JonMarc Grodi

Aug 09

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Baby on the way…

By JonMarc Grodi | Journal | 2 Comments

Dominic Jonathan Marcus Grodi Today is the final visit with the OBGYN before my wife Teresa is induced tomorrow morning. Wow! Dominic is going to be here soon.

Early in the pregnancy when the questions arose of “Do we want to find out the sex of the baby?”, I was initially very ambivalent, leaning toward not knowing, if anything. Somehow it just felt more “traditional” or “natural” (or something). I’m not exactly sure why.

My wife’s practicality won out however: she didn’t want to not be able to know and tell people the sex of the baby and end up with a bunch of green, orange and brown baby items. : ) This made sense to me (as much sense as such things can make to a guy) and I happily agreed.

Now here I am, a definite matter of hours before labor begins. As I look back, I am very glad that we found out the sex of the baby and named him: Dominic.

Teresa and I have played with him, sang to him, joked with him, and particularly toward the end, we even began to pick up on his reactions to touch and sound. Giving him a name – Dominic – made the new life – a real person – feel much more like the reality that it is.

I feel that it helped me to get to know my son spiritually and to bring him to God even in the womb. As a father, the times during the pregnancy I actually felt closest to my pre-born son were when I would pray for him and with him. It was a deeply profound spiritual experience to pray for Dominic while recalling some of the Old Testament scriptures such as Isaiah 49:

¹ Listen to me, you islands;
hear this, you distant nations:
Before I was born the LORD called me;
from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.

Wow!From the moment of conception, God knew Dominic and spoke his name. From the womb, God had already started him on his path. With this in mind, I prayed not just for safety and health but for the spiritual journey that Dominic had already started.

I make no assertion as to what is “proper” one way or another, but I personally am very glad we were able to get to know Dominic a little more, before he was ever born, by finding out his sex and giving him his name.

Keep Dominic and his mama in your thoughts and prayers as we prepare to meet him face-to-face.

JM

Aug 08

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Highlight: Brandon Vogt and his new book “The Church and New Media”

By JonMarc Grodi | Philosophy and Culture | One Comment

I had the singular privilege to meet and take lunch with an up-and-coming Catholic communicator and convert to the faith, Brandon Vogt. Brandon was visiting the offices of the Coming Home Network International to be interviewed by Marcus Grodi on EWTN’s “The Journey Home” program and CHNetwork’s “Deep In Scripture Radio”.

Kevin Lowry of GratefulConvert.com, my wife Teresa Grodi, and I took lunch with Brandon in between tapings. The four of us had a great conversation about evangelization, literature, conversion, and the new media, a topic for which Brandon is quickly becoming a go-to guy in the Catholic world.

Brandon gave me a copy of his book which I am excited to read and review as soon as I can. From the introduction and early chapters, it looks to be a great and inspiring read.

It may seem otherwise to some, but by my estimation the new media is a difficult thing for principled men and women to write and speak about effectively. I think it is difficult because of the strong temptation towards “glass-half-full” thinking and pessimism at the ways in which technologies are used. I myself have been known to bemoan the negative effects that the influx of rapid-fire communication has seemed to have on the culture itself – it is always easier to tear down than to build up.

From what I have read thus far and what I know from my delightful visit with Brandon, he brings wisdom, optimism, and resolve to the discussion on how the church is to engage the “digital continent”.

If any of you have read/are reading/are going to read, please let me know what you think!

JM

P.S. Here is Brandon Vogt’s info:

Brandon’s blog: www.thinveil.net

Brandon’s Conversion Story

Book Website: The Church and the New Media by Brandon Vogt

Aug 08

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More on Our Attitudes Toward Truth

By JonMarc Grodi | Philosophy and Culture | 2 Comments

I’ve talked and written before about the necessity of a proper attitude towards truth.

I often draw a connection between the attitude of some of the more notoriously un-Christ-like fundamentalist Christians and that of militant atheists. In these two groups who seem to be such polar opposites, I think we can rightly identify a similar attitude toward truth and thus toward each other.

