I have posted here  and here   on the hook-up culture, but am unlikely to surpass Maloney's analysis, printed here in its entirety. This makes for a reality check for parents excited about sending their offspring off to university and for anyone concerned about the real war on women (and men). The best defense for serious Catholics?  Right Here . JUNE 14, 2016 What the Hook-up Culture Has Done to Women ANNE MALONEY A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. ∼   Henry David Thoreau,  Walden A few months ago,  a young woman at Stanford University was raped by a virtual stranger, and her rapist received a ridiculously light sentence. The story grabbed headlines everywhere, and caused a firestorm on social media. This “dumpster rape” is being blared about eve...

Of late Papa Bergoglio has uttered   ambiguous sayings  on the Church’s need to apologize to homosexuals for the manner in which she has treated them. Judging from the popular brouhaha in the social media, perhaps there is  confusion in people’s thinking between homo-philia , chaste friendship, and  homo-eros , people who desire sex with people of the same sex We all know of the etymology from which these phrases derive. In the Greek there are four words for “love:” agape , pure unselfish love,  philia , the love of friendship, especially between brothers,  storge , affection love, a deep bond usually borne of spending a long time with another and, of course, the one most familiar,  eros,  which is passionate, sexual love, seeking pleasure from the other. In the Catholic view, as Pope Emeritus Benedict wrote in   Deus Caritas Est , all loves must be included under  agape , which is the term Christ uses, and the Church has adop...

My response to today's Supreme court abomination in  Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt  i s to ask the deceased Obi Wan, a  Catholic  to pray for the U.S. Abortion and Obi Wan Kenobi January 21, 2015  by  Fr. Dwight Longenecker In 1914 Agnes Cuff, a flighty and unstable young woman with few prospects and little money found herself pregnant. The father didn’t want to be involved. She was alone, shamed, poor and pregnant. Today she would be encouraged to get herself to an abortion clinic and end the unwanted pregnancy. Instead a little boy was born. English actor  Alec Guinness, most famous for his role as Obi Wan Kenobi in  Star Wars  was Agnes Cuff’s only child.  On his birth certificate he is named “Alec Guinness” but those were only his first names. The place for the child’s last name is blank. So is the column where the father’s name is listed. It has never been confirmed who Guinness’ father w...

Who smiles like this at the moment of death? Sister Cecilia, of the Carmel of Santa Fe in Argentina, witnessed to her love for Christ in her struggle with lung cancer Aleteia June 25, 2016 Facebook   4k   12 Death is a tragedy for mortal man, and yet with faith in eternity and anticipation of the embrace of our heavenly Father, death becomes radiant. We share today the news of the death of Sister Cecilia, a Carmelite of Santa Fe in Argentina, who suffered from lung cancer. She astonished those who surrounded her in her agony, as her face was transformed by a tender smile as she closed her eyes to this world. As you can see in the photograph, she looks like a lover who has arrived to the encounter she has long been yearning for. The Carmel of Santa Fe announced the death of Sister Cecilia to their brothers and sisters and friends of the Carmel, with a brief, but profound, note. Dear brothers, sisters and friends: Jesus!  Just...

I s the Holy Father being "sifted like wheat" of late? I ask this because he has made some interesting remarks of late, such as: Pastors should not be “putting our noses into the moral life of other people.” Isn't there the requirement that confessors and a pastors priests have some sense of the moral life of those to whom they minister?  S econdly,  during a question-and-answer session , Francis spoke of a “pastoral cruelty,” such as priests who refuse to baptize the children of young single mothers. “They’re animals,” he said . Most priests are very generous in extending baptism to infants, realizing that they are not responsible for the sins or shortcomings of their parents. Those who do, at times, delay baptism do so for other reasons, such as little evidence for a well-founded hope that the child will be raised in the faith. There  are  some prudential judgments to be made and pastors are required to make them (see canon 868).  ...

Mr. Reno never fails to go beyond the horse-race journalists' coverage of things that matter, as here: Terrorism Is Not Hate | R. R. Reno | First Things : "The violence he will commit is properly called terrorism. It is motivated by a political judgment, and committed by reactionary non-state actors in an asymmetric warfare with military powers. It is fundamentally different from incidents in which the perpetrator is deranged by some strong emotion—“hate”—as were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold...."

Sadly, the works of St. John Paul II on marriage, the family and sexuality, were basically ignored at the Synod on the Family . His Apostolic Exhortation,   The Role of the Christian Family in theModern World ,   has been described as the Magna Carta of the Church’s understanding of marriage and family in our time. In response to the serious consequences of divorce, and in light of the New Evangelization, let Catholic bloggers be more loyal to young people and innocent, as well as confused, spouses, and link St. John Paul II’s clear and luminous thinking about the sacrament of marriage as regards remaining faithful to one’s marriage and children while attempting to resolve for at least several years the conflicts in each spouse that contribute to marital difficulties.  I, as many have, witnessed firsthand the fact that those who initiate divorce have never faced their own inner emotional conflicts, especially sadness, that they unconsciously brought into the marri...

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...

Where do we belong? An ex-gay Catholic view of the Orlando Massacre  By Joseph Sciambra When I walked into the Castro District of San Francisco in 1988, I could not have picked a worse time in history to come-out as a “gay” man. It was the height of the AIDS crisis. That year alone, over 4,800, mostly “gay” men, died of AIDS in the US. The following year, the number of deaths would triple. Far into the next decade, my seemingly exuberant life became constantly interrupted as I was forced to stand by when one after another beautiful and once boundlessly hopeful young man fell silently into the grave. Some of these dead boys I knew well, others were but among the countless shadows that brushed against me in the dimly-lit nightclubs; a few, I could hardly remember, for they existed merely as a collected catalogue of the near-faceless men I had spent a few moments with. They were those I would sometimes anonymously huddle up next to. Acts of shared mutual desperation had brough...