On Prideful, Utopian Thought

(Continued from September 13)
The Church believes that we can change. She teachs that all sacraments, but most importantly the Eucharist, can and do change our lives. This belief in the power of the Eucharist is manifest in Thomas Merton, the great twentieth-century Catholic mystic: “the grace of the Eucharist is not confined to the moments of thanksgiving after Mass and communion, but reaches out into our whole day and into all the affairs of our life, in order to sanctify and transform them in Christ.” Change, conversion through the Eucharist does not happen overnight. But the Church believes at her core that Her sacramental life, over time, leads us towards holiness, the call of Vatican II.

At the same time, we as Catholics scrap the idea that as a society we will ever arrive at a Morean utopia. To cite only one example, Jesus said: “you always will have the poor with you” (Mark 14:7). Pope Paul VI, about whom I wrote my book, stated in his 1971 encyclical Octogesima Adveniens, that “the appeal to a utopia is often a convenient excuse for those who wish to escape from concrete tasks in order to take refuge in an imaginary world.” America may progress technologically, medically, and scientifically, and, individually, we may (or may not) choose to make progress through the sacraments; however, this growth will never convert into heaven on earth.

The Catholic Church, in contrast to the secular position discussed above about secular law, has taught from the beginning that Church doctrines are tied to God’s revelation of Himself, not cultural norms, though She has been cautious about constructing too many official statements about God (how can one say anything final about He-Who-Transcends-Our-Finite-Intellectual-Capacities?) God is: eternal (Psalm 90:2), omnipotent (Matthew 19:26), omniscient (I John 3:20), omnipresent (Psalm 139:7), and, most importantly for our contemporaries to understand, immutable (Malachi 3:6). Although beyond human intellectual abilities, God has not remained far distant from his creation, as asserted the Enlightenment Deists. Reasonably, God has reveals Himself to his creatures. Dei Verbum, one of the most important documents from Vatican II, has listed the many ways that God has revealed himself to us and how this revelation has been communicated down through the centuries: through the created world, the prophets, the Apostles, bishops, sacred Tradition, sacred Scripture, the magisterium, and Christ Himself. Pridefully we oten make the mistake of pretending to really know God's stane on cultural matters merely from our own finite intellects, a temptation which Adam and Eve first succumbed to.... (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'

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...

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...

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...

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!

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!?

Tolkein, Paul VI, and the Devil

In 1941, Tolkien wrote a masterful letter to his son Michael, dealing with marriage and the realities of human sexuality. The letter reflects Tolkien's Christian worldview and his deep love for his sons, and at the same time, also acknowledges the powerful dangers inherent in unbridled sexuality. From the letter: This is a fallen world…. the dislocation of sex-instinct is one of the chief symptoms of the Fall. The world has been 'going to the bad' all down the ages. The various social forms shift, and each new mode has its special dangers: but the 'hard spirit of concupiscence' has walked down every street, and sat leering in every house, since Adam fell….The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favorite subject. He is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, as through baser or more animal ones. Tolkien advised his young son that the sexual fantasies of the 20th century were demonic lies, intended to ensnare u...

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