For both, the truth is something they have discovered and planted their own flag in. Because of a fierce possessiveness toward Truth, as they see it, they are not able to recognize it in any other group. Because of an over-confidence in themselves, their understanding of truth becomes crystallized in their minds and they are unable to continue learning more or going beyond their own understanding.

For both, Truth becomes no more than an idol of their own making – one to which they insist others do homage.

This is not the attitude toward truth that we see in the lives of the Saints. Even these great men and women who have found themselves so close to Truth Himself, never became overconfident or prideful about the truth they experienced. Rather, their humility toward truth (and others) is one of their greatest virtues. Here is a great quote from St. Augustine that a Dominican Brother at my parish clued me in on:

Seeing Thy truth is neither mine nor his nor another’s; but belongs to us all whom Thou callest publicly to partake of it, warning us terribly, not to account it private to ourselves, lest we be deprived of it. For whosoever challenges that as proper to himself, which Though propoundest to all to enjoy, and would have that his own which belongs to all, is driven from what is in common to his own;that is, from truth, to a lie. For he that speaketh a lie, speaketh it of his own. (The Confessions of St. Augustine Book XII 34.)

The saints always recognized the truth as something bigger than themselves, given by God to all. Their idea of the truth never crystallized in their minds or was something they presumed to possess a monopoly on. Rather, truth was always understood to be infinitely greater and more mysterious than they could ever imagine. Far from possessing it or discovering it, they were the ones possessed and discovered.

One the values of making this distinction between attitudes toward truth, is that the saintly examples clue us in to the attitude not only beneficial for our own souls but for those we come in contact with.

When we rightly see truth as something bigger, better, and beyond our imaginings, we become like the disciples who have first met Jesus. We run back with joy in our eyes to invite others to come hear this man who speaks like no one we have ever heard before. We don’t hang back and grumble like the scribes and pharisees, convinced and possessive of our own truth and unwilling to grow. If truth is bigger than and outside of ourselves, suddenly we are no longer enemies or even opponents in the search for truth. Rather, we are all children of the truth and thus we can invite each other into greater fullness of truth without competition.

With humility toward truth and our neighbor, we are able to affirm truth and goodness when we see it in others and use this to call both of us on to a greater fullness of truth. Recall the passage in the Book of Acts where Paul encounters the Greeks, whose culture was definitely a mixed bag as truth is concerned:

22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, [1] 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; [2] (Acts 17:22-28)

Paul, a man definitely not lacking intensity and fervor, was humbly able to see the seeds of truth that already existed in the Greek culture. Rather than calling them to something opposite from their culture, he expounded on the seeds of truth and called the Greeks to pursue these to their fullness.

It is simply human nature to pursue truth, often in all the wrong places, but nevertheless. Far from attempting to extinguish or discourage the search for truth, we must affirm it in others we encounter and invite them to consider the claims of Christianity in light of this search. John Paul II writes:

“Men and women are on a journey of discovery which is humanly unstoppable – a search for the truth and a search for a person to whom they might entrust themselves. Christian faith comes to meet them, offering the concrete possibility of reaching the goal which they seek. (Encyclical: On the Relationship Between Faith and Reason, September 14, 1998 Pope John Paul II)

Every person is longing for Jesus Christ, for His Church, for His truth. We need to pick up on these longings and show people that in Christ they are not abandoning the glimpses of beauty, truth, and goodness they have already encountered. Whether they know it or not, people have experienced glimpses of the divine in culture, art, education, family, literature, movies, and other areas of life. We must show them that in Christianity they have the possibility of “reaching the goal which they seek”: Christ, the source of all Beauty, Truth, and Goodness.

We are not calling people to a foreign, alien land. We are inviting prodigal sons and daughters – like ourselves – to come home.

Let’s make sure they feel at home when they decide to visit, shall we?

Aug 05

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Review: MoneyWell – Virtual Envelope Budgeting Software

By JonMarc Grodi | Uncategorized | One Comment

Mac-users! I started an email of kudos to NoThirst Software and ended up writing much more than I expected. NoThirst is the developer of MoneyWell, a really great piece of financial software for Mac that I just recently discovered and now am really pumped about.

