The Pope, the Press and "Gays"

On the Holy Father’s Press Conference:

Renouncing a right to "judge" others is something that goes back to Jesus. It does not mean a refusal to recognize the moral character of others' behavior. One can form a moral judgment that what someone else is doing is wrong (Jesus obviously does not forbid that) without having or showing malice toward them. Francis’ statement that homosexuals should not be marginalized is old news- in keeping with the Holy See's approach to the subject, as 1992 Vatican document On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons. His statement that same-sex attraction "is not the problem," is also nothing new. "The problem," is going beyond merely having a sinful tendency--a temptation to which one is subject. Obviously, temptations are a problem, but if we resist temptation we do not sin. "The problem," on this understanding, is giving in to the temptation and sinning or--worse--building an ideology around the sin and trying to advocate the sin, thus calling evil good and good evil. The Pope’s statement that "they're our brothers" is also not innovative. Christians, like everyone, have fought to resist acting on every sort of temptation. Same-sex attraction is just one temptation among numerous others, and the fact that a person suffers from this temptation no more denies him of the status of brotherhood in Christ than does any other. But here also is what is not new: the media are painting a fabricated picture by contrasting the "good" Francis to the “bad" Benedict. None of Francis's remarks are antagonistic to the approach Benedict took during his papacy. Benedict himself (as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) was the signer of the previously mentioned letter on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, as well as the follow-up document on non-discrimination regarding homosexual persons.

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This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News

DANCING WITH MR. D: This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News : 'via Blog this'

Dancing With Mr. D: Grooming the Little Children

A former pro-transgender activist said she regretted her previous work in pro-transgender activism, adding she felt she was "indoctrinated" on gender ideology in an interview with Fox News Digital. "I started to realize that what I had been doing at my job at the LGBT Center, it was grooming," Kay Yang, a former employee of a location in New York, said. Grooming in this context means "to get into readiness for a specific objective." Kay works as a 'deprogrammer' to help parents and children who have been 'indoctrinated' by the 'cult-like' transgender agenda. Yang herself previously went by they/them and worked as a 'trans educator' in schools for years. Listen to her testimony.

A Series on Spiritual Warfare

In The Screwtape Letters , C.S. Lewis’ use of irony exemplifies distinctions between God and Satan’s attitude toward human beings; Lewis does this through the use of innuendos, sarcasm, and ironic inversions. I recently stumbled on a three-part series which builds on the truth in Lewis' writing here , here and here . Good Advent reflection!

Liberal Catholics, Conservative Catholics, and Holy Catholics

In Smoke , I wrote of two modifications of "Catholic" in popular parlance these days: Lest we forget, there were indeed reform-minded Council Fathers who responded to Pope John’s vision of the Church growing in spiritual riches as a fruit of the Council under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the hope that the faithful might through grace be aided in turning hearts and minds toward heavenly things. Given what has been said thus far, it should not surprise the reader that many “liberal Catholics” view the pontificate of John Paul II as too “conservative,” and out of touch with the modern world, while the traditionalists view the writings and teachings of the Holy Father as modernist! Dr. Jeff Mirus of Catholic Culture has rightly linked Pope Francis's view of Vatican II as synonymous with those of his predecessors, who were in attendance.

Blogging Disciples!

To promote a book I spent years in writing , I began this blog. I am a baby boomer who knows all too little about blogging and the latest techie stuff. As I was perusing various Catholic blog sites, I noticed a post by Fr. Longenecker entitled, "The Smoke of Satan." If one troubles oneself to read Fr.'s quite accurate assessment, and becomes interested in just exactly how, according to the Pope who coined the phrase "Smoke of Satan" the Devil made his entrance into the post-Vatican II Church in the U.S., then my book is just what the Savior may have ordered, so why don't you!?

