Over the years I have followed various national threat assessment analyses. These analyses report, discuss, and predict what are and what will be the major threats to our national security and well-being.

The nature of threats we hear about cut across a wide band of dimensions, from other countries (China, Russia, North Korea) to terrorist groups (ISIS, Al-Qaida). There is also the threat from natural phenomena (COVID, climate change).  Modern technology (cyber theft, electrical grid disruption) poses threats as well.

While there are reputable threats, we also hear about some bizarre concerns such as the FBI thinking that conservative Catholics are a terrorist threat. Other bizarre concerns include the Defund the Police movement claiming our country’s law enforcement is a major threat, and Antifa thinking the nuclear family is a threat.

The Threat to Defining our Human Nature

The reality is we do live in a world of serious threats. However, upon reflecting on our cultural environment of the past several years, it seems that the various threat assessments fail to address the threat that I think is one of the most serious. That would be the social engineering effort to redefine who we are as human beings. This threat undermines our education, our places of work, our government, and our social conventions. It is also affecting our freedom of speech and religious expression.

How is this effort a threat? I think that we, as a society, are undergoing a type of “brainwashing.”

The term brainwashing was first used during the Korean War. The Chinese tried to brainwash American POWS into the Communist way of thinking. The process involves the forced acceptance of a specific view. Any disagreements with that view are treated with disdain and even punishment.

I would suggest there are four main examples of brainwashing underway in our current culture.

Abortion

Many contend that abortion is all about women’s rights.  It is an issue solely between a mother-to-be and her doctor.

So, how is this a threat?

Beyond the direct threat to the lives of the unborn, abortion is the litmus test for protecting the sanctity of life within a society. The killing of an innocent life in the womb undermines the entire societal ethic of the respect for the dignity of the human person, for justice, and for equality under the law.

If an individual or a culture accepts that it is okay to kill a baby in the womb, it can progress to becoming okay to commit infanticide at any age. It then becomes okay to kill anybody who wishes to die, as we now see in assisted suicide laws.

What does this say about our human nature? Instead of reflecting the dignity of the human person, it says that what is important is the dignity of only “me” and “my” personal freedom of choice. It says we can play God with no obligation for “the other”. A selfish convenience becomes the priority that can influence decisions on other matters.

The right to life is a core tenant of not just our faith but our culture and our laws. It was defined as such in the Declaration of Independence where the first unalienable right defined was “life.” Consequently, the pro-abortion view of our human nature goes against our nation’s founding view of rights.

Transgenderism

The notion that gender is fluid and we can select our sex is undergoing a forced acceptance socially, within the business world, education, and government.  Many organizations now accept many gender definitions. Facebook, for instance, lists 58 different genders!

So, how is this a threat?

The immediate threat, of course, is to young folks who undergo gender modification by surgery and hormone therapy. This is especially concerning considering there is research suggesting that many teens outgrow gender dysphoria.  As such, those that ‘transition’ have many problems.

The cultural threat of accepting that we can have many genders is a threat to acknowledging the truth of our humanity. Nature and human history both document that there are two biological genders.  God created us in his image and likeness as man and women (Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 5:1-2). Gender is not based on feelings or social pressure.

Workplaces, schools, government agencies, and social conventions are forcing us to adopt politically correct language to support transgenderism. Terms such as “sperm producer” and “egg producer” instead of male and female are two examples of this politically correct stupidity. But if one disagrees, he/she is accused of bullying, being bigoted, and/or being transphobic.

As Father Nathaniel Dreyer wrote recently, “the names that we give things should reflect their essences.”  And even Confucius advised that the beginning of wisdom, “is to call things by their proper name.”

Promoting the acceptance of a false definition of our human nature is the epitome of relativism running rampant. It can set the stage for our losing the ability to discern the truth about anything.

Same Sex ‘Marriage’

The LBGQT agenda has won the court battle that has forced an acceptance of same sex ‘marriage.’

So, how is this a threat?

It helps to undercut the validity of marriage as an institution for raising the next generation. Attaching mothers and fathers to their children and to one another is not just one purpose of marriage. It is society’s purpose for marriage. Same-sex couples are not positioned naturally with respect to this important purpose of marriage law. It relegates marriage to just a legal expression of togetherness.

Same-sex marriage is the latest variation of the sexual freedom movement that has resulted in 40% of American children being born out of wedlock and a 50% divorce rate. Natural marriage is already on the wane with more and more people not getting married and having children.

Calling same-sex unions marriage blurs the lines about our inherent sexual nature. In short, it contributes to undermining the traditional and historical sexuality as a loving basis for procreation within a stable and secure marriage setting as God intended (Genesis 2:24). It sets the stage for the acceptance of all kinds of relationships to be called marriage. Allowing polygamy with multiple partners is already being discussed.

The traditional family structure has served as the backbone of civilization forever. Anything that lessons traditional families with a mom and dad leaves open space with dangerous consequences. With an absence of normal parental relationships, the government will increasingly be asked to step in for the rearing of children.

Transhumanism

Transhumanism is the belief that we are the masters of our own destiny to the extent that we can evolve beyond the natural constraints of our humanity. We can re-engineer our human nature through science and technology.  CS writer Steve Smith has written about dangers of transhumanism a number of times, most recently in an article entitled “The “Trans” Issue that Matters Most.”

So, how is transhumanism a threat?

It is reflective of the belief in eugenics that we can improve the human species by encouraging or permitting reproduction of only those people with genetic characteristics judged desirable.  In turn, we can alter our gene structure through gene editing to be whatever we want to be through merging technology with our biology to create a new and better species. Designer babies and cloning are examples.

Supporters talk of how we can change the natural biology of the human species. They say a human can become a “superhuman” who is immortal. The promises of this are addicting – no more disease, no more disabilities, super functionality and intelligence, and no more death.

However, the ethical framework behind transhumanism is that of utility. We can destroy life for the betterment of knowledge or destroy that which we think is not worth living.

Transhumanism and abortion have the same sense of what our humanity is. For both we are but commodities to be used or destroyed to satisfy our needs, desires or convenience. In turn, transhumanism is linked to transgenderism in that proponents think they can alter their biological gender to be whatever they want to be.

Distorting Truth

The evolution of these four examples has followed a similar course. First, they were to be tolerated, but soon after they were to be accepted.  Now we are seeing forced support through language and authoritative actions.

Social pressure for these movements has morphed into legal, workplace, and educational regulations. In essence, we are being forced to accept and apply a false and unrealistic view of our human nature with many consequences.

Some of the consequences have already impacted the freedom of religious expression. Examples are Catholic adoption services and Christian wedding cake bakers being sued for denying their services (based on their faith beliefs) to same-sex couples.

Freedom of speech is also being curtailed, especially on college campuses.  Speech codes and the use of approved gender language is now mandatory on many campuses.

Support for abortion remains high and gene research “to improve” our DNA continues.

And finally, we see the support and increasing acceptance of the application of the transgender agenda with such bizarre regulations of allowing boys to compete against girls and using girl’s restrooms and showers.

These efforts come under the umbrella of so called “wokism or “political correctness” which affects our perception of the value of the human person. How we view our human nature affects how we view the human person. How we view the human person affects how one is treated by others through social and legal codes. Ultimately, it can affect how our human rights are defined or denied.

Perhaps the most serious consequence is the ongoing distortion of truth. These actions are teaching and demanding a relative sense of perception of what is truth. All these efforts undermine our ability to assess and define what is true. Pope Benedict XVI pointed out such dangers under the name of the “dictatorship of relativism.”

Summary

These four examples represent the relativist view of our human nature.  It is a view based on one’s own ego and desires as opposed to God’s design. We do not make ourselves. We are made in the image of God.

The solution to the shifting threats of moral relativism is the timeless truths and moral   absolutes of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Retired Archbishop Chaput recently addressed this conclusion:

“What is the bottom-line issue in the culture war afflicting Western culture across the globe? The bottom of that bottom line is whether human beings are really just bundles of desires, all of which are morally equal and should be acknowledged as legitimate in the name of human rights. By contrast, Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) taught that the truth about our humanity is revealed in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. In Christ, we learn that we are creatures of a much nobler nature and destiny, and that self-giving, not self-assertion, is freedom lived in a truly human way. Wokery is a world of silos in which race-mania, “gender identity,” and “isms” of all sorts are somehow supposed to foster living in solidarity.”

“How does the West rebuild the shattered foundations of its culture? Vatican II, as authentically interpreted by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, teaches that a great awakening to the truths on which our civilization was built will come through a New Evangelization, in which every Catholic (as affirmed by Lumen Gentium and by the Council’s Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem) understands himself or herself to have been baptized into a missionary vocation, bringing others to friendship with Jesus Christ.”

The post A Threat Assessment for Defining Human Nature appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Ivan Provorov, a professional hockey player, recently committed a major transgression in the eyes of modern secular activists.  He refused to wear a rainbow-colored jersey and to participate in team activities in support of homosexual practices.

Based on the numerous articles written about him, he is ignorant, obnoxious, disrespectful of homosexuals, and homophobic.  There were even demands that he be benched.  In the name of diversity and inclusion, this foreign born player needed to be excluded.

He is not the only athlete, celebrity, or prominent public person to be labeled a homophobe.  Such accusations are handed out nearly every day.

What is a Phobia?

As defined by Johns Hopkins medicine, “A phobia is an uncontrollable, irrational, and lasting fear of a certain object, situation, or activity. This fear can be so overwhelming that a person may go to great lengths to avoid the source of this fear. One response can be a panic attack. This is a sudden, intense fear that lasts for several minutes. It happens when there is no real danger.”

Based on this definition, homophobia should be defined as an irrational fear of homosexuality.  But is it?

What behavior did Ivan Provorov exhibit that made him a homophobe?  Did he exhibit fear, faint, have a panic attack, or convulse uncontrollably on the ice when he saw a rainbow?  No.  He simply refused to wear a rainbow-colored jersey during practice.  He stated that participating in team activities to support the LGBTQ+ community would conflict with his belief as a Russian Orthodox Christian.

So, is choosing not to participate an irrational fear?  It sounds like he thought it through rationally.  So how can he labeled irrationally fearful of homosexuals or homophobic?

If Ivan Provorov refused to wear a jersey for the Anaheim Ducks citing the fact that he plays for another team, would he be labeled a duckophobe?  Of course not!

What is the Real Definition of Homophobia?

Merriam Webster online defines homophobia as an irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or gay people.  (Gay not meaning joyous, but rather homosexual.)  This changes the scope of meaning.  Now a phobia is not just a fear, but a very specific response to that fear.  It is discrimination against homosexuals.

But even in the case of Provorov, how has he shown aversion to or discrimination against homosexuals?  He did not wear a rainbow jersey.  That is not discrimination.

Homophobia is being used and defined differently to control language.  (Language is often controlled to hide sin.)  The actual applied definition of homophobe is anyone who dares disagree, challenge, or refuse to capitulate to the demands of homosexual activists.

Labeling someone “phobic” because they disagree or do not participate in someone else’s activism, is a slander to shut down debate and discussion.  This is on par with claiming to be in favor of diversity and inclusiveness and then trying to exclude anyone who’s opinion diverges from yours.

But phobic slanders are not limited to homophobia.  Xenophobia is levied against people who want to secure our nation’s borders.  Of course, the Ukrainians are not xenophobic for wanting to keep Russians from crossing their border.  People who want to debate the practices of the Taliban or want to discuss Muhammad’s pedophile marriage to a 6-year-old girl are called Islamophobic.  It is not hard to come up with many more examples.

Missing Phobia in Today’s Dialogue

However, it appears one phobia is clearly missing from today’s dialog.  When looking at attacks on Catholic churches in the United States, it would appear that there are those who have a phobia (in the activist sense of the word) against Christians.

Over 250 attacks have occurred in the last 3 years.  Vandals have tagged churches and beheaded statues.  Churches have even been burned to the ground.

Could these people be Christophobic?  Could these people be sinphobic?  (This is not a fear of sinning, but rather the fear of speaking of sin as sin.)

According to Merriam-Webster online, Christophobia, or Christianophobia, or sinphobia do not exist.  Now that is convenient.  Activists can claim Christians have all sorts of phobias, but Christians . . . well, I think the point is obvious.

Personally, I do not believe Christians should use the word Christophobic or take this victimhood approach to debate. Others have addressed this point.

There is, however, a clinical defined phobia that I do want to bring up.  Alethephobia is an irrational phobia or fear of hearing the truth.  I do not think it is wise to tell people they are Alethephobic, but often, by just asking people if they know what it means, a stalled discussion can become a healthy debate.

Be Okay with Being Called Names

Persecution of Christians in the past was very violent.  Christians were fed to lions, murdered in the coliseum, and crucified.  And even today Catholics and Christians are being tortured and killed. In comparison to this, being called names is not a big deal.

Be that as it may, Christians should and need to stand up to our accusers.  Christians (including me, personally) have been falsely accused of wanting homosexuals to be murdered.  Of course, that is not true, my desire is to witness to people and motivate them to freely (not coerced) choose a path away from sin and towards redemption.  To put it differently, I want to pull people from the fires of hell, not kick them in.

It is not uncommon these days for Christians who call sin a sin, to be falsely charged with advocating violence.  In many cases, these accusations and slanders against Christians are projections.

The calls for Ivan Provorov to be benched over his actions were likely projections.  The homosexual activists want to marginalize him, which is exactly what the homosexual activists accuse society of doing to them.

So, who has the phobia here?

The post So, Who’s Got the Phobia? appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Martin Luther thought anyone could read the Bible, interpret it, and understand it teachings. But there’s a YouTube video that proves him wrong.

Kristin Saylor and Jim O’Hanlon are the presenters in the subject video. Saylor is a female Episcopalian ‘priest’ and O’Hanlon is an Evangelical Lutheran Church Pastor.  They’ve disproven Luther’s thesis because they clearly do not understand what the Bible teaches in regard to homosexuality.

Before going any further let me make this clear.  This is not a personal attack against Saylor and O’Hanlon.  They are most likely very nice, kind, caring human beings.  But their interpretation of what Scripture says about homosexuality is anything but orthodox.  And this is a problem because both are leaders of congregations that profess to believe in God’s truths.  What’s more, they may be leading many others astray with their heterodox interpretations.

In 2015 Saylor and O’Hanlon made a “TEDx Talk” entitled “What the Bible says about homosexuality.”  To date the video has over 2.4 million views and over 20,000 comments.  And even though the talk is eight years old, quite a few of the comments are very recent.  So it is still being viewed.

According to these two individuals, the Bible does not say sexual relations between two men or two women is sinful.  The explanations and interpretations of Bible verses they offer to prove their contention are, however, incorrect and irrational.  To put it politely, their interpretation of Scripture is way out there.

TED Talks

If you are not familiar with “TED Talks,” they are the brainchild of Richard Saul Wurman.  (If you are familiar with TED Talks and TEDx Talks, feel free to jump to the next subhead.)

According to Business Insider,

“When designer and architect Richard Saul Wurman launched TED in 1984, he called it the dinner party he always wanted to have but couldn’t. Wurman united technology, entertainment, and design into one multiday event. He called it “TED.” (Wurman is a fan of cheeky acronyms.)

“Wurman sold the enterprise, in 2000, to Future PLC, a publishing company that [Chris] Anderson had built into a media giant in the 1990s. Through his personal nonprofit, the Sapling Foundation, Anderson bought TED from Future PLC in 2001 for $6 million. The company has stayed under Anderson’s watch since.”

According to the Ted Talks website, “Scientists, researchers, technologists, business leaders, artists, designers and other world experts take the TED stage to present “Ideas Worth Spreading”: valuable new knowledge and innovative research in their fields. These TED talks are filmed at our flagship TED conferences, independent TEDx events, partner events and salons held in our NYC World Theater.”

Ted Talks and Tedx Talks are slightly different. According to the Ted website,

“TEDx brings the spirit of TED to local communities around the globe through TEDx events. These events are organized by passionate individuals who seek to uncover new ideas and to share the latest research in their local areas that spark conversations in their communities. TEDx events include live speakers and recorded TED Talks, and are organized independently under a free license granted by TED. These events are not controlled by TED, but event organizers agree to abide by our format, and are offered guidelines for curation, speaker coaching, event organizing and more.”

Saylor and O’Hanlon’s TEDx Talk

Saylor and O’Hanlon start their talk with a somewhat silly skit before getting to the crux of their pitch.

“The Bible does not have one definition of marriage. It doesn’t have one model of marriage.  There is no consistent ethic of sexuality going throughout the Bible,” says O’Hanlon.

So right here one has to seriously question O’Hanlon’s knowledge of Scripture.

They then launch in to a deconstruction of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18:16-33 and 19:1-29).  They retell it in an attempt to make it not say what it says.

Saylor starts this off saying, “. . . in reality if you take the Bible as a whole, and look at percentage-wise, how much of the content is devoted to the issue of homosexuality, it is less than one percent.  Statistically speaking, it is just not a priority for the Bible.”

But since there are 783,137 words in the Bible, that one percent comes to about 7,831 words.  That’s actually quite a few words – about five times the length of this article.

Then Saylor says, “One of the most famous examples of these texts is the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which some of you might be familiar with.  It’s a story that has become famous because of anti-sodomy laws that exist in some places still today, and this concept of sodomy that is derived from this Bible story.”

