On Marriage and Family

Today should one attend a wedding, it is quite possible that the parents of either the bride or groom in attendance will be married, either in the Catholic Church or outside it, to someone other than the one they were first married to. In such a case, one would find oneself praying that the offspring of said marriage will not meet with the same fate.

The state of marriage today is what it is in part due to poor sacramental preparation in the years immediately following Vatican II for reasons I take up in my book, another fruit of the “sexual revolution”. Sad, but as is well-known, many young Catholics these days are delaying marriage, hooking up, practicing birth control, and cohabiting before getting married. Traditional marriage is under assault, and many baptized Catholics are joining in the attack, especially in favoring “same-sex marriage.” Thus it is inspiring to see the shepherds of the flocks gathering in synod to discuss “the pastoral challenges of the family in the context of evangelization.’ I say again, the synod will deal with the family in its various aspects – not with the single issue of Communion for the divorced and remarried.

Fr. Reese at National Catholic Reporter has described the document as “boring and joyless.” Well, I find the situation described in the first paragraph of this post as such. Boring might only be true for the synod if one did not understand the genre of the document or if one was indifferent to the pastoral concerns of the shepherds. The bishops (and I) have the joy of hope for “a new springtime for the family,” which they believe will be led by young people who appreciate the value of a stable, enduring relationship, and express a real desire to marry and form a family.

From what I can gather, the bishops see the need for an encounter with Christ on a personal and communal level. True, the lack of comprehension of the biblical and magisterial teaching on the family is legion; in addition, many Catholics lack a felt encounter with Christ and his Church, and so in turn misunderstand who man is, and who he is to God and to his community. From Part I of the Catechism on the Profession of Faith:

Jesus knew and loved us each and all during his life, his agony, and his Passion and gave himself up for each one of us: “The Son of God . . . loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20) He has loved us all with a human heart. For this reason, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins and for our salvation (cf. Jn 19:34) “is quite rightly considered the chief sign and symbol of that . . . love with which the divine Redeemer continually loves the eternal Father and all human beings” without exception.

Significantly, the bishops also express a desire “to defend and encourage forms of popular piety in support of the family". I for one have always preferred the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as it serves as a reminder to wish to be with Christ, to make one’s heart like his.While Fr. Reese may ridicule the hope of the Synod, I find it joyful to see that the Church herself always tries to make her heart like Christ’s.

Comments

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.

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...

Dancing With Mr. D: Oh S***! Planned Parenthood suggests ‘pooping’ on partner for teen ‘sexual exploration’ | The Pulse | LifeSite

I have mentioned before what Planned Parenthood “counselors” teach minors in the name of “sex-ed”: sexual bondage and sadomasochism, and steering them to sex stores to “get educated.” But not this: Planned Parenthood suggests ‘pooping’ on partner for teen ‘sexual exploration:’ 'via Blog this'

Novus Motus Liturgicus

From The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God: In 1959, Pope John XXIII saw a true need for liturgical renewal within the Roman Rite in accordance with the metaphorical principle of organic development, the aim of the Liturgical Movement endorsed by Pope St. Pius X. In authentic organic development, the Church listens to what liturgical scholars deem necessary for the gradual improvement of liturgical tradition, and evaluate the need for such development, always with a careful eye on the preservation of the received liturgical tradition handed down from century to century. In this way, continuity of belief and liturgical practice is ensured. As Cardinal Ratzinger wrote at the time, the principle of organic development ensures that in the Mass, “only respect for the Liturgy’s fundamental unspontaneity and pre-existing identity can give us what we hope for: the feast in which the great reality comes to us that we ourselves do not manufacture , but receive as a gift. Organic de...

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!?

Update on Bishop Cordileone Bishoping!

I have a copy of the Bishop's response to San Fran Nan Pelosi's warning to The Archbishop: THE ARCHDIOCESE OF SAN FRANCISCO OFFICE OF THE ARCHBISHOP ONE PETER YORKE WAY, SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94109-6602 (415) 614-5500 June 16, 2014 California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom Gabriel Blau, Executive Director, Family California State Senator Mark Leno Equality Council California Assemblymember Tom Ammiano Fr. Roy Bourgeois, Founder School of California Assemblymember Rich Gordon the Americas Watch San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), San Francisco Treasurer Jose Cisneros Gary Buseck, Interim Executive Director San Francisco Supervisor David Campos Rea Carey, Executive Director, National Gay and San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener Lesbian Task Force Dr. Michael J. Adee, Director, Global Faith and Faith Cheltenham, President, BINET USA Justice Project, Horizons Foundations, Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director, New San Fr...

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 ...

NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST: Time for Weeping

EPISTLE (I Cor. 10. 6-13.) Brethren, Let us not covet evil things, as they also coveted. Neither become ye idolaters, as some of them: as it is written: The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed fornication, and there fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted, and perished by the serpents. Neither do you murmur, as some of them murmured, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them in figure, and they are written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall. Let no temptation take hold on you, but such as is human: and God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able but will make also with temptation issue that you may be able to bear it. Can we sin by thought and desire? Yes, if we de...

Bishops Bishoping!

As the nation’s courts increasingly strike down popularly-supported state bans on marriage between men who have sex with men, and women who have sex with women, bishops increasingly are “bishoping”, to coin a term I use often in my book; i.e., they are at long last defending the faith against the onslaught always sure to come from the secular culture. Diocesan Catholic schools in Cincinnati and Oakland, Calif., are weathering criticism for contracts that require teachers not only to witness to the faith in the classroom, but also in how they live their lives in the public square. Condemnation of Catholic-school contracts that ask teachers to not controvert the Church in public have received dramatized coverage from the secular media in California and Ohio, where a slight number of teachers are opposing the contractual language. A a teacher in a Catholic school it is heartening to see the dioceses in question standing their ground, emphasizing the dynamic role teachers ...

Search This Blog