Feminism is Dead: Abortion Ratios Based upon Sex

                Saul wielded his sword in battle and that would ultimately be the cause of his death as he committed suicide with it, this is where the expression “falling on your sword” comes from as this is what Saul did.  Abortion was supposed to be the tool of feminism but as abortion has systematically and ever increasingly been used to kill unborn girls feminism has fallen upon the sword of abortion.

                Angie Murie, executive director of Planned Parenthood Waterloo Region in Canada, said:

“I wrestle with gender-based abortion more than any other reason.  From a macro perspective, I don’t think it is a good idea for us to be eliminating women.  But if you look at it at the individual level, which is what we do, I don’t have any right to say that one person’s reason is better or worse than another’s.”

                I am reminded of a saying about a forest and trees.  It is easy to pick on China as they are the greatest offenders by far.  The most distorted districts in China are over 150 male births to 100 female births, but I see this picking up throughout the world and the statistics are bearing it out, even in Europe.

                The answer is easy we live in a culture that is guided by what’s trending now.  Its soft power versus hard power and soft power will leave hard power in the dustbin.  China’s hard power approach has destroyed a large number of girls, but the people know in their hearts that what they are doing is totally devastating.  What is far more effective is the whisper at the dinner party, “Oh poor dear, maybe she couldn’t afford the test.”  Thus a willful disregard in nurtured in the heart and one feels none of those nagging objections of a well formed conscience.  One simply sees oneself and the desires of one’s heart.  Ah, how romantically devastating!

                One can see the disparity in countries very clearly not based upon religious piety or even party politics but economic growth and planned families.  Nearly half the world falls into an unnaturally male biased ratio, which is greater than 105 male births to 100 female births.  The world sex ratio for 2005 to 2010, as determined by the United Nations, was 107 boys to 100 girls.  This has left a calculated disparity of 32 million females throughout the world. 

I imagine these females were quite relieved at being dispatched as being female is apparently equally meriting as incest and rape in abortion consideration.  If they could speak they would thank us!  Thank us for being saved the apparent indignity of being born a girl and thus Feminism is dead in that it makes it unthinkable to value girls equally as it is only a matter of taste to do so. 

Abortion is worse than Sharia Law

                As I have been reading news reports about “The March for Life 2012” I notice things.  Such as the Washington Post never has a long shot of the crowd.  They have about ten pictures two of which are of the pro-abortion counter-protesters and four of which were protesters engaging with the pro-abortion activists.  All of the pictures are tight on the face and two just of a hand holding rosary beads.  So the impact is that an undeterminable amount of people were at the march, so multiple comments claim that there were only about 200, tens of thousands in fact, and there were an indeterminate amount of counter- marchers, probably also 200 or more, 11 in fact.  When one sees pictures which normal people take of a march what one sees is an ocean of humanity.  I also read the comments pages because it matters to me how people process information.  A comment I read among the hundreds is that we are heading for Christian Sharia Law.  In Sharia Law if one is caught stealing that person’s hand is cut off, it being the vehicle of the offence and thus its absence would also cause the community to be aware of the person as a past offender.  In abortion law if two people have sex and a pregnancy results a baby is broken and sliced into pieces, a baby is a logical outcome of the sexual act and the couple wishing to hide themselves from the logical outcomes of their sexual act.  Abortion is far worse than Sharia Law.

                Only if a person were picked at random and made to answer for two person’s indiscretions could a practice be more unfair.  This is simply allowing a member of your family to be killed for those very indiscretions.  Abortion is more like the tyrant one would criticize in Iran, or the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, or the civil rights record of any tyrant really.  The real difference is efficiency it would be hard to imagine 40 million or 50 million human beings destroyed by a despotic regime, it is estimated that 11 million people died in the Nazi concentration camps of those 6 million were Jews.  Joseph Stalin starved 7 million people to death in the Ukraine.  The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia murdered 2 million people.   400,000 people were killed in the Darfur genocide.  200,000 people died in the Bosnian genocide.

                The objection to these comparisons to our abortion epidemic of these United States is of course that babies in a mother’s womb are not babies.  A comment which I read yesterday illustrates this point stating that a fetus was actually a parasite, chemically masking itself from being attacked by the mother’s immune system and compromising a woman’s bodily integrity.

                The obvious problem with this argument is that having babies is natural.  A baby is not a parasite; even the author of such calumny was once a “parasitic” fetus.  If a baby is at the top of a woman’s bodily pecking order this is a totally natural occurrence.  Thus nature has made it so and thank God it has as there could be no humanity sans such measures.