So according to Saylor the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is famous because of anti-sodomy laws.  In other words, God’s truths take a back seat to man-made laws.

Sodomy

She then says, “And sodomy is a word that we throw around a lot, without necessarily understanding what it means.  We might have an idea that it refers to gay sex, that it’s somehow bad, when in reality it has a very specific definition, and it is any sexual act that is not procreative.”

But even the often liberal Wikipedia does not agree with Saylor here.  Wikipedia says, “Originally, the term sodomy, which is derived from the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Book of Genesis, was commonly restricted to anal sex.”

So Saylor is trying to redefine sodomy to make it mean what she wants it to mean.

At the 6:38 mark Saylor says “So what does the story of Sodom and Gomorrah actually say?”

Saylor says the story is about two travelers who couldn’t find a place to stay in Sodom. Lot takes pity on them and invites them to stay in his house.  Then the town mob banged on Lot’s door.  They demanded that he bring his guests out that they might “know” them.

She then explains that “know” in this context means “Let us know them intimately, sexually, and in this case violently.  We’re talking in this case about gang rape.”

She says “the story ends when God gets angry at the whole situation and destroys the whole city for their sins.”

O’Hanlon’s Interpretation

At this point O’Hanlon jumps back in and says, “So what does the story say?  And what does the story not say?  The story describes an entire city that converges upon one house for the purpose of raping these two people.  Does that mean this is a story about two adults who want to have a consenting relationship, who want to publicly affirm a monogamous relationship and their commitment to each other?”

Ezekiel 16:49-50 is shown on a screen and O’Hanlon ignores the “committed abominations” in verse 50.  He concentrates on verse 49 instead.  Essentially, the folks in Sodom were bad because they did not give help to the poor and needy.

He says “So when the Bible talks about what was the sin of Sodom, you can look throughout the Bible, over hundreds of centuries, it keeps referring back to Sodom, and how bad Sodom was and how wicked Sodom was.  But what is it specifically that the Bible is talking about?  Is it talking about same-sex partners, or is it talking about violence and violating people sexually?

“So it seems that this thing has become something that’s used to target a minority group, to say that this minority should be shunned and they should be punished, when it’s talking about how the people who are weakest among us, the people who need us the most, the most vulnerable people among us, are people that we need to be thinking about.”

As such, it appears that O’Hanlon thinks the sin of Sodom was that the people there were inhospitable and prone to violence.  The residents didn’t help the needy and they intended to gang rape two vulnerable visitors.  So sodomy is okay but gang rape is not.

Wrapping Up

It would take a 5,000 word article to go properly parse Saylor and O’Hanlon’s statements.  Suffice it to say that logic is not a key component of the video.

First they say we should not read the Bible literally. Then later they say it should be read literally.  They also say it should be read in context, but then they say it should be read in the context they propose.

Of course they do not bother mentioning any verses that contradict their interpretations of Scripture.  They assiduously avoid Leviticus 18: 22, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and 1 Timothy 1:8-11, just to name a few.

Near the end of the talk Saylor even tries to say transgenderism is okay. She says this is because “in Christ there’s neither male nor female.”

O’Hanlon wraps up the talk asking why we are still reading the Bible when civilization has progressed so much.  “The reason is,” he says, “because people still continue to base their values and morality on these old scriptures” [ital. added for emphasis].

So apparently “these old scriptures” are just that – a collection of “old stories.” They are really not all that relevant today.  Hard to believe two Christians would infer that the Bible – the Word of God – is out of date.

Throughout the 18-minute video only a few accurate statements are made.  One of these comes at the very end.  O’Hanlon says:  “And that’s why we stand here today saying we believe that being gay is not a sin.”

At least they got that right.  Being homosexual is not a sin.  Acting on homosexual impulses is the sin.

The post Re-Interpreting the Bible to Make Homosexuality Okay appeared first on Catholic Stand.

You are almost certainly aware of the debacle with the LA Dodgers and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SPI).  If not, a little bit of background may be helpful before considering some of the spiritual aspects of the sordid affair.

The SPI was founded in 1979.  They describe themselves as a “leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns … devoted to community service, ministry and outreach to those on the edges, and to promoting human rights, respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment.  We use humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit.”

SPI’s website shows that they loosely model their community after authentic Catholic consecrated religious communities.  Potential “sisters” even enter a process that has four steps – volunteer, postulant, novice and fully professed.  In the ceremony for becoming a sister they take vows, and receive the “black veil.” They also complete a “rosary of perpetual indulgence.”  I don’t want to know what that is.

The SPI In Action

The sisters don’t dress up like nuns.  They dress up like nuns from a clown show in the third ring of hell.  Their public display in garish outfits is what they call “manifesting.”  You’ve likely seen the pictures and, as is said, once you see them you can’t unsee them.

They take mock-religious names, like “Sister Shalita Corndog” and “Sister Vicious Power Hungry Bitch” (one of the founders).

The SPI host many events as part of their “community service.”  In April they celebrated the clownfuc#er, “we invite you to Cirque Dis So Gay, a fully immersive GENDER FUC#ING experience.”  In June they will host a Trans-Tastic Soccer Games – with a session specifically for youth.

They are also notorious for their Easter “celebration” with the crowning of “Foxy Mary” and “Hunky Jesus.”

What brought the SPI to wide attention in Catholic and Christian circles was the decision by the LA Dodgers to honor the SPI.  The Dodgers are giving SPI the baseball team’s Hero Award.  The award is in recognition of SPI’s “twenty-seven years of service to the LGBTQIA2S Community”.

SPI On the Interior

SPI’s website includes individual bios, and assorted public interviews.  As such, we can glean a little about the interior life of some of SPI’s members.  Quite a few of the sisters seem misguided and disenfranchised.  It’s easy to see that they would find an organization like SPI to be welcoming and provide a sense of belonging and purpose.

More than a few of the members also appear to dabble in the occult (Wicca and Santeria) and a hodge-podge of other pantheistic practices.  Others seem to have more hardened hearts, outright aggression toward religion, and perhaps are more calculating in their motives.  Some of them have probably experienced being hurt, whether actual or perceived, by mainstream religion.

How This Should Work

Our spiritual minds are hard-wired to form value judgements.  That is one of the core functions of our intellect.  The intellect is passed an image from our physical brain, and it judges what that image represents.  It extracts the essence of that image.  That is what makes us different from chimpanzees.

In a sane world, anyone would see men dressing up as a garish cartoon version of a nun and doing it again and again and again and again, and immediately recognize it for what it is.  Such behavior isn’t a matter of “irreverent wit.” It is a cry for help.  Lest there be any doubt, check out this video of SPI’s Easter “celebration” (note that it is not for the faint of heart; don’t dwell on it for long).

A sane world would model Christ – who always led with “accompaniment” but in the service of lifting people from their bondage.  But we are not in a sane world, we are in a fallen world.  Our intellects are darkened.  Without God’s grace and our participation with that grace, people don’t see things for what they are.

The root issue isn’t an award from a baseball team, it is that SPI’s behavior is disordered.  And they are enabling and leading others down the same disordered path.

The Catholic Response

It has been heartening to see a fairly uniform response from the Catholic world.  Many of the Catholic hierarchy have spoken out publicly against the Dodgers’ decision.

Catholic Vote has been leading public awareness about the SPI, encouraging a boycott, and mounting an impressive ad-campaign.

Most importantly, on the spiritual front, there will be a Eucharistic Procession to Dodger Stadium on June 16.  The procession is being spearheaded by Virgin Most Powerful Radio and Bishop Strickland.  It is intended to make reparation for the many offenses that are bound up in this entire mess.

Generally speaking, however, the bishop’s response focusses on the SPI’s anti-Catholic bigotry.  As offensive as that is, it does not address the root issue.  I have to wonder if the SPI sisters dressed up as fairy princesses and acted out pagan rituals, would the bishops still be publicly rebuking the Dodger’s decision?

Joe Biden and our Shared Suffering

One high-profile exception on the Catholic front is Joe Biden.  He hasn’t given a specific opinion on the SPI matter, but in the midst of it and leading up to so-called pride month, his presidential Twitter account released a message generally in support of the LGBTQI+ community.  On June 4 he tweeted “When one group’s dignity and equality are threatened, we all suffer.”

MSN picked up on this and linked it to Mr. Biden’s profession to be Catholic.  In an article proclaiming ‘Biden’s Defiant Gay Pride Support’ author Claude Wooten wrote, “America’s Catholic president borrows his own promise and outlook language from the Bible, specifically Corinthians 12:26, which reads that ‘If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.’”

But such hermeneutics miss the mark.  Yes, when one member (or group of members) suffer we all suffer, but Mr. Biden and MSN misdiagnose the suffering:

• When people suffering with conditions such as gender dysphoria and same-sex attraction, are goaded deeper into the disorder rather than treated therapeutically, we all suffer.
• When high-profile Catholics suffer from a severe lack of judgment, and publicly lead others into error, we all suffer.
• When children suffer the loss of their innocence by being exposed to filth, we all suffer.
• When our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and our Blessed Mother suffer mockery and blasphemy, especially in a public spectacle, we all suffer.

America Magazine also Misses the Mark

America Magazine waded into the fray with an article, “Drag queen ‘nuns’ will be included in LA Dodgers Pride Night. I have complicated feelings about it.”

Before considering those “complicated feelings” let’s be clear that this issue isn’t a “feelings” sort of thing.  It is a “thinking” sort of thing.  And it ought not be complicated.

The article’s author says, “What causes me some unease about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, however, especially at this particular moment, is that their costumes mock women who wield relatively little power, especially in the church.”

Taking the author at his word, he experiences “some unease” from just two related things.  The SPI’s costumes mock a particular subset of women and that subset of women wield relatively little power.

So, if nuns had “power” all would be well?  If this wasn’t some twisted form of Marxist class warfare, there would be no unease?  Or, if the SPI still mocked Catholicism, and still profaned Christ and our Blessed Mother, and still publicly celebrated deviant behavior, but they dressed as “plain clothes nuns” there would be no unease?

A Long Time Coming

Should this sad event come as any surprise?  The SPI claim the LA Dodgers have been working with them for 10 years.  And Major League Baseball seems to be as bought into the “pride” movement as every other woke organization.

Baseball was an important battle ground for the Second Commandment. At the turn of the last century, in state after state, there were legal, political, and social battles over whether baseball games should be allowed on Sundays.  Winning arguments for Sunday baseballs games typically cast them as patriotic and good for communities.  Behind the scenes, however, baseball ownership was mostly interested in selling tickets.  In 1933 the last jurisdiction, Pennsylvania, voted in favor of Sunday baseball.  And we know the history of Sunday sports ever since.

Whether Sunday sports should be regulated isn’t the issue, however.  What is the issue is that we are now at a point where society has lost all reverence for the Sabbath.

Baseball, America’s pastime, is the wedge that broke the dam.  Now the Sabbath is flooded with all manner of profanity.  A century later there is a direct spiritual link to that loss of reverence and the present Dodgers-SPI brouhaha.

This is where the Eucharistic Procession gets to the spiritual heart of the matter.  The issue is much broader than the Dodgers or the SPI.  And we can all share in the work of reparation.

Several times in scripture the most unwitting characters are guided to speak directly to Truth.  Think Balaam and Caiaphas.  And now Biden and MSN.

When one member suffers, we all suffer.

The post There’s No Joy in Mudville, or in LA appeared first on Catholic Stand.

As we get older and experience more injuries and infirmities, the popular catch phrase to describe one’s condition to others is “it’s the new normal.” As a consequence, we have to learn to adapt and modify our behaviors to that new normal.

But beyond the personal dimension, the “new normal” label is more and more being applied to our social and political environment and much of daily life. The high cost of home ownership, for instance, is the new normal, according to realtors.

Unfortunately, this new normal in our society has morphed into social and regulatory norms that are forcing us to adapt not just behavior but our thinking, especially about what is true. In many cases it involves a new normal in morality.

The “New Normal” is “Abby” Normal

I recently watched the classic comedy of years back called Young Frankenstein. There is a scene where Dr. Frankenstein suspects that Igor, his assistant, did not bring him the right brain to use in the dead man he brought back to life. Igor confesses that the brain came from laboratory jar with the name “Abby Normal,” i.e., an abnormal brain.

That sums up what I think much of the new normal is today. Those in high authority are forcing new attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors on us. Just a few decades ago, however, these attitudes, beliefs and behaviors would have been considered strange, at best, to crazy and obscene at the worst.

It is relativism run rampant. That relativism seen in so many aspects of life as the new norm is, in my opinion, “abby normal.” Contemporary culture (media, education, academia, government) asserts that truth is not absolute. Instead, it is determined by changing social values. If one doesn’t go along with the abby normal, anything you say could get you into serious trouble.

Abby Normals

Abortion, and a number of other ‘abby normals,’ are health care and constitutional rights today. Two members of the same sex can now be married. The new umbrella of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is the key to workplace promotion today.  One’s race and sex, as opposed to merit, is what matters.

The list could go on and on.  But what really bothers me is that June – the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus – is now Pride month for the LGBTQ community and movement.  The plethora of celebrations gets my juices boiling.

A Pride celebration event in Toronto, for instance, had buck naked men parading around in front of crowds that included children. Public lewdness has been part of such events for years.

Sacrilegious demonstrations by drag queens such as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are also now deemed as acceptable. This is a group who mock us as Catholics, desecrate the sacred, and engage in erotic exhibitionist behavior.  Steve Smith wrote recently about the LA Dodgers honoring them in his  article “There’s No Joy in Mudville, or in LA.”

At a recent a drag queen and Pride event in New York city the drag queens were chanting “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.” This illustrates that such abby normal groups are not just benign expressions of sexual tolerance.  They are active recruiters for homosexuality and transgenderism lifestyles.

It seems that most of the western world has succumbed to accepting this abby normal. Who would have thought that drag queen performances would be acceptable for very young school children.  And who would have thought that the U.S. Navy, in a bizarre effort to increase enlistments, is using a drag queen to show how inclusive is the Navy?

Transgenderism?

An associated abby normal is the bizarre acceptance of transgenderism.  Schools and the government that are now shoving this ideology down our throats. The recent White House Pride celebration with a transgender women/man baring her/his breasts demonstrates how the government has bought into this perverse gender ideology.

Who would have thought that men and women can no longer be considered men or women? Instead, we are forced to accept the notion that one’s gender identity (of which some claim there are numerous variations) is determined by feelings and not by biology.

Not Adapting to the Abby Normal

The implications and consequences of these examples have been explored in a previous post. Some folks choose to ignore what is happening or adopt the notion of “live and let live.” Others highlight the changes that are occurring and say they are redundant.

A question asked at a recent Church men’s group meeting is why do we keep discussing these various issues?  We have no choice, I answered, offering up Edward Burke’s famous quote.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Discussion of such issues can serve to help us find direction for dealing with them. Whereas we adapt to our personal infirmities (as a new normal) we don’t and should not adapt to what is “abby normal.” We should not willingly go along with those efforts and ideologies that go against common sense, the truth and core beliefs, especially when social or regulatory pressure is being applied.  As such, they need to be on our radar screen.

An opinion, or ideology, law or political order that goes against the truth, especially as expressed by the Church requires standing up and challenging it. Many are doing so as I write this essay.

Standing Up to the Abby Normal

The pro-life movement is an example of standing up over many years by refusing to adapt to abortion laws and social pressure to accept abortion. Writing, petitioning, voting, witnessing and marching for life has resulted in changed laws to protect life.

Parents are confronting schools and school board policies about forced transgender ideology in the curricula, allowing drag queen story hours and policies such as allowing boys in girl’s bathrooms.

Legal efforts are underway to overturn regulations requiring approved speech “codes” regarding transgenderism and sport governing bodies are finally seeking legal means to overturn transgendered policies allowing boys to compete against girls.

The Catholic Church is legally challenging hiring practices forcing employment of persons that do not adhere to Church teachings such as same-sex married individuals.

Christian bakers and florists are legally challenging state law efforts to demand they provide services for gay marriages and transgender celebrations that go against their religious beliefs.

Many legal defense organizations are aiding these efforts, such as The Thomas More Society, First Liberty and the Alliance Defending Freedom. They deserve continued support.

Perhaps the most difficult non-adaptation is in day-to-day conversations with those that support “abby” normal positions. It is all too comfortable to remain silent and not “rock the boat”. Too often, if one does not go along, I have found that the discussion mutates into a discussion of the “intolerant Catholic Church”. However, if we are true to our beliefs we need to stand up and reasonably and calmly defend our faith.  Not always an easy task since the Church has its “abby” normality’s.

“Abby” normal within the Church

Unfortunately, there are efforts within the Church to go along with and support the new “abby” normal. Many clergy and the hierarchy are wishy washy or silent about standing up to the secular world’s acceptance of the “abby” normal norms outlined above. An example is that many in the clergy and hierarchy look the other way in providing communion to pro-abortion politicians.

The clergy abuse problem stands out as another example of looking the other way by tacitly accepting and/or covering up homosexual predation.

Who would have thought that a so called Synodal Way, especially exposed by German bishops, would advocate for such secular causes that counter Church teaching and practices to the point of potential schism?

