The Pope, The Protestant and the Redemption of Capitalism

by Susan Fox

Pope Francis

“The Gospel offers us the chance to live life on a higher plane, but with no less intensity: ‘Life grows by being given away, and it weakens in isolation and comfort. Indeed, those who enjoy life the most are those who leave security on the shore and become excited by the mission of communicating life to others.’” (The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis)

Christian Entrepreneur
"Jay" Maymi

That is the task that Evangelist and Author Jesus Maymi has undertaken in “The Entrepreneur’s Devotional: Biblical Principles for Business Success” released on Dec. 1 and available at http://www.empoweredlifeministries.org/.

While the pope is complaining about the cold indifference of an economy of exclusion and inequality, saying such an economy kills, Maymi –- a Protestant –- is doing something about it. He imbues his business life with a sense of total dependence on God.  In his free time, he visits prisons, homeless shelters, and nursing homes. After speaking about his faith, he prays one-on-one with the residents there.

“Jay is obviously a Man of Faith first,” said Estate Planner John Cornish, aka “The Money Guy,” after outlining how Maymi’s business principles are boosting his own third quarter reports.

It seems to me that Maymi, a member of the Assembly of God Church, is undertaking the mission the pope is asking Catholics to do. “When the Church summons Christians to take up the task of evangelization, she is simply pointing to the source of authentic personal fulfillment. For ‘here we discover a profound law of reality: that life is attained and matures in the measure that it is offered up in order to give life to others. This certainly is what mission means. Consequently, an evangelizer must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral!’” Pope Francis said.

The Entrepreneur’s devotional concurs. In the section on the responsibility of success, he says, “You can only go on so many vacations, and you can only spoil yourself with so much until you start to realize that true joy comes in not what you did to make your life more comfortable but in what you did to enrich the life of someone else.”

I was an investigative business reporter for 12 years, working for West Coast newspapers including the San Francisco Examiner and the San Diego Union.  My main purpose was to uncover fraud and business abuse, though I cheerfully covered the good business practices I witnessed in banking, agriculture, mining and personal finance.   

However, what I found in short supply was honesty and a sincere caring about the customer and employee. Yet I myself broke big story after big story because I used Jay Maymi’s devotional approach; I prayed before I investigated. I depended on God.  Documents indicting the actions of some crooked businessmen seemed to just drop into my lap from heaven. Obviously, that means if you ignore the 10 Commandments in your business practices, there is a Higher Power working against you through people in the Fourth Estate!

The alternative is Jay’s prayerful approach to business, which will benefit not just the entrepreneur, but the entire economy and society.  I honestly don’t think capitalism will survive without Christian men and women living their faith in the work place.  

After reminding us of Mark 14:51-52, where a young man, wearing only a linen garment, flees naked from the Garden of Gethsemane as Jesus is seized, Jay concludes: “As Godly people of self-enterprise, we must decide that we will run towards Christ and not away from Him, embrace our identity in Christ, and stand firm for Whom and what we believe in. Choosing to conserve one’s business success, market share, personal image, advancement potential, and security by abandoning our association with Christ will only leave you with a barren, empty, and naked feeling that will have nothing to do with clothing.”

Each chapter comes with a personal prayer and relevant Scripture passages. I am impressed with the depth of readings chosen. And they are appropriate to each topic he describes. This is obviously a work of deep prayer. Jay also gives you space to journal your own faith response in the book.

In discussing one of his business failures, Jay reveals that in prayer God showed him that if he had succeeded, it would have had a bad outcome for Jay and his family. This is called the gift of knowledge, one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit enumerated in Isaiah 11: 2-3.  God gives it to people who pray regularly, intensely and wait on God’s response to their individual needs and problems. “At that moment, I praised God for His Goodness in keeping that door shut!” Jay said in response to his business failure.

Make every thought “captive to the obedience of Christ,” Maymi reminds us in the section on making a plan for your enterprise. “We are instructed to chart our thoughts to ‘whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.’ (Phil 4:8)”

Jay also urges Christian businessmen to abandon lukewarm practices that lead to mediocrity. Mediocrity will not bear good fruit. “It is only through sheer passion, daily actions, and a burning desire that momentum (in your business) can be created. Sustained momentum ... has the potential to change lives and history.” Jay concluded.

