Summer Reading (as the Summer is NOT almost over)

Here are some of my recommendations for books on marriage, sex, and family for those who would spend serious time thinking deeply about what marriage is, how we came to the point of its overthrow, and what the future might hold. Most available in e-editions.

Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George. What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense. Encounter Books, 2012.

Being a human affair, marriage is a natural entity before it’s a religious matter. The authors make a purely rational, non-religious argument for natural marriage grounded in reason and history as a comprehensive union of will and body ordered to procreation and the broad sharing of life, involving permanent and exclusive commitment.

Pope Paul VI, On Human Life: Humanae Vitae. Ignatius Press, 2014

Ignatius Press presents Fr. Marc A. Caligari’s 1998 translation of Paul VI’s controverted encyclical with Mary Eberstadt’s fine essay “The Vindication of Humanae Vitae” serving as a forward. James Hitchcock provides “A Historical Afterword” and former atheist turned Catholic-blogger-speaker-apologist Jennifer Fulwiler provides a postscript entitled “We’re Finally Ready for Humanae Vitae”. The additional material makes the volume most useful for discussion and study.

Mary Eberstadt, Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution. Ignatius Press, 2013.

Eberstadt, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, provides us with a collection of essays worked into a coherent book dealing with the dynamics of technological and social change on sexuality and their effects on men, women, children, and young adults.

• Anthony Esolen, Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity. Saint Benedict Press, 2014.

Many people assume same-sex marriage affects no one outside of those who choose to enter such legal unions. Esolen, professor of literature and translator of Dante, shows how same-sex marriage will change society and culture on a deep level by its effects on things such as friendship, freedom, the relationship between the sexes, and children.

• Robert R. Reilly, Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior is Changing Everything. Ignatius Press, 2014.

Against those who would assert that acceptance of the gay agenda is no big deal, Reilly demonstrates not only that the acceptance of homosexuality is changing human society at a fundamental level but also through copious quotes that radical change to the fabric of human existence has been gay activists’ desired endgame.

Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom. Regnery, 2015.

Anderson, a Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has done more to defend natural marriage in the public realm than any other figure. After Obergefell, he provides us with a road map for living with—and resisting—its consequences.

Enjoy!

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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.

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:

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!?

Bishops Bishoping!

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 ...

LEFTIST GENDER IDENTITY GONE WILD: Nebraska School District Instructs Teachers To Stop Calling Students "Girls and Boys" And Call Them "Purple Penguins" Instead...

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'

From the WAPO Compost

Benedict XVI once wrote on the Parable of the Sower and the Seed: “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in his heart; this is what was sown along the path.” Our Lord reminds us here that His teaching on the Kingdom of God in its fullness remains fruitless for those who see the Kingdom as merely an earthly kingdom, having rejected its supernatural dimension. This seed bears no fruit, and its fate is the spiritual fate of the hearer. What the Sisters of Notre Dame DeNamur taught me in my formative years was that there was more to my existence than things temporal, challenging me to work toward holiness and the salvation of my soul Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam that I might enjoy happiness with Him forever. Here is the lastest example of furuitlessness: Outlook Perspective Evangelicals and Catholics made their peace. Catholics are paying the price. Some have begun to realize they tra...

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...

Read My First Chapter for Free!

St. Michael the Archangel Kindle allows one to share quotes from books on Facebook. Here is an entire chapter...

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...

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