We even see accommodation to the secular world in the Vatican making an agreement with China that gives that totalitarian regime some control over the Catholic Church. Should China really have a say so in the ordination of Bishops?

The list goes on and on as in secular society.

While the Church has made great strides in cleaning up the clergy abuse scandal, there is still work left to be done, especially regarding the Bishops roles and responsibilities.

In terms of the other areas highlighted above, there have been a few clergy who have spoken out. However, many have remained quiet and the Church leadership has a long ways to go to not let the progressive agendas become a new but “abby” normal. Consequently, I believe we all have an obligation to speak out to voice the truth and what the Church teaches.

“Abby” Normal Progression

I once heard someone comment on all the “abby” new norms of having gone from “stupidity to tyranny.”  The new normal examples mentioned here are moving toward more and more regulatory demands on all of us to go along, accept, and support the various ideologies.

“If I can convince you to believe an absurdity, I can convince

you to commit an atrocity.” – Voltaire

In that light, vigilance is required.

“Be on your guard, stand firm in the faith, be courageous,

be strong” (1 Cor 16:13).

The post Confronting the New “Abby” Normal appeared first on Catholic Stand.

By the time this article appears, I will be 92 years old (as of July 11).  It’s a much different world today than it was when I was a youth.

In my youth, I never dreamed of becoming this old or still having a sound mind when I reached this age.  I also did not envision what our country or the world would be like in the year 2023.

When I was born, many households still did not have electricity. As I recall, many families did not have refrigerators, phonographs, toasters, mix masters, or washers and dryers.  Most families did, however, have radios.

My family had an icebox and a Victrola. My mom used to make toast in the oven, boil coffee grounds in a coffee pot, and use a strainer to separate the grounds from the brew.

Back then, we all came from families ruled by parents who taught us the skills of living and imbued in our hearts respect for God and country. The world today is far different in many ways.

Thankfully, family units of husband, wife, and children are still the norm.  But today there are many single parent families and many of these are families headed by unmarried people.  A very small number of families are also headed by two people of the same sex.

My early fascination with toys

The Victrola was a wonderful machine. It was powered by a coil spring, wound by hand. It was a marvelous contraption. The Victrola captured a voice or music within scratches on a rotating disk and played them back through a needle attached to a mica disk at the entrance to a horn that magnified the sound. I thought, as a child, what marvelous things man can make.

We children used to have different toys to play with.  I remember there were many small windup toys, like toy tanks that I used to wind up with a key and run on the floor.  Many of these toys were made in Japan.

Eventually “Made in Japan” became a derogatory term.  We did not appreciate that the toys really worked, even though they were obviously cheaply made.

I had a lot of fun with those cheaply made toys.  I also had a toy that allowed the owner to cast lead soldiers and I cast many lead soldiers with them.  As I grew up, I wound up using the toy to make sinkers for fishing.

But little did our country know that we were supporting the industrialization of a backward nation.  Japan was manufacturing toys to accumulate wealth while, behind the scenes, they were building the largest navy in the world.  Eventually, they attacked us.

Our whole country became galvanized after Pearl Harbor. After all, it was a sneak attack. They tried to destroy our naval power when they were in negotiations with the U. S. over many problems.

My Parents taught me religion

But behind all of this I picked up from my parents that there was a purpose to life, that there was a God who created us and wants us to join Him in heaven. But there is a catch. God expects us to live righteous lives that resemble Him in all we do, especially in how we treat our neighbor.

That’s where my first experience with religion came from. And I saw it confirmed by many other Americans as they lived out their lives.

All of us are familiar with the comic strip hero Superman and other comic book heroes like Green Hornet, Captain Marvel, Batman, etc. Those heroes were all conjured up by young Americans just like me. Superman was conjured up in 1938 by Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster when they were sixteen. They were Clevelanders in Glenville High School.  I lived in the same neighborhood.

I resonate with those writers, and they had a very big influence on me. We are all vulnerable to being bullied by stronger kids, even robbed or murdered by them. The idea of a powerful superhero who went around righting every wrong and turning the culprits over to the police for trial and justice really captured my imagination.

Fostering the right stuff

I started saving Superman comic books. I think I bought the first copy myself. Then I found a used books store that also carried used comic books.  I had the first eight issues of Superman, but then I just stopped collecting them. If I had saved them, those eight issues would today be worth thousands of dollars.

But the real value of those books is not the monetary value.  It is in what those books did to my character and the character of a great many impressionable young Americans. The idea of going around and correcting the wrongs they saw and turning the culprits over to the police is, I think, invaluable in any society.

Old movies fostered this same sense of character, and I knew the movies very well. My mom used to send me to the local theater every Saturday with enough money for admission and some candy and popcorn,

I loved The Lone Ranger (and Tonto), Tom Mix, and actually almost every western movie where the hero rectified some wrong people were suffering from and quietly rode off into the sunset without expecting any reward from the people he helped.  I also liked The Green Hornet and Bat Man.

Proud to be an American

These traits became very deep-seated in my character, and never left me. I saw this attitude big time during world War II when the Americans liberated Europe from the Nazis and went home without plundering those they liberated. The U.S. even flew food and provisions into Berlin to keep people from starving during the first Berlin crisis in 1948.

When I hear the words of the song “Over There,” I still burst with pride over my fellow American men.  “Over there, over there, send the word, send the word over there.  That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming . . . And we won’t come back till it’s over, over there.”

Religion is disappearing from America

Over my long life, I have seen much of that righteousness and zeal disappear. Many Americans, it seems, are no longer proud of our Christian backbone.

I remember the shock when I first discovered that some Americans no longer wanted America to be identified as a Christian country. It happened during the Clinton presidency when a Bill Clinton pushed through his “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy saying  recruits should no longer be asked if they are homosexual. Up to that time I had always voted Democratic, Since then I have never voted for a Democrat.

I think God does not want men to chase after other men to have sex with them. God has warned humans all through human history to avoid such disordered behavior. People are apt to be placed in hell for such a defiance of God.

Prior to the Clinton presidency homosexuals were deemed unfit for military service. After Clinton, homosexuals became more and more combative, insisting that they be accepted into every aspect of our society. This caused great discomfort to men not addicted to sexual misconduct.

I think we are headed for trouble

But it’s not only homosexuality, it’s everything that was considered wrong in the past that people are clamoring to be accepted today. I view this with dread. I know this level of defiance against God is going to be bad for our country.

When God identified Himself to Moses and the Israelites, He said “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall not have other gods beside me.”  He then gave Moses the 10 Commandments.  And God really did command our obedience.

I think the Israelites understood that if they defied God, like the Egyptians did, God would destroy them just like He destroyed Pharaoh’s army. I think, if we continue to defy God, He might destroy us also.

In today’s America, sexual excess has totally permeated American lives.  Sex outside of marriage is endemic. Sex between members of the same sex is also accepted as normal by a huge percentage of American people. Americans have even fostered belief in multiple avenues of sexual pleasure, predicating sex not on the biological makeup of the body but on the sexual practices of people in their pursuit of sexual pleasure.

This has caused me great concern during my senior years. It made me wonder why God is so insistent that His will must be obeyed and why is He so willing to confine those who defy His will into hell.

Conclusions

I have come to realize that the possession of free will is a priceless gift given to man, but it carries a huge price. A human with free will must sacrifice everything not to defy God through his or her free choice. And God knows how difficult that is. I think that is why God promises us to confirm the righteous in absolute fidelity to adherence to His will in the next life, if we are lucky enough to escape damnation.

In the next life, we will love God so much that the appeal to defy Him will never again grasp us. Nobody in Heaven will ever defy God. Nobody in heaven disobeys God. God is thoroughly good, and disobedience is thoroughly evil. Disobedience would destroy the peace and harmony in heaven.

I understand this so thoroughly that I want to convince all my fellow humans to choose to obey God and never choose against God.

I guess that has become my mission in my senior years, while I still have the ability, to spread the good news of Jesus Christ.

The post Our Changing World and God appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Society must be inclusive.  The dignity and natural rights of everyone must be respected.

Most every human being on the planet would probably agree with these statements.  The “Catechism of the Catholic Church” even states as much in CCC 1935.

At the same time, however, the Church recognizes that sin harms society:

“1865 Sin creates a proclivity to sin . . .

“1869 Thus sin makes men accomplices of one another and causes concupiscence, violence, and injustice to reign among them. Sins give rise to social situations and institutions that are contrary to the divine goodness. “Structures of sin” are the expression and effect of personal sins. They lead their victims to do evil in their turn. In an analogous sense, they constitute a “social sin.”

Unfortunately, when the elites and progressives (in short, the Left) speak of an inclusive society where “everyone” is included, they mean that we must accept sinfulness and immorality as something to be celebrated.

What the Left really means by inclusive is that those who have immoral sexual proclivities, those who are confused about what sex they are, those who think murdering babies is no big deal, and even those who break laws demonstrating or entering a country illegally must be fully accepted by society.

And just to be clear here, accepting means approving.  Heaven help you if you are a baker who does not condone same-sex marriage, or a farmer who does not support Pride month.

DEI

The Left has even coined a new acronym to express their views:  DEI.  It stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and it is mandatory thinking in the workplace, in schools, and really, everywhere.  DEI is “an ethos that recognizes the value of diverse voices and emphasizes inclusivity . . .”

So, DEI is the new set of guiding beliefs for everyone in society.  But it’s more than this.  It’s more like a claw hammer.  The claw side is meant to pull up those who are confused and those with immoral proclivities.  The face of the hammer beats down anyone who disagrees with this new, so-called spirit of the age.

In other words, the Left’s inclusive society is not really inclusive. “Everyone” does not really include Catholics, other orthodox Christians, or anyone not on the Left.

From Tolerance to Acceptance

A mere 10 years ago, the Left and the LBGTQ activists were saying everyone needed to be tolerant of homosexual and other “queer” behaviors.  Many pointed out at the time that tolerance would soon become full blown acceptance.  And, sure enough, that is what happened.

In 2015 SCOTUS found that the Constitution of United States allowed same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges).  Even though marriage is not even mentioned in the Constitution, the majority progressive justices on the court said it was there.  Mere tolerance was no longer acceptable.  We now had to accept immoral, intrinsically disordered behaviors as well as man’s redefinition of the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.  It was the law.  Man had overruled God.

As Donald DeMarco wrote recently in the National Catholic Register, “Those who begged for tolerance, once they have their way, become violently intolerant of their beneficiaries. Foul becomes fair, as Shakespeare’s witches proclaim, while fair becomes foul. It is not a question of giving in to the dissidents, but arming them.”

In fact, society has so armed them that the LGBTQ activists, appropriated June (with full and complete endorsement by the Left) as PRIDE month.  It is now the month in which we are all supposed to celebrate intrinsically disordered behavior.

And don’t for a minute think that picking the month of June was not intentional. At one time June was the prime month for weddings.  Young ladies dreamed of becoming “June Brides.”  It’s also the month the Catholic Church dedicates to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Murdering Babies and Gender Stupidity

Murdering unborn babies must also be accepted. But if you believe that murdering unborn babies is heinous, the Left will do their best to see that you are excluded from society.

“My body, my choice” was the battle cry popularized by the feminists.  Roe v Wade (another misinterpretation of the Constitution) locked in this new right. The murdered babies did not get a vote.  Thankfully, SCOTUS overturned Roe v Wade in 2022.  Now, however, a handful of individual states controlled by the Left are trying to continue this legacy of murder.

Extensions of this right to choose were same sex ‘marriage’ and now the ridiculous belief that people can choose what sex they want to be.  This idiocy says men who say they are women can compete in women’s sports.  They should also be able to use women’s locker rooms, showers, and bathrooms.

In Oregon now, if you do not subscribe to this woke gender stupidity, you will not be allowed to adopt children.  But two men or two women living in an immoral relationship can adopt children.  Go figure.

Apparently, we are supposed to “follow the science” except when it comes to certain biological facts that are inconvenient.  But only the Left gets to decide which scientific facts can be ignored.

Women Priests?

Gender stupidity is even affecting the Catholic Church in a curious way.  Some dissident women seem to think they should be allowed to become priests.  At the very least, they say, women should be able to become deacons.

According to an article in the dissident National Catholic Reporter “Several institutes at Georgetown University hosted a conversation on women’s ordination in the Catholic Church on April 17, with a five-member panel of theologians and local lay leaders discussing the church’s answer on the issue as “unfinished.”

The issue is, however, only “unfinished” if one is a dissident or radical. Pope St. John Paul II settled the issue in his Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.  In the letter he states, “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”

Commenting on this letter, to Dr. Robert Fastiggi, Professor of Systematic Theology, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit MI, said:

“St. John Paul II, in 1994, did not state that the Church’s inability to confer priestly ordination on woman was revealed by God. Rather, he stated that this decision “is to be definitively held by all the faithful.  Thus, his 1994 judgment was definitive and irreformable, but it is also infallible because the Holy Spirit protects the Magisterium from error when it makes such definitive judgments.”

Never Give Up, Never Surrender

The dissidents, however, will never accept that the issue is settled.  That’s how they roll.  Dissidents and radicals never, ever admit defeat.  They dare not do so.  It would mean they were wrong.  This would hurt their pride (the devil’s favorite sin).

But, if you were one of the objectors to the Covid vaccines, ‘my body, my choice’ no longer applied. It only works for murdering babies, immoral, intrinsically disordered sexual behavior or gender stupidity.  Since murdering babies is okay, if you objected to taking an abortion-tainted vaccine, too bad.  And the sheer possibility that you might not isolate yourself if you contracted Covid, and possibly infect someone else with it, was something too horrific to contemplate.

And if you like to loot and destroy others’ property when you demonstrate, or if you are here in this country illegally, that’s okay.  You are still entitled to full and equal participation in society.  All voices must be heard.  Anyone in a country illegally should even be able to get a driver’s license so they can drive legally.  They should even be allowed to vote, even though they are not citizens of the country.

Only those on the Left know what’s right – an oxymoron if ever there was one.

Excluded From Being Included

The free exercise of religion, guaranteed in the first Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, is a problem for the Left.  They view religion as a disqualifier from being included in the wonderful, inclusive, utopian society they envision.  This is because some creeds see the immorality of sexual perversion and gender stupidity.  Such unacceptance is a no-no; it’s an automatic exclusion from being included.

So, if you adhere to religious beliefs that say certain sexual perversions are immoral and sinful, you are excluded from being included.  You are also excluded if you believe that men cannot be women (and vice versa).  And you should not have a voice in the public square, the Left says.  You must keep your mouth shut.  If you voice a dissenting opinion, you will be cancelled, and, if possible, your life will be ruined somehow, and, if possible, you will even be jailed.

Voicing an opinion that goes against the views of the Left is not only hurtful, it is downright hateful.  David Carlin offers a salient perspective on this phenomenon at the Catholic Thing.

As such, in a country where freedom of speech is guaranteed in the Constitution, the Left is trying to limit free speech. It turns out it’s not that hard to do.  All you have to do is gain control of the entertainment industry, mainstream media, social media, local school boards, and the educational system.  You can block, censor, or ban ideas, and dox people you don’t like.

The Left has long known this.  They learned it from Karl Marx.

Atheists and Snowflakes

And thanks to Karl Marx and others of his ilk, Atheism is slowly rising, and more so on the Left and among young adults. As Gallup notes, “Belief in God has fallen the most in recent years among young adults and people on the left of the political spectrum (liberals and Democrats).”

The Left’s efforts have also succeeded in turning many millennials into ‘snowflakes.’  These snowflakes need safe zones, trigger warnings, and therapy dogs.

According to the description of the book “Snowflake Generation” by Lionel Bolnet, these snowflake adults “are said to be less resilient, less courageous, humorless and constant whiners.  . . . Once exposed to the outside world, around 2010, this character trait astonishes everyone, and even the snowflakes themselves. They don’t take risks, complain a lot, can’t stand annoyance, hate criticism, want to be pampered at the office and see discrimination around every corner.”  And this is true even of some  young Catholics.

Heaven help us if these snowflakes don’t grow up.

Of course, not all millennials are snowflakes, just like not all baby boomers were hippies and radicals.  But like the radical boomers, the wimpy, whiney snowflakes could also impact society and our country in a not good way.  Someone who wants to be pampered, for instance, is not likely to be inclined to put him or herself out for others.

This attitude is showing up in the armed services’ recruiting efforts.  The military missed its recruiting target by 25 percent in 2022.  In 2023 the number is likely to be even higher.   According to surveys conducted for the army, “young people simply do not see the Army as a safe place . . . “

The Real Fascists and Totalitarians

The Left claims those on the right are totalitarians and fascists.  But it is those on the Left who are the real totalitarians. They also practice their own kind of fascism.  Leftist Fascism might be described thusly:

A far-left, authoritarian, ultra-globalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a cadre of dictatorial, autocratic leaders, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the earth and the elitists of the human race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and her squad of far-left, socialist Democrats typify this kind of fascism.  In her rant against the Parental Rights Act she decried fascism while actually calling for it.  (Note that this is not a personal attack against AOC; it is simply an observation.)

Like many on the Left, AOC thinks the state’s authority in regard to children supersedes parental authority.  This thinking is playing out big time in states like Minnesota and California.  Legislators in both states think the state should have the authority to seize custody of children whose parents refuse to allow their children to take gender transitioning drugs and have mutilating surgery performed on their children.

