Our thoughts and prayers go out to the whole of the LDS church with the passing of President Hinckley this past weekend. As many of you will recall, it was the death of Pope John Paul II that spurred Sarah and I into producing the CMP.  Now, a few years removed from that event, we watch as the LDS Church goes through it's own transition of leadership.  On this day, I'm reminded of the kind words President Hinckley had to say regarding Pope John Paul II, "My beloved brothers and sisters, on behalf of the worldwide membership of this Church, I extend to our Catholic neighbors and friends our heartfelt sympathy at this time of great sorrow. Pope John Paul II has worked tirelessly to advance the cause of Christianity, to lift the burdens of the poor, and to speak fearlessly in behalf of moral values and human dignity. He will be greatly missed, particularly by the very many who have looked to him for leadership."  Now it is the Catholic Church's turn to echo those words.

While it was some time before the Catholic Church knew who would be called as the next Vicar of Christ, the LDS Church has a clear plan of succession from the President, to the First Counselor, to the Second Counselor.  Based on this plan of succession, it appears Thomas S. Monson will be/is the next President of the LDS Church.

Sarah and I would like to thank Father Roderick for mentioning the Catholic Mormon Podcast on his Daily Breakfast podcast #345... 

We continue to be amazed and humbled by the wonderful emails we receive and traffic that continues to come to the CMP website. Thank you to everyone who has written us and posted on the site.  By the pictures, you can see an example of what we've been doing rather than podcasting...  not to sound like a broken record, but one of these days we'll turn out a new show.  There are actually a few emails that I've been (and will continue) holding until we do the next show because they are just that good.

Again, thanks for stopping by and Peace be with you all...

--rob

Hello everyone, Sarah and I hope you had a wonderful Easter weekend!  For us, it was very enjoyable with my family but WOW was it cold in Northeast Ohio... seriously, what's up with snow in April??? C'mon now, global warming....humm...  The kids just had to do the egg hunt inside grandma and grandpa's house this year!

I'd also like to thank my wonderful wife for allowing me to be a complete couch potato during the Masters.

Unfortunately Sarah was not able to go to Mass as our youngest son Billy had her up all night and wasn't feeling well enough to attend.  I do have to share with you one funny story though from Mass.  OK, so we (our two oldest children, my Mom, Dad, Sister, Brother-in-law and I) went to the 9am Mass and we're sitting there waiting...and waiting...  now it's 9:05 and nothing... then the Deacon came out to say that we'll begin the Mass as soon as the Celebrant arrives.  With that you could hear a low volume wave of chatting cross the entire church as people began to speculate as to what was going on.  A few minutes later, the Priest arrived and the enterance procession began.  The priest arrived at the front of the church and greeted everyone by saying "I'd like to welcome everyone to the 9:12 Mass."  and a slight chuckle crossed the church.   Fast forward to the homily...  now I love the homily and this perticular priest is fantastic.  He started out by saying "In today's world, we are so caught up with moving quickly through tasks...  We are a task based society, we even coined a new phrase, 'multitasking'." (by the way, this pretty much sums up my life, so it really captured my attention!)  He continued to say, 'You know what multitasking is, right?  It's like when you're sitting on your chair, drinking a cup of coffee, petting your dog, watching Meet the Press on tv and someone walks in to say - Father, you have the 9am Mass today."  What a great way to think on your feet!!!  Absolutely hilarious!!! 

So, how was your Easter?  I'd especially like to extend a welcome to those who entered into the Catholic Church this Easter!  It's Sarah's 5 year anniversary of becoming Catholic and it's still amazing to think about all of the events of that time in our life!  Please feel free to email or send some pictures of your Easter celebration. If you completed your journey of conversion this past weekend we'd love to hear from you and see pictures!

Hey Gang,

I wanted to get a quick not out to all of you to let ya know that Sarah and I had actually recorded a show on 3/18, but after we were finished, I discovered that they mic input wasn't set to the mixer and her laptops built in mic did a pretty crappy job of picking up our voices.  I'm working to clean and boost it as much as possible.  Don't want you thinking that we've dropped off the earth yet again so to speak...

 

On another note, I have been keeping up with everyone's posts and appreciate all the activity on the site!  Finally, I'm switching the catholicmormon.com domain name to Go Daddy and you may experience a brief interruption of this domain name resolving at some point in the next week.  Hopefully not, but just in case...  that's why.

