Why still Catholicism?

            “If in 1,800 years we clergy have failed to destroy the Church, do you really think that you will be able to do it?” Cardinal Ercole Consalvi in response to Napoleon Bonaparte’s boasts that he would destroy the Church.  Napoleon has had a lot of company over more than 2000 years now from inside and out; starting with Jews such as Saul and Roman Emperors into the raft of reformation era theologians and enlightenment thinkers, which have not ceased spawning to this very day!  If one were to approach the question from the Hegelian model of history, as I had until my conversion, the Catholic Church is a total aberration.  One would expect that the Church would have been synthesized into oblivion after the reformation aided rise of the nation-state.  The initial persecutions alone probably should have been enough to crush the young faith; eleven of the twelve initial leaders and chief teachers were murdered or rather martyred for their faith.  Christians were murdered at such a rate one would have surely had to have been suicidal to be baptized and share in that faith.  It turns out that just the opposite is true somehow and that is the secret to answering the question, “Why still Catholicism?”

            Cardinal Ercole Consalvi’s statement to Napoleon acknowledges what every critic of the Church has also understood and that is that the Church has been administered on Earth by very human beings.  Martin Luther’s real ignition point is that the dukes and princes supported him in an attempt, which would prove successful, to pry power away from Rome.  Respected theologians of the time found Luther’s arguments lacking, ironically Henry the Eighth wrote a book “Septum Sacramentorum” disemboweling Luther’s arguments thus earning him the title “defender of the faith”.  God seems to love irony however as Henry then soon found his own very human reasons to start a church, every early Church father one reads holds the schismatic in the same regard as the murderer but Henry would soon go there too.