It’s long been recognized that a small, radicalized, determined, and very vocal minority can change society.  And the US has had a front row seat in seeing this play out for the last 60 plus years.  A relatively small group of far left, socialist-fascist-totalitarian-secular-progressive ideologues has been a driving force in our culture for decades.

The never-ending harangues of the Left are rapidly creating a post-Christian society.  This is why articles such as this are constantly needed.   They shine a light on the emotional, immoral, and irrational harangues of the Left.

Conclusion

In 1884 Pope Leo XIII is said to have had a vision in which he overheard a conversation between God and Satan.  Satan is said to have asked for one century so that he could destroy the Church, and God granted him the 100 years.  Pope Leo was so unnerved by the vision that he composed the Prayer to St. Michael. He also issued instructions that it be said at the conclusion of every Low Mass.

But in 1968, Pope St. Paul VI suppressed the recitation of prayer.  Just four years later, however, on June 29, 1972, he acknowledged that something was amiss. He wrote “through some crack, the smoke of Satan has entered the Church of God.” He voiced these words that same day, the ninth anniversary of his coronation, during a homily given at a mass for the solemnity of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.  Suppressing the prayer to St. Michael was probably not a good idea.

The smoke of Satan has harmed the Church in several ways.  Most importantly, it has done great harm to the Church’s moral authority in the eyes of the world.  And the world is very much in need of the Church’s moral authority because its authority comes from God.

But the smoke of Satan has done as much, if not more harm to society.  The “wickedness and snares of the devil” have resulted in a great deal of immorality, confused thinking, and disregard for God’s truths.

If God does plan on giving mankind a Warning, I hope His plan is to do so sooner rather than later.

The post An Inclusive Society in Which Many are Excluded appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Since the Church’s beginning, we sinful people have acted as though Jesus’ magnificent message about marriage/family/sexuality was NOT abundantly clear. As a result, there has been scandalous failure to truly appreciate the sacraments of Marriage and Holy Orders, as well as the vocation of religious life. New Ways “ministry” is one of those failures.

When I was still a Brooklyn high school student, scandalous confusion compelled the Vatican to release Persona Humana – Declaration on Certain Questions Concerning Sexual Ethics (approved by St Pope Paul VI on 11/7/75):

Christian doctrine…states that every genital act must be within the framework of marriage….

[some] have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people….

Pastors of souls must…exercise patience and goodness; but they are not allowed to render God’s commandments null, nor to reduce unreasonably people’s responsibility

A Tree (as Well as Myself) Grows in Brooklyn

In the 1970s, I was especially proud that my hometown diocese was at the forefront of services for people with developmental disabilities and for deaf people. From volunteering at Brooklyn diocesan summer camps, Saturday respite programs, and special events, I was also blessed to know other volunteers who were fine young people.

My first sign language classes were offered by the Brooklyn Diocese. I recall practice signing with my friend Frank on the tough NYC subway of the 1970s. In 1978, I also recall receiving a palanca letter from Frank, welcoming me to the Brooklyn diocesan Cursillo.

In the early 1980s, Frank and I were both interested in pursuing holy orders and/or religious life. While I sensed a shift in men attracted to holy orders/religious life, from men I knew growing up, I initially thought they were just way cooler than my uncle (whom I had not yet come to treasure). Anyway, I recall being envious that Frank seemed to fit in better with the young men having that interest.

While I have not had direct communication with Frank since the 1980s, I am aware of his well-known activities.

New Ways “Ministry” – Inspired by Brooklyn’s Bishop

Brooklyn Bishop Francis Mugavero issued the 1976 Sexuality – God’s Gift. While this pastoral statement clearly lacked the depth and clarity of Persona Humana, New Ways “Ministry” has called it “one of the first Roman Catholic statements to contain a compassionate and encouraging message to gay and lesbian people”:

Gay and lesbian people deserved to be treated equally in society and the Christian community, he noted [He did not use those terms.], and then he addressed them directly, stating, ‘. . . we pledge our willingness. . . to try to find new ways to communicate the truth of Christ because we believe it will make you free.

New Ways “Ministry” identifies the above “new ways” phrase as being their impetus. A quick check of it web site reveals that New Ways – much like James Martin, SJ – tries to alter unchanging truth about marriage/family/human sexuality….

Confusion Still Reigns….

Though the Vatican and USCCB were strongly critical of New Ways “Ministry” in the past, Pope Francis recently gave them a private audience. In the widely publicized photo of that meeting, my old friend Frank – long time CEO of New Ways – stands next to the Holy Father.

To me, it seems disingenuous for Frank to act as though he has been victimized by the Church. Much like the Holy Father’s embrace of James Martin, SJ, the New Ways photo strikes me as a clericalist smack in the face to Catholics trying to faithfully follow the truth about marriage/family/human sexuality.

But There is Every Reason to Hope!

Twice in my life, I was in the presence of the saintly, late Father John Harvey, OSFS – moral theologian and psychologist. Across the East River from my native Brooklyn, Father Harvey founded the wonderful Courage apostolate, at the behest of the late Cardinal Cooke (cf, A Call to Courage – undated autobiographical work). Tragically, Father Harvey spoke of meeting with ” massive indifference on the part of many clergy and laity alike.” Courage has five basic goals:

1. Live chaste lives in accordance with the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.
2. Prayer and Dedication. Dedicate one’s life to Christ through service to others, spiritual reading, prayer, meditation, individual spiritual direction, frequent attendance at Mass, and the frequent reception of the sacraments of Reconciliation and Holy Eucharist.
3. Foster a spirit of fellowship in which all may share thoughts and experiences, and so ensure that no one will have to face the problems of homosexuality alone.
4. Be mindful of the truth that chaste friendships are not only possible but necessary in a chaste Christian life and in doing so provide encouragement to one another in forming and sustaining them.
5. Good Example. Live lives that may serve as good examples to others.

Please join me in praying for my old friend Frank and the conversion of all involved with New Ways.

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The post “New Ways” and a Very Old Proclivity appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Truth is unchanging no matter what people do to undermine it.

Advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers (Congregation for Religious, 2/2/1961).

 the Church…cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called “gay culture”….It would be gravely dishonest for a candidate to hide his own homosexuality in order to proceed, despite everything, towards ordination….Let Bishops, episcopal conferences and major superiors look to see that the constant norms of this Instruction be faithfully observed for the good of the candidates themselves, and to guarantee that the Church always has suitable priests who are true shepherds according to the Heart of Christ. (Congregation for Catholic Education, 11/4/2005) 

On the Other Hand

Since at least 1970, Catholic clergy have de-emphasized sexual sins. In fact, my 64-year-old ears can recall few homilies addressing the sinfulness of contraception, homosexual acts, masturbation, pornography, or sex outside of marriage. Are any Catholics secretly or silently gladdened by that, or by the dramatic increase in declarations of marital nullity?

Is anyone noticing the vast increases we are simultaneously seeing in abortions, cohabitation, divorce, and STDs?

Since at least the 1980s, media have inundated us with reports of abusive or inappropriate priestly behavior. Overwhelmingly, the abuse/inappropriate behavior has been of a homosexual nature. Yet, we have been effectively dissuaded from questioning homosexuality among Catholic clergy.

Did an unspoken bribe purchase the silence of faithful Catholics on homosexuality in the clergy? How could anyone think that blessing homosexual coupling is a step in the right direction? Fortunately, truth is unchanging, and no one can take it away from us.

The Legend of Big Bad Ted

Many in positions of power laughably intimated that the fault for all abusive or inappropriate clerical behavior could be laid at the feet one very bad dude (i.e., Mr. Ted McCarrick, nee Cardinal McCarrick). Yet, as per Rev Paul Sullins, PhD (2018):

1. Clergy sexual abuse is still a problem. Since peaking 35 years ago, it has declined much less than commonly thought. The decline is consistent with an overall drop in sexual assault in American society.
2. Since 2002 abuse has been rising amid signs of complacency by Church leaders, and today is comparable to the early 1970s.
3. The share of homosexual men in the priesthood rose from twice that of the general population in the 1950s to eight times the general population in the 1980s. This trend was strongly correlated with increasing child sex abuse.
4. A quarter of priests ordained in the late 1960s report the existence of a homosexual subculture in their seminary, rising to over half of priests ordained in the 1980s. This trend was also strongly correlated with increasing child sex abuse.
5. Four out of five victims over age 7 were boys; only one in five were girls. Ease of access to boys relative to girls accounts for about one fifth of this disparity. The number of homosexual priests accounts for the remaining four fifths.
6. Estimates from these findings predict that, had the proportion of homosexual priests remained at the 1950s level, at least 12,000 fewer children, mostly boys, would have suffered abuse.

Efforts to downplay the seriousness of sexual sin again kicked in after McCarrick was driven out of town! I see a need for rigorous housecleaning addressed in the rise of clerics like James Martin, Marko Rupnik, and Cardinal “Tucho” Fernandez.

No One Can Take Away the Truth! God Will NEVER Forget Us!

Truth is unchanging, available, and more accessible than ever!

Recently, my Catholic Stand editor recently shared the “Catholic Questions” website for faithfully addressing people’s concerns (12/14/2023).

Additionally, fresh off the magnificent Bible in a Year podcasts, Ascension Press has dusted off the Catechism of the Catholic Church for a daily podcast.

Also, counteracting lies of the culture obscuring our recognition of the treasures of our bodies, Saint Pope John Paul II left us with his “Theology of the Body.”

Finally, perhaps the late Pope Benedict XVI’s most incredible gift to his beloved Church was a Reader’s Digest version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church – the Compendium of the Catechism. I have assembled some sign language tools (1, 2, 3, 4) for the study of the Compendium.

Conclusion: Be not afraid!

 In times of confusion, we must remind ourselves that we always have the sacraments and the timeless teachings of our Faith.

We should also recall how recent Holy Fathers (i.e., Saint John Paul II and Benedict XVI) left us with magnificent tools for the study of our Faith: the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The post Truth is Unchanging, Available, & More Accessible than Ever! God Has NOT Forgotten Us! appeared first on Catholic Stand.

By Fr. James Barry

On December 18, 2023 the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the declaration Fiducia Supplicans: On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings. The declaration has already produced a wide range of reactions and responses.

Two questions about Fiducia Supplicans (FS), however, are especially puzzling.  Why issue such a document if nothing has really changed and it’s not saying anything new, and why issue a document that will most certainly generate confusion with its ambiguity?

The First Question

One could argue that there is precedent for issuing a document that does not say anything new.  The last time the CDF/DDF issued a document with this level of authority was back in 2000, when the declaration Dominus Iesus was issued.  In Dominus Jesus nothing new was being said either.

Dominus Jesus dealt with “the unicity and salvific universality of Jesus Christ and the Church” (the sub-title of the declaration).   The document’s purpose was  to set the parameters of the playing field in discussing matters of faith.   By the year 2000,  as a result of Second Vatican Council’s declaration on religious freedom and inter-religious dialogue, discussions had taken on some noteworthy, and erroneous, interpretations which the CDF sought to answer.

With Dominus Jesus, the CDF was simply painting the lines on the playing field – you can play here, and there, but not in the stands and not outside the field.  In other words, these truths cannot be changed, but these theological proposals are open for discussion.

But FS is different.  The document says that the declaration is meant, oddly enough, as a sort of responsum to a Responsum to a dubium.

The Responsum

The Responsum from 2021, specifically said that the Church does not have the power to bless same-sex unions.  And as FS says, it “elicited numerous and varied reactions. Some welcomed the clarity of the document and its consistency with the Church’s perennial teaching; others did not share the negative response it gave to the question or did not consider the formulation of its answer and the reasons provided in the attached Explanatory Note to be sufficiently clear. To meet the latter reaction with fraternal charity, it seems opportune to take up the theme again and offer a vision that draws together the doctrinal aspects with the pastoral ones in a coherent manner” (3).

Fraternal charity might be the motive, but Dominus Iesus also received a very negative reaction in some circles – and no one got a different declaration more to their liking. Now, however, because there were people who didn’t like the answer in the Responsum, or thought it was unclear, the CDF decided to issue a document more to their liking – and which is less clear.

I’m not sure that fraternal charity is a motive that warrants a CDF declaration, especially if nothing has changed doctrinally. On that same token, if it’s just a question of liturgy or liturgical praxis, let the Congregation/Dicastery for Divine Worship deal with it, but I digress.

The difficulty is this: the document says it doesn’t change anything, but it also says that there has been a real development based on Pope Francis’ pastoral vision.  So nothing has changed – yet something has changed.

An Analogy

I think we can make an analogy with the slogan of the LGBTQ-etc. movement: “Love is love.”

If we take that statement at face value, it’s impossible to disagree. Indeed, it’s what philosophers call a tautology: “Love is love.” Yes, indeed.  It’s like saying “A car is a car” or “A dog is a dog.” At face value, nothing new is being said.

However, this is not what the movement wants: they want it to mean that all love is the same, using love in the broadest sense possible. Man with a man, woman with a woman, a man with men and women, whatever. It all goes, because “love is love.”

The problem, however, is that the content doesn’t correspond with the words. Some of these forms of ‘love’ are not loving at all. On the contrary, they’re sinful, and sin is never loving.  So not all loves are, in fact, loving.  “Love is love,” however, is great marketing. It’s difficult to persuasively argue against it in 20 words or less, or in a 10 second sound bit.

The “Book of Blessings”

I get the impression it’s the same with FS.  The content doesn’t correspond with the words. “Nothing has changed, we’re just advancing in our understanding of blessings.”

What, however, is being advanced?  If you look at the “Book of Blessings,” you can bless pretty much anything. I have the “Book of Blessings” (the old-school Roman Ritual Latin-English version) within reach of my desk.  In it there are blessings for irrational creatures (dogs, cats, fish, goats).  It also contains blessings for beer, bonfires, brick-kilns, butter, chalk, cheese, eggs, electric dynamos (just in case?), fields, oats, printing presses, railways and railcars (both a solemn and non-solemn form), seismographs, telegraph-instruments, tools for scaling mountains, and wheelchairs.

The book also has protective blessings and even a deprecatory blessing against noxious vermin.  I prayed it once at a friend’s house.  It includes such heart-warming phrases as:  “By our blessing, curse these noxious vermin, destroy and exterminate them … I purge you noxious vermin of evil, that speedily you be banished from our lands and fields, never returning, but departing into places where you can do no harm … We pronounce a curse on you, that wherever you go, you be cursed, decreasing from day to day unto your extermination.  Let no remnant of you remain except that which might be necessary for the welfare and use of mankind.”

So telling me that out of all the things I can bless, I can also bless people is nothing new.  I had already figured that out.

Blessing Pilgrims

Likewise, FS says that we can bless pilgrims on the journey without asking about their marital status. Yes, we can certainly do that.

In Europe, in general, people ask for blessings all the time.  Priests pray with them and for them, and ask God to help them through life. Great.

Likewise, in the United States (this is the only place I’ve seen this done), we commonly bless people who come up to communion with their arms crossed. The most likely reason is that they’re not in a state of grace. Nonetheless we bless them.

So, why is there a need for a DDF document to tell me that I can bless people when I already knew that? Indeed, another priest in his commentary wrote that good and holy priests bless pilgrims and random people all the time, without asking for any credentials or marriage certificates.

So, why issue a declaration for something wherein nothing has changed, and there’s nothing new? I think it is because we have a case of “love is love” here. The document says nothing has changed, but the emphasis on blessing same-sex couples or those in irregular unions is to make a point. We don’t want to bless their situations.  Rather we want to bless their . . . intrinsic goodness as human beings?

Sometimes we call this pastoral de escritorio, a desk apostolate. It has no connection with the real world. On paper it seems great, but in real life it makes no sense.

Blessing or Absolution?

Consider the situation in some European countries that are traditionally and culturally Catholic. Often there are couples that aren’t married who come to have their children Baptized.

In Italy, for example, part of the Baptismal preparation is a brief class with the opportunity to go to confession. I knew a priest in Italy who used to tell the people that if they are living together and not married, they can go to Confession, but the priest won’t give them absolution.  They will receive a blessing instead. The problem is that these people have so little formation and understanding they don’t know the difference between a blessing and absolution.

So, FS tells us that we can bless same-sex and irregular couples in a way that is not liturgical and cannot be confused with marriage or approval if the couples ask for it spontaneously. Presumably, this is something that we could’ve done before in the broadest sense of the term if nothing has changed.

Problems

In the end, FS creates a number of problems.

Again, why issue a document for this if it’s nothing new? Is it really a document for priests and pastors? OR, is it more for couples in irregular situations?  Will it entice them to come and ask for a blessing, and insist that they can receive one (even if they don’t understand the difference between liturgical and non-liturgical)?

After Amoris laetitia, I recall a woman coming to me, asking to go to confession so she could receive communion, even though she was living with a man who she wasn’t married to. I told her that she really couldn’t receive communion.  But she insisted that “Pope Francis said it was fine.” I replied that if it was really okay, why did she want to come to Confession first?

Perhaps FS is not a document for the average parish pastor.  Maybe it is for ideological pastors who want to make a point.