Dancing with Mr. D: Gender Ideology

In a private conversation with Bishop Andreas Laun on January 30 as part of the Austrian bishops’ ad limina visit , Pope Francis strongly condemned “gender ideology.” In so doing he follows the example of Pope Benedict, who is on record as saying that gender ideology is “a negative trend for humankind,” and a “profound falsehood,” which “it is the duty of pastors of the Church” to put the faithful “on guard against.” Bishop Laun The Austrian bishop stated, “In response to my questioning, Pope Francis said, ‘Gender ideology is demonic!’” As I have chronicled on these pages, the Holy Father often refers to the work of the devil. Of gender ideology, Bishop Laun explained that “the core thesis of this sick product of reason is the end result of a radical feminism which the homosexual lobby has made its own.” “It asserts that there are not only Man and Woman, but also other ‘genders’. And furthermore: every person canchoose his or her gender,” he added. “Today,” he said, ...

Libido Redux: Porn Stats

If one types "Libido Redux" on this blog's search engine, you will see various events which corroborate Pope Paul VI's prophecy that the human libido is a "crack" through which Satan can play havoc with souls. Here is the latest in the series, which should enlighten the reader, the stats on children and Christians in particular. From one who knows the truth of Paul's prophecy: "I have posted on a number of other articles about porn, but I wanted to post here as well to reach out to anyone else who, like me, is a porn addict. I tried for the first 9 years of marriage to stop looking at porn, and I could not. I asked God to help me stop, I went to confession, I received the Eucharist daily, but I could not stop. It was not enough for me to do it on my own with God. I had to ask for help from other people, see a counselor, and get into a 12-step recovery program, and that is how God is healing me. I believe the numbers here because I understand ...

Silence

In the preface to Smoke I recalled: .... observing from my pew prior to the 6:30 am Mass in 1958 the Sisters entering St. Eugene’s from the front-side entrance of the Church, special to them for access from their one-room convent in the adjoining school. It was winter, and the church was dimly-lit. They entered with awe-inspiring reverence, processing in their full habits, the beads of their waist-draped rosaries colliding gently, genuflecting and kneeling in silent preparation for the soon to occur reenactment in a non-bloody manner of Our Lord’s eternal sacrifice first offered on Calvary for our salvation, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The latent aroma of incense and the sight of fresh beeswax candles flickering on the altar, together with the sisters’ silent reverence and obvious practice of what they taught their first graders - the importance of reverence in the House of God - is an impression which not only convinced me that Jesus lived there (in the Tabernacl...

About the Author II

In the years prior to the Second Vatican Council, I also remember attending daily Mass before elementary school, which, because we had fasted for three hours, allowed us to eat breakfast in Mr. Sullivan’s math class. I remember bellowing out Tantum Ergo at Wednesday Evening Benediction, which I was in the habit of attending with my Mom, siblings and “Gramp,” (her Dad, John). I also remember looking forward to participating in the praying of that most sublime form of prayer, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, with my St. Joseph’s Daily Missal. With Pope Benedict’s having granted permission for priests to offer the Extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, we hear much ado in the form of reaction against this from Catholic “progressives,” and about how the Council placed a new emphasis on the laity’s participation at Mass, the implication being that Catholics did not actively participate at Mass prior to Vatican II, opting for such devotions as the praying of the Rosary or Holy Car...

Libido Redux: On Transgerderism

W hat Christianity shares with Judaism (and Islam, for that matter) is a belief that God created all things (though all three religions understand God differently). We are creatures. We owe our being, our existence, to Him. We are stewards of His creation, stewards, even, of our own bodies. Acknowledgement of God’s creative power leads to religious awe, a sense of the sacred. This means that each creature/creation has a nature, a manufacturer’s (God’s) instruction manual. Masculinity and femininity are aspects of that nature for human beings. When belief in God becomes irrelevant, we can throw away this instruction manual and refuse to see ourselves as a creature who has responsibilities to God and to society. To understand ourselves, we need to start at the beginning. What kind of being are we? The traditional answer–originating with the Greeks, continuing in the Middle Ages, and persisting into our own time -- and the answer given by common sense intuition -- is ...

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