            Denis Diderot said, “Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”  Diderot was an Enlightenment thinker and a materialist whose thought set the stage for the French Revolution, which began five years after his death.  Diderot died of natural causes; the religious of France during the enlightenment’s French Revolution died by the guillotine, the sword, and the musket barrel.  Whole monasteries of Sisters and Brothers, Priests, Bishops, and Cardinals all violently slaughtered for the enlightenment of the world. 
            This is how one can see and begin to understand the mystical nature of God and especially the life and death of His Son Jesus; we do not kill to live and spread the Gospel we die to live and spread the Gospel.  Our priests were priests called by Pope Gregory to be celibate to increase their discipline and dedication to that Gospel.  God does not do things as man would.  It would seem counterintuitive to cut the best and brightest from the gene pool but there is something greater they must do than simply populate the world.  It is there vocation to bridge that material world with the source and summit of life, God.
            Their fatherhood brings the faithful into life through the sacramental life of Christ’s Church and sustains us in this material and spiritual life by the material and spiritual nature of the sacraments; as Jesus Himself was both God and man so is life matter and spirit and God provides nourishment for both as He is The Father. 
            Our Father has also provided the faithful in these seemingly impossible moments in Church history with amazing Saints and Miracles to directly answer the challenges set against it.  Saint Francis of Assisi actually reformed the Church by calling it to Holiness through his own example.  He refused to disparage the Church because he knew that though the world was having its way with many of the clergy of the time at the heart of the Church was the same one unchangeable truth, Jesus Christ.  He served Christ and led the Church through that example.  His order was endorsed by Pope Innocent III after He dreamt that Francis was holding up the Church.  God has a way of influencing people.
            Saint Catherine of Sienna brought the Papacy of Gregory XI back to Rome.  She did this in an unusual way as he dictated letters from her spiritually.  She also asked him to reform the clergy and the Papal States.  He was not the only one to have this experience as she worked for peace among the Papal States and worked against the Western Schism.  She worked tirelessly to convince all of Pope Urban VI’s legitimacy and is considered a Doctor of the Church.  Having the Pope dictate your personal correspondence kind of makes the nailing of the ninety-five theses look rather pedestrian doesn’t it?
            St. Anthony of Padua was nicknamed “Hammer of Heretics” as he won amazing numbers of converts by his preaching and numerous miracles.  St. Dominic also had amazing success winning converts through his beatific virtue, impeccable knowledge, and charismatic preaching.  St. John Vianney fought the aftermath of the French Revolution which resulted in a thorough secularization of the parish to which he was assigned, Ares.  He won thousands back to the faith through pious devotion, patience, prayer, and hours in the confessional.  As an illustration of how many conversions he caused and how he invigorated the faith of France after the Revolution I offer these facts, Ares had a population of 230 when he became its priest in 1818 and by 1855 the number of pilgrims who traveled to see him was 20,000 a year.
            Miracles and apparitions have also renewed, revitalized, and refocused the Church throughout her history.  On December 12, 1531 Juan Diego presented Bishop Zumarraga with a sign from a woman, who identified herself to him as “the perfect ever-virgin Mary mother of the most true God,” he had met her on his way to catechism class, having been one of the very few native Aztec people to convert, that a church should be built upon a little hill known as Tepeyac.  Juan Diego brought fully opened roses, provided by the lady; he had taken from that barren hill in the cold of December.  He presented this sign to the Bishop who fell stunned in amazement at the image which was now present on Juan Diego’s tilma amid the cascading roses.
            “Our Lady of Guadalupe” caused the near total conversion of the Aztec people not only because she is a pictogram overflowing with meaning to the native Aztec people; who’s written language was actually pictograms, but due to the incredible miracles attributed to the image; one of the most striking examples being that of a dead man who regained life in the presence of the image on December 25, 1531.
            More than 7 million pilgrims a year visit the very image which seems to be preserved from time as it has not faded or decayed in the 480 years it has been venerated.  Our Lady of Guadalupe has not only been preserved from natural wear but also from bomb blast.
            On November 14, 1921 Luciano Perez, a communist agent, placed an enormous vase of flowers and dynamite on the alter beneath the image; moments later after Luciano was safely away the Church was rocked by an explosion.  The marble alter was reduced to a pile of marble stones, the windows of the church itself and of the building across the street were blown out, and a large iron crucifix was twisted and curled by the impact of the bomb blast and yet the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was totally unperturbed.  The glass case which held it bore not a single crack.  This proved to be the high water mark for the Socialist Revolution in Mexico which also was reduced to rubble.
            February 11, 1858 apparitions begin at Lourdes France.  A young lady dressed in white, who would eventually reveal her name to Bernadette Soubirous as she spoke, “Que soy era Immaculada Counceptiou.”
            The dogma of the Immaculate Conception was issued by Pope Pius IX on December 8, 1854, in his Papal Bull “Ineffabilis Deus” (“Ineffable God”).  On March 25, 1858, the feast of the Annunciation, Bernadette approached Father Dominique Peyramale repeating, “Que soy era Immaculada Counceptiou.”  Father Peyramale seemed scandalized by the words, “No lady can bear that name!”  He asked her if she knew what it meant and she shook her head.  She did not understand; she only repeated it over and over again until she came to him and then she spoke it to him.
            Pope Pius IX was something of a polarizing figure in a polarized time.  He had also presided over the institution of Papal Infallibility as a dogma of the Church.  A lot of people were looking at that time, as they do in every time it seems, for a liberalization of the Church and Pope Pius IX was seen as a liberal when he was elected, but the Holy Spirit guided him in a different direction than the liberals would have taken him and there was dissent.
            By Mary coming to Lourdes under the title “Immaculate Conception” in amongst the swell of healing miracles from the miraculous spring which Bernadette dug with her own tiny hands God himself seemed to reaffirm His decision.   He chose Pope Pius IX the successor of Peter; listen to him.
            The Apparitions of Our Lady to three children near Fatima Portugal began on May 13^th, 1917.  Lucia dos Santos, age 10, and her cousins Francisco, age 8, and Jacinta, age 7, Marto were tending their families sheep when they received the first visit from Our Lady.
            Portugal had instituted anti-clerical laws since the liberal Civil War of 1834 and beginning in that year the property and land of the Portuguese Catholic Church and that of every religious order was confiscated by the state and sold.  This was apparently supposed to redistribute the property of the Church equitably, every bit of it attained through the donations of private citizens, the poor, however, had no capital and so the property ended up in the hands of speculators.
            From 1834 to 1910 Portugal was a grab bag of turmoil and rival political ideologies.  Monarchists rose and fell beside more so named “democratic” parties.  The resulting Coup de’ taut and Portuguese First Republic left the government in the hands of the Portuguese Republican Party and one party rule.  A new set of anti-clerical laws and Alfonso Costa’s self described “hostile” separation of Church and State.  Costa stated in “Declaration to the Congress of Free Thought”, March 26, 1911, pg 256, “Thanks to this law of separation, in two generations Catholicism will be completely eliminated in Portugal.”
            1917 was terrible for the entire world.  World War I escalated; the United States was brought into the war in 1917.      
            The Russian Revolution began in St. Petersburg/Petrograd in February; the name was changed from St. Petersburg to Petrograd in 1914.  Though Lenin was still in Switzerland and so Germany enabled his travels to Russia via train, as they wanted Russia to withdraw from the war.  The Bolsheviks begin the Communist Revolution in October and on August 4^th Pravda calls for the killing of all capitalists, priests, and officers.
            The Canadians also knew for a fact the world was going to hell as an American team, the Seattle Metropolitans, beat the Montreal Canadiens 3 games to 1; thus bringing the Stanley Cup to the United States for the first time.
            This is the world of Fatima 1917.  Our Lady came to a world of militant atheism and militant nationalists and militant militants.  She enlisted a crack team of commandos that had been sent to prison for a crime they didn’t commit; wait no she came to a 10, 8 , and 7 year old in a country that had been trying to destroy the Church for 73 years.  Does that make any sense to you?  Thank God I’m not god because I kind of liked the whole commando thing.
            To prove even further that God does not do things as we would God sends Mary to win converts with this message, “Do penance!”  This is serious they are not handing out coffee mugs with the Church logo to induce people; God just tells you the truth.  He is not placating the spoiled children of the world.  We need to do penance we need to make reparations for the state of our world.  God isn’t looking for us to join His club; He is the way, the truth, and the life.  He doesn’t have anything to sell because everything is already His.  Our worship adds no Glory to God, but it is vital for us.  So He teaches through Mary at Fatima with authority.
            The final apparition attracts the faithful and the atheist alike for each hope to have their world view born out.  The miracle of the Sun transformed those who experienced it.  The devoutly pro-government and anti-clerical papers too had to relay the miraculous nature of what occurred.  The sun spun, danced, changed color, and seemed to come crashing to Earth only to be set right at the last instant. 
            There was also a physical symbol as the Earth and onlookers were thoroughly soaked by a downpour with had persisted until the time of the apparition.  After the “dance of the sun” everything and everyone was completely dry.   
            Our Lady warned that “the war to end all wars” was not going to live up to that billing and that a light in the sky would precede the next war.  The aurora borealis could be seen all the way down in Europe and in Northern Africa January 25, 1938 before the outbreak of the Second World War it was the widest occurrence of the aurora borealis since 1709. The war began September 1^st 1939 when Germany invaded Poland, yet as early as March 13, 1938 Germany took over Austria, in an action termed the Anschluss.
            Our Lady spoke of consecrating communist Russia to her Immaculate Heart.  The revolution started in February, though not a Communist or Bolshevik revolution at that time.  It consisted of hungry people, which was most of the people, not ideology charged people.  When Lenin finally came eyewitnesses described him as lacking in charisma having as much ability to fire up the crowd as a college lecturer; but he promised food, jobs, and end to Russia’s involvement in the war.  This is what people wanted and so by October comes the Bolshevik revolution.
            The apparitions started in May and lasted six months.  For the children of Fatima to comment on Russia without having seen and heard the live stream on their iPads is astounding.  Remember that Lenin was in Switzerland as the peasants revolted in Petrograd.  Lenin was chomping at the bit to get back to Russia, but it was up to the better judgment of the Germans to decide if he could.  The last apparition was on October 13^th.  The October Revolution began on the 25^th.  Mary knew before Lenin the fate of Russia and warned all to fight against it, pray the rosary everyday she instructed and do penance.

