Because he is a Jesuit! As one who has written on spiritual warfare in the history of the Catholic Church, it is refreshing to have as Pope one so attuned to preset day realities!

Dean Bailey and Family I have just read an interview with a man who is being healed of a same-sex orientation, which he describes as an addiction. He has authored a book , much of which is on his website .  He speaks publicly about his struggle with homosexuality, telling audiences that homosexuality is a “sexual addiction and dependency,” not a condition to be socially accepted and celebrated. “It is merely one of the many evidences of the broken, spiritual condition of our human race,” he tells people. Having written extensively on how Paul VI, recently beatified, teaches that the Devil uses human libido as a way to lead souls from the truth about human sexuality, taught by Our Lord though His Church, I was glad to hear Dean Bailey state the following: "Spiritually speaking, however, I believe that Satan is the ultimate deceptive force and mastermind behind not just the marriage aspect of their agenda, but also behind the entire distortion that somehow managed to turn a dy...

Joseph Sciambra: How Our Lord Jesus Christ Saved Me From Homosexuality, Pornography, and the Occult: Vatican Family Synod Statement on Homosexuality from the Perspective of a Former Gay Man : 'via Blog this'

P ope Paul VI will be beatified Sunday at the Vatican. While he is perhaps best known for his decisive 1968 encyclical on the regulation of birth,  Humanae Vitae , he will also be remembered as a man of extraordinary gifts who was burdened by the tumult the Church faced during his 15-year papacy. His election as Pope Paul VI in 1963 required of him to bring the Second Vatican Council to a conclusion and oversee its implementation. Having taken the name Paul to signify the Church’s mission to evangelize the whole world, he made nine overseas journeys, beginning with the Holy Land. Unhappily his pontificate was marked by a series of crises. Both heterodox and traditionalist Catholics considered him feeble and vacillating, though for differing reasons, and he was tormented to the point of once saying that “the smoke of Satan” had entered the Church. It was this phrase which caught my attention to the point of research for a book on the  Church in the U.S.  si...

A principle used in Catholic moral and pastoral theology of which many Catholics have never even heard of, the “law of gradualness,” has gone viral this week emanating from the Synod on the Family. The law is a principle by which people should be heartened to grow closer to God and his plan for us gradually, rather than hoping to go from an initial conversion to holiness in a single step. We see this in Sacred Scripture in 1 Cor. 3:1-3 , 2 Cor. 10:6 , and Heb. 5:12-14 . Has the idea of the law of gradualness been abused? Looking at its invocation of late, one sees that it is prone to abuse. For example, at the Synod of Bishops on the Family in 1980, bishops called for an interpretation of this law that would permit contracepting married couples to receive absolution and Holy Communion on condition of a firm purpose to gradually stop contracepting. St. John Paul II’s rejected it in his apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio , rejected this proposal: [Married people] cannot ...

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 ...

On these pages I have written that Pope Francis labels the Gender Identity Movement "demonic."  Here they go again.... LEFTIST GENDER IDENTITY GONE WILD: Nebraska School District Instructs Teachers To Stop Calling Students "Girls and Boys" And Call Them "Purple Penguins" Instead... : 'via Blog this'

So much for "TOLERANCE"  Read  Real Victims of the Gay Bullyboys - Crisis Magazine : 'via Blog this'

In light of recent Supreme Court dalliance, this is moving and important reading bearing thoughtful consideration as the Synod on the FAMILY continues...  Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children's View - Crisis Magazine : 'via Blog this'

University launches first-ever online abortion course : 'via Blog this'

Cardinal Burke – It is scandal to present homosexual uncle’s relationship to kids - YouTube : 'via Blog this'

I Stand With Marian High In Being Faithful to Its Catholic Beliefs and Mission - The Petition Site : 'via Blog this'

I just ran across an Andrew Sullivan op-ed in The Dish . What piqued my interest was the following: (My comments in red). And it comes down to this: does it seem Christian to you to fire people for marrying someone or for having a baby?"   For one who becomes pregnant by the method(s) employed in "same-sex marriages," she would not be being terminated  solely for "having a baby."  Catholic teaching prohibits in vitro fertilization, maintaining that a child has the right to be conceived in the marital embrace of his parents. Human sexuality has two components, the unitive and procreative; IVF separates these components and makes the procreative its only goal. Pope Paul VI said that there is an “inseparable connection, willed by God, and unable to be broken by man on his own initiative, between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative meaning.”   IVF makes the child a commodity produced in a laboratory, and...