In either case, people will take FS, and run with it.  For instance, Fr. James Martin already invited a same-sex couple to come and be blessed (so the blessing wasn’t spontaneous).  The New York Times was conveniently on hand for photographs.  And other episcopal conferences have also seen the open door, and said, “Well, let’s come up with liturgical blessings for them!”

Part two of this article, tomorrow, addresses the second question: Why issue a document that will most certainly generate confusion?

(Fr. James Barry is a pseudonym for a Roman Catholic parish priest.)  

The post Fiducia Supplicans is Meant to Cause Tension: Part 1 appeared first on Catholic Stand.

The good Sisters who taught me in grade school knew how to use language correctly.

One of my earliest teachers was a Franciscan Sister.  As a first-grade teacher, she was very practical.  I still remember several of her lessons in detail.  She was exceptionally good at explaining things in ways a child could understand.

Once she talked about how the devil enjoys tricking people into sin.  She used the parallel of receiving a beautifully wrapped present, complete with ribbon and bow.  I vividly remember picturing a crimson foil wrapped box in my mind as she described the package.  Once unwrapped, however, all one finds is a rotten apple, bruised, moldy, and taut with the stench of decay.

Manipulating Language

This lesson holds true in today’s modern world.  The packaging may be different, but the comparison is identical.

Beverage cans and bottles display the number of fluid ounces.  Ounces have a fixed definition that protects the consumer from being cheated.  The language is clear.  But one must actually understand what ounces are.

When ordering drinks at a fast-food drive through, however, ounces are irrelevant.  The common language is small, medium, and large.  And some companies have even dispensed with small and only offer medium, large, and supersize.  What does medium really mean?  How many ounces is ‘large?’

Still other companies have created whole new language for their drink sizes.  Medium and large are replaced with terms like tall or venti.

The language used in not by accident.  Businesses are deliberately trying to manipulate consumers to improve sales. Companies are selling ‘the perception of more’ masked in imaginative language.

Packaging Sin in Handsome Language

Products are not the only thing being sold to us.  Opinions, philosophies, and even sin are peddled to society.

In today’s world, every sin is packaged in very handsome language.  It seems the devil has enlisted the aid of the greatest marketing and public relations firms to transform the ugliness of mortal sin into language that sounds warm and welcoming.

After years of incremental creep, the meaning of words has changed.  In numerous cases, the narrative is entrenched so deeply that calling a sin by its rightful name has itself become a sin in the modern world.  One need not look far to find many examples.

Pro-Choice as a Case Study

Do you know anyone against choice? I don’t.  No one is against choice.  Even God gives us a choice to follow Him or to deny Him.

In today’s world, when someone says they are pro-choice, the language sets a tone of moral superiority.  Choice is established as freedom given to us by God.

But what does pro-choice mean?  Does it mean you can choose to send your children to Catholic schools?  No.  Does it mean you can choose to get married and start a family?  Again no.  Does it mean you can choose to put your baby up for adoption if you do not have the means to care the child?  Wrong again.  Let us take another hot button topic.  Does it mean you can choose to carry a firearm legally for sport or self-defense?  Absolutely not!  Of course, pro-choice really only applies to abortion. So, if it means only one choice, it’s really not choice at all.

It should be no surprise that the one who first denied God has conspired in this world to mask the sin of murdering unborn children with the language of “choice.”  This is no accident.

Gay as a Second Case Study

Sometimes the definition of a word is intentionally twisted to mean something it did not.  The first time I heard the word gay was in the theme song of the Flintstones cartoon.  At the time, I did not know what it meant to “have a gay old time.”  My parents told me it meant happy, merry, keenly alive, exuberant.  This is how the word was defined in their 1930’s era dictionaries.

During the last half of the 20^th century, a swing occurred.  My 1984 edition of Webster’s dictionary lists 3 definitions for the word gay.  The first 2 definitions were about being happy or bright.  The third definition listed was a single word – homosexual.

In today’s Merriam-Webster dictionary, the first definition reads, “of, relating to, or characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to people of one’s same sex.”  The first meaning of “gay” has been redefined in the last 50 years.

The word Homosexual is very clear.  Gay, however, sounds much more positive and has displaced the former.

When looking closer at the current definition of gay, one finds that the word homosexual is completely omitted.  If gay is the replacement word for homosexual, why not use it in the definition?  The only reason can be to conceal its true nature.

Other Examples

These are only two examples in a lengthy list.  The whole contrived dispute of gender is ripe with illustrations.

Sometimes the manipulation of words is a bait and switch like replacing the phrase freedom of religion with freedom to worship.  In this case, a similar sounding phrase was injected into public discourse with an intentionally different meaning.  Catholics can ‘worship’ as they wish, but don’t actually ‘practice’ the principles of your religion in the public square.

How does one combat this?  One of the priests in my parish has often said that we must name our sins during confession and not be cowards hiding behind vague language.

This option is a possible approach when engaging others.  We must be polite and loving without conceding to sin.  Our mission is to extend a hand and pull people away from the fires of hell.   Part of our challenge is to speak to them in a way in which they will want to reach back to us, to grasp our hand, and leave sin behind them.  This is difficult when someone is convinced that their actions are not sinful.

Politely Stating the True Definition

I recently learned that a close friend’s son is homosexual.  My friend has embraced the sin and vehemently defends this behavior.  Apparently he loves his son more than God.

I did not bring this up, however, I would not affirm his position when pressed.  I stated that I thought choosing homosexual behavior was sinful.  He was upset by this, and the fact that I used the word homosexual as opposed to gay or having pride.  He said the word homosexual is insulting.  I told him I did not understand why.  I am not insulted when someone says I am heterosexual.  If he is proud of that behavior then way not be proud of the word?

This very awkward discussion went on for over an hour.  Fortunately, both of us remained calm.  This was really a challenge, especially when he accused me of condoning the killing of homosexuals in muslin countries because I would not concede that homosexual behavior was acceptable.  I reminded him that murder was a sin, just as adultery.  That sparked a tangent discussion on adultery and the sacrament of marriage.

We are still friends, but I suspect that this topic will come up again.  I am glad that I was blessed with calm because I believe I will have the opportunity to be a witness again.  A shouting match would have ended any chance to witness Catholic teaching.

Uncomfortable Conversations

Standing up for the Faith can be extremely uncomfortable.  Keeping discussions polite without conceding can be difficult.  Both are necessary, however, if the goal is to bring others to Christ.

Such conversations are part of the spiritual works of mercy. It is our duty to admonish the sinner, instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, bear wrongs patiently, forgive injuries, comfort the sorrowful, and pray for the living and the dead.   Sometimes the trouble with our friends is not that they’re ignorant, it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.

The post Controlling Language to Hide Sin appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Biology is irrelevant today.  So why do so many or our leaders say we should follow the science?

Today a male can say he’s a female (and vice-versa) and we are told we must accept this.  Two males (or two females) can also get ‘married,’ and again we must accept this.  And a baby in a woman’s womb is not a human being.  Babies in the womb can be murdered, and once, again we should accept this as if it is no big deal.  Even though it is.

So if biology is irrelevant, let’s just chuck all the sciences.  Let’s forget about physics and chemistry and geology and such.  Let’s simplify things.

If we can be whatever we want, and do what we want, let’s all be zebras from now on.  It will solve a lot of problems.

All Together and One With Nature

Think about it.  If we are all zebras, we will, all of us, be black or brown and white.  The so called ‘systemic racism’ problem goes away and white privilege is no more.  There is no longer a need to be woke.

And the pluses just keep adding up.

The vegans amongst us will be thrilled because zebras are grazers – they only eat plants.  Those of us who like meat will have to adapt, however.  But isn’t that a small price to pay for being part of a homogeneous world-wide herd that lives in harmony with nature?  Isn’t this what the ecology nuts want?

Of course, all those who raise chickens, pigs, and beef will have to find another line of work.  So will the fishermen.  But I’m sure everything will work out okay.

And since zebras are primarily passive (except when it comes to mating) we also won’t need policemen, and we won’t have to worry about wars or have governments or need borders any more.  All those in law enforcement or the military, and all the politicians and lawyers, will have to find something else to do to occupy their time.

The mating part could be a bit of a problem since dominant male zebras have harems of females.  The zebra feminists may not like that, but, what the heck, other large male mammals have harems as well.  They zebra feminists will just have to learn to live with it.

Zebratopia

And since we will all be part of the same herd, we will all be part of a giant dazzle (a herd of zebras is called a dazzle).  We will be free to roam about the planet as we wish.  Oh boy, open borders!

But since zebras hoof it everywhere they go we won’t need bicycles, motorcycles, cars, boats, trains, airplanes, or even roller blades.  And we won’t need fossil fuels to run those machines that require fuel.  That will make all the global warming alarmists and green nuts happy.

Zebras, to the best of my knowledge, also don’t have much need for technology so we can throw away our smart phones, computers, and flat screen TVs.  Sorry AT&T, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Hollywood, the entertainment industry, and high tech manufacturing – you are suddenly all defunct.

And being zebras, if we are true to our sense of zebraness, survival of the herd will be a motivating factor to our existence.  As such, abortion will be a no-no.  Every new little foal that is conceived will be nurtured and will become a welcome addition to the herd.  Sorry liberals, but you’ll have to bite the bullet on this one.

Yep, life will be pretty good for everyone if we all decide to be zebras.  The Socialist-Marxist ideological dream of Utopia on earth will finally be realized.  We will all think alike and act zebra-like.

Of course, if some people decide they are lions or cheetahs or crocodiles instead of zebras, everything will fall apart.  So we will have to somehow get rid of the zebra-phobics amongst us.  This may not be very zebra-like, but, hey, the Utopian dream can only be realized if we are all zebras. Thus the zebra-phoebes will just have to be canceled, ostracized, shunned, jailed, or worse.

Utter Nonsense

Now let’s get real.  This is all utter nonsense.  People cannot be zebras any more than zebras can be people.  And men cannot be women and women cannot be men.  It is a biological impossibility. So why do so many among us even entertain such ridiculous notions?

Try as we might, we cannot pretend biology is irrelevant.  But some truly irrational and misguided people are bound and determined to do just that.

Two men or two women cannot be ‘married’ because they cannot procreate.  As the Catechism states, “1652 By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory.”

What’s more, God’s teaching is very clear when it comes to sexual morality.  The short version is found in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, “Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor sodomites . . .  will inherit the kingdom of God.”

Jesus tells us in Mathew 7:13-14 to “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many.  How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.”

Believe in God’s Truth

Society needs to get off the broad road and find the narrow road again.  It needs to stop pushing the mushy, warped, nonsensical, relativistic psychology that is so in vogue and start remembering that Jesus Christ is the “the way and the truth and the life” [John 14:6].

Since we are all sinners we must be tolerant of one another’s faults and propensity toward sin.  But tolerance does not mean acceptance.  As Christians we have a duty to admonish sinners.  We need to start admonishing and stop being accepting.

Open mindedness and tolerance taken to the extreme becomes moral blindness.  And this seems to be the situation today.  Society has become morally blind.

Pray for our country and our leaders and speak up for truth.  We need to get off the wide road and back on the narrow road.  The wide road is the road to perdition.

The post Hey, Let’s All Be Zebras From Now On! appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Would you willingly invite an ax murder into your house in the late evening?  How about inviting in a rapist?  How about inviting in a crime lord, a stripper, a pornographic movie star, or a drug pusher?

Knowing the audience reading this article, one would probably argue that these are absolutely absurd questions.  No one would openly invite unrepentant sinners of this level into their home.

Unfortunately, I would argue that some very evil people are regularly invited into homes, into living rooms, dens, and basements.  The guest may not be physically present, but their words, actions, and attitudes definitely are present and sometimes even glorified.

Televisions are like open doors.  They allow behaviors and attitudes cloaked in the camouflage of entertainment and pop culture right into our home.

Among the most popular movies in history are The Godfather, Psycho, and Pulp Fiction.  Would anyone disagree that the characteristics in these movies should not be emulated?  Yet, even to this day, our society considers these movies must watch classics.

Included in the most watched TV series are The Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad.  These shows fall far short of upholding Christian values.

Even documentaries commonly delve into the history, explanation, and sometimes apologetics of heinous crimes and sin.

Many Sources

Just as much as images projected on a screen, sounds are invited into our home.  Radio and streaming services deliver the latest music to wherever one may be.  Many of today’s tunes may have a good beat, but when you stop and listen to the lyrics and their meaning, it is not uncommon to find sin glorified.

Even the books, newspapers, and magazines invited into homes often include attacks on our Faith and values.

So, what is the point?  After all, it’s not a sin to listen to music or enjoy entertainment on TV.

One Can Not Un-experience Something

In 2014, the Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation produced a commercial showing a soldier laying on his back, wounded, straining to reach for a motionless child maybe a meter away.  He struggles in agony until a dog stirs him from his terror.  It was only a nightmare.  The nightmare ended with the dog consoling his human.  The message of the commercial is, “We not only help those who cannot see, but also those who have seen too much.”

Once one sees sin it cannot be unseen.

The entertainment industry prides itself on realism.  Gone are the days of an actor falling over in swashbuckling movie, feigning his death.  Movies today show the flesh parting and the stains of blood.  The same realism is applied to sexuality.  These images can not be unseen even if they are fake.

Often “clean” entertainment is not so clean when one considers the dialogue and culture presented.  Characters often discuss premarital sex and adultery in a tone which accepts and sometimes celebrates these behaviors.  Even without the images, the dialogue creates images in one’s head.  These images chip at the soul, bit by bit, leaving scars.

This has come up as topic with many of my colleagues.  The solution most often provided is to ‘turn it off. ‘

This solution sounds simple but is hard in practice.  Accepting this challenge means deliberately limiting what enters one’s home.

Passive Invitations

As an adult, one may restrict one’s entertainment to avoid the portrayal of sin.  Be that as it may, today’s technology is a passive invitation to anyone in our home.

Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix, and the Roku Channel are examples of on-demand streaming services with massive libraries.  To help one select programs, these services allow one to browse through categories such as action, animals & nature, mystery, or science fiction.  However, some of these services also list the category “adult animation” between action and adventure.  The services also list “LGBTQ” between late night and mystery.  One service even lists a category titled graphic violence.

Whether one watches shows in these categories or not, current streaming services have established a pathway for sin to enter your home.  What is to stop a curious teenager from investigating any if these previously unwatched categories?

Sin even has a way of sneaking past one’s safeguards.  While watching a 1970’s family show on a streaming service with my 7-year-old, I was surprised to have it interrupted by a commercial for a drug to treat a homosexually transmitted disease.  The images included in the commercial clearly promoted that sin.  It took about 30 seconds to realize what was being shown.  This was 30 seconds too long.

After taking some time to think about this incident, I had to wonder about the goal of the commercial. Was it to advertise a pharmaceutical product to a person whose demographic in no way would need the drug or to subliminally promote the behavior?

Securing Your Home

Securing one’s home from the beating tide of sinful influence, takes a deliberate effort.  DVD’s do still exist. They eliminate pushed programming and commercials.  The same is true for music CD’s.

Others have recognized the negative influence of today’s entertainment and are using technology to combat it.  VidAngel is service that filters streamed video by skipping or muting any unwanted or objectionable content in the privacy of your home.

Another alternative also exists – abstinence.  Humans survived for thousands of years without continual entertainment.  It is possible.  You can actually Fast from Technology.

The post Who Are You Inviting into Your Home? appeared first on Catholic Stand.

“Let’s go, Brandon!” has become a popular euphemism for a derogatory chant directed at President Joe Biden. It began in early October when NASCAR driver Brandon Brown won a race at Talladega. While a local news reporter was interviewing Brown immediately after his win, the crowd behind him shouted the derogatory chant. The news reporter then said, “As you can hear the chants from the crowd … ‘Let’s go, Brandon’,” but everyone knew that the actual words chanted were barely like “Let’s go, Brandon!” In a failed attempt to disguise the crowd’s clear words, the reporter created her own version of the chant.

Renaming and Reshaping Reality

This article is not about Biden or his policies. It is not even about crowds shouting derogatory chants at public sporting events across the nation. It is about the desire of many in our country to rename certain actions in ways that do not correspond with reality. These people despise reality so much that they are willing to lie, protest, riot, burn, curse, shout, sue, denigrate, defame, and assault anyone who does not agree with their demonic ideology.

I don’t use the word “demonic” casually. Satan is the father of lies, and the people who perpetuate these denials of reality do so with such anger and hatred that to say their deeds are purely human provocations is a severe understatement. One has only to watch a single episode of the mainstream media reporting to witness this vast distortion of reality.

Their postmodern  actions have become organized against truth, and their ideology has become influential at all levels of our society (e.g., government, education, media, commerce, and religion). Their goal is to destroy objective moral truths and reshape society according to their malevolent designs. The “Let’s go, Brandon” chant is simply a symptom of a much more sinister problem.

Postmodernism’s Lies

The following examples show some of postmodernism’s lies over the last century and their relationship to one another:

Lie 1: Sex is primarily about pleasure

In 1930, contracepting by married couples crept into mainstream Christianity through the Anglican Church. The contraceptive mentality denies the procreative and unitive purposes of sex. By denying these purposes, sex no longer needs to be reserved to the confines of marriage between one man and one woman. Sex within a contraceptive framework becomes an objectifying and mere hedonistic pursuit (pleasure for pleasure’s sake).

