On the Gender Identity Phenomenon

“When will the Catholic Church come into the twenty-first century?” is a sentiment often expressed in the media these days, suggestive of a set of issues that are known to Christians: same-sex “marriage,” contraception, and divorce (to name only a few). Because the teachings of the Church on these subjects are at odds with the increasingly secular culture, non-Catholics—and even many Catholics—are left frustrated, even angry as to why the Church doesn’t finally come to the same conclusions as does the secular worldview.

Historically, since the Enlightenment western secular culture has presumed (erroneously) that we are progressing slowly toward a perfected humanity. They believe that, given enough time, willpower, money, technological advancements, and scientific breakthroughs, it is believed that we will be able to dig our way out of our brutal past pockmarked by wars, poverty, disease, and social injustice to arrive at a just society.

Another presumption has to do with modernity’s understanding of secular laws. The idea that stature laws are dictated by natural law (which had been the standard belief for centuries) is mostly dismissed today. Natural law is the truth that an intelligible and consistent order exists independently of human opinion or construction, and that this order is a source of moral restriction and command for human beings. Since the 1960s, the dependence of secular law on natural law has increasingly been replaced by the idea that there is no independent, objective moral order; in other words, moral and immoral are categories that are subjectively and culturally constructed.

In sum, a secular worldview believes that the progress of the human person over the centuries has led to changing cultural norms that must become codified in statute law. As cultural norms change, so, too, our laws do and must change. To cite the most media-obsessed example, it is argued that our society has progressed over the centuries to come to understand that relationships between people of the same gender are morally acceptable, and therefore our laws should be changed to allow homosexual marriage.

In the fifth century the Church addressed similar claims concerning the perfectibility of man. Sts. Augustine and Jerome fought a theological battle with Pelagianism. Pelagians rejected the notion of the sinfulness of humanity, embracing the view that we have an unconstrained free will. Because they rejected the idea of original sin (as would the Enlightenment philosopes), the Pelagians concluded that one could arrive at a perfected state of sinlessness. This position was ultimately condemned by the Church because of its erroneous, overly optimistic understanding of the human person.

Thus far, the reader must be wondering: if the Church rejects the idea of inevitable progress towards perfection, are we just terrible sinners who cannot make any progress in this life at all? Catholic docrine makes two claims simultaneously: yes, we can change, and no, we cannot change. (To be continued....)

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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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