 A woman’s body even colludes with these “parasites” as it monthly makes itself ready for just such an occupation; making the perfect environment for the invasion.  The womb is a perpetual turncoat pining to host a “parasite”; making things just so.  “Your body your choice” it guffaws waiting for its chance to aid the resistance.  Every female member of NARAL and Planned Parenthood, of a certain age of course, has this internal disconnect between the head, the heart, and the body, and particularly their uterus and ovaries issuing their monthly propaganda.

What adds insult to injury is that do to microchimerism having babies is incredibly beneficial to a woman’s health.  Microchimerism is a process by which mothers and babies share cells across the placenta in utero.  What this provides a mother is cell therapy for many decades after she has given birth, even though the mother’s immune system should have cleared these cells out in a matter of hours.

Dr. Kirby Johnson of Tufts Medical Center, Boston, relayed a story to illustrate these phenomena to NPR’s Robert Krulwich.  A woman had been admitted to a Boston hospital with symptoms of hepatitis.  She was an intravenous drug user who had five recorded pregnancies: one live birth, two miscarriages, and two abortions.  Johnson took a liver biopsy of her as a part of his examination and found after reviewing the lab results hundreds of fetal cells, “literally sheets of cells, whole areas which seemed to be normal.”

In conclusion, Christian Sharia law is not on the horizon, the abortion law in place now is far more illogical and backwards than Sharia law.  A fetus is a baby in a particular stage of development and not a parasite.  Pregnancy is not simply a woman’s burden but also a very real blessing and last, but certainly not least, one must read or watch the news with an eye for distortion and be willing to share the truth on comment boards.  Now put your hands upon your keyboard we break on three; one, two, three, break!

               

Why Women and Children must go First

                Obviously the topic springs to my mind due to the tragedy of the Costa Concordia and the actions of the ship’s Captain Francesco Schettino.  Regardless of what happened, whether he actually slipped and fell into a life boat, the tradition of boarding women and children first has come into the “public conscience” as a topic of debate.  People site evolution and genetic ingraining to explain why the tradition exists, but it reads like hogwash as they simply make the statement and expect it to be self evident.  I wish to present evidence that men are not hardwired to allow women to disembark from a sinking vessel first and as a result of this public debate may not in the future.  The truth I wish to shine through however is that they must let women and children go first.

                Women and children must not board lifeboats first because they are weak; they must board first because men are weak.  Men who do not practice chivalry are not men at all, they are not even over grown boys, they are more like animals.  They push and fight for an ever narrowing interest until it focuses squarely upon himself; this puts single men at even greater disadvantage.

                The difference can be shown in the differences in survivors aboard the Lusitania and the Titanic.  The Lusitania’s lifeboats, as the ship went down quickly, were filled exclusively with men and women who were young and fit.  Whereas aboard the Titanic there were hours to “organize” according to age, gender, and class.  When the knee jerks, actual Darwinian theory is tested, and the physically fittest survive. 

                Some decry the way the Titanic evacuations were handled, especially with regard to class as the third class was not even let on deck until it was too late.  This illustrates what I am talking about.  The life boats were limited and most had sailed and people want greater democratization touched with empathy.  They have no right to expect this from nature; but they have every right to expect it.

                Should the ingrained genetic argument be correct in and of itself the Lusitania’s lifeboats would have surely had almost exclusively women of fertile childbearing age and children.  The hardwiring should have bucked harder in the shortened time frame not been left out altogether.  The women who survived were of child bearing age but they were also fast and strong.  That was the factor at play not the state of their uterus.  They held their own, they merited their survival.  This is the nature of nature.

                If we are honest the real wonder is not that the lifeboats are not stacked with women like cordwood.  The wonder is that there are any women at all in the lifeboats.

                 I believe my friend, Deacon Bob, would take the time to illustrate the point with this experience he had in Vietnam.  He was sitting on the roadside with two Vietnamese who helped the Americans. When he saw a Vietnamese family walking by he wondered aloud why the husband walked ahead of the wife by a designated number of paces.  One of the Vietnamese stated it had always been this way to which the other stated it had not always been this way; the wife walked ahead of the husband when the husband was afraid of landmines.  I would like now to apologize to Deacon Bob for he tells the story with mastery and I just butchered it.  The lesson can, I think, be gleaned even in my poor telling; chivalry is not natural.

