… I do… uh, you get it.

Did you know…

One out of every 10 Americans is an ex-Catholic

If they were a separate denomination, they would be the third-largest denomination in the United States, after Catholics and Baptists

One out of three people who were raised Catholic no longer identify as Catholic

6.5 people leave Catholicism for every one that joins

50% of young people who were raised Catholic are no longer Catholic today

79% of former Catholics leave the Church before age 23

The Catholic Church is losing members faster than any denomination

10% of parishioners provide for 90% of parish support, but all of them reap the benefits

The vast majority of Catholics are so catechetically illiterate that they can’t even tell you how many sacraments there are, much less what they’re called

70% of Catholics don’t believe in the Real Presence

These statistics tell a sorrowful but very true story about the Catholic Church in the modern world. They tell us the Catholic laity don’t know a whole lot about the Catholic faith. I’m firmly convinced of two things (well, actually a lot more than two, but we’ll get there later): that Catholicism is the most exciting lived experience possible, and that it’s simply not possible for people to walk away from the Catholic faith if they know and understand the pearl of great price that is the Catholic Church.

I’ve been a lay evangelist since I first became a Catholic thirty years ago. I spent roughly the first twenty-five of those years working at converting non-Catholics into Catholics. Did I know about the statistics cited above? Sure I did, but I had a theory about that. As it turns out, my theory was wrong.

My theory was this: When you get some sort of sickness in your blood, what does the doctor do? He pumps new blood into your veins, of course! Well, that’s the attitude I had about the bad and dying blood in the Church. I figured that if the Church had a lot of new blood in its veins (converts) who were all excited about being Catholic, the old blood would be rejuvenated. Boy, was I wrong!

The Holy Spirit has used me to make hundreds of converts, but they didn’t rejuvenate the old blood. Quite the opposite happened. Catholics are so filled with apathy and lukewarm in the Occidental world that they actually infected the converts with the same malaise they suffer from. That’s obviously not the case with you, or you wouldn’t be reading this book, but it is the case by and large.

You’d think it wouldn’t take a guy so long to catch on, but I’m pretty thick headed… which came in handy in the army, because bullets bounced right off the old noggin! Anyway, in 20/20 hindsight, I have come to realize God let me wander through that Arabian desert of evangelization for a reason.

Evangelization is simple, but it’s not always easy. It’s simple because all you have to do is share the teachings of the Church with people. What makes it hard at times is, you’re pretty much out there by yourself. There aren’t a lot of Catholics who want to get out there to help. But the great thing for me is that God placed me in that position as a lay evangelist to force me to learn the faith and learn it well. I’m not bragging, but a lot of people consider me a walking Catholic encyclopedia. (They should meet my godfather!)

So I learned the faith very well. I eventually became a consecrated member of the Marian Catechist Apostolate. You may be too young to remember who he was, but the Marian Catechist Apostolate was founded by the late and great Servant of God Fr. John Anthony Hardon, SJ. Fr. Hardon was a close personal friend of Pope St. John Paul II, and perhaps the best theologian of the twentieth century. He was one of only five people in the world who could have a private audience with the pope without first having an appointment. He was also a friend of mine. (His association with JPII is probably as close as I’ll ever get to meeting a pope.)

When Fr. Hardon died in December of 2000, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke took over as the Marian Catechist Apostolate international director. His Eminence is also a friend of mine. In fact, during all those years of making converts, I had the privilege of becoming friends with a number of prominent Catholics—both clerical and lay. If you think I’m bragging here, I’m not; there’s a reason why I’m telling you this.

When it finally dawned on me that God wanted me to focus on Catholics instead of non-Catholics, gaining all the knowledge and friendships I had acquired came in very, very handy. But I didn't come to the realization that I was supposed to focus on Catholics right away. In order to get me to focus on that, God allowed me to have a debilitating stroke. Since a stroke of this magnitude pretty much took me out of the game for getting around to evangelize people, I had to be open to God’s will to find a new way to reach souls. Thus Joe Sixpack was born!

Initially, I just began writing the What We Believe... Why We Believe It bulletin inserts. But I quickly realized that people who read the inserts needed a way to be able to ask Joe Sixpack questions about what they were reading. So that’s the reason why I built the JoeSixpackAnswers.com website. This is a site where anyone can go to find answers about the Catholic faith. If they can't find what they're looking for on the site, all they have to do is contact me directly through the Ask Joe page.

As people began to ask questions on the website, I realized that I needed to do more for to feed their ravenous hunger. So I began hosting weekly webinars to teach various aspects of the faith. I teach everything from catechetics to apologetics to moral theology to ecclesiastical history and more.

I thought that was all God was going to require of me, but I was wrong. Oftentimes I am asked by site visitors a lot of things I didn't anticipate. Since we launched the website three years ago, God has allowed me to intervene in people’s lives in a pretty significant way. Over the last three years, I have had the privilege heading off two suicides, bring three people back to the Church, rescue one man from homosexuality, and several other significant issues.