                Penance is such a key between the sacrifice of the Mass and the life of the Church outside the physical walls of the Church.  The Protestant asks, “If you have Christ himself in your Church why would you ever leave?”  The simple answer is we are asked to as the mass concludes, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”  The Catholic must understand that we are called to serve, just as every Saint did who has entered the Kingdom of Heaven before us.

                As Jesus emptied Himself of His Divine nature and was born of Mary so this was also the pattern of His life becoming a slave as St. Paul notes.  Jesus emptied Himself of pride to be filled by the Holy Spirit and in so doing remaining within the mystery of the Holy Trinity.  As we see in His testing by Satan in the desert Jesus denies Himself the expedient solution of Satan and trusts in the truth of the Love of His Father.  Today one would say, “He was in need who would judge if He had eaten of the bread transformed from stones?”  God would because we stole from Him the opportunity to have His angel’s minister to us after the trial is concluded.  We are not God; we are to trust in the goodness of God with our whole mind, all of our soul, and all of our heart. 

                We see denominations charmed by the world; you may ordain who the world prefers but to do so one must vilify who the lord prefers.  They become not about the goodness of God but the expediency which Christ himself turned away from. 

                Penance is our chance to join in Christ’s love and to trust in it.  We are not saved by our faith alone.  We are saved by our embrace of Jesus and our continued struggle to open our hearts ever wider to God until we are as Jesus was perfectly human.  We are separated from our very humanity as we deviate from the truth.  Penance offers us a chance to open our hearts because we do penance not just for ourselves but others and not just others but sinners.  We do penance for our enemies so that we all may be joined again to God.

                When we focus on our faith alone the question is asked, “Why do good?”  Works are not a part of our salvation.  It is true that we are not saved by our works but by the sacrifice of Jesus in His life, death, and resurrection. 

                I have heard it said that the reason to be good is because we are to be an example to those who do not believe.  This is true but it rings like tin on the ear.  There is so much more.  We have the opportunity and the invitation to join in the very life of the Holy Trinity.

                As Jesus’ suffering was and is redemptive so too can our suffering be redemptive; His by His divine nature and ours through His grace.  Paul describes us as the body of Christ and we are bound to each other through our baptism and the sacraments especially the Eucharist.  The body of Christ on Earth is bound to suffer until He comes again and it is the Church’s opportunity to allow that suffering to make sense.

                If we can learn to suffer for one another and especially sinners; we will not simply be bound together by our suffering but we will uphold one another in love.  Our Lord’s Kingdom will come on Earth as it is in Heaven.

                There is one God.  There is one Son who took on the sins of the world, was crucified, died, was buried, rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven for the redemption of the world.  There is one Spirit given to us at baptism and so one Spirit which unites us, and so there must be one Church.

                Guided by Church Tradition, informed by Church history, and sustained by the Sacraments the Church remains alive and vital.  It is not simply the institution and autocracy its detractors charge The Catholic Church is the depository of the fullness of faith. This is a concept most do not understand for men such as Napoleon actually believed they could destroy what God Himself has created on Earth.

                “You are Cephas/Kepha/Petra/Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.”  Jesus says upon this rock “I” will build “My” Church; not Peter’s or Constantine’s but His, Jesus Christ.  In the final analysis that is the only explanation which makes logical sense as to how this Church continues on and will continue until Christ comes again.

Victoria’s Secret is not just her Underwear

                Tonight the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is televised on a major network and that makes me so sad.  I am sad for the women of the world and especially little girls.  I am also sad for men nobody expects anything from you and you shrug and admit you are a proud stereotype with no desire for integrity or heroism.  The race to the bottom picks up velocity because of shows such as the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.

                The Girl Scout Research Institute (GSRI) put out finding of a study they had done in which 1141 girls’ age 11 through 17 were asked about reality television and their resulting perceptions.  Girls who watched these shows rated the importance of appearance higher than those who did not.  78% who watched thought gossip was normal in female relationships as opposed to 54% who were not frequent watchers.  68% of those girls surveyed believed it was “in girls’ nature to be catty and competitive” compared with 50% of those who were not regular viewers.  63% of watchers found it difficult to trust other girls as opposed to 50% of non-viewers.

                I bring this study up to highlight how impressionable our girls are.  In a different study by GSRI entitled, “The New Normal?  What Girls Say about Healthy Living, 2006, 1/3 of girls 8 to 17 have a disordered idea about their weight and “23% of girls say they do not participate in sports because they do not think their bodies look good.”

                So those who believe that this show is a positive expression of encouragement to girls really have not dug into the figures to support their views; because the figures do not support those views.  Just the opposite in fact the impression left on girls who need exercise is I am too fat to get involved and the message sent to girls who do not need to lose weight is this is an appropriate way to get attention. 

The other side of the coin is the male side; men allow themselves to be further convinced that the objectification of women is an appropriate and wanted form of interaction.  So we see a synergy of dysfunction emerge; women and girls seeking attention inappropriately and men giving them attention which is inappropriate.

The resulting depression and heartache is then placed at the feet of the “morality bigots” of the world, because we make things so repressive, instead of shows such as the Victoria Secret Fashion Show.  I pray we see through the smokescreens and defend women and especially girls who deserve a healthy and loving future.

