I'm excited to share with you that today my first fiction novel, Chasing the Seeds, has been published!

I wrote this book, and the series that it begins, to be entertaining and suitable for adults as well as teens (probably late teens; parents you should read the book before deciding whether your teen child should).

It is "clean" meaning: zero profanity, zero blasphemies, zero sexual stuff. 

What's the book about?

When Edmund, a young software engineer from Austin, discovers a clue in his deceased father's book, the contents launch him on a worldwide scavenger hunt for a mysterious prize that will shake the power structure of the entire world.

Pursued by a rogue FBI agent, Edmund must overcome his loner tendencies and welcome help from a friend, a mentor, and a beautiful young woman to get to the prize before the agent does...and without being killed.

Along the way, there's a worldwide run on the banks as the Fed battles the European Central Bank, plunging the world into chaos...

Dear friend,

In my previous letter, I discussed ideas from philosophy about the existence of God.

What does it mean to be a Christian?

I’m going to “jump ahead” in this letter and address a question that will come up if you continue down the path of becoming a Christian.

You may have already reached the point where you think you want to become a Christian, or you may reach it in a month or a year, but when you do, you will want to read and think about this letter.

What does it mean for you to be a Christian?

Do you need to say a prayer, or one prayer per day, or multiple prayers per day?

If you need to say one prayer at first, is it the sinner’s prayer that you may have heard about or recall from an old Sunday school class you went to at a Protestant church?

The sinner’s prayer has these components:

1. Acknowledging one’s sinfulness and need for forgiveness
2. Recognizing Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the only way to salvation
3. Expressing faith in...

Dear friend,

We’re going to get a little philosophical in this letter.

When I was an agnostic, I distrusted philosophy and lent it no credence. This was due to simply not having learned what philosophy was but also because in practice I heard about many different, contradictory philosophies, so I concluded that one could make “philosophy” into whatever one wanted.

But just because something can be abused and twisted doesn’t mean that it’s bad, just that it is misused.

One of the greatest thinkers to ever live was St. Thomas Aquinas. He lived during the 1200s and was a priest of the Dominican Order. He made a brilliant synthesis of how reason supports beliefs of the Catholic Faith, especially in his Summa Theologica.

He has a set of famous proofs of God’s existence from reason that are called “Aquinas’s Five Ways.” He incorporated the ancient philosophy of Aristotle and corrected and perfected it.

Here’s his first way, his...

Dear friend,

In my previous letter, I shared how I personally became a Christian from atheism.

As I write these letters to you, I also encourage you to take action to seek for yourself the truth of God’s existence and of Christianity in particular.

Here is how I recommend you do that:

1. Say a prayer each day for God to make Himself known to you so that you can believe.
2. Start reading St. Matthew’s Gospel.

Here’s a bit more on the prayer part of that recommendation.

God is omniscient, so He knows everything. He knows that you currently don’t believe in Him (or maybe are unsure if you do), and He knows that you want to believe in Him if He is real.

But God prompts us with His grace to seek Him. It is up to us, choosing of our own free will, to accept that grace and pray for God to help us believe. God will never force Himself onto you, because He wants our love, freely given, since otherwise it is compelled and therefore not love at all.

Therefore when you pray,...

Bitcoin and the Catholic Church: could two things be any more different and at odds with one another?

In fact, after reading this article, I hope to convince you that Bitcoin is not only compatible with the Catholic Church, but also that Bitcoiners should become Catholics themselves.

Why Bitcoin and the Catholic Church Seem to Be at Odds

Centralization vs. Decentralization

Bitcoin runs as a peer-to-peer network of computers (let's call them nodes, though special nodes exist, for example, mining nodes). This network is decentralized, meaning that these nodes are being run all over the world by a diverse group of people, most of whom don't know each other, and connect to one another is way that is ad hoc and not centrally controlled and planned.

So Bitcoin is DECENTRALIZED, while the Catholic Church appears to be the epitome of CENTRALIZATION.

The Catholic Church is a hierarchical organization, with the Pope at the top, the bishops under him, priests under the bishops, and then the...

