The 21st Century Must Come Into the Church

Continued from September 14....

Through the Church’s teachings, God has also revealed his truth on how humanity can live happily. What is so little understood by Catholics and Christians is that doctrinal revelations that come through the Church come out of God’s very Self. They are not tied to culturally constructed norms! Read Vatican II’s Dei Verbum: “by divine revelation God wished to manifest and communicate both himself and the eternal decrees of his will concerning the salvation of humankind.” Our Lord’s Church derives its basic vision not from mere human speculation, which would be tentative and uncertain, but from God’s own testimony—from a historically given divine revelation. Thus Catholics believe that just as God himself is immutable, so, too, are His teachings as revealed through the Church because they come from him.

As I discuss in my book, although the Church does not change its central teachings, we do see the theological principle of “development” that Blessed John Henry Newman discussed in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine: “the bodily structure of a grown man is not merely that of a magnified boy; he differs from what he was in his make and proportions; still manhood is the perfection of boyhood, adding something of its own, yet keeping what it finds.” Here a caution: to say the Church “develops,” is not to say the Church “changes.” What is true about God’s teachings revealed through the Church 2,000 years ago is just as true in the twenty-first century.

We can now see why modern secularists are so contemptuous and spiteful toward the Body of Christ, the Catholic Church. They do not understand Her fundamental assumptions, and so utter foolish questions such as, “When will the Catholic Church come into the twenty-first century? Foolish because this question itself is permeated with a postulation about progress toward perfection that does not make sense to the Catholic worldview. The more appropriate question? What has God revealed to us about what it means to live a healthy life, and how do we best live that life? The answer, according to Catholicism, is that we should conform our lives to those timeless truths revealed through the Church in order to enter into a rightly ordered (not disordered) relationship with God.

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Neomodernism vs. Religious Life (conclusion)

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Adult happiness declines, while teen contentment grows - Try Jesus Christ!

Adult happiness declines, while teen contentment grows - TODAY.com

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'

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 ...

Libido V

I think it helpful that, as I discuss in chapter 3 of my book that recent events corroborate Pope Paul VI's prophecy in Humanae Vitae as evidenced by this story...

Rolling Stone gathers Ross

Halfway through reading Ross Douthat's Bad Religion , I wish to warn Catholic "progressives" that liberal Protestantism gives us a for-taste of what the Holy Spirit will always guard Christ's Church against- read it in the Times here. See also Ross' blog at right.

Recent contest win for Missions Category!

The conversion of my revised Book Cover is complete! It is now orderable and appears on the following: Amazon.com-Kindle Barnes & Noble - Nook Apple iBooks

Post-Obergefell: Dutch woman to marry dog after cat-husband dies

Years go, when support for "same-sex marriage was 12% nationally, I would argue to my classes that it would never catch hold with a majority of the American people, as such a redefinition of marriage would not preclude one from marrying anyone one wanted- I used the example of marrying my pet turtles. No one took me seriously, though I wasnot far off the mark in this prediction, as evidenced in Dutch woman to marry dog after cat-husband dies - NY Daily News : 'via Blog this'

Because Rope Sales are up...

In light (or dark?) of the Fifty Shades of Grey bewilderment, I think it time catechesis on the dignity of women be emphasized every chance one gets. Alexandra Richards reminds us that women are a threat to his mission of the destruction of souls. But not if they are his property. The following warrants prayerful thought : To Women: Be What God Made You You don’t need to read Genesis to see that God created men and He created women, but have you ever asked yourself why he created you a woman and not a man? We live in a time where gender is as interchangeable as ketchup and mustard, where men dress up as women and women dress up as men. We are having an identity crisis, and it’s time to find out why God created you the way He did. God created your feminine heart to give and to receive true love. Yet, why is your heart is daily torn apart by a culture that is blinded to your indispensable dignity? We need only look at how the contraceptive industry n...

Libido Redux: Who is to Blame for the Evil of Pornography?

Donny Pauling has rightly observed: "....our enemy in the fight against porn is not the pornographers who produce it, or the people who participate in creating it. As St. Paul states in his letter to the Ephesians, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, powers, forces of darkness, and spiritual forces of evil in the spiritual realm. Trying to fight porn by going after pornographers is like trying to treat one symptom of a disease rather than finding its cure. Pornography has a cause, rooted in the condition of our own hearts. To fight it, we must start with ourselves, being willing to face the part we play. We must let our hearts be changed."

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