On Sole Fide, Sola Gratia, Sola Scriptura

Haven't been blogging for awhile, as I am still recovering from a bout with my annual attack of bronchitis.... In this day and age of half-truths, spin-meistering, and dis-ingenuousness, I am always heartened by intellectual honesty, hence, I am glad to pass on this article in which a separated brother recounts how relying on Scripture alone for one's life as a disciple is never enough. The debate on the necessary means of salvation (the bible, faith, grace) is not, as it often seems between Protestants and Catholics, an "either-or" matter, but a "both-and...."

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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'

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

The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God

In my first Chapter I discuss at length a phenomenon which the Holy Father in a recent audience recalled like it was yesterday: the true and false Second Vatican Councils: "I would now like to add another point: there was the Council of the fathers - the true Council - but there was also the Council of the media. It was almost a Council unto itself, and the world perceived the Council through these, through the media. "Therefore the Council that immediately and efficiently arrived to the people was that of the media, not that of the fathers. And while the Council of the fathers was realized within the faith, and was a Council of the faith that seeks 'intellectus,' that seeks to understand itself and seeks to understand the signs of God at that moment, that seeks to respond to the challenge of God at that moment and to find in the word of God the word for today and tomorrow, while the whole Council - as I have said - was moving within the faith, as ''

Do Not Be Ashamed

T he demeaning and of Pope Benedict is quickening in combination with the growing exaltation of Pope Francis in the secular world and among the "progressive" dissidents within the Church. Thus I believe a little review of his Pontificate is in order, as the signs of the times required him to shoulder a heavy cross and suffer a quiet type of crucifixion due to his exceptional faith and courageous writings and actions. Pope Benedict took strong, long overdue and very necessary actions against moral corruption within the clergy, the religious orders and within Catholic aid agencies. He appointed many bishops faithful to the true Vatican II, and removed many who were a cause of scandal to the Church. He took actions on the liturgy and other issues that were not popular, but which he saw as essential to preserving Catholicism and Christian culture much as laid down in his The Spirit of the Liturgy. The full story of his papacy remains to be told. “And blessed is he who

LIBIDO REDUX: Sex and the Single College Girl

CONGRATS TO THIS CO-ED WHO REVEALS THE TRUTH ABOUT THE CURRENT ENVIRONMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION: Sex on campus sucks. I wish I’d never done it. But when I first arrived at my medium-size New England college with a youthful outlook and a spring in my step, I thought quite differently. I didn’t arrive on campus looking to engage in a crash course of Bedroom 101, but it soon became clear that sex and hookups were happening all around me. Despite my M.O. to generally be shy and keep to myself, I felt pressured to fit in. And I wondered what all the fuss was about. Everyone seemed to be having a blast exercising their sexual freedoms, and I was on board with the idea that the sexual revolution put women in the driver’s seat. I had just turned 18, and my life was ahead of me. What better time than now to experiment? What could go wrong? Now, only a couple years later, I see things differently. I look back on my college sexual experience, and I can see how, overall, it influenced me

An "eminently logical" Strategy! (From: The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God)

In psychoanalytic thought, libido (from the Latin: desire, lust ) is the psychic and emotional energy associated with man’s instinctual biological drives (sexual desire). Though theoretically held in check by the ego and super-ego, in Freudian thought libido understands man as a sexual animal whose happiness derives from the unrestrained libido . The virtue of chastity in Freudian logic could only end in illness and unhappiness. Such thinking became normative in the United States in the 1960s, and it was not long before “the greatest of natural mysteries,” the marriage act, was reduced to an openly discussable “fun activity.” Paul VI offered libido as one way Satan, the “malign, clever seducer” undermines man’s sexual morality with his “sophistry.” The Devil’s strategy here, as the Pope cautioned, is “eminently logical.” He approaches man with what amounts to a false reason in his mind, which, if dwelled on, can influence the will by rousing him to do something evil which see

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 merits, but ar

Here We Go Again...

From The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God: Cardinal Wojtyla had warned in preaching the papal retreat in 1976 of “rebellion,” i.e., the apostasy of the present age, the source for the present crisis of faith facing the Church. I believe it is consistent with Church teaching on spiritual warfare to see in St. Paul’s “son of perdition” one who would lead humanity away from the Church toward a humanist, man-centered world-view claiming the right of authorship of the moral law. This also explains why those who dissent from Church doctrine and the authority of the magisterium claim an amorphous “spirit of Vatican II” (an “anti-word?”) as their authority for what amounts to unbelief. In our own time the reader perhaps has experienced the war for the soul of men waged between the authentic Christian humanism of the Gospel, which permeates the teaching of John Paul the Great, and the “new humanism” which violates the rights of God as true Author of all that is good. This "Spi

My Intended Audience

I have written for those Catholics born and perhaps catechized before Vatican II or immediately thereafter who as yet are unaware of the true teaching of the Council. It should not surprise the reader that there are Catholics whose lifestyles do not differentiate them all that much from those who are not Catholic and/or Christian. Moreover, many Catholics of the “baby-boom” generation are alienated from the Church all together because their only exposure has been to a superficial, cultural Catholicism, impotent in the face of an American culture increasingly without faith. Conversely, many others have left the Church – hungrier, as they say, for a more “biblically-based church.” The book is also intended for young people of the “JP II” generation of Catholics, born long after the council but perhaps not fully aware of the turmoil spawned by dissent in the Church which, though on the wane, is still with us today. These young people, especially those in authentically Catholic college

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