I also love the second commandment in  “The Entrepreneur’s Ten Commandments.” It was “Thou Shalt Not Deceive Others for Gain.” Honesty is vitally important in all social interactions. It even comes down to paying attention to little things like returning the cash when you are given too much change in a retail transaction, or avoiding false feedback to your customers to make a sale. There are ways to tell the truth without being offensive. Or remain silent.

Behind a financial system that rules instead of serves, “lurks a rejection of ethics and rejection of God,” Pope Francis warned. “Ethics has come to be viewed with a certain scornful derision. It is felt to be a threat, since it condemns the manipulation and debasement of the person. In effect, ethics leads to a God who calls for a committed response, which is outside of the categories of the marketplace.”

Pope Francis among the people he loves

The Pope goes on to explain the dangers of the marketplace where ethics are abandoned: “God can only be seen as uncontrollable, unmanageable, even dangerous, since he calls human beings to their full realization and to freedom from all forms of enslavement.” 

While waiting for a sale to close or a call to be returned is frustrating, Jay said, “Waiting helps create a further dependence on God.” That pretty well sums up Jay’s approach to life and business. “God is a one event at a time God. He will direct your steps from one experience to another even if that experience seems unusual, uncomfortable, and inconvenient. This pattern serves to create trust and reliance in His divine guidance and instruction. It also teaches us to wait expectantly and patiently.”

Such advice would do well for Catholics in their own spiritual walk.  If we follow the entrepreneur’s devotional, I think we would be successful in our business efforts, but we would also deepen our relationship with God, and reflect His Image to the world.  That would be a great blessing.  I recommend this little book.

Are you surprised that a Catholic would recommend a Protestant devotional? Did you expect the pope’s encyclical to browbeat a businessman like Maymi? The Catholic Church’s job is to bring you into relationship with Truth, Who is a Person, Jesus Christ. Truth is universal. God doesn’t keep it to Himself, nor does He just share it with Catholics.

Susan Fox has a Master’s in Economics, and a Master’s in International Trade and Finance from the University of Kentucky, Lexington. She quit her 12-year career in print journalism in 1991 in order to home-school her son. She is currently one of two authors at this Christian blog, www.ChristsFaithfulWitness.com. Her husband of 30 years, Lawrence Fox, is co-author.

PRO-LIFE TWITTER STORM: The Voice of the Turtledove Has Been Heard in Our Lands!

by Susan Fox

Read the story behind the group that launched 82,000 tweets in one day with the hashtag #PraytoEndAbortion.  This Pro-life Twitter Storm took the phrase to the top of the list of tweeted phrases in the United States and Fourth in the world on Dec. 12, 2013.

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings, announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation, and saying to Zion, “Your God is King!” (Isaiah 52:7)

Who is She?

Who is She who comes forth as the Morning Rising, Fair as the Moon, Bright as the Sun, and terrible as an Army in Battle Array?

Indeed, who is she who waltzed through the Internet Thursday, December 12, 2013, walking on the voices of thousands of ordinary people from Ghana to the United States?

#PraytoEndAbortion was the top trending hashtag on Twitter  Thursday night in the United States
and fourth in the world because thousands of people tweeted and re-tweeted the phrase on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. “The voice of the turtledove has been heard in our land.” (Song of Songs 2:12) The voice of the turtledove is associated with Our Lady’s voice in the Liturgy of the Hours. Doesn’t that describe what occurred?

Just a few weeks ago I didn’t even like Twitter because I am a very long-winded writer, and tweets are very short, no more than 140 characters. A hashtag is a phrase prefixed with the symbol #. Hashtags make it possible to group messages, and rank the most highly re-tweeted phrases.  Now I can’t believe that a couple thousand ordinary people launched 82,000 tweets with the words "Pray to End Abortion" in one day!  

When I was lobbying for the pro-life cause at the United Nations in 2000, I met a delegate from Sudan. She wanted to know who was I because everybody at the UN represents a group. I told her I was just an ordinary American housewife, not paid by any group. But I was invited to participate by the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute. The woman’s face lit up. She burst out laughing. “Why you are Nobody,” she said. “You have great power.”

And that’s what happened Thursday. “Nobody” spoke and everybody heard the message “Pray to end Abortion.”  The silent unborn voices of millions of human beings were also heard. Some of them may be born because of Nobody’s Twitter Storm.