Penn. State vs. the Catholic Church

I saw this headline on the television in the lobby as I was passing through, “Penn. State vs. the Catholic church”.  CNN was asking someone how compatible the comparisons are and then they made a blanket statement like, “They both covered up abuse because they were afraid of the consequences if the abuse came out.”  O.K. that’s one theory, I believe the story is a lot more nuanced than that.

                In the Penn. State case you have an eye witness whose gut check failed him and that failure went all the way up the ladder to Joe Paterno; in the case of the Catholic Church the Bishops received advice from the world of psychology. 

                It is a different time than that of the Church’s scandal, which peaked in the mid-60s through mid-80s, there are not a lot of psychologists seriously advising that a pedophile could or should be rehabilitated.  This was not the case as the Church looked for direction; the direction they received included isolating the pedophile from children and counseling for the offender.  These techniques have since been discredited, largely because predators find victims regardless of attempts to isolate them.

                The Catholic Church had 6 credible allegations of sexual abuse in 2009, this number  was down 36% from 2008, keep in mind that these are 6 allegations against over 40,000 priests and tens of thousands of individuals working for the Catholic Church.  You will not hear that reported in the media.

                33% of girls and 16% of boys are sexually abused before the age of eighteen, not by priests but by the population at large. In the abuse of girls 29% were relatives and 60% were acquaintances and in boys 16% were family members and 44% were acquaintances.  When one compares statistics the unfortunate reality is that the Catholic Church can not only take the “Pepsi Challenge” with any other institution but also against most extended families.  Since the vast majority of perpetrators against children are men which highlights the fact that the Catholic Church has become more effective at choosing quality men than women have.

                The difference is that the Church has become more insistent on the universal application of its teachings.  The sexual abusers in the Church preyed on the willed confusion by some after the Second Vatican Council as they drew from secular and worldly influences and many times saw their victimization as an expression of their liberal Catholic politics.  Women from the time of Eve, or Lilith if one buys into all that, have been wooed by secular and worldly influence.  Ever wonder why housewives are so desperate?  It has a lot to do with the promise made between the friends of “Sex in the City”, to “have sex like men”.  The unintended consequences of this leaves their children unguarded against the men they parade through their children’s lives, which is a consequence of imploding families and easy divorce as marriage has as little consequence as sex.

                To determine if the “Laissez fare” attitude toward sex and marriage is actually feminist or not one should note which sex is most viscerally hurt through its application over time.  Women and children are far more, of course, the ones who bear the brunt of the impact of the policy of no fault sex and marriage.  The arguments against a healthy respect of sex, marriage, and family are largely academic and so extremely intellectual, my apologies for the sarcasm, that it leads us back to the campus of Penn. State.  The following was lifted from the comments section of the National Catholic Register online from an article entitled “Penn State and the Church”.  I left it as is so as not to assume any credit as it does hit the nail on the head.

                “In March 2002, when Jerry Sandusky was abusing and molesting young boys, Penn State sponsored and hosted a Conference on Women’s Health and Wellness.  Like many virtuous sounding names, e.g., The Second Mile Foundation, the true nature is far more sinister.  Patrick Califia-Rice was the keynote speaker at Penn State’s Conference on Women’s Health and Wellness.  Califia-Rice is an outspoken advocate of pedophilia and sadomasochism.  She (apparently used to be a “he”) wrote books such as “Macho Sluts” and “Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex”.  Most relevant to the exposure of sex abuse at Penn State is Califia-Rice’s philosophy, which, according to World Net Daily, NAMBLA posts on its website.  Here is what the Keynote speaker at Penn State’s Conference believes.
“Boy-lovers and the lesbians who have young lovers are the
only people offering a hand to help young women and men
cross the difficult terrain between straight society and the
gay community.  They are not child molesters.  The child
abusers are priests, teachers, therapists, cops and parents
who force their stale morality onto the young people in
their custody.  Instead of condemning pedophiles for their
involvement with lesbian and gay youth, we should be
supporting them.”
Califia-Rice was the keynote speaker at this Penn State Conference during the tenure of Penn State President Graham Spanier.  Last week, of course, the Penn State Board of Trustees fired Spanier.  Shockingly, this Conference was not an isolated event on President Spanier’s watch.  To the contrary, it appears as if part of Penn State’s mission during President Spanier’s tenure was to promote and encourage all manner of depravity and immorality in the name of academic freedom and free speech.  In Feb. 2001, Penn State’s Womyn’s Concerns hosted a “Sex Faire”.  This taxpayer funded event included games such as “pin the clitoris on the vulva” and “orgasmo bingo”.  It also included a “Tent of Consent” where students were allowed to engage in any behavior they desired.  World Net Daily reports other events.
At this time, then Pennsylvania State Representative John Lawless tried to stop these sort of events at Penn State.  Not surprisingly, Rep. Lawless objected to Pennsylvania taxpayers funding such events.  The Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee held a hearing.  At the hearing, Penn State President Graham Spanier said he would not stop such events because Penn State was committed to free speech.  When asked if the programs were wrong or immoral, Spanier said “It depends on what your definition of immoral is.” 
In the end, Rep. Lawless sadly reported that “You can’t touch Penn State.  * * * Football is more important than education and morals.” 
Put simply, Penn State supported and sponsored the exact activities that the university now says it finds objectionable and repulsive.  President Spanier once testified that those activities were protected free speech.  The university’s current about-face is not credible.” 


Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/penn-state-and-the-church?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NCRegisterDailyBlog+National+Catholic+Register#When:2011-11-13#ixzz1drLZXouY

                30% of molested children will molest their own children, 80% of 21 year olds who were molested as children meet criteria for some form of mental illness, 14% of men and 36% of women in prison were abused as children, and abused girls are 25% more likely to experience teen pregnancy so the “help” which the child molester offers is inconceivably misplaced and unwanted by the abused child and society at large.  This is the humble opinion of this Catholic, who will not walk away from any situation of abuse but jump into the shower and right down the throat of the perpetrator, period.