Lie 2: Fornication and divorce are morally licit

By reducing sex to a mere pleasure-seeking act, marriage became a less revered tradition. In the 1960s, divorce rates in America began to increase and marriage rates began to decrease. There was a direct inverse proportion between the two. Although numerous factors contribute to these issues, the point is that marriage had become a less virtuous and respected pursuit in our postmodern world. Additionally, the sexual revolution made fornication a “right” that no one must ever judge as immoral.

Lie 3: Abortion is not murder

By destroying marriage and responsible parenting within this God-designed framework, postmodernists began their cry for abortion rights. They often deny that abortion is murder and cloak this most vile act under the euphemisms of “women’s rights” and “women’s health.” Their mantra continues to be “My body, my choice.” The problem with this logic is that the baby’s body is not the woman’s body.  This should be clear to any objective thinker.

Lie 4: Homosexual “marriage” is real

By destroying the sexual act’s meaning and purpose, postmodernists have ushered in a gay revolution in which homosexual actions by people who suffer from same-sex attraction are legitimized and celebrated at all levels of society. Additionally, if sex is merely about pleasure, marriage can be defined as whatever the postmodern advocates and sympathetic government leaders say it is.

Lie 5: Men are women and women are men

If murdering the unborn is not really murder and homosexual “marriage” is real marriage, then confusing sex and gender is no big deal. If a man feels that he is a woman or a woman feels she is a man, then everyone must, according to postmodernists, accept this fantasy and use language that appeases these psychologically disturbed people. Rather than placating them, we should be encouraging them to get psychological and spiritual help.

Relativism

All these heinous actions ultimately have their roots in moral relativism. Although relativism does not seek to outright deny morality, it relegates truth to individual feelings.  “Your truth is good for you. My truth is good for me.” By making our feelings rather than God and reality the purveyor of truth, relativism set the stage for postmodernism. Unfortunately, postmodernism has set the stage for atheism’s expansion, and atheism will set the stage, as it has in other cultures, for communism.

Our once great nation is being reduced to constant infighting and corruption rather than the common pursuit of good that once permeated our culture. The Greatest Generation will soon be a relic of our past and, I believe, the Worst Generation is growing strong amid a complacent, live-and-let-live society.

The Necessary Catholic Response

The Catholic response must be what it has always been. Learn, obey, and share the truth lovingly with others. The Catholic Church is the only institution on earth that has the fullness of unadulterated Truth in the realms of faith and morals. Someone might accuse me of boasting, but I will boast of Christ and His Church any day versus postmodernism with its superficial, contradictory, fantastical, and hedonistic worldview.

Every Catholic must pray, fast, and give alms. We must, according to our abilities, give our time, talent, and treasure to combat the Church’s enemies and build up the kingdom of God. If we do not glorify God at home, work, publicly, and privately, evil will overcome the world with even more vigor than we are now seeing.

So, here is my advice to all: passionately tell your families, friends, and coworkers about Christ and His one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church. Make the Sign of the Cross and pray at every meal, even when eating in public. Volunteer at local charities. Teach at your parish. Work with your parish’s evangelization committee. If it does not have one, work with your pastor to create one. Most importantly, place all your trust in God and do the work to which He is calling you.

The post “Let’s Go, Brandon!” appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Truth seems to be a pretty flexible commodity these days. And in politics, truth seems to be downright elusive.

We’ve heard some real doozies from politicians down through the years:

“We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”
“I am not a crook.”
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”
“Abortion is health care.”

Profundity or Fallacy

But politics, aside, today we often hear statements like, “Well, that’s your truth but it’s not my truth” or, as relativists like to say, “The only truths are facts that can be tested and proven.  Everything else is just opinion.”  But there are problems with both of these statements.

In the first instance, there cannot be contradictory truths.  If John says “God exists” and Sam says “there is no God,” both statements cannot be true.  One of the statements must be false.

There’s also a problem with the relativists’ claim.  If the only truths are facts that can be tested and proven, the “everything else is just opinion” part of the statement is just opinion.  And since it’s not a fact (because it cannot be tested and proven), it may or may not be true.  This means the first part of the statement may or may not be true as well.  This is a formal fallacy known as Affirming the Consequent.

What’s really maddening is that people today think these statements exhibit profound thinking.  That people think this is an indictment of the educational system.

But even in the sciences, truth can be elusive. As “retired, cranky, old physicist” and CS writer Bob Kurland has pointed out, there are a lot of “why” questions science just can’t answer.  There are also “how” questions science cannot answer as well (example: how was this person cured of such and such when there is no scientific explanation for such a cure?).

Propaganda and Censorship

So should we really “follow the science” when it comes to things like Covid-19 and the vaccines?

Yes, we should follow it very closely.  Unfortunately following the science on both of these topics has not been easy.  This is because the science has been both propagandized and heavily censored.

As Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Professor Dr. Marty Makary noted, for example, “the CDC has been “using science as political propaganda. The absolute worst studies that were done during the pandemic came out of the CDC.”  Yet the studies held up by public policy dissenters to the approved script were dismissed as flawed.

Remember the Great Barrington Declaration?  Some 928,000 infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists signed the declaration. These scientists voiced “grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies.”  These experts recommended an approach they called “Focused Protection.”  Yet the declaration was ignored or ridiculed.  It did not follow the approved script.

When it comes to medical science the opinions of reputable medical experts should be openly discussed.  Debate is part and parcel of proper scientific inquiry.  In the U.S. debate is also called freedom of speech.

The opinions of recognized experts should not be censored just because they do not follow an “approved” narrative.  And they should certainly not be made subservient to anonymous, and possibly incompetent and biased fact checkers.

Yet articles like “The Silencing of Joe Rogan” abound.

“The Left wants Joe Rogan silenced for peddling “misinformation” about COVID-19,” wrote Angus Milne.

“Joe Rogan’s crime is discussing COVID-19 vaccines and COVID policy with two medical professionals: Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Peter McCullough. Both men are highly qualified to talk about this subject; both men reject the narrative pushed by Western governments and the mainstream media.”

Tyranny

Of course such tactics should no longer shock us.  The day before the Rogan article appeared at Crisis, Noelle Mering, writing at Catholic World Report succinctly stated the situation we are in.  She says there are

“. . . two essential conditions of tyranny: foster in citizens an unhealthy suspicion of one another and an unhealthy faith in the powers that be. Identity politics habituated us to this. COVID-19 has put it on steroids.”

Then she delivers a knockout blow to the would-be censors:  “Truth does not need coercion or censorship.  Power decoupled from truth demands both” [emphasis added].

Vaccine Truth

So what is “the truth” when it comes to the Covid vaccines?

Setting aside the philosophical discussions of “What is truth?” let’s go with a common sense definition: Truth is that which is not false.

Consider these two statements:

1. “The vaccines are safe and effective.”
2. “There is evidence that the jab is harmful even deadly.”

Which statement is “True?”

The “approved” narrative says statement #1 is true and statement #2 is false.  In fact, if you watch any television you’ve probably seem public service advertisements loudly proclaiming some variant of statement #1.

There are, however, many who say statement #2 is true and statement #1 is false.  Even the prestigious Mayo Clinic points out in regard to the vaccines: “Because COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials only started in the summer of 2020, it’s not yet clear if the vaccines will have long-term effects.”

Muddy Water

Of course, proponents of both statements point to statistics and studies to support their claims that what they are saying is true. And both sides cast doubt on the statistics and studies offered by their opponents.

The result of all the contradictory information floating around is that the truth is clear as mud.

The real truth may actually be closer to a third statement:  The vaccines were developed using the cloned cells of an aborted baby.  The vaccines appear to be safe for most people.  The long term effects of the vaccines are not yet known.  The vaccines can be harmful and even deadly, for a percentage of those who get vaccinated. In addition, the vaccines will not prevent you from contracting Covid or passing the virus on to others, but they may lessen the severity of your symptoms.

Or, as this article points out, maybe the whole truth is yet to be determined.  The article is concerning:  “The Most Objective Evidence Shows No Indication That Covid Vaccines Save More Lives Than They Take.”

Perhaps Phil Lawler is right.  Maybe a “Covid Truth-and-Reconciliation committee” would be a good thing.  But he’s also right that “the odds are stacked heavily against its adoption.”

Truth in Advertising?

By law, all drug advertisements have to provide full disclosure and mention possible side effects.  Vaccine “public service announcements,” however, say only that the vaccines are “safe and effective.” No mention of possible risks or side effects.

Is the world we now live in one in which the government is exempted from following the law?  Should the government be able to force you to take a vaccine in violation of your well-formed conscience? And should the government be able to force you to take a vaccine that may be injurious to your health, or even kill you?

The answer to all three of these questions is “No.”

To paraphrase Shakespeare, something is rotten in the U.S.  Or, As CS writer/managing editor Peter Darcy wrote not too long ago, “There is almost nothing happening in American cities and capitals today that is honest.”

Of course, just as statement #2 is contrary to the approved narrative, statement #3 would likely get censored on social media as well.  Such a cautionary statement is not going be conducive to achieving a 100 percent vaxxed goal, or whatever is the real goal.

And it’s possible that “the real goal” has been something other than defeating Covid.  As Rahm Emanuel famously stated, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.  And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

Suppressing Truth

So if quelling the pandemic was not the goal, what was the real goal?  The real goal may have been more wealth and power for the already rich and powerful.

As Joseph D’Hippolito writes about a new blockbuster of a book by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of deceased U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy –

“Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. exposes Fauci’s corruption and incompetence in The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War against Democracy and Public Health. Kennedy details the ongoing collusion between the federal government and pharmaceutical firms, collusion that Fauci devised to enrich himself and his allies.”

It’s not that difficult to suppress the truth, at least for a time.  As depicted in the movie “Concussion” the truth about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), was suppressed for a good number of years.  (CTE is a neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated blows to the head.)

It was only because of the dogged determination of one man, Dr. Bennet Omalu, that the truth finally came out – CTE was causing severe behavioral problems, mood problems, and thinking problems for a good number of former NFL players. Yet Dr. Omalu was censored – he was effectively ridiculed and canceled (“coercion and censorship”) by those who opposed the truth.

So it is possible to suppress the truth for a time.  And when the main stream media, social media, and educational institutions all collude with the government, suppressing the truth should not be too difficult.  George Orwell warned us of this in his book “1984.”

The Truth

Good Catholics need to start speaking up.  We need to speak out against the destructive ideologies and falsehoods being bandied about today.  We need to proclaim the truth loudly and often.

• All lives matter.
• Abortion is murder.
• Celebrating diversity is divisive; celebrating the oneness of the human race unites.
• God does not make homosexuals.
• Sexual acts between two men or two women are immoral.
• Two men or two women cannot be “married;” such a union is unnatural and cannot be blessed.
• There are only two sexes – male and female.
• Men cannot become women and women cannot become men.
• Women cannot be ordained priests.
• Fornication is a sin.
• Cohabitation is a sin.
• The use of artificial birth control is a sin.
• Violence and looting is not peaceful assembly.
• Socialism and Communism are political systems that are contrary to the nature of the human person.
• Critical Race Theory is irrational drivel.

And, a shout out here to Father Jerry Pokorsky who wrote recently:

• “Equity” does not mean “equal dignity before God.” It means equality of outcomes and violates logic and common sense on every level (intelligence, athletic abilities, etc.).”
• “The doctrine of “inclusion” camouflages moral relativism.”

Fear Hell

Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  That was another doozy.  He was wrong.  We should all fear spending eternity in hell.

Far too many today, however, seem to think sin is not sin and everyone will go to heaven when they die.  They no longer “tolerate sound doctrine.”  Instead, they follow “their own desires and insatiable curiosity.”  They “stop listening to the truth” [2 Timothy 4:3].  They pay attention, instead, to the “deceitful spirits and demonic instructions” of false teachers [1 Timothy 4:1].

Fortunately for us there is one source of truth that cannot be corrupted.

“For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” [John 18:37].

God’s teachings are the answers to all our problems yet we continue to put our trust in the princes of the world.  But by and large the princes of today have abandoned God.  Many “leaders” today are totalitarian wolves in sheep’s’ clothing.

“For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths” [2 Timothy 4:3-4].

“Thus says the LORD:  Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings, who makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the LORD” [Jeremiah 17:5].

We need to start listening to God.

The post The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth appeared first on Catholic Stand.

In 2014, the Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation received the Gouden Loeki Commercial Award.  The award was probably well deserved.

The commercial that received the award begins with a close up shot of the eye of man who is stricken with panic.  As the shot widens we notice that his breathing is intense and there is blood on the side of his head.  Then we see there are soldiers around him and hear the sound of gun fire.  It becomes clear that he too is a soldier.

As he looks to the side, he sees a doll and, just beyond it, a young girl lying face down in the rubble.  The solider can barely move as he reaches out to the girl while one of his fellow soldiers comes to his aid.  Terror and anguish fill his face.

Suddenly the scene shifts to this same soldier in a bed being woken by a dog.  The dog then hits a switch with his nose and turns on the lights in his darkened room.  A narrator says:  “We train dogs to guide people with trauma out of a nightmare, because we not only help people who cannot see, but also those who have seen too much.”

You can view the commercial here – The Royal Dutch Guide Dog Foundation (KNGF) commercial for veteran dogs – YouTube

Violence Cannot Be Unseen

Violence is brutal and often savage.  Most often it is a sinful act, but even when violence is used for self-defense it is still ugly.

Quite often, violent sin scars the soul, even if one is only a witness and not the perpetrator of violence.  Such scarring can unintentionally lead to other sins.  Seeing violence inflicted on others can foster rage and even hatred.

Many people relive violent acts in their dreams and sometimes even in the faces of other people who pass them by on the street.  Fortunately, most people shy from violent sin because it is so horrific and uncomfortable.  There is no pleasure in it.

A Shattered Cup

Porcelain is fragile.  A shattered porcelain cup can be pieced back together and repaired with glue.  Be that as it may, cracks and other defects persist.

The same is true for our souls.  One may go to confession, repent sins, and try to repair one’s soul.  One can work to piece his or her life back together, however, the scars from sin remain.

Sexual Sin Cannot Be Unseen

Not all sins leave the same type of scars.  Unlike violence, sexual sin often brings worldly pleasure, at least in the short term.

Grown men often struggle with pornography their entire lives.  Once they have seen an image, they cannot un-see it.  Moreover, seeing one image often creates a hunger to see more and more and more, leading to a spiral of addiction.

Men I know who struggle with this temptation regret seeing past sinful images because of the craving it has created within them.  They also work to resist temptation by avoiding sexual images and any form of pornography.

Sexualizing the Young

Sexual education in schools has been a point of contention for decades.  However, sexual education in government run schools has shifted of late.  It now focuses on unnatural and disordered pleasures and is no longer just for high school students.  It now includes a multitude of perversions presented to younger and younger children.

Less than 10 years ago it would have been absurd to think that sexual education would be brought into kindergarten.  Moreover, the type of graphic sexual education presented attempts to normalize homosexuality and other forms of sin.  It discards modern Christian morality and its benefits for the ancient pagan appetites of Sodom and Gamora.

Even though children are not mentally, emotionally, and spiritually ready to confront such topics, secular educators claim the subject must be introduced as a form inclusion and equity.  But as Jerome German pointed out recently, the only equity being created is the equity of sin.

This generation will feel the effects of this radical indoctrination for their entire lives.  A 5-year-old kindergartner cannot un-see such sins.

Challenge for Parents

Parents must recognize the threat.  Parents must reject the naive thinking that their children will not embrace secular values after being bombarded with 6 to 8 hours of daily propaganda.  There are other options to government schools.

To avoid the indoctrination of sin, Catholic schools as well as other Christian schools are one option.  To offset the costs, some states offer vouchers which can be applied to non-government schools.  Some churches offer both merit and need based scholarships as well.

However, just because a school calls itself Catholic or Christian does not mean it actually promotes Christian values.

Home schooling is another option.  In 2020, the number of 5-17 year-old students who were home schooling rose to 9%.  In addition, the curriculum and technical resources now available for home schooling makes this option more attractive every year.

Both of these non-government options have a cost, however.  But when discerning a course of action, one must remember that the cost is not just financial, but also spiritual. What is the cost of sin to your child’s soul?

The End Game

Sexualization of Children is evident in today’s schools.  Adults have forced the young to see too much.  Children are being groomed not just to accept sin, but to be the next victim while being told they are the beneficiary.

The post You Can’t Un-See Sin appeared first on Catholic Stand.

Most Catholic high schools in the U.S. have probably never been written about in a national publication.  And that may be a good thing.  No news is good news, as the old saying goes.

An exception is De La Salle High School, a Catholic high school for boys in Concord, CA. De La Salle had 12 consecutive undefeated seasons in football, from 1992 to 2004.  The school’s 151 consecutive wins is a national winning streak record for high school football.  This feat was so impressive a movie was made about it in 2014 – “When the Game Stands Tall.”

But usually if a Catholic high school is spotlighted it’s usually because something not so wonderful happened there.  At least that’s the case with the Catholic high school I graduated from.

A New Coach

I read about my high school last September at the National Catholic Register and at the Catholic News Agency websites.  The high school is Benet Academy, in Lisle IL, in the Diocese of Joliet.  It was in the news because it hired a new coach for the girl’s lacrosse team.  The new coach, Amanda Kammes, is in a same-sex ‘marriage.’