Years ago, a priest told me not to worry about what’s in the daily newspaper. He said, “Listen to the news in heaven!” There were 2,544 people signed up to tweet on Thursday, but many others joined the Twitter Storm in progress. These people closely resembled St. Juan Diego, the Native American, who met Our Lady of Guadalupe in person one Saturday morning in 1531 on Tepeyac Hill outside the modern day Mexico City.  

Why? Because the beautiful lady of “unearthly grandeur,” wearing clothing “radiant as the sun,” addressed her little Juan as “the humblest of my children.”  Such were the 2,544 signed up to tweet.

Not only did Our Lady see Juan that way, but so did the Bishop of Mexico, to whom she sent her little Juan. “Come another time, and I will listen at leisure,” said Franciscan Bishop Fray Juan de Zumarraga. That was polite speak for “Go Away. I think you are crazy.” Juan was “Nobody.” But Our Lady assigned him the task of getting a Church built on Tepeyac Hill outside the modern day Mexico City.

Juan thoroughly agreed with Our Lady’s assessment of himself as the “humblest" of her sons. When he returned to report his failure, “He said, “My Lady, my maiden, I presented your message to the Bishop, but it seemed that he did not think it was the truth. For this reason I beg you to entrust your message to someone more illustrious who might convey it in order that they may believe it, for I am only an insignificant man.”

Many probably thought the same thing when they undertook to tweet for life. Twitter shut me down after 30 minutes of tweeting. Desperate tweets came from nuns saying, “I can’t tweet any more. Re-tweet!” And the second time Twitter shut me down, I had to promise Twitter I would never do it again!

Our Lady sent Juan Diego back to the reluctant bishop a second time. This time the bishop openly stated he needed proof.

I went back to the computer to tweet again, and so did thousands of others.

Then Juan Diego’s uncle became very ill, and he set out to get a priest to hear his confession, but he decided he’d better go the other way around the hill less his mission get interrupted by the little maiden who kept sending him to the bishop!

And I realized I had to go to the grocery store to get something for dinner as it is the duty of my state in life. I ran to Costco.

But Our Lady met Juan Diego on the other side of the hill, and assured him his uncle would be okay. “Listen and understand, my humblest son. There is nothing to frighten and distress you. Do not let your heart be troubled and let nothing upset you. Is it not I, your Mother, who is here? Are you not under my protection?” 

And I sang the “Star Spangled Banner” out loud in Costco. I had never felt so hopeful for my country in my life. Nobody looked at me like I was crazy. This was a miracle.

Then Our Lady sent Juan Diego to the top of the hill to pick Castilian roses in the middle of a bitter frost. Juan Diego was astonished, but he picked the roses and brought them to Our Lady to arrange in his tilma (mantle). At last, this was the sign needed to convince the bishop. And convince him it did! Especially when the roses fell onto the floor in front of the bishop and left a perfect image of the lady of “unearthly grandeur,” wearing clothing “radiant as the sun” on the tilma itself! It is a miraculous picture, which has lasted almost 500 years and is still is beautifully intact. The Church was built. The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe is visited by several million people every year.

But the best part of the story is yet to come. It is a story of the wife of a New Jersey chiropractor, who was given a mission by Our Lady of Guadalupe, and an important sign -- red roses in December! And surprise, surprise, she felt terribly unqualified to undertake the task.

On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in 2011, Esmeralda Kiczek woke up and heard Our Lady speak in her heart: “She wanted me to find a way to pray the Holy Rosary at the March for Life with everyone there.” This would be the March for Life on Jan. 23, 2012.  “She also told me that Jan. 23, 2012 will mark the beginning of the end of abortion.” She and her husband Dr. Brian Kiczek rejoiced at this news.

But despite their joy, Esmeralda had a problem. “I did not know where to start or what to do. I felt like the most unqualified person to do this kind of mission. I prayed for a few days and on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe I finally got the courage to contact the March for Life.” Perhaps Our Lady regarded Esmeralda as the “humblest of her daughters?” Yes?  To her surprise, Miss Nellie Gray, the founder of the March for Life, personally answered the phone and calmly accepted the news that Our Lady wanted everyone to pray the Rosary, and that the Rosary was the answer to the end of abortion.