North Carolina vs. Mississippi

Today Mississippi votes on a “personhood” amendment.  Yesterday victims of a sterilization program in North Carolina spoke out on “Rock Center with Brian Williams”.  These two articles strike me as: one) they are both about reproductive rights, but two) they are also both about “personhood”.

                “North Carolina was one of 31 states to have a government run eugenics program.  By the 1960s, tens of thousands of Americans were sterilized as a result of these programs. 

Eugenics was a scientific theory that grew in popularity during the 1920s.  Eugenicists believed that poverty, promiscuity and alcoholism were traits that were inherited.  To eliminate those society ills and improve society’s gene pool, proponents of the theory argued that those that exhibited the traits should be sterilized.  Some of America’s wealthiest citizens of the time were eugenicists including Dr. Clarence Gamble of the Procter and Gamble fortune and James Hanes of the hosiery company.  Hanes helped found the Human Betterment League which promoted the cause of eugenicists. 

It began as a way to control welfare spending on poor white women and men, but over time, North Carolina shifted focus, targeting more women and more blacks than whites.  A third of the sterilizations performed in North Carolina were done on girls under the age of 18.  Some were as young as nine years old."

For the past eight years, North Carolina lawmakers have been working to find a way to compensate those involuntarily sterilized in the state between 1929 and 1974. During that time period, 7,600 people were sterilized in North Carolina.  Of those who were sterilized, 85 percent of the victims were female and 40 percent were non-white.”  (Rock Center, 7/11/11)

                So what we have here is classic victimization.  Women and minorities bore the brunt of the forced sterilizations, although anyone deemed “undesirable” would have fallen under the “guidance” of the governmental program.  Suffice it to say none of the victims would have been the daughters of industrial or governmental officials, they were the wheat which meads out the judgment to the chaff.

                It reminds me of abortion.  “How pray tell is that?”  The answer is obvious; the baby will drain the parent’s resources, the baby is unwanted, the baby is a psychological hardship, the baby will cause the mother to suffer physically, the baby is just like a good for nothing so and so that drains our society of all its goodness, like someone who would qualify for the eugenics program in North Carolina in the 1960’s.

                The baby is not a result of miraculous conception.  The baby is a result of two people having sex, unless it was conceived using In Vitro Fertilization which is also a eugenic process.  People who are pro-choice should be pro-choice and recognize that 99% of the pregnancies aborted are simply incredibly cruel forms of birth control.   Abortion is not actually pro-choice at all but an attempt to invalidate a choice; just as the powers that be seek to invalidate the lives of the victims of forced sterilization.

                To sterilize a person is to extinguish that person from the infinity of time.  I believe it is in the Midrash of the Jewish faith in which it is explained that to kill a person is not only to kill that individual but also all the persons of his or her lineage and so it is an incredibly grave matter, in other words every murderer is a serial killer with an infinite number of victims over an infinite number of lost generations.  The state has tried to erase that person who was sterilized from the fabric of time.  A mother who terminates her otherwise viable pregnancy faces the same reality; do you see how sick abortion is?  It erases a son or daughter out of time for all eternity.

                If one does not believe in the personhood of the baby in the womb then forced sterilization is a victimless crime.  For what is taken from the individual but their fertility and fertility only means one thing, a womb will never grow money.  What has been taken, as Governor Perdue also states, is more valuable than money it is our children.   

  

One man, one woman, one marriage, zero bigots?

                Oh, to have it all to do over!  I was about a year into my Catholic adventure and I was in an Ethics class at Regis.  I allowed myself to be silenced.  I was too timid to speak out against the conventional wisdom “They are just in love!  What’s wrong with that?”  What indeed?  Let’s take a sober look at truths so simple we take them for granted; that marriage must be between a man and a woman.  I can say this without hatred and thus sans bigotry, just saying sheesh.

                What is love?  What is marriage and why?  People assume so much of marriage; that it’s only a social matter involving visiting our loved ones in the hospital and receiving their benefits or their property.  I say, “Stuff the benefits!” and I would still marry Melissa again tomorrow.

                Marriage is a sacrament, only in the Catholic Church incidentally, but that only makes me more sure of the veracity of the Catholic faith.  A sacrament is an outer sign of an inner reality.  “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife; that they shall be made one flesh.”  Jesus quotes Genesis 2:24, as recorded in Matthew 19:5 and Mark 10:7, as He spoke of marriage and our bodies bare out the expression of that spiritual reality.  For just as man and women fit together “like puzzle pieces from the clay” (Iron and Wine, from the song “Such Great Heights”) so too do our souls, bonding us mystically together in a love like that of the Trinity.  So too is that love fertile, like the Trinitarian model, children being the result through the will of God.  If a man and a woman are infertile they must still be open to the possibility that children may one day arrive regardless of what anyone says to the contrary. 

                This openness to the possibility of life shields the couple from the temptation that one would simply use the other expressly for sex, thus depriving them of their human dignity and turning them into a vessel of self-serving pleasure.  This is one example of what’s wrong with pornography, this is also an example of what’s wrong with contraception, and this is what’s wrong with homosexuality too.  There I said it homosexuality is disordered, like contraception though so if you are gay and some Christian is giving you a hard time ask them if they use contraceptives.  These two are morally similar, except contraceptives which are abortive are far worse, and most Christians are just like the rest of culture so most use contraception.  Sex is given meaning and dignity in marriage rather than trying to find our meaning by a sexual act.

