about

My name is Ben Anderson and I run this site. I am a Roman Catholic living in the rather progressive Diocese of Rochester, NY. I believe that the Catholic Church exclusively contains the fullness of Christian Truth. I believe that living in this fullness of Truth is the road to happiness and I wish to share that with the world. Please contact me if you'd like more info about this claim.

The initial reason for this blog was to be a defender of official church teaching in a diocese that seems to be more inclined to make up their own religion (see more in my introductory post entitled "Dear Heterodox".) I've also been working to make this into a website that serves as a general evangelization tool. I am working to provide resources for Evangelicals, Atheists, Secularists, Lukewarm Catholics, fallen away Catholics, and any other human beings. If you have any suggestions or wish to help in this regard, please contact me via email - benanderson@benanderson.us

My Faith

I was raised in a conservative Presbyterian household. My parents taught my brothers and I the Christian faith and I am ever grateful for that. We learned the Bible and Reformed theology. When choosing a college, I followed the footsteps of many others in my family (my father, 2 older brothers, and 2 uncles) to Grove City College. Grove City College is a small but nationally renowned conservative Christian school in Pennsylvania between Erie and Pittsburgh. During this time I began questioning and eventually rejecting my faith. I kind of thought I'd always come back to it, but as many a young man can attest to, God just wasn't a priority for me. The redeeming aspect of that part of my life is that I met my beautiful wife, Mary - a devout Roman Catholic. I was surprised to find out that GCC was about 30% Catholic. It seemed odd to me that a Catholic would want to attend such a staunchly protestant school. Now that I have a better understanding of American Catholicism, I understand the reasons for doing such. Although there is much that divides the Catholic world and the Evangelical world, this divide is much less than that which divides orthodox Catholicism from progressive Catholicism (which has overtaken the majority of Catholic colleges and universities).

After we were married, I began coming back to my Christian faith. I started church shopping in an area completely new to me (Rochester, NY). I found that the protestant churches I attended were either Christian in name only or rather anti-Catholic. While I didn't yet espouse a Catholic world view, I certainly saw my wife (and many other Catholics I had gotten to know) as good Christian people. This made me begin to question what my Church taught. That's when I realized "my Church" wasn't such a clear cut thing. The church (PCA) I was raised in followed the Westminster Confession of Faith. I guess I figured most other protestant churches followed the same confession, but I came to realize that this obviously is not the case. In fact the church I finally settled on didn't have much in terms of formal beliefs (http://www.browncroft.org/Portals/0/content/about/Browncroft_Views.pdf).

That's when I really started to examine what church I wanted to belong to. The most important thing to me was to find the one that contained the most truth. That's when I first took an honest look at the Catholic Church. Many of the issues I had with protestant churches simply didn't exist in the Catholic church. Of course, there were a boat-load of other issues I had with the Catholic church, but I figured it was worth a look. I read books, watched and listened to EWTN, and scoured the Internet. After many months I was convinced that Jesus Christ established a Church and that he gave the keys of His kingdom to Peter and the succession of popes. See the Why be Catholic page some quick resources backing up this claim. So on Easter of '07 I was confirmed and received into the Catholic Church. Shortly after that the honeymoon ended. Before I gripe, let me say that there are also many positive things I've experienced in the Church. One of these is the very faithful parishioners and leaders I've met. We had a great Bible study going with our then pastoral assistant (now administrator) leading it. This man is a strong Catholic Christian and a superb role model whose service to the Church is quite commendable. I also was blessed to be involved with the RCIA program and we had a stellar group of catechumens and candidates. It is for such reasons that it broke my heart to come the realization that our parish had become the victim of heretical teachings.

My Beef with the Diocese of Rochester

I'm a recent convert (Easter '07) to Catholicism. I converted because of the Catholicism I discovered in books, Catholic radio, Internet resources, EWTN, the CCC, and various other sources. During my entry into the Church I was oblivious to the tensions w/in. Within a year of joining the Church, I discovered how far out Diocese of Rochester is. Being a newbie, I bit my tongue for a while and worked at inner peace. Eventually I came to believe the issue here wasn't a question of temperance. I raised an issue a few months ago detailed here:
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=291006

If you don't want to go through that whole thread, I'll sum it up:

• Priest endorsed ordaining women in homily
• This wasn't the first time or isolated issue. He frequently expressed disgust with the Catholic Church, suggested that traditional Catholic morality is outdated and no longer necessary, and often thumbed his nose at the pope.
• I wrote a letter to the priest quoting Ordinatio Sacerdotalis
• Priest responded saying we can basically ignore what JP2 said
• I wrote letter to the bishop
• Bishop responded saying go talk it out with the priest
• I talked to priest and he basically said that we don't have to listen to church authority

So if we don't have to listen to the Pope when he states something unequivocally, what do we have to listen to? This priest's homilies were often littered with loose positions on Christian morality and attacks against the Church. I had always presumed he believed at least the essentials of Church teaching. As it turned out, he told me he believed what the Holy Spirit led him to believe, not necessarily what the Church teaches. This was very troubling to me because now I was back at square one with no official teachings. So what's the big deal about this? It's a big deal because we basically have a local Church full of imposters. Our diocese is sending out a message that is contrary to official Catholic teaching. At least have the guts to leave the Catholic Church if you don't like it. It's not gonna change no matter how hard you try. But please stop calling yourself Catholic and promoting agendas that are at odds with authentic Catholicism.

I was obviously disappointed with the priest, but even more so with the bishop who didn't seem to care that his priests were grossly misrepresenting the Catholic faith to his flock. After this experience I feel like my eyes were opened. The rabbit hole goes much deeper in this diocese. The numerous issues in our diocese are being documented in more and more detail daily through this tool of the Internet.

Obviously I was very perplexed and not sure where to go from there. That's when I ran across some orthodox Catholic blogs here in Rochester. They let me in on a tip that at least 2 parishes in our diocese (St. Stanislaus and Our Lady of Victory) actually follow Rome and not the DOR heterodoxy. I've been attending OLV since and am much better for it. It's so good to know I'm not alone in my frustration with the DOR. I wonder how many other people are out there.

So my basic beef with the DOR is stop lying because that's what you do when you call yourselves Catholic and teach something other than Catholic teaching.

Update: The priest in question who went against Church teaching is now retired and no longer the pastor at this parish. This parish now has a lay pastoral administrator. I have a great deal of respect for this man and if there ever were a case where a layman should be the pastor - he's the one you'd want. However, I felt like this parish has become the poster child for endorsing lay leadership, so I have not returned. I detailed the specifics in this post.