I have tried a lot of different pieces of financial software but MoneyWell is a little different. MoneyWell keeps track of two levels of information. First, your real life bank accounts and transactions and second, both the money you have planned to allocate to different areas as well as the money you have already allocated. Instead of the traditional envelopes, you allocate money to virtual “buckets”. As your “real life” transactions are automatically downloaded from your bank (or entered manually for cash accounts or banks without direct downloads), you assign them to your income or expense buckets.

It’s a little hard to describe in print, but I would encourage anyone (using a mac) who is looking to effectively budget – whether the goal is to pay off debt, save for the future, or whatever – to check out MoneyWell and watch a few of their videos: http://nothirst.com/moneywell/. It is a great piece of software that succeeds where other brands of personal finance software fail – ease of use, simplicity, practical functionality, and more.

Since I was writing to praise the developers about the elements I liked, I decided to share the email below in case the program might be of use to you.

I just wanted to email and thank you for MoneyWell!

My wife and I went through Dave Ramsey’s “Financial Peace University” last year which led us to change our financial plans and begin working to pay off debt and prepare ourselves for the future.

We have done rather well since then, BUT struggled with the budgeting. One of the reasons for this was that while we liked the envelope idea, it was hard to manage when we had multiple bank accounts, cash, irregular sources of income etc etc. Keeping everything straight was a bit of a mess.

I have tried a number of personal finance programs over the past few years. I have spent hours upon hours with programs like Quicken and iBank being continually frustrated by bugs in the system, a lack of adequate or understandable tutorials/documentation, but most fundamentally I found that these programs treat budgeting as an afterthought. They are focused almost exclusively on a retroactive approach to finances: looking back and figuring out what happened! This was completely useless for the envelope system and to the approach we were trying to take to our finances. I kept trying to make the programs work proactively – spending the money on paper first – but again was frustrated at how poorly the budgeting tools worked out.

I also tried simpler programs like Mint.com. While I enjoyed mint and tried for a while to make it work, the limitations on the tools were too great and made realistic, proactive budgeting continue to be too difficult.

What struck me about MoneyWell when I first discovered it and began watching the videos (aside from the pleasant surprise that there WERE a collection of helpful videos) was that the whole software seemed to be designed around the responsible financial ideas that I had been learning and trying to implement. Spending money on paper first, avoiding debt, regarding “savings” to be your emergency fund, rather than part of your available cash, etc – even much of the language of the videos seemed to reflect the values I was working towards.

Whereas I had spent hours upon hours upon hours trying to setup complicated programs like Quicken or iBank function to help us budget, plan, payoff debt, and save, I was able to watch the tutorial videos, setup my accounts, setup my buckets, and breathe a sigh of relief all in one evening. In fact, I kept excitedly returning to the program expecting there to be more work to do, but there was not! Finally, I could put the personal finance software aside and go back to my life.

Among the many strengths of the software – easy to set up, good looking, speedy, intuitive, etc – there were a couple areas that stood out.

First, one of the difficulties in starting any kind of financial program is that it is a little like stepping onto a speeding treadmill. My paychecks are half gone for the month, some bills have been paid but not all, the budget I made at the beginning of the months is already fatally ruined… How now do I effectively “hit the ground” running with a new personal finance software? With MoneyWell, I was able to easily setup the start date and levels for my buckets and “ta-da”: I am set to go. I was so taken aback by the ease of this process.

Secondly, the idea of the two levels of your finances as noted in the videos – the real life accounts, transactions, etc as well as the virtual level of your buckets and money flows – is very helpful and well implemented so as to keep your focus on the virtual level, or in other words YOUR BUDGET. This is always the difficulty! It is one thing to setup a budget and envelopes, but if you have money in two different checking accounts, some in your envelopes, and some irregular income coming in, it is very, very difficult to keep your eyes on the budget (rather than the account balances themselves) and at the same time ensure that the numbers in your budget are still correct. MoneyWell keeps our eyes on the plan while at the same time making it easy and effective to ensure that the plan is staying consistent with reality.