                So many people try to define themselves as “sexual beings”; they beg to be used to attain some sort of self esteem.  It creates a perversion of personality with sex, sexual attraction, superficial “sexy” fashion, and an overall compression of human existence into a Pandora’s Box of mischaracterized self-worth.  When one runs up against the many limitations of this life style the answer must be, “I need to be sexier.”  One comes to this conclusion easier it seems than a more rudimentary answer that, “I am not my sexuality!” there is no such thing as a “sexual being”.  One is so much more than who one can possess in some infinitesimally small manner.

                We are saved by our ability to give and not by what we are able to receive.  We can never receive enough of what we think we need in order to be whole, for the more we seem to get the more we realize how much more there is which we lack, and so instead of filling a hole we dig one.  We can only start to give of ourselves and that is where we find God.  Marriages, and their resulting families, are made for this smelting furnace of human transformation.

                These couples who live according to Church teaching are attempting to live in God’s will and learning to forsake their own.  To choose to do God’s will is obviously basic Christianity; to do God’s will over our own is to love God and trust in His love of us.  This is an expression of intimacy, to do the others will over your own because of love; anything else is simply playing at intimacy.

                This intimacy, this opening of hearts, creates the seedbed in which the seed of children flourish.  To create a family through this model is to create support and strength.  This is the purpose of marriage to create human flourishing into future generations.  The purpose of marriage is to draw us out of ourselves and into our most loving relationships. These are object lessons into the mystery of Trinitarian love and the very heart of the Christian faith.

                Can a homosexual marriage cause human flourishing?  Gay couples say yes, children of homosexual couples generally say yes.  There is a fundamental issue with the homosexual experience however it is that sex, sexual orientation, and gender, are up in the air but also at the very center of the parental understanding of “self”. 

                So what we have are ideas basic to identity, though not exclusive to identity, which are both fluid and central.  I have encountered parents of this parenting style who say “I am here to love and support my child in any of their decisions.”  They say this though they are speaking of toddlers.  The problem with this approach is that the hardest part of loving children is guiding them, this is called parenting.   

                Parenting effectively is the best way to minimize the skyrocketing trend of sociopathic behavior.  Narcissism is no longer a psychologically applicable diagnosis due to its flourishing in the culture at large.  Children need firm boundaries and self awareness in order to cultivate empathy.  It’s good for children to be in touch with how they feel; but that is not the extent of their ability to feel, unless they are not parented.

                This is not necessarily or exclusively a homosexual parenting problem, but in a household which would seem to cherish a child’s personal expression and introspection over and above providing definitive structure and traditional morays which sets that child up to be lost and ungrounded.

                Many homosexual couples wish to create a child with as much of their own biological information as possible; this inevitably means IVF, In Vitro fertilization.  This is going to offend some, but IVF is not a moral way to have children.  The first issue is that people simply believe they are entitled to children simply because they desire them.  This trend is indicative of the narcissistic and sociopathic tendencies of the culture at large.  We are out of touch with nature but very much in touch with what is commercially expedient.

                Our pride is not the most morally objectionable reason to be opposed to IVF; the big reason is that it is eugenics in action.  The created embryos are separated into tiers of perceived genetic value and all but the top tier is flushed or washed down the drain.  These are all not just genetic material we can do with what we will but outside the lab in a natural environment these are our sons and daughters.  The cry will go up “not until they implant” but even before they implant these embryos are communicating chemically saying “I am here.  I am on my way.”  To which the body of the mother responds with activity which welcomes that new life.  There is in nature a precursory chemical bond of communication well before a baby finds its home in its mother’s womb.

                In an essay entitled “Gay Rights” by Martha Nussbaum she states that homosexual households have “a more equal division of labor”.  This argument makes parity a virtue and totally discredits the importance that the sexes must adapt to in one’s spouse.  Mothers and fathers have different strengths and weaknesses.  This is not effectively countered by saying one partner is more masculine or feminine in their approach.  This is ridiculous because they actually aren’t; what is advanced instead is simply the construct they have made to mask the short coming they perceive in their personality and the opposite sex should be offended by the caricature.  There are actual differences between sexes.  These should be seen as strengths in the relationship not an invitation to unequal division of labor.

                Relationships between a man and a woman are intended to be places of giving and growth because we have such differences as sexes.  Men believe they know what men need; men believe men need license to do what they want.  Dan Savage has called for open sexual relationships; Mr. Savage asserts that the idea of men being faithful is not natural.  He thinks marriage is a construct which keeps women submissive and directly under the thumb of their men and they would be much better off under the insecurity of an open sexual relationship in marriage.

                What men truly need is not the license to have open sexual relationships!  What men need is to learn to be devoted and dedicated husbands and fathers!  Studies I’ve read have always confirmed that women and children are much more at risk outside of stable marriages.  Men can be taught to be nobler beasts but not without a structure which makes them grow up.  If men are given license in the most sacred area of the relationship license for the rest of it is just assumed.  The resulting man-boy would have a free reign of terror over the household and the very man Dan Savage rails against would be created, a real misogynist.

                Take Titanic for instance, women and children first except for the type of man no man should want to be, the man who places himself above everyone else and places himself pompously in the life raft amid the women and children and any other scoundrels.  Real men die for their love and they die for what’s honorable and what’s noble; they will die for their families.  They follow the example of Christ, but not out of their fallen human nature but because that Christ-like love has taught them discipline and respect and their love of the sacraments have given them the chances and grace needed on their journey to imitate Christ for the sake of their families.

                Children are always blessings; parents however are not.  The basis for what is good and true is not simply whatever is good for “me”.  The basis for what is good brings us out of our own self-interest.  This truth excludes some paths out of hand.  Homosexual marriage falls under this category.

Waiting for the Flood: Noah in the Midrash and NYPS Sex Ed.

                The Midrash, literally “story” in Hebrew, explains the Hebrew Bible and is a vital part of the rabbinic tradition.  I find as I look at the push, in the New York school system for example, for compulsory sexual education that the void of moral and practical context is in effect not a solution but actually will compound the problem.  We are in effect waiting for the flood.