In fact the phone call seemed to answer a question Miss Gray had been asking in her own heart: “Why has abortion not ended?”  So Esmeralda told her the answer is the Rosary. And one of the signs was Esmeralda's own red roses were blooming gloriously outside her front door in December in New Jersey. Her family knew it was a miracle, "but we did not know what it meant.”

The Kiczek's Roses blooming in December

Then the story of Juan Diego climbing to the top of Tepeyac hill to cut Castilian roses in a frost in early December in 1531 finally clicked with Brian and Esmeralda Kiczek. They understood the meaning behind their own December roses.

They weren’t able to pray the Rosary with everyone at the March for Life, but they had a room in the convention’s hotel.  They called it the Rosary Room. And people prayed the Rosary there at all times during the March. “Everyone that came was really a prayer warrior,” Esmeralda wrote in her blog, http://www.theendofabortionmovement.com.

The Kiczek's March for Life poster

And from that experience she and her husband were inspired to start a group dedicated to pray the Holy Rosary to end abortion, contraception, and euthanasia, called “The End of Abortion Movement: The Rosary is the Key.”

And it was that group -- led by Dr. Brian and Esmeralda Kiczek, which organized the #PraytoEndAbortion  TwitterStorm on Dec. 12, 2013.

Incidentally, Our Lady of Guadalupe is regarded as the Patroness of the Unborn, and many miracles have been worked in connection with her image, a copy of which is sent around the United States. In the 1990s, one of the members of the Junior Legion of Mary in Renton, Washington, felt the heartbeat of the Christ Child in Our Lady’s womb in the picture. I was there. I witnessed it. The symbolism of Our Lady of Guadalupe’s dress is that of a young woman who is pregnant. Therefore Jesus is in the picture too, as yet too small to be seen.

Little Jesus, He’s there to remind us, #PraytoEndAbortion. And He loves to remind His mother to pick her disciples from the “humblest of her children.”


JOIN US DEC. 12, 2014 FOR ANOTHER TWITTERSTORM TO END ABORTION. WE HAVE CHANGED THE HASHTAG SLIGHTLY. IT'S NOW #Pray2EndAbortion. Follow 30 Twitter accounts a day from CatholicsFollowBack @CatholicsFollow and they will follow back. Build your twitter base so that your tweets on Dec. 12 will have a wider audience. For more information on this new Twitterstorm go to #Pray2EndAbortion

If YOU would like to pray to end abortion, contraception and euthanasia, go to The End of Abortion Movement   and sign up! You just have to add the intention of ending abortion, contraception and euthanasia to your daily Rosary. And if you don't pray the Rosary yet, why not start? God bless you. 

REASONS FOR IMMODESTY; ARGUMENTS FOR MODESTY

by Susan Fox

So goes the peanut gallery... After my last piece  My Apostolate to the Immodestly Dressed Woman, men were amazed that women dressed immodestly if they were not trying to attract men. Women were amazed at my husband’s disclosure about how chaste men view fashions. It seems like I managed to surprise both sexes!

Forty-eight years ago, I stood in the bathroom at my aunt’s house and watched my 20-something cousins putting on make-up. I was 12 years old.

I adored those cousins, I’ll call them Rachel and Judy.

They were the closest thing I had to older sisters. One of them, Rachel, I had chosen to be my Confirmation sponsor. All of us came from good Catholic homes.

The process of putting on that make-up almost seemed to me to be a scene of medieval torture. Judy would torment her eyelashes with a rack, make them longer, and then brush them with black stuff. Then she’d repeat the process until wow -- those eyelashes were so long they didn’t look human at all. It was 1965. The Church had just finished Vatican II. The sexual revolution was in full swing.

Those girls stood there working on their faces for two solid hours.  They were beautiful girls. They didn’t need to wear make-up at all.  

Then Judy lectured me. “Susan,” she said, “if your Mom doesn’t start wearing make-up she’ll never get a husband.” (My mother was a widow at this time.) I didn’t worry about this at all. I frankly didn’t want my mother to “get a husband” any way. At the age of 12, it sounded terrible to “get a husband.” Better to fight off a cold.

But it was clear that Judy and Rachel wanted a husband, and that’s why they were going to all this trouble. How sad the road they chose led to shame when they were single, and then marriages that didn’t last. My beloved Rachel, the oldest sister, died alone in her house with no family near-by and Judy was married only 9 years.