After trying for months and months to setup a budget and envelopes that worked for us (and always ending up spending it all), we now have money set aside in 15+ envelopes for expenses that are coming up and we were thus able to make a higher payment toward our debt this month.

Thanks for a wonderful product and keep up the good work!

Blessings,

JonMarc, Teresa, and baby Dominic (due to be born next week)

Please let me know if you have any questions about my experience with MoneyWell.

If you know me, you know I get really excited about things. In fact, I’m thinking about writing more about software, businesses, charities, services, and products that I have found to be worthwhile. We need to reward good work!

Jun 22

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JonMarc on Deep In Scripture discussing faith

By JonMarc Grodi | Philosophy and Culture, Prayer, Why Aren't We Saints? | One Comment

Today I joined my father Marcus Grodi on his radio program Deep In Scripture. We talked about one of my favorite topics which: trying to get at a very basic, foundational understanding of what faith is.

The word “faith” is tossed around so much, sometimes interchangeably with “belief” or “trust” and the meaning of it gets very watered down. It is such a presumed part of the life of a Catholic or Christian, that it often “goes without saying”. But the culture’s presuppositions about faith get into our psyche and pretty soon our understanding of faith is informed more by the scoffs and criticism of our detractors, rather than our Church and our Scriptures.

Is faith just “belief” or “trust”? Is it something we do or something that God does? Is it simply Pascal’s wager, as it is reduced to in so many Philosophy 101 classes? What does it mean to have faith? What does it really look like to put faith in God?

Mar 18

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Ends and Means – Ethics refresher

By JonMarc Grodi | Uncategorized | One Comment

Many situations in which I have found myself over the past couple years have made me revisit what I thought I knew about ethics..

Ethics and morals, like many of the most important things in our lives, often become taken for granted to the point that we forget some of there most important points.

This is especially important for us to remember today given the situations facing the church. With clerical scandal constantly revisited on the news and the overall decline of morality and culture even within members of the Church itself, what might we reiterate about ethics and morality that might shed some light?

Sometimes the most necessary information to revisit is that which seems obvious. What I would like to revisit is the fact that ends do not justify means.

Good ends, well intentioned ends, wishfully thought out ends, seemingly attractive end, never, EVER justify evil means.

Point made. What is the relevance?

Here’s the thing: This concept seems obvious and basic and unquestioned, but like many such concepts, it is only easy until you are faced with a situation involving lofty ends but questionable means.

One of the most commonplace and easy traps to fall into involve the way we interact with people we live with, work with, or are close to in some way.

When we care about people we naturally want to help them be better. With this end in mind, what so often happens? We yell, nag, criticize, put down, write off, marginalize, or in some other way try to produce this good “end” by poor means.

We know we should be kinder, more patient, gentler, or all in all more loving, but these are hard to do. In fact, not only is it hard to help others be better in a loving fashion, but oftentimes we are trying to enact change in others that we are unwilling or unable to as yet enact in ourselves.

It comes down to this: its easy to be concerned with these lofty ends, but much harder to perform good means.

But here is the real kicker: Those lofty ends are worthless if you sink to evil means to get them. God may work good from them, but that’s His business. You on the other hand have sinned, and this is not changed by the fact that God can bring fruit from even the darkness of sin.

This is the reality of our moral lives. The goodness or badness of any given action is never dependent on the outcome of the action. This is a good thing too because nomatter how good of an action we perform or bad, we can’t control the outcome. Our best efforts can seem to produce disaster, and our worst sins can, by grace, be made to flower. We are not morally responsible for the good or evil results of our actions, but only the goodness or badness of the actions themselves.

Again, when reminded that “ends never justify means” many will say “well, duh!”. But unfortunately if we were honest and prayerful about it, we all know examples of lying, cheating, gossip, disobedience, and other vices, many are our own, that have been justified or ignored because some rosy “end” held us in thrall.

Just as we are called to give and not count the costs, we must never let the ends of our actions distract us from the rightness or wrongness of the actions themselves.

Think about it and leave your comments below. God Bless.