                One may get a grasp of what is natural by observing the documentary “Becoming Chaz”.   In which Chaz Bono and others who are going through hormone therapy are interviewed and observed.  The stated results are aggressive behavior, especially sexual appetite which is greatly increased.  Chaz’s girlfriend, Jennifer Elia, stated the change was such that Bono went from being the nicest person she had ever met to someone she did not even like.  Studies have shown that by exposing women to even small doses of testosterone they become less empathetic.  I do not wish to insinuate that this state is permanent and without hope of adapting. I simply wish to explain that male hormones are often described as being nothing nice.  A man’s testosterone levels naturally greatly decrease just before the birth of his child and never reach the same levels as when he was single as if readying him to become a father and nurturing husband; this further illustrates how the single man is at a disadvantage.

                I believe this may explain a lot about men throughout history and through anthropologies.  With this fabulous excuse of male hormones and the evidence of men in and through histories and in anthropologies why is it still my contention that men should be chivalrous to the point of death aboard an ocean liner?

                “Hold it the greatest sin to prefer existence to honor and for the sake of life lose the reasons for living.” Juvenal, Satires. 

                Is that not what this is about?  It is indeed, but to grasp the statement’s meaning one cannot lose touch with the reasons for living.  Our society as it becomes perverse and degraded by materialism, our world views become sociopathic.  Secular Humanism seems too kind for the bile produced as one needs to be human in order to be a secular humanist.

Because a man without honor is worse than an animal; he is a cancer.  He is an aggressive cancer which only seeks to suck the life from as much of humanity as he is exposed to.  He has an insatiable appetite and no matter the seeming focus of his attention what he actually destroys is life.

He will do it in the name of progress.  He will say women should have set up their own boundaries.  He will do as one woman who survived the Costa Concordia described and muscle their way to the life boats, “Men first and women and children are on their own.”

“I will not serve!” this is the sin of cancer and the quote of Satan moments before he fell from heaven.  “I will not serve!” this is the antithesis to honor and the cause of a man’s ruin.  “I will not serve!” is the only phrase the walking dead speak.  The phrase is rearranged and elaborated upon until it is a language of death and the language of our culture. 

^33” Whosoever shall seek to gain his life shall lose it: but whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.”  (Luke 17:33)
                Dying is not the worst thing that can happen to a person.  We will all die.  We can never force enough experience into these small years to overcome some experiences.  Some experiences fill us and some hollow us out.  To sacrifice one’s life so another can go on, especially when this action is joined to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, will fill those moments with an infinite meaning.  The alternative is to fill an infinite number of minutes with an eternal deficit, to dig a hole that can always be dug deeper.  One may act hollow and morbid, one may try to fill the hollowness with vice, and one will create more and more experiences which are harder and harder to overcome.   Survival, even of the fittest, is no guarantee of a fairy tale ending.  The answer is to act with honor and respect life enough to defend it until the very end of your own. 
                In the movie The Seventh Seal (1957, Ingmar Bergman) Antonius Block, played by Max von Sydow, is in the confessional confessing to Death, played by Bengt Ekerot.


“I want knowledge.  Not faith or conjecture but knowledge.  I want God to reach out His hand.  Show His face, speak to me, but He is silent.  I cry to Him in the darkness, but sometimes it feels as no one is there.”


“Perhaps no one is there.”


“Then life is just senseless horror.  No man can live facing death knowing that everything is nothingness.”


“Most people give no thought to death or nothingness.”


“One day they will stand at the far edge of life peering into the darkness.”


“Ah, that day, I understand what you mean.”


“We carve an idol out of our fear and call it God.”


“You’re upset.”


“Death visited me this morning.  We’re playing chess together.  This reprieve will allow me to attend to an urgent matter.”


“What sort of matter?”


“My whole life has been nothing but futile wandering and pursuits, a great deal of talk without meaning.  It’s all been in vain.  I say this without bitterness or self-reproach, knowing that most men’s lives are the same.  But I want to use my reprieve for one meaningful act.”


                Tomorrow, January the 25^th, is the feast day of the conversion of St. Paul.  Let us mark a conversion in our hearts by allowing one meaningful act and by the time we should need to abandon ship our hearts will lead us to do what is right.  I will see you at the bottom of the sea!

Is being Pro-Choice Sexy?

                Is being Pro-Choice sexy?  Planned Parenthood thinks so as they have asked twitter users to pass on a message which states just that, “Pro-Choice is Sexy!”  Is being pro-choice sexy?  The answer is… Yes!  Wait, what?  No it really is sexy.  In fact it not only really is sexy; it is really sexy. 

                Why would I make such a statement?  Because it is true; both of these options limit a woman’s ability to actually be a woman.  A woman may be the object of sexual desire and thus objectification but a woman may not be fully a human being.  A woman may be the object of sexual interest but she has no right to sexual stability, men don’t care.  If a woman teaches a man she wants to have sex like he does and society at large guarantees any repercussions of any of this sexual expression can be chopped up and thrown away.  Women are teaching men not to care.

