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 Since the 1960s, the dependence of secular law on natural law has increasingly been replaced by the idea that there is no independent, objective moral order; in other words, moral and immoral are categories that are subjectively and culturally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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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.

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!

I view of the Federal Disctict Judge's ruling on same-sex "marriage" in Michigan, and the Circuit Court's stay : Marriage is and can only ever be a unique relationship solely between one man and one woman, regardless of the decision of a judge or future electoral vote. Nature itself, not society, religion or government, created marriage. Nature, the very essence of humanity as understood through historical experience and reason, is the arbiter of marriage, and we uphold this truth for the sake of the common good. The biological realities of male and female and the complementarity they each bring to marriage uniquely allows for the procreation of children. Every child has the right to both a mother and a father and, indeed, every child does have lineage to both. We recognize not every child has the opportunity to grow in this environment, and we pray for those single mothers and fathers who labor each day to care for their children at times amid great challe...

The 21st Century Must Come Into the Church

Continued from September 14.... T hrough 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 “devel...

What the F?

A certain person very dear to me watches too much of the Soprano reruns, and thus I too get caught up in it (to my shame--this HBO show and reality TV shows in general will make adjectival use of the F-bomb routine if we do not repent....) Thus it piqued my interest to run across this video of the Pope, who in the past has said, "Who am I to judge?" This video is heartening, for though we are not allowed to judge people, we are allowed to, even have a responsibility to, judge behavior . Nice going, Holiness!

Pope Francis blasts “gender” ideology, quotes Benedict XVI: “this is the age of sin against the Creator!”

Here is an excerpt. From Vatican Insider : “In Europe, America, Latin America, Africa and some Asian countries we are seeing some real ideological colonisations,” he repeated. “And one of these, I’m going to say it outright, is gender ”: “Today, children, children! are told at school that they can choose their sex. Why are they taught this? Because the books are supplied by the people and institutions that give you the money. These are the ideological colonisations backed also by countries that wield a great deal of influence. And this is terrible. Speaking with Benedict XVI ,” he said, “who is well and lucid, he told me: ‘ Holiness, this is the age of sin against the Creator! ’ He is intelligent! God created man and woman; God made the world like this, like this, like this… and we are doing the exact opposite. ” Watch video:

What God Hath Joined Together...

A recent 2016 study of suicide risk from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a 24% increase in suicides in the United States over the 15-year period between 1999 and 2014, including a tripling of the suicide rate for females 10-14, this in a culture that posits that all family structures are the same. Research on the children of divorce provides overwhelming evidence to disprove the myth that divorce does not harm children. In fact, the divorce epidemic has contributed to the serious and growing psychopathology in American youth. One example is the 2010 study of American adolescent psychopathology published in 2010: 49 percent of the 10,000 teenagers studied met the criteria for one psychiatric disorder and 40 percent met the criteria for two disorders. Research by Penn State sociologist Paul Amato (2005) on the long-term damage to children from divorce demonstrated that, if the United States enjoyed the same level of famil...

Marquette: Jesuit But not Catholic

In the fall of 2014, a graduate student instructor of a philosophy course , Cheryl Abbate told a student at Marquette University, which claims to continue “the tradition of Catholic, Jesuit education” who secretly recorded the exchange, that his defense of man-woman marriage was an unacceptable topic in her ethics class and compared his views to racism. Abate said, "You can have whatever opinions you want but I can tell you right now , in this class homophobic comments, racist comments, and sexist comments will not be tolerated." And then she told the student he should drop the class. Now, for Marquette to be truly Catholic, a defense of a Cathodic understanding of marriage must not only be tolerated, but promulgated. Marquette Professor McAdams blogged on the incident and charged the teaching assistant with "using a tactic typical among liberals now. Opinions with which they disagree are not merely wrong, and are not to be argued against on their merit...

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!?

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...

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