The story got a good deal of local attention.  The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times newspapers ran stories about it.  Local television stations covered the story as well.

Benet initially offered the lacrosse coaching job to Kammes.  Then it withdrew the offer when administrators discovered she was in a same-sex marriage.  But then Benet went ahead and hired her anyway.

Some 40 or so students and parents apparently protested the decision to not hire Kammes.  Also, “an online petition advocating for K[a]mmes’ hiring,” got some 4,000 signatures.”  I have to wonder, however, how many of the signers were Catholic, alumni, or people who actually had a connection to Benet.

The girl’s lacrosse team was even “photographed wearing rainbow masks in support of the prospective coach.”  Apparently having a top notch girl’s lacrosse coach is of critical importance.  It’s even more important than upholding Catholic moral teaching at a Catholic high school.

As such, I have been wondering if the word Catholic is still an apt description of my former high school.

Discernment

The Benedictine Monks of St. Procopius Abbey, who founded the high school in 1887, apparently wondered about this, too.  So they took some time to mull it over.

In January of this year, Benet Academy Chancellor Abbot Austin G. Murphy, O.S.B., announced that the Benedictine monks would “transition out of leadership at the school.”

Abbot Murphy was originally “deeply troubled” by the decision to hire Kammes. The school’s decision “calls into question its adherence to the doctrines of the Catholic faith,” he said.

After three months of discernment the Benedictines decided they could no longer be affiliated with Benet.  The 135-year relationship would be ending.

On January 4, 2022 “After much deliberation, the monks as a community have discerned that they no longer have the resources needed for the governance and oversight of the academy,” Murphy and the academy board’s chairman Dennis M. Flynn said in a joint statement.

Abandoning the Mission

So apparently the five Benedictines who serve on the 24-member Benet Academy board have resigned or will be resigning sometime soon.  Kudos to Abbot Murphy and the Benedictines.  The Benet administrators and other board members, however, have shamed themselves and Benet.  Maybe they allowed themselves to be swayed by misguided mercy.  Or was it a desire for a Catholic League title in girl’s lacrosse and maybe some lacrosse scholarships?

As Patrick Reilly wrote at NCR, the initial decision to rescind the offer of employment was sound.  It “was a courageous witness to our Faith and to authentic Catholic education, especially given protests in support of the candidate by some students, parents and alumni.”

But, said Reilly, when Benet reversed its decision and hired Kammes that witness disappeared.  “[T]he board effectively abandoned the school’s Catholic mission.”  (Reilly is the president and founder of The Cardinal Newman Society, which promotes and defends faithful Catholic education.)

The Joliet Diocese, however, apparently disagrees.  A news release from the Joliet Diocese Office of Communications on February 2, 2022, was a bit of a shock.  It stated that the Diocese is working to try to find a path to safeguard “Benet’s Catholic identity” [emphasis added].

Not Walking the Talk

I was somewhat taken aback when I read this.  Then I checked the Benet Academy website.  Sure enough, nothing had changed according to the “BENET ACADEMY AT A GLANCE” blurb on the main page.  It says Benet is “a Catholic, Benedictine, college preparatory high school.”

Why the Diocese of Joliet still allows Benet to call itself a Catholic high school is a mystery.  Benet Academy clearly no longer walks the talk when it comes to the Catholic faith.

Hiring a man or a woman in a same-sex ‘marriage’ for any position at a Catholic school is hypocritical.  (It’s also not too smart from a legal standpoint.)  It is akin to hiring someone who is openly cohabitating with a member of the opposite sex.  One might even say it’s like hiring a teacher or counselor who is openly pro-abortion.

Such hires do not send a good message to students.  The message is “The sinful activities these people are engaged in (or preaching) really aren’t that bad.”

There is a subliminal message too – “it’s okay for you, too, to be sinful.”  Teachers are, after all, considered to be role models for students.

Catholicity

As the recently released instruction by the Congregation for Catholic Education, “The Identity of the Catholic School for a Culture of Dialogue,” states:

“24. The work of the lay Catholic educator in schools, and particularly in Catholic schools, “has an undeniably professional aspect; but it cannot be reduced to professionalism alone. Professionalism is marked by, and raised to, a super-natural Christian vocation. The life of the Catholic teacher must be marked by the exercise of a personal vocation in the Church, and not simply by the exercise of a profession.”

It’s too bad this instruction wasn’t released about six months earlier.  Even so, why those at Benet who are supposed to be professional Catholic educators could not grasp this is a mystery.  Why the parents of those young people currently attending Benet did not protest the hiring decision is also a mystery.

The post When a Catholic High School Doesn’t Walk the Talk appeared first on Catholic Stand.

With the arrival of cool weather, the season of festivals is about to close.

They are quite similar: ethnic or specialty food, traditional dance and music, and children’s activities such as face-painting and carnival rides. The general purpose of each festival is to celebrate the contributions that the particular group has made or, as with the county fair, a special event.

With festivals, of course, come some stereotypes and caricatures. Most Arabs don’t know how to belly dance, though it’s fun to try at their festival. Germans don’t just eat sauerkraut and drink tall steins of beer, and Italians don’t talk like Marlon Brando in The Godfather and only eat pasta. The Irish typically don’t eat corned beef and have never seen a leprechaun. And while stereotypes might have some basis in truth, each group’s beauty, originality, and contributions are overwhelmingly emphasized and celebrated.

I think about all of this as, once again, our city had yet another Pride festival.

Vulgar Stereotypes On Display

While Pride festivals have many of the same attractions as any street festival, i.e., food, beer, and music, it also is different from all other festivals: the presence of highly sexualized displays and persona. You won’t see drag queens, scantily clad figures, over-sexed merchandise and paraphernalia, or perverse displays on parade at any other local festival or fair. Yet these aspects are a significant presence at Pride festivals. The rainbow t-shirts, flags, and face paint do little to cover up these ever-present and vulgar aspects of Pride festivals.

Unlike green beer and “that’s a spicy meatball” jokes, these stereotypes at Pride festivals are not cute or funny. On the contrary, they are very offensive. In fact, they are vestiges of the stereotypes that the “straight” establishment has had, and held against those with same-sex attraction, for hundreds of years. Are we to celebrate the bigotry of these outdated stereotypes?

Perhaps it is a vestige of our over-50-year-old generation, but my friends who have same-sex attraction do not attend Pride parades because they are embarrassed or find them distasteful. Furthermore, all have stated that they would not take kids to a Pride festival.

What Are They Celebrating?

Which prompts the question: What is being celebrated at a Pride festival? Does promiscuous sexual activity truly represent what same-sex attraction is all about? Is that what corporations and virtue-signaling “straight” folks are promoting when they put the rainbow logos on their sneakers, store windows, and front lawns?

Imagine that you are a boy or girl with same-sex attraction (which boys and girls typically know by the time they reach adolescence.) You attend a Pride festival to celebrate whom you think you are. Then imagine how the presence of drag queens, sexualized dancing and behavior, and promiscuous activities make you feel. Is this what it means to have same-sex attraction? Is this what should be expected as a “normal” life experience?

Pride festivals denigrate the very people they are supposed to be celebrating. They perniciously groom children to believe that promiscuous sex is not only expected but to be celebrated and that sex, in varied and frequent ways, is the overarching purpose of one’s life as a same-sex attracted adult.

Stop. This is nothing to celebrate, and it is an insult to everyone.

A Different View of Pride

Like all people, those with same-sex attraction are uniquely created by God in His image. They were not created to use or be used by others but rather to use their unique gifts and talents to glorify God through the selfless love of others. Only this form of love gives us true contentment and true peace because only this form of love is proper: Selflessly willing and working for the best for others. Love does not exist in using others for our own selfish desires, nor allowing others to do the same to us, yet this is what the prevalent view of “gay life” promotes.

There is a better way to look at people with same-sex attraction.

I would argue that God has uniquely blessed them with a range of gifts and talents at a much higher rate than their small representation in our society. It is estimated that 5-7% of people worldwide have same-sex attraction. Yet a much more significant percentage of composers, musicians, artists, actors, singers, dancers, writers, and others in creative pursuits are those with same-sex attraction.

Same-sex attracted people seem to have a built-in complementarity, containing attributes from both sexes, which many native tribes have referred to as having “two spirits.” I would argue that this gives them a more remarkable ability to examine issues from different viewpoints and provides them with unique strengths. While my evidence is personal, it has been supported by over half a century of interaction with many friends and acquaintances with same-sex attraction. I find that their opinions are unusually insightful and thoughtful, their creativity is amazingly beautiful and rare, and their thoughtfulness is overwhelmingly sensitive and generous.

Blessing of Gifts

Surely not all people with same-sex attraction are like this, but those whom I am blessed to call friends most certainly are. And while they are not as famous as the many creative geniuses who have given us so much through the years, they are just as much a gift to me and many others.

Why not celebrate this at Pride festivals?

May God bless those with same-sex attraction, especially those boys and girls who are trying to figure out just how—and why—God made them. To paraphrase St Francis de Sales, may they be who they are and be that well so they may bring honor to the Master Craftsman whose handiwork they are.

The post Pride Festivals Denigrate the Same-Sex Attracted appeared first on Catholic Stand.

By Antonio J. Galindo Aleman

In our first installment of this article, we addressed the Gnostic roots of the feminist thought of Simone de Beauvoir, who believed that men were ‘mystifiers’ who created rules and social conventions convincing women to accept inferior, submissive roles to men.

Judith Butler and Meaninglessness

Feminist Judith Butler was influenced by the thought of Simone de Beauvoir but, at the same time, she criticized her point of view on women.  The problem that Butler had with Beauvoir’s thought is the relationship that she makes between sex and gender in connection with the facticity of the body.

For Butler, to accept the facticity of the body is contradictory to the belief that there is no meaning in things, because by recognizing the facticity of bodies, she believes that Beauvoir is imposing some kind of meaning on the female body. This is what makes Butler go a step further.

According to Butler, there is nothing given to us, not even the facticity of the body. And here is where she inverts the metaphysics of substance by denying the existence of stable substances. Butler argues that the very concept of substance is a social construction of the heteronormative system that use cultural powers to make you act as you act. This patriarchal system has created a set of concepts and laws, such as sex, gender, heterosexuality, and substance (nature), to force us to perform according to the heteronormative system, using the threat that if you do not follow this law, you will be cast into the world of non-being.

In other words, the fear is that you will be socially excluded and discriminated against if you do not perform according to the sexual roles dictated by culture, which are supposedly based on biological sex. This is why Butler wrote in her book Gender Trouble that “Gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts within a highly rigid regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance, of a natural sort of being.”(1) This is what she calls performativity.

The Gender Matrix

In this gendered matrix, heterosexuality is imposed and establishes man as superior to women, giving to woman the place of the second sex. Furthermore, Butler argues that this patriarchal system has been constructed based on the fear of homosexuality. This is so because, according to her, following Freud, the primary sexual attraction of every child is directed towards the parent of the same sex, not the opposite sex parent.

According to Butler, this means that homosexual desires are the natural tendency and the real object of sexual desire in every human being, but the cultural powers have been repressing this homosexual desire presenting it as an atrocious and unnatural desire that must be destroyed. It is this lack of acknowledgement and fear of homosexuality that has led culture to develop social structures that sexualized the body, in a heteronormative dictatorship, as male or female, and only if you follow these sexualized structures can you enter the realm of existence.

This is also why Butler believes that “gender is an unconscious and socially-compelled performance, a series of acts and behaviors that create the illusion of an essential identity of ‘man’ and ‘woman.’”(2) Gender is not an essential truth derived from the body’s materiality, as per Beauvoir’s notion of facticity, but rather a regulatory fiction that is imposed on us creating the reality of sex.

It is through this illusion of an essential identity of man and woman that the cultural powers are constantly threatening us with the fear of casting us into the realm of non-being, to awake in us desires to perform according to the heteronormative system in order to be recognized as a real being, and thus not be marginalized and despised.

Demystification and Satan

The solution, then, is to follow a process of cultural demystification through a revolution in which she invites us to act against the heterosexual matrix through “cultural practices of drag, cross-dressing, and the sexual stylization of butch/femme identities”(3) in order to little by little disrupt heteronormativity because we cannot allow anyone to define us, forcing us to be what we are not.

This performativity against the heterosexual matrix “will denaturalize sex and gender by means of a performance which avows their distinctness and dramatizes the cultural mechanism of their fabricated unity.”(4) In other words, we need to carry out a cultural revolution in which we begin acting against heterosexuality to destroy the heterosexual patriarchal dictatorship that presents heterosexuality as the normal thing, which has given birth to the concepts of sex and gender.

From here we can now analyze the gnostic structure that both Beauvoir and Butler follow.

The Demystifying Serpent

As we saw before, in Gnosticism, the Bad God (Yahweh) is, using Beauvoir and Butler’s concepts, the great (male) mystifier who has tried to convince humanity that to follow the commandments is the right thing to do, threatening them with the punishment of death if they do not follow his commandments. Then, it is the serpent (devil) who comes to demystify us by making us aware of this state of slavery and of the divine nature of our freedoms inviting us to rebel against this God and his laws in order to achieve perfect freedom.

Translating this into Beauvoir and Butler’s dualistic vision of the world: there are the mystifiers and the mystified.

The mystifier, instead of Yahweh, is man who has convinced women that to be happy they have to be submissive to man. Thus, women come to be the oppressed ones who cannot enjoy their absolute freedom; in Gnostic terms, they cannot enjoy their divine nature. The solution to this oppression is to go through a process of demystification through a revolution that wakes up men and women from this state of bad faith and to begin enjoying equally their absolute freedoms.

Therefore, Butler’s book, The Second Sex, and her philosophy come to be like the serpent in Gnosticism to awaken in us the knowledge of this state of slavery and the recognition of the divine nature of our freedoms. Freedom signifies a being that is not determined by another. Rebellion against natural and moral law is the only pure act through which you impose your freedom onto the freedom of others.

Distorted Ideas of Slavery and Freedom

Another Gnostic aspect present both in Beauvoir and Butler is the view of the body as a prison to freedom. Beauvoir presents it focusing more on the rejection of the female body. The facticity of women, concretely the potentiality of motherhood, is a handicap to her freedom, and man has used it to convince her that this is her natural role: to be a mother. The solution is to break the bonds of motherhood through abortion in order to destroy the fact that women are more prey to the species.

In Butler’s thought we can see the same Gnostic schema in a more radical way. According to her, the material world does not determine anything about our identity. The problem is that the patriarchal heteronormative power has created a gendered matrix full of laws that carry the threat, as it was said earlier, of being cast out into the world of non-being if one fails to comply.

From a Gnostic perspective, the patriarchal powers come to be like the Bad God of the Old Testament that has created heterosexual laws to impose on us, threatening us with the fear of being cast out into the world of non-being. Butler’s philosophy, acting like the serpent of Genesis, makes us aware of our divine nature that is enslaved by this patriarchal culture.

In their minds, this is why we need a revolution to break the heterosexual matrix by doing all kinds of immoral actions as Gnosticism believes. In fact, we must promote immoral actions such as transsexuality and homosexuality, to denaturalize sex and gender, and to disrupt the heteronormative matrix that has created heterosexual bodies.

In the Gnostic mindset, it is not true that if you do not follow the commandments you will die. It is not true that if you do not follow the heterosexual order you will be cast out into the world of non-being. On the contrary, the more you break them the more you liberate your divine nature.

As we can see, the thoughts of Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler are strongly influenced by Gnosticism. I believe that in order to successfully fight against this destructive ideology we must know the roots of it found in Gnosticism, which carries the first lie of the Devil to humanity: that by sinning we become like gods. But instead of bringing us a better life, it actually kills us.

(1) Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1989), 45.

(2) Favale, Abigail. “The Eclipse of Sex by the Rise of Gender.” https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-eclipse-of-sex-by-the-rise-of-gender/.

(3) Gender Trouble, 137.

(4) Ibid., 138.

The post Gender Theory and its Gnostic Roots, Part II appeared first on Catholic Stand.

While driving back home from a 40 Day for Life shift I got annoyed at all the political ads on the radio station to which I was listening.  I changed stations to a 50s/60s music station and Del Shannon’s 1961 hit “Runaway” was playing.

The song is about a boy’s girlfriend leaving him and the boy wondering why she ran away.  For some reason the theme of “running away” caught my attention.

There are many issues in our world that many would just as soon “run away” from. From discussions with many friends and family (especially of my generation), it seems there are three main areas that many would just as soon run away from.  Many would actually prefer to not even think about them or deal with them in any way.

Discontent over Abortion

We are in another ‘political rhetoric’ season with the midterm elections. The ads by Democrats in my liberal state of Colorado are loud and misleading. They say this election is all about taking away women’s rights.   They infer that pro-life candidates are evil, authoritarian women haters.  Even worse, they imply that Pro-lifers are rightwing extremists.

Added to the election noise about abortion, is the disturbing news about all the attacks against Catholic churches (86 since the Dobbs decision leak) and crisis pregnancy centers (74 since the Dobbs leak). While many of us celebrated the Dobbs decision, it is clear that attacks on pro-life views and institutions will be undergoing increased persecution. But we can’t run away from that reality.