Getting back to having been able to meet and become friends with many prominent Catholics, not only has my life been enriched by knowing them, but I have been able to refer certain people I have helped through our website to my friends to help these souls deal with certain issues for which my prominent Catholic friends are uniquely qualified to handle. I have no doubt that these Sixpackers, as I call them, have had their lives enriched as much as I have.

Just as in volume one, each chapter in this book is the actual content of the weekly What We Believe... Why We Believe It bulletin inserts. If you like this book and want to see the bulletin inserts in your parish every week, have your pastor visit the following URL: wwb.gr8.com. He can begin getting the What We Believe... Why We Believe It bulletin inserts every week, and the first three months are totally free.

Your parish doesn't have to be subscribed to the bulletin inserts for you to take advantage of this apostolate, though. You can always visit the JoeSixpackAnswers.com website anytime you wish. When you do visit the website, be sure to enter your name and best email address in the form on the right hand side of the page. When you do, you'll begin receiving a free email course that teaches you things you never knew about the Catholic Church. You will also begin to get special invitations to attend the free weekly webinars I host. Register for the webinars even if you can't attend the live event. The day after the event you'll receive a link that will allow you to listen to a recording of the webinar.

In the meantime, prepare to read this book like you were sitting down to a fine meal. Each chapter is sort of like getting a separate course to a meal. Every one of the chapters is a bite sized lesson in the faith that is easily digestible and quite tasty. Bon appétit!

1

A Real Man’s Conversion

One of my favorite books of the Bible is found in the Old Testament. Most versions call it Tobit, while others call it Tobias. I keep waiting for someone like Mel Gibson to come along and make a movie out of it, because this book has everything that makes a great movie—angels, demons, miracles, murder, betrayal, deception, and on and on. This book is where we learn about guardian angels. It’s a short book that takes most people about 45 minutes to read. Here’s the gist of the story…

Tobit, who with his son Tobias, was a man of great charity among the people of Israel, but he had become blind and couldn’t earn his living anymore. So he sent Tobias to collect on an old debt from a friend. Not knowing the road to where Tobias’ friend lived, Tobit looked for a guide to go with him. A young man named Azarias met Tobias and offered to go with him to show him the way to the town where his father’s friend lived.

Many dangerous and exciting events took place during the journey (which is the best part of the story you’ll have to read for yourself), and it seemed Azarias protected Tobias from every harm at every step along the way. When Tobias returned home to his parents, he also brought with him a wife—along with many camels, horses and sheep. When his mother saw him coming from afar, she sent word to her blind husband that Tobias was home.

Tobias was happy to see his parents and gave Tobit the money he was sent to retrieve while he told the story of his adventures. That’s when he explained how Azarias had helped and had told Tobias his father’s blindness could be cured. Azarias told Tobias to take the gall from a fish and put it on Tobit’s eyes. Immediately the older man’s sight was restored! Tobias was so grateful to Azarias for all his help on the trip and the cure for his father’s blindness, he tried to give the young man half of all he had. That’s when Azarias told Tobit and Tobias who he really was.

There’s something I’ve got to tell you, said Azarias. I’m not what you suppose me to be. I’m not a man who desires to be paid for his services. I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints and enter into the presence of the glory of the Holy One. Because you have always worshipped God, because you buried the dead, were kind to the poor, bore your troubles bravely, God has sent me to you. Bless the Lord of heaven who has shown you His mercy!

As it turns out, Raphael was acting as Tobias’ guardian angel. But what is an angel? Thanks in large part to Hollywood, many people think angels are the souls of those who were once our friends and loved ones, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Indeed, most of us really know very little about the angels and have only a child’s perception of them. You should read Fr. Robert Fox’s book The World and Work of the Holy Angels to learn more, but we’ll cover some of the basics here.

The angels are pure spirits who possess intelligent and free will. They have no body, but God has seen fit at various times throughout human history to allow them to assume a physical presence in order to deal directly with mankind, as is the case with Tobias and in Genesis 18 and 19 to name a few. The angels are more perfect than we are and more like God, because they are pure spirits. They’re superior to us in the order of creation because of this. Our is the natural world, but theirs is called the preternatural order.

God made all the angels good, but some became evil and rebelled against Him when God tested them (2 Peter 2:4). These rebellious angels are called devils, demons or evil spirits. God cast them into hell for their disobedience. Because they are God’s enemies, and because it is part of their nature to have the ability to bilocate (i.e., be in more than one place at a time—both hell and among us), the demons desire to harm us by tempting us to sin against God. We can always resist the demons, though—not of ourselves, but with God’s help (1 Peter 5:8-9).

The angels who didn’t rebel were rewarded by God with the same reward He will give us if we persevere in serving Him well. That is, He will reward us with the eternal happiness of heaven where we will live with the angels to see God as He truly is, and love and adore Him forever.