                The midrashic teaching on the time of Noah presents a time of noise.  People had lost the ability to communicate because nothing had any meaning.  Sex was not a part of the marital conversation between a man and a woman; people just had sex with everything and anything and nothing was channeled or directed.  Conversation is, or rather was, more than just shouting at one another our positions; it is an engagement and it is the process of relationship.  The flood then is seen as a quieting of the noise and a return to a primordial silence.  

                Noah built a tebah, an ark, but actually translates as “box” and in later Hebrew as “word”.  Noah is said to have himself not been described as heroic or noble; but God had a place in His heart for him.  In fact Noah is described as being absent of the word; illustrated in that after God told him to build an ark and of the flood he said nothing in return, no prayers for humanity and no questions.  Noah simply does what he was told and finds himself in the anti-flood world of the ark.  A celibate life of service to God’s creation now encapsulated within a floating coffin.  The Hebrew tradition explains the celibacy in that God called them to enter the arc separately by sex and they were called by God to exit as husband and wife.  Noah is said to have worked to feed the animals on their time schedule twenty four hours a day everyday for forty days and nights, just as God does.  So the arc is truly the antithesis to the pre-flood world.  Life on the arc is ordered, if not naturally ordered, it is supernaturally ordered.  It is like a seed or a word filled with meaning waiting to land as all things must to truly live.

                The word falls flat upon the ear, Noah is not God, and he pines for the arc.  He longs for the God-like stature he held on the arc.  So he tastes another kind of apple, alcohol.  He becomes drunk, self medicating his sorrows and ennui, letting everything loses order in a morass of self indulgence.  His son also pines away for power and attempts to usurp his flagging father while he’s passed out.  We return to the fallen world of pre-flood Earth.  This is a cautionary tale.

                Enter New York Schools in an attempt to mitigate the effects of sex on the youth of New York they have instituted a policy of mandatory sex education with complimentary condom usage demo. 

                I read an article in the Denver Post on Sunday Tina Griego, a Denver Post Columnist, wrote about the Florence Crittenton school for teen families.  She wrote both of how a teen mother and her boyfriend used only condoms because she was afraid of her mother finding oral birth control pills.  They used the prescribed method of birth control of the New York school system and yet she still got pregnant at fifteen.  A second pregnant fifteen year old at the event got pregnant intentionally because she wanted the love and attention she felt a baby would provide.  Condoms do not stop that sort of misguided longing.  The communication is garbled to our youth there is too much noise and false promise.

                Sex will not make you happy.  Sex is for the creation of a totally dependent life.  There is a correlation between teen pregnancy and abject poverty.  Sex ed has been taught for 40 years and rates of STDs and unintended pregnancies continue to rise.  Schools will not be responsible for what they teach about sex until students who are the pregnant fruit of these programs sue them.  I hate to suggest litigation but the schools feel no consequence for their actions and it is the children who have to suffer.  

                No child can give consent to have sex; in fact neurological research suggests that we probably shouldn’t be able to give our consent until about twenty-five years of age.  I am not suggesting that course of legislation; I bring it up to highlight how vulnerable children are.  Children need our guidance.  They need us to be clear and concise.  They need us to be authoritative.  When we fall short of this it is abusive and we are passively contributing to the sexual abuse of every child who has sex.

                What we are creating is a society where sex is for everything but what sex is for; which is the noise the Midrash warns of in the pre-flood society of Noah’s age.  Information is everywhere and communication is nowhere.   The floodwaters were described as the ultimate crushing noise and following that crescendo was utter silence.

                The Midrash tells a cautionary tale but the answers are intuitive.  The Tebah floated over the water like the Spirit of God in first Genesis.  The side of the Tebah was opened and life poured out of it.  The Tebah was the word the word was made flesh in Jesus.  The story of the flood ends in a sorrowful Noah for he longed for intimacy with God.  Jesus brings us an invitation to intimacy through Him.  Through His life, death, and resurrection Jesus has made the answers of the flood more than intuitive.  He has made sex, marriage, and family accessible to communication by giving them definite meaning.  We transgress those laws at our own peril, waiting for a flood if you will.

Greece’s suicide rate, occupy Wall Street, and you

For the first half of this year Greece has seen a 40 percent increase in the suicide rate compared to the same time last year.  The sharp increase may seem intuitive or inevitable to many people but to me it seems like the most absurd waste.  Life it seems has a price as the Greek economy dissolves and individuals throughout their society are touched some, many by any standard, are choosing to kill themselves.  Individuals are losing hope.  Hope cannot be appropriately placed in something such as an economy or one’s hope for a bit of an economy; hope can only be securely placed in God.

                The disordered lives of individuals are, perhaps inevitably, becoming lethal.  If one places their relationship with God fully out of mind, even if one robotically attends mass once a week, and their relationship with material goods is perpetually at the fore life in Greece becomes unbearable.  The fact that for many these suicidal tendencies do not suggest the need for a reevaluation of one’s priorities but a dirt nap is incredible.  That is the intellectual thing to do though is it not?  Socrates can’t complain can he?  The Socratic precedent has simply become the way Greeks deal with hardship and the Greek government. 

                They feel hopeless in spite of their own “occupy Athens” protests.  Why?  What lessons can we draw in answer to our own “occupy fill in the blank” which sprouted from the “occupy Wall Street” protest?

                Protesters see themselves as the ninety-nine percent who have not been bailed out by the nanny state.  The nanny state was described by Noam Chomsky in his book “Free Market Fantasies: Capitalism in the Real World” which postulates American capitalism being a sham propped up by the Federal government.   The book is a transcription of a talk delivered at Harvard University, April 13, 1996.  The talk obviously predates the Obama administration’s stimulus and bailouts this talk exposes a pattern of bailouts of all of the nation’s banks and elite corporations overtime.  It seems virtually no industry or bank has felt real economic forces without the safety of the nanny state to bail them out.  Our present situation is not a new problem but an exacerbation of the status quo.