Discontent over the Church

Catholic media sites, including this one, have been expressing all kinds of discontent with the hierarchy over many issues facing the Church. The continuing sex abuse scandal and confusing statements from Pope Francis are disconcerting.  And the goings on at the German bishops’ synod, and the so called Synod on Synodality can make one’s head spin.

The current happenings have led to a lot of confusion about what exactly the Church teaches.  Some say Church teachings are being changed.  It can make one just want to go to mass, receive the sacraments, practice the virtues, and forget all the noise. However, if we are true to our faith we can’t run away and ignore what’s happening within the Church.

Discontent with the Culture

The changes in the culture seen in the workplace, in schools and in everyday social contacts are also disconcerting.  Transgenderism, homosexuality, gay marriage, etc., all project a distorted ideology of the nature of human beings. Added to that is the progressive agenda of indoctrination, especially in the schools, supporting this “new” sexuality. A growing totalitarianism against free speech if one disagrees with the “enlightened” view on these issues has also emerged.

Many of us just shake our heads and opine how crazy it all is. Likewise, there can be a sense of futility at not being able to do anything about the progressive “march” of this new ideology.  Often heard statements are “Our time is over” or “just go with the flow” or “we need to change with the times.”

However, the changing times go against what our faith teaches us. And there is a growing political and social effort to deny religious freedom of speech and practice over these issues. Can we really run away from what is becoming a forced and imposed tyranny?

Run Away or Engage?

Illness, crushing responsibilities, or an overwhelming need for peace of mind may prevent some from engaging these issues.  However, for many of us, running away and accepting the notion that there is nothing one can do, is out of the question.  There are some efforts that can be considered.

A key question is what can I do about these issues?  A second question is what am I willing do about these issues? The old warrior in me has engaged in these three issues and some example approaches are provided below.

Abortion

It’s important to realize that legal decisions and court cases are not the eventual solution to the problem of abortion. Changing hearts and minds is where it’s at. Renewed efforts are necessary to educate and inform the public and fellow Christians about abortion.  We especially have to confront the false narratives that deny science.

This can be done in normal conversations.  But we can also spread the pro-life message, be involved in pro-life marches, and pray rosaries at abortion sites. For those of us that are so inclined, writing letters to editors of newspapers and writing essays are all opportunities to convey the pro-life message.

Finally, during this election season it’s important to vote for pro-life candidates.

I personally have borne the brunt of pro abortionist’s vitriol.  So realize that it is important to know that anyone who chooses to be involved in pro-life efforts needs to develop thick skin.

The Church

The happenings in the Church, especially among the hierarchy, can cause confusion and discouragement.  But what is happening now is not new. The Church has undergone controversies over the last 2,000 years. It is important to have faith that the Holy Spirit guides the Church and to remember that eventually God’s will prevails.

In the meantime, a first step is to keep informed of happenings within the Church. I have found that The National Catholic Register website is a solid news source.

I think the focus needs to be on sustaining a faith based on orthodox teachings regardless of current controversies. There are faith based sources that can provide orthodox direction. When confronted with an opinion or narrative about Church teachings that appears at odds with traditional beliefs, reviewing the Catechism and the Bible provides a perspective on the issue.

Going beyond getting personally informed, one can also become involved in one or more Church organizations.   The Knights of Columbus and Legion of Mary both support and promote traditional teachings.

The Culture

The culture is the most difficult area to deal with because it is impossible to not engage with the culture at large. School curriculums, work requirements, and informal social norms promote and seem to require following the progressive mantra on a regular basis.

I believe that freedom of speech and religious expression are the ultimate issues. We are definitely in a culture war. With those freedoms at stake, standing up for our beliefs and confronting falsehoods becomes more and more important.

It may be uncomfortable or even risky to stand up and confront the falsehoods being imposed on the culture. While it may be necessary to go along with some requirements at work or in school there are still opportunities to stand up and express the truth.  What our faith teaches us formally or informally which can make a difference.

Perhaps the most frequent opportunity to engage the progressive sexual or social agenda is through informal discussions. Don’t run away from a discussion about an issue such as transgenderism.  Speak up and use the occasion to “educate” others on the facts. But doing this requires being informed. The Catholic Answers website provides much information and “ammunition” on many issues.

If so inclined, one can also be ‘active.’ Get involved and speak up at public events such as school board and city council meetings.  As with abortion, voting for candidates who refuse to go along with the false narratives is important.

Prayer

C.S. Lewis is quoted as saying that Christianity was a “fighting religion.”  He wasn’t saying that we are aggressive and war mongers but that we are to stand up for what we believe. Thousands of martyrs have shown that.

Whether abortion, Church controversies, or an increasingly oppressive culture, remaining true to the faith is necessary. Regardless of one’s engagement, prayer is the one tool we all can apply. At the most basic level, it is an action showing that we are not running away.

“And we have this confidence in him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us” (1 John 5:14).

The post You Can’t Run Away appeared first on Catholic Stand.

When observing an object, we naturally want to know the purpose(s) for which it is made. For example, if I ask a car manufacturer why they make engines, they will answer that car engines are made for the purpose of turning fuel into active energy for cars.

Likewise, when I observe parts of the human body, I naturally want to know the purpose(s) for each part. A cursory study of the human heart tells me it is designed for pumping blood throughout the body. A study of the human brain tells me it is designed for processing sensory knowledge and integrating the human body’s varying parts into an organized whole.

The human reproductive system too has its own purpose. A study of human sperm cells tell me that they have the single purpose of fertilizing the human egg (ovum). The sperm’s tail has the single purpose of propelling the sperm to the ovum.  Accordingly, the male’s half and the female’s half of the reproductive system are designed to assist the sperm in reaching the egg (regardless of any defects in the system). Clearly, the female’s half of the reproductive system is designed to receive the male and his sperm.

Today we might say that we are “just following the science”.

Marriage and Procreation

Given the above, we can see that the sexual act is ordered toward procreation (even if procreation cannot or does not occur) because the sperm’s single purpose is to seek its counterpart, the ovum. Also, the sexual act is ordered toward union between one male and one female for obvious reasons.

This ordering implies that the sexual act’s purpose is to create children, which is accomplished through the organic (meaning “of the organs”) union of one man and one woman in the sexual embrace. These newly created children have one mother and one father.

Due to the sexual act’s design to bring about the existence of other human beings and organically unite a man and woman, marriage is the divine construct under which this act should occur. In marriage, properly speaking, one man and one woman promise themselves to each other for their reciprocal care, for the care of their potential children, and for the care of society (familial, secular, and ecclesial). After all, human beings are not just detached individuals. They are born into families and societies and are designed to participate in the common good.

Also, the mother and father must provide their child with a lifelong example of female and male complementarity. They have a duty to show their child how a good man and woman should live and how they should love one another through the good times and the tumultuous ones.

Dr. J. Budziszewski, a Catholic philosopher, writes, “A parent of each sex is necessary to teach the child, because the child needs a model of his own sex, a model of the other sex, and a model of the relationship between them. Mom and dad are jointly irreplaceable” (The Meaning of Sexual Powers).

Additionally, Scripture tells us that marriage is designed to reflect the sacrificial marriage between Christ and His Bride, the Church. Christ loves His wife so much that He sacrificed Himself to save His bride and as an example of supreme love.

There are many consequences to the Catholic view of marriage.

Divorce and Remarriage

Because marriage is designed to be a lifelong commitment, human beings have no authority to terminate a valid marriage. Jesus said, “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder” (Mark 10:9). Therefore, a civil divorce actually has no effect on the marital bond. It may somehow serve the spouses in dividing property and rendering custodial decisions, but it cannot dissolve a sacramental marriage. It is merely a piece of paper issued by the state for legal purposes. Accordingly, any “remarriage” is an adulterous relationship.

Contracepting

Because sex is designed to be the total giving of a man and woman to one another, contracepting is a detriment to sex and, therefore, an offense against God’s concept of marriage. Contracepting is the deliberate interference with sexual intercourse to prevent conception. Because the sexual act is ordered toward conception, contracepting is an inherently contradictory action.

Contracepting is not only designed to prevent conception, it also prevents organic union. Contracepting intentionally frustrates the mutual sharing that should be present in the sexual embrace. The result is mutual objectification (i.e. lust, using each other purely for sexual pleasure rather than lovingly embracing each other for union and procreation; cf. CCC 2370).

Fornication and Pornography

Fornication is sex between two unmarried people. Because the man and women do not make a sacred promise to join together for the sake of each other, their potential children, and society, they seek to objectify one another through sex in this type of relationship. In other words, the man and woman have sex just for the fun of it. Although sex is designed to be pleasurable, pleasure is not the end for which sex was created. Rather, pleasure is part of the motivation for sex (CCC 2353).

Pornography, likewise, takes what should be a sacred union between a man and woman and puts it on display to be objectified (CCC 2354). Masturbation turns the sexual act inward, seeking self-gratification rather than a loving embrace between a married person and his/her spouse (CCC 2352).

Adultery

Adultery is sex between a married person and another who is not the married person’s spouse. In adultery, like fornication, the two participants seek to objectify one another. This sexual embrace not only violates the marital promise, it seeks to disrupt and even destroy the family unit (CCC 2380-2381).

Homosexual Attraction and Behavior

Regarding homosexual attraction and behavior, one, and only one, conclusion can be drawn the above. If a human being desires to have sexual intercourse, he/she must do this with someone of the opposite sex. If the sperm is designed for the ovum, then the sexual act must be with someone in whom the ovum is designed to exist.

Our entire reproductive system screams this message so loudly that one must purposely deafen oneself, figuratively speaking, not to hear it. The sperm is clearly not designed for other areas of the body, male or female. As such, the Church teaches that sexual attraction to someone of the same sex is a psychological disorder (the Church’s term to describe the homosexual orientation is “intrinsically disordered”) and should be treated as such. Homosexual behavior, like the other sins mentioned, is a grave sin.

Because marriage is intended to be a committed relationship between people who are ordered toward organic union and procreation, homosexual “marriage” is nothing more than a charade. It exists on government issued documents only and not in reality.  This is because homosexual couples are not ordered toward organic union and procreation.  Thus, anyone who advocates for homosexual “marriage” advocates for something that is not the Will of God and thus denies reality.

Additionally, our actions have an end to which they ought to be directed but often they have an end to which they are actually directed. Human sexuality ought to be directed toward union and procreation. Thus, sexual activity that intentionally frustrates that end is evil. It would be like purposely filling one’s lungs with water. The lungs are not created for that end, and intentionally filling them with water would frustrate the lungs’ proper purpose and end.

Transgenderism

You are the gender with which you were born regardless of any emotional or psychological issues you may have. If you are someone ordered toward producing sperm, you are clearly designed to be a male. The same goes for females (those ordered toward producing ova). So, those who suffer from some transgender disorder should seek psychological help because this is not a natural orientation or behavior.

Those who support transgender behavior and related medical practices are in a particularly grave spiritual position. They choose to encourage these people’s actions despite knowing that they need psychological help, and for the sake of their own salvation, they need to turn away from this horrific ideology.

Conclusion

Because we are created with intellectual powers and the power to choose, we are accountable for the decisions we make. God orders every human being toward understanding and choosing. Therefore, when we abuse these God-given powers, we work against our own nature and the Nature-Giver, and we fall into a state of sin. Being that God is Justice, He will ensure perfect justice is meted out to each and every person.

All this from understanding the microscopic sperm cell’s single purpose.

The post What a Microscopic Cell Can Teach Us about Morality appeared first on Catholic Stand.

The pro-abortion, transgender, same sex ‘marriage,’ and LGBTQ agendas seem to always be at the forefront of daily experiences. These agendas seem to be a priority in our public schools, the workplace, government, the military, and entertainment (including professional sports).

Likewise, these areas of liberal progressive movements are creeping into the Catholic Church. Our Church has traditionally served as a “rock” of stability, morality, and sanity against such immoral clamor. However, the current hierarchy of the Church appears to be crushing that “rock.”

Words Matter

Over the past several years, a series of Vatican speeches, documents and interviews have led to much confusion about Church teaching. Almost all the controversial communications revolve around sexual morality issues.

The general theme around topics such as blessings of same-sex marriage, homosexuality, communion for divorced, etc., revolves around the notion of the priority of mercy. However, a lack of clarity in the discussion of these issues has caused much confusion.

The latest document put out by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) is the most recent example. It has caused a lot of controversy about the rationale and validity of offering blessings to same-sex couples and others in irregular relations. Even after a couple of months it is still receiving attention.  Many, including me, see Fiducia Supplicans (FS) as undercutting Church teaching on marriage and sexuality.

I tend to agree with Retired Archbishop Chaput. He concluded that while FS doesn’t necessarily change Church teaching on marriage, it sure seems to change Church teaching on the sinfulness of same-sex behavior. It fails to recognize the objective status of a relationship but leads instead to a subjective and “merciful” evaluation of homosexual relationships.

The Church cannot bless same-sex unions, according to the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith in 2021.  As the CFD wrote back then, “[God] does not and cannot bless sin.” Yet, FS seems to infer such blessings are allowed.

This document appears to follow the same path that Amoris Laetitia did in allowing the divorced to receive Holy Communion. Prioritizing mercy, however, seems to undermine Church doctrine and traditional teachings.

Ambiguity Run Rampant

This latest document is but a symptom of the current pontificate. It demonstrates an ongoing trajectory of papal pronouncements and conversations that are not always clear. At the same time, clarity is not offered on various communications, even after respected cardinals such as Cardinal Burke request it.

Besides the unclear messages about blessings for same-sex couples, we have seen unjust and uninformed negative claims about the US Church. There have also been claims of rigidity against those holding orthodox/traditional beliefs.  And the on again off again support for the German Synodal Way, has also been confusing.

There are a variety of other examples as well. The details of the Vatican-Chinese agreement, for instance, have never even been divulged.

FW is just the latest document that shows how divided both clergy and lay Catholics can be over a Vatican communication.

I believe a key role of our Pope is to be a voice of clarity. He is to be the voice for doctrinal instruction and correction. Above all, he is to be the voice to unify. I do not see this from this pontificate.

Pope Francis’ in his recent clarification of FS, for instance, said that when a “couple” asks for a blessing, the individuals are being blessed and not the “union.” But his use of the word “couple” muddies the water. It seems to acknowledge that two men or two women can indeed be a “couple.”

Merciful Ambiguity

To be sure, Pope Francis’s emphasis on mercy is commendable and I applaud him for that effort. However, as discussed in a previous essay, being merciful and welcoming just opens the door.

The real work of the Church begins once that door is open.  Instruction on repentance, belief, and transformation must follow. But the message in so many cases seems to stop at just mercifully opening to door.

Consequences

This ambiguity is more than just a theological or doctrinal concern.  A lack of clarity can lead to breaches in faith practices by clergy.

The recent actions of an Italian priest are an example of this. He put up a crèche with two women instead of Mary and Joseph. He maintained that this a merciful and open and welcoming scene. Give me a break!  That is blatant blasphemy.

The lack of clarity in Vatican documents such as FS can also lead to false perceptions of Church teachings. An example of this is former Presidential candidate Chris Christie (who identifies as a Catholic) changing his mind and now supporting same-sex marriage. His misinterpretation of the document is that the Church has changed its mind and accepts same-sex marriage.

Underlying Concern

The concern over clarity leads to a concern over the Church’s fidelity to doctrine and traditional teachings. I think a major purpose of the Church is to instruct us on doctrine and tradition and to provide a clear morality based on that doctrine.

However, the language in so many communications out of the Vatican seems to put doctrine aside. Explanations offered to clarify various pronouncements and documents note they need to be understood with “nuance.” I’m sorry, what we need is not nuance, but straight language about what is right and what is wrong.

I am just a layman, yet I am I called to follow and defend our faith beliefs and practices as defined by the Nicene Creed, Sacred Scripture and Holy Tradition as stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

However, I cannot always defend some of the pronouncements and statements coming out of the Vatican in written or verbal form.   I believe a number of them go against those sources of the “Word.” The current controversy over same-sex marriage blessings is just the most recent. As my old basketball coach used to say, “never defend a stupid shot.”

In spite of all this, I am not yet ready to conclude that the documents and messages coming out of the Vatican are a direct attempt to change Church doctrine.

Change the Culture, Not Doctrine

At the same time it does seem that there are some members of the hierarchy, such as Cardinal Fernandez (author of Fiducia Supplicans ), and certainly those in the German Synodal Way, who are trying to change doctrine.

In trying to ease the Church into a shift of doctrinal change that goes along with the progressive morality culture of today those members of the hierarchy are causing division. Their efforts are wrong headed attempts to adapt to our current culture. The Church should not be about changing herself to bend to the progressive culture but should be about changing that culture.

C.S. Lewis stated that Christianity is a “fighting religion.”  By this Lewis means that we are charged to fight for the “truth.”  We are to be a force for good, and not be “wishy washy” about what we profess and practice.

My prayer is that our Holy Father and orthodox members of the hierarchy and clergy act as soldiers for the faith – that they stand up to this challenge.  They should offer clarity, and defend the deposit of faith. By such efforts, the Church can then be a stronger beacon of hope and truth.

“…you should know how to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of truth” [1 Timothy 3:15].

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