 

Did you happen to see the Pope's affirmation that Hell really does exist?  If not, here's a link...  Does this come as a surprise to anyone? 

Finally...  that's about the only reasonable title we could come up with for this show.

As mentioned in the podcast, here is the link to Skype. Please let us know what you think by leaving a FREE voice mail using Skype.  Our screenname is 'catholicmormon' and we look forward to hearing from you!

As always, you can also email us at catholicmormon@gmail.com

Thanks again to everyone who has stuck with us over the months and years and a huge welcome to all the new listeners of the CMP! 

All I can say is that it feels great to be doing something with the CMP site once again. The wheels are turning to find ways to involve all of you. I think we've come up with a good one. Actually, it's a back to the future move so to speak.

Sarah and I purchased a one year subscription to Skype voice mail for our account 'catholicmormon'. With this subscription, you now have the ability to leave us a voice mail up to 10 minutes in length (mini show??? humm....)

If you have never used Skype before, it's a totally free program you can download at www.skype.com and once you've installed the program you can add our screenname (catholicmormon) to your contact list.

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the show, faith, personal stories or anything else you'd like to share.  Sarah and I will be going through the voice mails and will be sure to use them in upcoming shows.  Please drop us a line - this is your show too!

thanks,
--rob

In an effort to ensure that those who remained subscribed to the CMP know that there is some action on the website, I wanted to put out this brief audio update. 

Thought I'd also share a recent picture of the kids helping mommy...

Thanks again for staying subscribed!

--rob

Well, the political season here in the good ole US of A is heating up... already.  Is it me or does this 'season' seem to be starting earlier and earlier every cycle?

While Sarah and I haven't yet recorded our next show, we've been kicking around some ideas and with the flurry of Presidential bids being announced, I thought I'd throw out my two cents and see what all of you out there are thinking… 

As you obviously gathered by the title of this posting and the graphic, I'm going to share some thoughts on the Presidential campaign of Mitt Romney (www.mittromney.com) which he announced today, February 13, 2007.  I don’t think it’s a big surprise that Mitt is LDS, right?  You knew that…  or did you?  I actually started writing this blog post prior to his formal announcement and speculated as to how (or if, for that matter) the media would make a big deal about his LDS faith.  Well, Mitt beat me to the posting and USA Today newspaper has already answered my question to some degree.  I’m actually writing this post from snowed in St. Louis… and wondering if I’m going to be able to get home to Cleveland tomorrow relatively on time - one can only hope!  This morning, I was very surprised to see a picture of Mitt and his Mormon faith on the cover page of the newspaper as I rolled out of bed and grabbed the paper that had been slid under my hotel door during the night. 

Now granted, I didn’t have any time today to watch the news on tv or gather any other sources, but that one event said to me that this will be 'an issue’ that will be discussed in the media.  Let’s face it, ‘news’ has become more about sensationalism than facts (at least in my opinion) and to that end, I’m fairly certain there will not be any shortage of ‘sensational’ stories should they decide to dig into Mitt’s family history and faith.  The big question is, how will Mitt address this and will this attention be a good thing or a bad thing for the LDS church?  How will exaggerations or misrepresentations be addressed by church leadership?  Should they be addressed by Church leadership?

Now, as a voter I’m going to share some thoughts with you in the hope of generating a good and open discussion on what’s in a vote.  As a general political philosophy, Sarah and I tend to side more often with Republicans than Democrats – So, I guess that makes us conservatives in nature and superseding all of that, we’re Catholics who make decisions based on principles.  No, we didn’t vote for John Kerry because he’s Catholic, actually, we didn’t vote for him at all.  In our opinion, he lacked personal ethics and consistency toward his faith given some of his political positions – not the lease of which is his stance on abortion!  I’m sorry, but I couldn’t buy the idea that I’m Catholic, but will choose to live my (political) life in a manner inconsistent with my Catholic faith.  You are the sum of all your parts – mind, body, history, faith, goals, blab la bla.  Are Sarah and I the only ones who see this as a MAJOR issue of personal integrity that should carry over to one’s political career?