                Men haven’t even had to ask for these indignities feminists have insisted upon them.  Women have fought for their rights only to have the right to say I do not wish to be respected; I wish to be found sexually desirable.  If women wish to race men to the bottom they will lose and lose big!

                For the sexually assertive woman has the right to one expectation and that is that everything will go well because sex is good in and of itself.  When the woman is crushed by losing the afore mentioned race to the bottom she has no recourse as the dogma she has followed allows only two basic rights: 1) to kill her innocence, 2) to kill her innocent.

                Pro-Choice is very sexy indeed.  God save us.

Zoo wins award for diversity after accepting a “Girl Scout” into its Bear Habitat

                A seven year old who self identifies as the new third gender designation “Girl Scout” was accepted into the bear habitat of the city zoo today.  The child stated it simply, “liked doing bear stuff.”  The new cub’s former parents stated, “It’s not our job to be judgmental.  It’s our job to love and support our sexless ageless thing until its metamorphoses.  It just chose what it wanted early in life and who am I to judge.  I find this whole line of questioning to be judgmental and bigoted.”  The zoo agreed, “If the “child” self identifies as a bear cub and presents itself as a bear cub we accept it as a bear cub.”

                The “child” made vague references to “Winnie the Pooh” and its favorite “The Jungle Book” when asked about its road to self discovery.  When asked if a “child” could be expected to fully understand what it actually means to be a bear cub the parents bristled, “That question invalidates its feelings.  I don’t want it to grow up in a world like that, full of expectations and broken dreams.  I want it to be free of bigots like you!  Bears are many things but bears, especially zoo bears, are not bigots.”

                The award was bestowed by the Born This Way Foundation.  In a statement the foundation praised the zoo for “not listening to the haters.” 

                “We want the world to know seven year olds need to be supported in any life altering decision it chooses to make.  They are brave in eschewing societal tyranny and embracing the true nature of “humanity” which is non-judgment especially if it leads the searcher to a bear habitat.  Our support must match or even surpass their bravery and desire.  Because what is the worst thing that could possibly happen?  That seven year old “Girl Scout” maybe broken hearted for the rest of its life.”

                We will continue to follow this story as a memorial fund has been graciously established in the “Girl Scouts” name on the Born This Way Foundation website.

Freedom and the Misconception of Freedom

“Anarchy is that condition of mind or methods in which you cannot stop yourself. It is the loss of that self-control which can return to the normal. It is not anarchy because men are permitted to begin uproar, extravagance, experiment, peril. It is anarchy when people cannot end these things. It is not anarchy in the home if the whole family sits up all night on New Year's Eve. It is anarchy in the home if members of the family sit up later and later for months afterwards. It was not anarchy in the Roman villa when, during the Saturnalia, the slaves turned masters or the masters slaves. It was (from the slave-owners' point of view) anarchy if, after the Saturnalia, the slaves continued to behave in a Saturnalian manner; but it is historically evident that they did not. It is not anarchy to have a picnic; but it is anarchy to lose all memory of mealtimes. It would, I think, be anarchy if (as is the disgusting suggestion of some) we all took what we liked off the sideboard. That is the way swine would eat if swine had sideboards; they have no immovable feasts; they are uncommonly progressive, are swine. It is this inability to return within rational limits after a legitimate extravagance that is the really dangerous disorder.”  (G.K. Chesterton, Eugenics and other Evils, 1922)

I was an anarchist specifically because I believed freedom solved problems.  Without freedom social and personal issues would not be synthesized fluidly into the most streamlined evolution of personal and social ethos.  It is an incredibly appealing idea as one has not to work towards virtues but work to remove the word virtue from the lexicon and allow the fittest to survive.

What happens as this has happened is not actually the social flourishing I had believed in but rather the society has become as “uncommonly progressive” as swine.

Freedom it seems is not simply the ability to say yes to what one wishes; freedom is the ability to say no to what one desires.  Without the ability to say no one is simply an addict, and what society seems to desire is only the freedom to be addicted to what one wishes.  What this produces is what we have seen; society mixes as fluidly as oil in water.  The reason for this is as one focuses exclusively upon the sole desire of one’s own heart, one becomes sociopathic and loses the ability to empathize with those who are only really standing in the way of one attaining one’s heart’s sole desire.  This makes each individual quite grumpy and less likely to empathize with those utter bastards who hate us because they are only jealous of our happiness; the happiness we are denied because of them!  We desire then only a theory of happiness and we are consumed by hate for those we presume to be a roadblock to the synthesis of this obvious reality which fails to be realized.