WOULD Pope Francis Sign the New Catholic Teacher Contract? ”  Frank Bruni of the Times has noted this question  posted on a dozen billboards around Cincinnati recently, presumably because of the Diaz case . This case and others, and the way the involved institutions handle them, are interpreted by Mr. Bruni as the Church vacillating  between a message of greater tolerance and the traditional practice of intolerance, and  "between the direction in which the Catholic Church needs to move and the matters of sexual morality on which it keeps getting stuck."  Who determines the direction in which the Catholic Church needs to move? The New York Times Editorial page? No, it's founder, Jesus Christ, who has already, through his life, teaching, passion, death and resurrection determined the direction His Church is moving and will continue to move, in spite of all attempt by the gates of hell to prevail against her. Bruni opines, " T...

On Monday’s feast of the archangels, Pope Francis spoke of the ongoing battle between the devil and mankind, encouraging attendees to pray to the angels, who have been charged to defend us. “He presents things as if they were good, but his intention is destruction. And the angels defend us,” the Holy Father told those gathered for his Sept. 29 Mass in the Vatican’s Saint Martha residence. Francis began by pointing to the day’s readings, taken from Daniel Chapter 7, in which the prophet has a vision of God the Father on a throne of fire giving Jesus dominion over the world, and Revelation Chapter 12, which recounts the battle in which Satan, as a large dragon, is cast out of heaven by St. Michael. Noting how these are strong images portraying “the great dragon, the ancient serpent,” who “seduces all of inhabited earth,” the Pope also drew attention to Jesus’ words to the prophet Nathanael in the day’s Gospel from John, when he tells him: “You will see heaven opened and the ange...

A Catholic theologian once said that the Church is not infallible and that it has changed its doctrines. Perhaps he felt Jesus' words in Matthew 18:18-19 ("Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted them by my heavenly Father") mean that the Church can change its doctrines as times change. No, the Church cannot change its doctrines no matter how desperately some theologians may want it to or how loudly in the social media they claim it can. The doctrines of the Catholic Church are the deposit of faith ·         revealed by Jesus Christ, ·         taught by the apostles, ·         and handed down in their entirety by the apostles to their successors. Since revealed truth cannot change, ...

“Morality clauses” have been cropping up across the country, including in Cincinnati, where the New York Times reported that critics of the new Archdiocese rules there have put up billboards this spring asking, “Would Pope Francis Sign the New Catholic Teacher Contract?” The contract there  specifically bans “public support of positions contrary to Roman Catholic teaching” that include same-sex marriage unions, assisted suicide, abortions, as a few examples.   Answer: Yes, the Holy Father would sign the contract.

Is it possible that Church leaders and Catholic institutions in the U.S. are assisting the furtherance of central tenets of the secularist political and cultural plot? Have you ever read of a prominent Catholic who contends that the Bible instructs us not to judge people ? How often have you heard this phrase in the social media? I think there is the phenomena of an unsuspecting acceptance in some Catholic circles of a secularist understanding of important cultural issues. If a Catholic supports the notion that men who have sex with men, or women who have sex with women “come out,” he or she assists the Gay agenda in achieving its dream of getting an imprimatur from society for grave sin. Many Catholics, woefully ignorant of Catholic moral teaching, by default seem to be accepting of secularist identity politics and the groundless idea that same-sex attraction is innate, and the defining characteristic for those aggrieved by it. Often such Catholics cite the homosexual pries...