OK, so now we have Mitt Romney in the race for the White House.  True that his values are much more in line with those of Sarah and I in terms of the value  of life, economic policy and the role of individuals verses ‘big government’.  Great.  But…  there is that religion issue.  Clearly Mitt would disagree with Sarah and I on the issue of who’s faith is established by God.  Technically, we don’t disagree a little – we disagree a lot!  Our faiths in the bluntest of terms are mutually exclusive – there is no shade of one in the other.  It’s either Catholic 100% right or LDS 100% right.  Either Our Lord’s Church has had an unbroken line of succession and the keys of God’s kingdom have been passed down through the Chair of Peter OR God took the keys away shortly after the death of the last of the twelve original Apostles and restored His Church through Joseph Smith…  black   or    white   …period. 

As a voter, I’m now presented with the question of how much I should value the personal religion of a political candidate.  True, I like what he stands for on the political issues.  I’m sure he’s a good, well intentioned, honest man.  I’m not questioning that at all.  However, after having studied and experienced the LDS religion, I have formed opinions which (if I am to be consistent in my overall principles for living my life in an integrated fashion with my religion) should also be considered with casting my support for one man.  Call it what you want, I’m not bashing on Mitt or the LDS religion, but I will probably be looking for another candidate to vote for during this election season should he get the Republican nomination.  I simply cannot bring myself to vote for a person who holds such different views of who God is and holds very different opinions on Christianity.

I suspect this will be a major MAJOR issue has his political opponents trickle information to the media.  It’s going to be interesting to see what the media picks up on and how he responds, but one thing is now clear to me – this will come up.

What are your thoughts – is this a big deal to you?  Do you think it will be a big deal in the media?  Do you think it’s even fair for us to consider the faith of a man when choosing a leader… 

 

ooohhh boy has it been a long time... and ooooh boy oh boy has that come across loud and clear in the posts from the previous show (and gmail).

OK, now for the reason... Well, truth be told, there isn't a good one. I guess you could say that we burned ourselves out in the first year, flickered through most of 2006 and now we find ourselves plopped smack dab at the start of 2007. I know this probably isn't the reason some of you may have been looking for or whatever the case may be, but it's the truth.  That said, Sarah and I do feel very bad about 'leaving you hanging' and going AWOL for so long (including Christmas...).

So, this presents us with a few questions that we (y'all too!) need to answer... First, is the CMP worth continuing in it's current or some new form? I tend to think it is, but needs to change form to something easier to produce. Secondly, is there any new or broader perspective that we should introduce such as a side-bar focus on other faiths? The second question is a little tougher as it may expand our audience participation, but sacrifice this little niche that we've carved out for ourselves, not to mention that neither Sarah nor I really know enough to put half-way decent content together.  I, personally, vote for keeping the CMP focused on C and M for the P...but who knows, maybe others want to know a little more about J, I, L, B, or other religions...  (incase anyone was wondering, I had in mind Judaism, Islam, Lutheran and Baptist in mind when I wrote the letters...)

At this point, there are a few truths I know.  First, there's no question about our faith.  Please don't mistake the absence of the show for anything other than a lapse of passion to produce it coupled with a need to focus on our family.  Second, the supportive emails and posts on the blog are greatly appreciated and partially responsible for us wanting to 'do something' once again!  Third, we miss you guys...  honestly, it's like something has been missing in our lives too.  However, this time around I'm going to try to maintain more of a balance in show related activities and family related activities.  Looking back at some of the posts from previous shows, it was obvious that I suffered from CBPS - Constant Blog Posting Syndrom.  Seriously...  what the heck was I doing posting at all hours of the day and night???  loco...  Now, I'm out of CBPS rehab and going to get my feet wet again.

So, what do ya think?  Willing to give the CMP another try?

Take care and thanks for sticking with us... 

--rob

First, where the heck did summer go???  Jeez o man, we cannot believe the leaves are starting to turn already! 

You'll probably find this show a little more 'raw' when compared to a typical show.  In the interest of time, we've decided to keep some of the 'screw ups' that we would have otherwise edited out...  hope it isn't terribly distracting!  We hope you agree this is a great show, it's packed with your emails and our responses...  this was truely a listener inspired show, thank you!!!

Here's the link to Sarah's eBay store

On another note, let us never forget 9/11 (a very moving clip at the end of the podcast titled 'Silent Night 9-11'