I offer you an example from yesterday’s paper, or the internet facsimile thereof.  A young woman was not allowed to have the pictures she submitted to the yearbook printed in said yearbook as they were deemed too racy by its editors.  Have her First Amendment Rights been violated?

No, she simply has her trotters on the sideboard!  One argument put forth from her mother is that the girl aspires to be a model and this is no different than students posing with their guitars.  I would agree with her assuming that the student was in a skinhead band and had a swastika prominently placed upon his pointy Charvel.  There are degrees of what must be deemed acceptable.  Not every model aspires to model for Maxim, read trash, some, though decided many too few, wish to maintain their dignity as they pursue their chosen profession.

The insistence that the student’s depiction of what constitutes modeling has to be accurate further degrades the profession in the social mind for all models.  If the skinhead guitarist told you what he was doing was simply being a musician one would be remiss to simply accept that at face value.

We have a duty to protect what is decent for those who will have to live with the reality of a degraded definition of what is real.  My daughter deserves to be respected; my nieces deserve to be respected, welcome to the world baby Greeley!  If I fail to allow them to grow up in a world in which this can be attained then I am to be judged for their misery.

The only logical outcome of doing away with the pursuit of virtue would be greater virtue.  The reality of doing away with the pursuit of virtue is misery.  Misery is the logical outcome of anarchy.  Misery is the logical outcome of addictions.  Whether one is addicted to a superficial acceptance which leads to the degradation of our God given dignity or addicted to the idea of a Utopia which raises one’s pet addiction to the state of normalcy, but  which is simply everyone else’s dystopia, freedom is not about our own selfish pursuits.   

Carnivorous animals are not murderers.  They have no ethos to uphold; they act instinctively.  We cannot use our instinctive nature as a defense in a court of law. We have something more; thus the court of law, thus the court house, thus the uniforms and robes, thus also the metal detectors.  These result as a byproduct of our faculty to use our freedom.

“1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.
1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.
1733 The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to "the slavery of sin."[28]
1734 Freedom makes man responsible for his acts to the extent that they are voluntary. Progress in virtue, knowledge of the good, and ascesis enhance the mastery of the will over its acts.
1735 Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors.
1736 Every act directly willed is imputable to its author:
Thus the Lord asked Eve after the sin in the garden: "What is this that you have done?"[29] He asked Cain the same question.[30] The prophet Nathan questioned David in the same way after he committed adultery with the wife of Uriah and had him murdered.[31]
An action can be indirectly voluntary when it results from negligence regarding something one should have known or done: for example, an accident arising from ignorance of traffic laws.
1737 An effect can be tolerated without being willed by its agent; for instance, a mother's exhaustion from tending her sick child. A bad effect is not imputable if it was not willed either as an end or as a means of an action, e.g., a death a person incurs in aiding someone in danger. For a bad effect to be imputable it must be foreseeable and the agent must have the possibility of avoiding it, as in the case of manslaughter caused by a drunken driver.
1738 Freedom is exercised in relationships between human beings. Every human person, created in the image of God, has the natural right to be recognized as a free and responsible being. All owe to each other this duty of respect. The right to the exercise of freedom, especially in moral and religious matters, is an inalienable requirement of the dignity of the human person. This right must be recognized and protected by civil authority within the limits of the common good and public order.[32]” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part 3 Article 3 Section I, Freedom and Responsibility)

It is so important to the very fabric of society to be aware of what freedom is and what it is not.  We have not the right to our perversion of reality we have not even the right to remain silent in these matters.  We are obliged by our freedom to serve everyone in society and not some chosen few, meaning primarily ourselves.  This is the responsibility of that freedom.

“One of those wise old fairy tales, that come from nowhere and flourish everywhere, tells how a man came to own a small magic machine like a coffee-mill, which would grind anything he wanted when he said one word and stop when he said another. After performing marvels (which I wish my conscience would let me put into this book for padding) the mill was merely asked to grind a few grains of salt at an officers' mess on board ship; for salt is the type everywhere of small luxury and exaggeration, and sailors' tales should be taken with a grain of it. The man remembered the word that started the salt mill, and then, touching the word that stopped it, suddenly remembered that he forgot. The tall ship sank, laden and sparkling to the topmasts with salt like Arctic snows; but the mad mill was still grinding at the ocean bottom, where all the men lay drowned. And that (so says this fairy tale) is why the great waters about our world have a bitter taste. For the fairy tales knew what the modern mystics don't --- that one should not let loose either the supernatural or the natural.”(Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Eugenics and other Evils, 1922)

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.