I first heard about Bitcoin when the Mt. Gox implosion happened around early 2014.

I saw the Bitcoin price chart and gasped when it went up parabolically to almost $1,200, then collapsed down into the $200s.

At the time, I didn't know anything about sound money, fiat currency, or the Federal Reserve, so the idea of Bitcoin seemed crazy to me, even though I was a software developer who could understand the technology behind it.

From No-coiner to Bitcoiner

Not long after, a friend of mine kept encouraging me to get into cryptocurrency, specifically Ethereum, but intuition told me that Bitcoin was the first one, so I bought a small amount of Bitcoin in 2015. I purchased no Ethereum.

I viewed Bitcoin as a highly speculative investment, but after buying it, I had skin in the game and started watching the price and the news on it.

I had my Bitcoin on an exchange and didn't own a hardware wallet.

Price-wise, Bitcoin wasn't doing anything spectacular, so I slowly lost interest in it, but...

Introduction

This is the first in a series of real letters I am writing to my agnostic friend.

It is intended to provoke thought and discussion between him and I, and hopefully ultimately result in his conversion to Christianity and the Catholic Faith. I printed this first letter and mailed it to him via snail mail.

It is not intended to be a proof-text against a hostile atheist (of which I was one), but rather someone who doesn't believe in God but is open to discussing it and considering it for themselves.

Hello my old friend,

I write to you in what I hope will become a set of letters to share with you how I became a Christian from atheism/agnosticism, and then specifically a Catholic, and how over the past twenty-three years those decisions have been confirmed in diverse ways.

My hope and expectation is that you, with whom I’ve been friends for a long time, will read and ponder these letters, as a person of good will, and also if you are inclined, will respond to any of...

Catholic Answers recently published a new book by well-known apologist Joe Heschmeyer, titled The Eucharist Really Is Jesus: How Christ's Body and Blood Are the Key to Everything We Believe.

When I first saw the title of the book, I thought, "I already believe this, so what can this book really add to that?"

Turns out, it added a lot!

Before I dive into it, be sure to check out Joe's blog Shameless Popery, both in its original site: https://shamelesspopery.com/ and also the newer articles he is writing for Catholic Answers Magazine: https://www.catholic.com/profile/joe-heschmeyer

Do you believe that the Eucharist really is Jesus?

Good! You are in line with Catholic dogma.

But do you know how to interpret John 6, when Jesus says says near the end of the Bread of Life discourse that, "It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life."

Protestants (wrongly) jump on that verse and say, "See, see! Jesus...

I distilled down into a one pager (front and back) what I wish I would have known as a young, single Catholic man.

At that time, I had discerned that I was called to marriage and not to the priesthood nor religious life.

You need a solid supernatural (or spiritual) foundation in the Catholic Faith, but then also need to cultivate natural qualities (things like: manners, dressing in a respectful way, etc.).

You can download the guide below and print it out yourself, and also you can watch the presentation where I explain the guide in more detail.

Take this guide as a launching or starting point for having a discussion with other young men. No one size fits all for every man, and each man has his own talents, strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots.

Get the young single Catholic men's guide here.

Here's the link to My Daily Bread, excellent topics for Mental Prayer.

God bless,
Devin Rose, Lionheart Catholic

 P.S. In the guide and video I mention...

I recently came across several stories of St Louis de Montfort, the great French priest dedicated to Our Lady, and wanted to share an insight about him that affects our influencer culture.

St Louis de Montfort was a French Catholic priest who lived in the late 1600s to early 1700s.

He re-evangelized the people of Brittany and the Vendee in France (important later!).

He died in 1716, over seventy years prior to the French Revolution.

In the French Revolution, one region in particular rose up against the diabolical Reign of Terror of the Revolutionaries: the Vendee.

St Louis de Montfort's work among them, by God's grace, steeled their resolve and conviction to fight the bloodthirsty Revolutionaries, and fight they did.

Most of them had no combat experience or martial training of any kind, but they had a strong faith in Christ and a dedication to His Church, and they were appalled at the godless brutality that they were witnessing, the destruction of their churches, the...