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Showing posts from January, 2017

Libido Redux: California's Proposition 60

T he Catholic Church, founded by Jesus Christ, remains the great exception to the sexual revolution.  Facilitated technologically by the oral contraceptive and culturally by rapid secularization, this revolution successfully separated sex from babies, and, in short order, sex from marriage, sex from love, and even love from marriage, if love is understood to have a sacrificial, enduring character (think “no –fault” divorce). The sexual revolution has crushed everything in its path, including most, (not ALL) Christian churches in the West, which it rendered both impotent and sterile.  The Catholic Church has been the lone institutional holdout, earning for itself puzzlement from her friends and ferocious hostility from enemies.  Catholic teaching has insisted that both natural reason and biblical revelation teach that sex, love, marriage and children all belong together in the complementarity of men and women made in the image and likeness of God.  For both human happiness and

Divide et opera

D ivision within Christ’s Church, such as that which exists at present over Amoris rlaetitia ,   Pope Francis'   post-synodal apostolic exhortation   is a clear attack by the evil one. Satan’s strategy here is the time-honored one of  divide et impera  –   divide and conquer. Remember Jesus’ words to the Pharisees? “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.” Quite simply, no ideology, no matter how sincerely embraced, may substitute for personal conversion, for, in the case of divirced and remarried Catholics,  entering the narrow gate. When Pope Francis issued Amoris Laetitia it produced a controversy around an unanswered question —whether or not divorced and remarried Catholics might be admitted to the Eucharist in certain circumstances. At two synods the proposal, pushed by prelates handpicked by Francis, faced strong opposition from many bishops and didn’t achieve consensus. The document produced by th