                What the protesters seem most generally to be asking for is their cut in what the “one percent” enjoy.  Greece has actually experienced what this looks like having had such a bloated civil government that it found that level of government involvement; though job inducing, totally unsustainable.  So the idea that the answer is to increase the umbrella of the nanny state to involve every citizen of the United States of America has proven misguided.

                Some say that the nanny state umbrella should be removed entirely, seemingly embodied by “The Tea Party” at the other end of the spectrum.  I recall seeing a bumper sticker which exclaimed, “More Freedom!”  My thought about the bumper stickers sentiment was, “Boy that would take a lot more personal responsibility than America can muster at the moment.”

In order to eliminate external control internal control must make it redundant.  Internal control is absent without a well formed conscience which we choose to follow.  The following excerpt is from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

ARTICLE 6 - MORAL CONSCIENCE

1776 "Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment.... For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God.... His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."[47]

.               Moral conscience makes the laws of government redundant; but without individual citizens with well formed consciences the call to dramatically increase or decrease the role of government simply becomes a call to fascism.  We can see this illustrated by thinking of George Orwell’s “1984” on one end of the spectrum and Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” on the other.  Neither ideology is free of a fascist trajectory.  The key becomes internal control and conscience.

                As the individual engages with the conscience and builds the discipline to act out of the conscience the actual end becomes clear; the end must be engaging with God.  The search for truth will eventually lead us to the ultimate truth, the search for love leads us to the ultimate love, the search for hope leads us to the ultimate hope; hope in Jesus Christ.

                So hope must not be placed in currencies and their zones or what these currencies promise to purchase for what they ultimately purchase is disappointment.  This disappointment may lead to soaring suicide rates as is Greece but the remedy awaits our understanding in the person of Jesus Christ.

Capital Punishment

                 On September 21^st 2011 two men were put to death by the state.  Troy Davis was executed in Georgia and Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed in Texas.  Davis’ steadfast declarations of his innocence and other circumstances around his case seemed to make him worthy of mercy in many people’s eyes while Brewer’s hate crime and definite guilt made his case almost an afterthought for many, his is not the obvious of the two to discuss while decrying the death penalty.  I witnessed this while trying to find his name for this essay.  I typed “executions September 21, 2011” and only Davis came up so I added “Texas” to the Google search and only one article rose to the top over the shadow of Davis.  I believe it was wrong for the State to have executed either men, and I will not leave Lawrence Russell Brewer out of the discussion for convenience sake.

                In his essay “What do Murderers Deserve?”  David Gelernter wrote for Commentary in the Utne Reader, “Why execute murderers?  To deter?  To avenge?  Supporters of the death penalty often give the first answer, opponents the second.  But neither can be the whole truth.” 

                He continues, “In fact, we execute murderers in order to make a communal proclamation: that murder is intolerable. A deliberate murderer embodies evil so terrible that it defiles the community. Thus the late social philosopher Robert Nisbet wrote: “Until a catharsis has been effected through trial, through the finding of guilt and then punishment, the community is anxious, fearful, apprehensive, and, above all, contaminated.”

When a murder takes place, the community is obliged to clear its throat and step up to the microphone. Every murder demands a communal response. Among possible responses, the death penalty is uniquely powerful because it is permanent. An execution forces the community to assume forever the burden of moral certainty; it is a form of absolute speech that allows no waffling or equivocation.”

                Gelernter states in the same essay, “Opponents of capital punishment describe it as a surrender to emotions—to grief, rage, fear, blood lust. For most supporters of the death penalty, this is false. Even when we resolve in principle to go ahead, we have to steel ourselves. Many of us would find it hard to kill a dog, much less a man. Endorsing capital punishment means not that we yield to our emotions but that we overcome them. If we favor executing murderers, it is not because we want to but because, however much we do not want to, we consider ourselves obliged to.”
                The argument Gelernter makes falls right into the hands of the major criticisms of the utilitarianism his argument espouses: 1) it ignores the rights of the minority 2) it allows innocent people to suffer.
                Davis’ case highlights these two criticisms especially in that his guilt was in question and yet he was put to death.  What Davis’ case thus also highlights is that there is greater utility for society in protecting it from an unjustly executed governmental institution which fosters the lowest qualities of humanity while suppressing and/or numbing the greatest qualities.
                Both sides desire telos (purpose) for society through their espoused views on the death penalty.  The purpose we seek must be to elevate the value of life; Gelernter insists that to execute the murderer is to say life is so important it is worth killing for.   Capital punishment becomes the ultimate statement of the importance of life.  This seems backwards because it is backwards.
                Lawrence Russell Brewer’s life had value in spite of the grotesque nature of his crime.  His victim, James Bird Jr.’s life had an infinite and immeasurable value, but even if Brewer devalued his own life by committing an act as completely horrible as the way he murdered Mr. Bird, according to the universality of Kant’s categorical imperative a murderer condemns him or herself to death, Brewer’s life still had meaning and purpose.  When the state refuses to kill it’s convicted felons it sends a real message about the importance of human life and the reality of the horror of murder.
                When the state murders a convict in its care, it blurs the universality and concreteness of the message, “Murder is wrong.”  If the state can rationalize murder, so too can we, and anybody’s murder might be simply a couple rationalized thoughts away.
                Capital punishment teaches society not about justice, but shows through its own example about sociopathic behavior and implies a virtue therein.  In our hearts there is always an exception to the rule and that exception is us.  Justice must uphold that we are not so special or the categorical imperative falls apart.  The closer we get to characters in the state of anomie, the further we are from justice.
                In order to have the rule of law, the state must be the chief proponent of the rule of law; otherwise the law becomes so many empty words.