Skip to main content

On the Smoke of Modernism

AS is well known to all but those who choose not to see, the broken or irregular home has gone from being the exception to the rule. 

The family is the building block upon which all secular and Christian civilization is built. Marriage is a divine and natural institution perfectly portrayed by Christ the bridegroom and His Church, the bride. Though the world has been trying to change both, we find ourselves with a gap between how the world sees family and marriage and what the Church knows about them.

The Fourteenth General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops took place from October 4 to October 25, 2015, in Vatican City. While it is inspiring that the Church fathers are attempting to develop pastoral solutions to the overwhelming problems we face as a global society concerning marriage and family, it is rewarding to know the roots of the problems that we face. If we untangle the modernism on both topics we will discover that the problem lies in the contraceptive mindset.

As I discuss in The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God, after successfully work of separating rights from duties by the spirit of rebellion, Satan’s most profound work was to separate the marital act from its primary ends of procreation and unity. It is a diabolical inversion of reality that the third end of the marital act, that of the pleasure that flows from the marital act, is claimed by modern man to be the “new” primary end. This makes God’s primary end of procreation an inhibition to seekers of the new false primary end, and therefore something to be eliminated by technique or technology. The modern world has become obsessed with that task.

My argument in the book is that Paul VI was prophetic in asserting that contraception is at the root of family crises in the modern age, and this teaching has been obscured by the modern philosophy flowing from the sexual revolution. In 1968, when he published his encyclical Humanae Vitae, the world was expecting a change in Church teaching, much like many are expecting changes in Church teaching from the Synod. The Church’s teaching on contraception is absolute, because the law against it is divine and natural. It is demonstrated from the beginning, through the episode of Onan (Genesis 38:8-10) through the Apostle’s first catechism (the Didache), and re-stated in every catechism put forth by the Church. 

To be continued….


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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'

Rolling Stone gathers Ross

Halfway through reading Ross Douthat's Bad Religion , I wish to warn Catholic "progressives" that liberal Protestantism gives us a for-taste of what the Holy Spirit will always guard Christ's Church against- read it in the Times here.  See also Ross' blog at right.

Neomodernism vs. Religious Life (conclusion)

That’s a credit to him, that he at least had pangs of conscience; whereas these other orders, like the Jesuits, even when they saw that the IHMs were almost extinct, neverthe­less they invited the same team in. Oh, yes. Well, actually we started with the Jesuits before we started with the nuns. We did our first Jesuit work­shop in ‘65. Rogers got two honorary doctorates from Jesuit universities…. A good book to read on this whole question is Fr. Jo­seph Becker’s The Re-FormedJesu­its. It reviews the collapse of Jesuit training between 1965 and 1975. Je­suit formation virtually fell apart; and Father Becker knows the influence of the Rogerians pretty well. He cites a number of Jesuit novice masters who claimed that the authority for what they did—and didn’t do—was Carl Rogers. Later on when the Jesuits gave Rogers those honorary doctorates, I think that they wanted to credit him with his influence on the Jesuit way of life. But do you think there were any short-term beneficial...

Libido V

I think it helpful that, as I discuss in chapter 3 of my book that recent events corroborate Pope Paul VI's prophecy in Humanae Vitae as evidenced by this story...

Recent contest win for Missions Category!

The conversion of my revised Book Cover is complete! It is now orderable and appears on the following: Amazon.com-Kindle Barnes & Noble - Nook Apple iBooks

Beyond Gay

David Benkof It is refreshing to see that our elder brothers, the Jewish people, have a spokesperson in the media for the truth that abstaining from sex is a real option for  frum  (traditionally observant) gay men.   David Benkof i s a St. Louis-based writer and former faculty member at Yeshivat Darche Noam/Shapell’s in Jerusalem. Check him out. Also, I am reading a marvelous work, apologetic in nature, for those looking for resources to combat the slippery slope of the erosion of  traditional  marriage in our culture.... View the YouTube video,  Is making Gay OK?

Libido Redux: Who is to Blame for the Evil of Pornography?

Donny Pauling has rightly  observed: "....our enemy in the fight against porn is  not  the pornographers who produce it, or the people who participate in creating it. As St. Paul states in his letter to the Ephesians, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, powers, forces of darkness, and spiritual forces of evil in the spiritual realm.  Trying to fight porn by going after pornographers is like trying to treat one symptom of a disease rather than finding its cure.  Pornography has a cause, rooted in the condition of our own hearts.  To fight it, we must start with ourselves, being willing to face the part we play. We must let our hearts be changed." 

Rolling Stone Gathers Pope Francis

Final thoughts on the Rolling Stone feature on Pope Francis… The article attempts to show Francis’ break from the supposedly “conservative” Church of old, in the process remaking Pope Francis as the hero of the liberal left. It uses the scandals of Vatican finance and sexual abuse, coupled with old stories about Opus Dei and the Latin Mass, to fashion Pope Benedict XVI as a “conservative” conniver. In short, Francis is portrayed as the populist leader of a movement to “liberalize” the Catholic Church. Certainly the article contains a great deal of untruth. Inconvenient facts, like Francis’ theological orthodoxy, are ignored. Rolling Stone draws arbitrary conclusions from selected illustrations drawn from the Pope’s life. Why would this pop cultural icon do this? Easy. Sexual and social relativists wish to refashion Christianity such that they may claim Christ, and his vicar, as their supporters, for their social agenda is more appetizing to people if it complements, r...

Dancing with Mr. D: Gender Ideology

In a private conversation with Bishop Andreas Laun on January 30 as part of the Austrian bishops’  ad limina visit , Pope Francis strongly condemned “gender ideology.” In so doing he follows the example of Pope Benedict, who is on record as saying that gender ideology is “a negative trend for humankind,” and a “profound falsehood,” which “it is the duty of pastors of the Church” to put the faithful “on guard against.” Bishop Laun The Austrian bishop stated, “In response to my questioning, Pope Francis said, ‘Gender ideology is demonic!’” As I have chronicled on these pages, the Holy Father often refers to the work of the devil. Of gender ideology, Bishop Laun explained that “the core thesis of this sick product of reason is the end result of a radical feminism which the homosexual lobby has made its own.” “It asserts that there are not only Man and Woman, but also other ‘genders’. And furthermore: every person canchoose his or her gender,” he added. “Today,” he said, ...