But on that day, they got dressed, and what Rachel put on would make today’s skimpiest dresses look modest. Rachel was very uncomfortable dressing this way, but her younger sister Judy kept telling her it would be all right, and not to worry.

Finally, they were ready, and as they were walking out the door, I said, “Where are you going?”

“We’re going on a date with Creep Perry.” Shocked, I asked, “Wait! Why are you going on a date with a guy you think is a creep?” They threw the answer out over their shoulders as they sailed through the door. “He has a yacht.” If only I could call them back now, stop them from walking out that door. But they walked out – too insecure to dress modestly, too insecure to date a decent man,  desperate to leave home, and choosing all the wrong roads to their goal to be loved by one man for the rest of their lives.  They failed. They utterly failed.

Part of the reason they failed was because of the way they were dressed.

I found some interesting research on the subject. A Princeton psychologist Susan Fiske used brain scans to show that when men looked at women immodestly dressed – say in bikinis – areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools like spanners and screwdrivers were activated.

But parts of the brain that are normally associated with empathy for other peoples’ emotions and wishes shut down.  The study concluded that sexy images of half-dressed women can shift the way men perceive women, turning them from people to socialize with to objects to act upon.  Some men even demonstrate increased hostility.

The women appreciated my husband’s input in my last post on modesty, and so I ran back into his office this afternoon, and interviewed him. We met at the Maryland State Fair in Timonium, Maryland in 1982. He was running the Catholic evangelization booth sponsored by the Legion of Mary, and I came up from Northern Virginia to volunteer to work the booth.

My husband assures me that certain areas of his brain did light up when he saw me, but it was the “right kind of attention,” he said. Because my dress was modest but very feminine, it was the kind of attention he said,  “where I knew I had to know you first.”

Success! And I didn’t wear any make-up! No, two hours wasted in front of the mirror. I never looked for a husband in a bar or on a yacht. And after an 11-month courtship, we have been married 30 years.

But not all women wear immodest dress because they are insecure and desperately want to get married. At the age of 17, I was focused on getting an education, traveling the world and being friends with my mother.

But my mother bought me a mini-skirt. I did not know men were sight-oriented. I honestly didn’t associate my apparel with men at all, for what did they have to do with my life then?

I was what you would call a “late bloomer.” Even when I was in France without my family at the age of 19, I can remember a strange French man asked me to tea in his apartment. He probably thought, “American, hmm.” There was a book out that year (1974) in France called “L'Américaine,” and it had a half-naked blond woman wearing jeans on the cover.

So maybe his mind was in that book when he asked me to tea. This is what I thought: “That man must be completely insane to think that I would go alone to his apartment!” Please ladies, if it happens to you, always think that. There is no reason to go alone to his apartment. He can always invite you out to tea at a café. Think safe.

But I didn’t say what I was thinking. I smiled sweetly, and said, “No, Monsieur. Merci!” And left.  He was utterly dumbstruck.

So why did I, on a few occasions, wear a min-skirt two years before this incident? Why would a girl totally ambitiously focused on career and education, wear something so designed to lead me to another kind of life?

It was a matter of self-esteem. I was a victim of bullying when I was a child, and it was a way of saying, “Hey, I look pretty good now.”

But I didn’t keep that skirt long.  I wore it up to receive Communion one day, and I suddenly felt terribly ashamed.

It was Jesus’ eyes that mattered after all. It was He I wanted to please. Jesus thought I looked great with a longer hemline. So I never dressed immodestly again.

And ladies if you have a vocation to marriage, a bit more material here and there will add an air of mystery that will help you attract a chaste man. That’s the kind of bird you want, ladies. They are not dull, and they make better husbands and fathers.

The key is to remember that what you are showing with immodest dress are the goods of marriage. They are intended for your husband, not some strange man on the street. And they will be enjoyed so much more if they are displayed in that context, and not before.

"Beautiful is the woman who understands she is God's highest creation. She has dominion to choose wisely how she will show up in the world." (Received in a Tweet.)

Don't miss watching this beautiful You Tube Video in which a Father sings to his Baby Daughter. 

"Gonna Be Beautiful" by Corey Durkin

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