The good angels pray for us, protect us, and serve as our guardian angels. Of the nine choirs of angels (Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, Angels), the lowest is simply called Angels, and this choir serves as a sort of draft board for guardian angels. In other words, the angels in this choir are made up of all the other choirs and they are the ones who serve as our guardian angels. So your guardian angel may be a Seraphim while mine is a Principality. Each human is assigned a guardian angel at our conception, and your guardian angel is with you from then and forever…if you make it to heaven. You’ll never lose your guardian angel, unless you end up in eternal punishment in hell. There are more angels in heaven than there are humans ever created or ever to be created, which is why everyone gets his own guardian angel forever.

Your guardian angel protects you from spiritual and material dangers, guides your mind to know what is right, prays for you, and presents your prayers to God. Think back throughout your life. Everyone can think of at least one time when something happened and you should have been killed or gravely injured, but something unexplainable happened that kept you from harm. You can thank your guardian angel for that…and you should!

Learn to talk to your angel. You might feel silly at first, but how is it different from speaking to God or the Blessed Virgin Mary? You can speak to your guardian angel like you’d talk to your best friend, and you can even call him by name. No, he probably won’t reveal his name to you, but you can give him a name. The great Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, known as America's Bishop in the ‘50s & ’60s, called his guardian angel Skippy, and he spoke to Skippy all the time.

Spending time with your angel is important. It would be very embarrassing to get to heaven and meet up with this really big guy who says, Hey, do you know who I am? I know who you are. I’m your guardian angel. I’ve been with you from the moment you began life in your mother’s womb. I’ve loved you, protected you, sat with you through all the good and bad in your life, and you never once spoke to me. Now I’ll be your servant throughout all eternity, even though I’m a perfect stranger to you. Can we talk now?

The angels love silence. Begin spending time each day, preferably in the morning, to talk to your angel. Just five minutes in the beginning will be sufficient. Then sit and listen. Block all else from your mind and focus only on your angel. It will take a couple of weeks as you learn to drive the white noise from your mind, but if you’re persistent and try to focus on your guardian angel, he will begin to communicate with you. I’m not kidding. This is actually true. I’ve done it for years, and it’s been a tremendous help to me. It only works against me when I fail to listen to my guardian angel. Like I said, you should get a copy of The World and Work of the Holy Angels by the late Fr. Robert J. Fox, because this is What We Believe... Why We Believe It.

2

Working 24/7…and Obeying God

One day, two men stood outside the parish church after Holy Mass and carried on a conversation. One said to the other, Why, Bill, you’ve put on some weight! Don’t you work anymore?

I work about twenty-four hours a day, replied Bill with all seriousness.

Impossible! exclaimed his friend.

Not with a system, Bill began to explain. I work twelve hours down at the shop and around the house. Then I support our parish, the diocese, and mission work—that money works even while I’m sleeping.

Bill understands the precept of the Church that the faithful are obliged to assist with the material needs of the church, each according to his own ability. ¹ The parish can’t exist without the financial and prayerful support of its parishioners.

Although no one likes to compare a parish church to a business, it does indeed meet anyone’s criteria for a business. Every business has a deliverable—a product or a service. Your parish’s deliverables are Baptism, Confirmation, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Confession, Anointing of the Sick, Matrimony, spiritual consolation, spiritual growth, and aid to others in the form of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Every business also has overhead, and your parish’s overhead is at the very least the costs for grounds and building maintenance, heating, cooling, lighting, cleaning, office expenses, water, sewer, and all the little perks you enjoy from your parish. If there is a school…well, that usually costs more than the tuitions being charged. And if your parish is involved with special services to people in need, that is itself a tremendous cost in remaining true to Christ's command to go out into all the world.

Every business must make a profit. This is where people get a bad feeling in the pit of their stomachs when talking about the parish church as if it were a business, but the parish must take in more than it spends or it can’t survive—which is the principal reason bishops close parishes. Not only must a parish take in at least as much as it is required to spend, but it must take in more. Why? For the same reasons you have a savings account. What happens if the pipes freeze and break? What happens if the heating system goes out? What happens when office equipment breaks or wears out? If a parish is only taking in as much as it spends, how are these things paid for? They must be taken care of from the parish collections that exceed expenditures.

Apart from the cold business aspects of parish finances, there is also the spiritual aspect. The Church does have the fifth precept (a Church law) we are all required in conscience to obey: You shall help to provide for the needs of the Church. That law of the Church is more fully explained in the 1983 Code of Canon Law: The Christian faithful are obliged to assist with the needs of the Church so that the Church has what is necessary for divine worship, for apostolic works and works of charity and for the decent sustenance of ministers. This canon law and the fifth precept have as their basis some of the biblical writings of St. Paul.

Now concerning the contribution for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that contributions need not be made when I come. (1 Corinthians 16:1-2)

The point is this: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and provide in abundance for every good work. (2 Corinthians 9:6-8)

It is a pitiful commentary on modern Catholics that statistically only 10% of parishioners provide 90% of the parish income. Are we to believe 90% of parishioners are thoughtless and selfish? That would seem to be the implication. That Catholics don’t give as they should seems totally unreasonable to me. After all, you wouldn’t dream of expecting the products or services of any business without having to pay for it—or taking services from government without paying taxes, both of which are compelled contributions. Why would you expect the parish to be able to provide