“Christian” country – large majority of Americans say depraved sex, unwed births are OK May 21, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in asshatery, Basics, Dallas Diocese, disaster, episcopate, foolishness, General Catholic, sadness, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sexual depravity, sickness, Society.comments closed
I guess at least in one sense, one could look at this as a positive development. For if a majority say births to unwed mothers are morally acceptable, that means they shouldn’t favor abortion in these cases? But I would be a fool to expect even such a utilitarian consistency. I won’t quite pronounce this nation morally dead quite yet, because who knows how the pollsters led people to these responses, but it’s disturbing if even 20% of Americans now believe these depravities are now “moral:” (I add emphasis and comments)
A Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans now believe that sexual relations between two men or two women, and unmarried women having a baby, are morally acceptable.
In the new survey, 59 percent of American adults answered that gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable, a 19 percentage point increase since 2001 when only 40 percent said it was morally acceptable. [Which just goes to show the ongoing moral collapse, the soul-devouring influence of the popular culture, primarily through the medium of television, and the results of a relentless, focused, elite-driven propaganda campaign of unprecedented proportions. Black is white. Up is down. Laverne and Shirley are now that “nice couple” that has lots of cats and doesn’t go out much.]
Sixty percent of respondents said that having a baby outside of marriage was morally acceptable, a 15 percentage point increase since 2002 when only 45 percent said it was morally acceptable.
Of the 20 issues which Gallup asked about their moral acceptability, same-sex sexual relations and unwed pregnancies saw the greatest increases. They were also the only issues which changed from a minority to a majority of the country finding them morally acceptable over the past decade.
The other large increases in moral acceptability were: sex between an unmarried man and woman went from 53 to 63 percent, divorce went from 59 to 63 percent, and medical research using stem cells from human embryos went from 52 to 60 percent. [What can I say? The sexular pagan chose their target well. Sex is the ultimate human weak spot, and studies have shown that once one gets lost in a state of perpetual arousal, virtually all inhibition is lost. Barring a major miracle, these numbers will only get worse.]
The only large decline in moral acceptability was for medical testing on animals, which went from 65 to 56 percent. [Of course! And see below, far more people think it is unethical to conduct medical testing on animals than it is to kill a defenseless human being! Because they are so cute and cuddly! The animals, I mean! Babies are just work, and cost $$$! Everyone knows that! I mean, who would want their daughter burdened with a baby?]
At six percent, married men and women having an affair had the lowest number of those saying it was morally acceptable.
Oh, I have no doubt that will change, and significantly, in the next 10 years. In 2022, there will be some poll that finds, inexplicably!!, that suddenly a large minority of Americans think marital infidelity is just fine, and 10 years after that, it wil be a substantial majority. And a hundred other depravities that were once unthinkable, will then be commonplace. What do you think will become of the hook-up kids on today’s college campuses, people who already have dozens of lifetime partners, when they go to get married? The statistical data is not good – studies show that women in particular with many partners have extremely high divorce rates (near 100% in their lifetime, according to some studies), and anecdotal evidence indicates much of this rate is fueled by sexual frustration and/or infidelity.
Drive God from your life, and it’s not that nothing takes His place. Satan does. And yet so many in Church leadership stand idly by and let it happen. So do we laity. Dear Lord….
Nietzche and cultural nihilism May 21, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, catachesis, disaster, Ecumenism, error, family, horror, persecution, sadness, scandals, secularism, sickness, Society.comments closed
Michael Voris has a very good Vortex episode out describing how Europe fell for sexular pagan theologies promising uninhibited hedonism and an earthly socialist “paradise” before the eternal night of death. One of most influential disciples of this lifestyle was Friedrich Nietzche, as Voris notes below:
“The Faith does not revel in suffering, it provides a reason for it. It does not take pain away, but rather baptizes it, and sees in it our redemption.” Great quote.
Voris does well to bring up Nietzche, but in his need to be brief (and specific to the impact Nietzche’s beliefs had on the practice of the Faith), he leaves out some extremely relevant points. There was no country in which Nietzche’s sick and twisted nihilism were more influential than in Germany. And it was under this influence that Nietzche’s disciples in Germany brought us two world wars. Anyone even moderately familiar with Adolf Hitler and Nazism know how enthralled this modern socialist pagan cult was of Nietzche’s and his view of a transcendent Aryan “superman.” Almost all of Hitler’s racialist insanity was driven by Nietzche’s so-called philosophy.
But Hitler was hardly the only one. Such nihilist views were very predominant in the German Empire in the years leading up to WWI, and it was Prussian visions of their own possession of the “superman” ethos that powered much of their conduct of political brinksmanship and military aggression. If you read Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower, she spends quite a bit of ink painting a portrait of a very demented culture in fin de siecle Germany. And that demented culture was directly responsible for tens of millions of deaths over a 30 year period.
And that’s not even the half of it. Read about how debased and perverse was the culture of Germany’s first “democratic” government, the Wiemar Republic of 1919-1933. Abortion, fornication, gotterdammerung spending habits at the public and private level, rampant homosexuality (including among most early Nazi leaders)….it was a real sick culture. Rather like the United States today.
The point of this addition is that this nihilism had not only spiritual consequences, but profoundly ugly real-world consequences, as well. But of course, they would. For in spite of the sexular pagan conceit that it is Christianity that has enveloped Western culture in darkness, the reality is exactly the opposite. It is Christianity that freed Europe from the darkness and ignorance of pagan sex cults, and it is the world’s rejection of Christianity that is bringing on the new darkness.
Because we are a stubborn, stupid, fallen people, and we cannot even learn from our own mistakes, but have to make the same ones over and over and over again. We are well advanced in the process of a civilization-destroying mistake right now. Enjoy the ride……
Domine, miserere nobis!
Since I so short on time today and likely will be all week, another great video by Voris that obliterates Calvin’s “predestinationist” insanity. I think it important for mainline protestants to note that all their sects were started by apostate Catholic clergy.
This is true! May 21, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, Ecumenism, Four Last Things, Interior Life, Liturgy, sanctity, Tradition, Virtue.comments closed
Thanks to Orbis Catholicus Secundus:
The media is starting to freak about Pope Francis May 21, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, episcopate, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, manhood, Papa, scandals, secularism, true leadership, Virtue.comments closed
You mean, he like, really believes in the devil? Doesn’t he know it’s the 21st century and, like, nobody believes in that anymore?
Pope Francis gave an extensive blessing to a very ill man. The man responded in a rather unusual way, audibly groaning and seeming to shudder, before semi-collapsing back into his wheelchair. Numerous media outlets immediately lept to the conclusion – ZOMG! Exorcism! Which, no way, not a formal one anyway, but certain prayers and blessings can be quickly applied with have the effect of a minor exorcism – they will drive away demons oppressing a soul lightly. I’m not saying that’s the case here, and blessings like this from this Pope are nothing unusual. But what has been unusual is the revealing reaction of the media, which seems to be increasingly upset that a man they expected to be “their guy,” or at least friendly to their conceits and worldview, is turning out to be just what they fear and loathe the most: a Catholic. He may be a Pope with very different interests and approaches to the Faith than the last few, and who knows what the future may hold in terms of his actions or emphases, but he is demonstrating such dyed in the wool Catholicism it is giving the media paroxysms of fear and doubt. To which I say, yay!
I, for one, am glad this Pope places such a strong emphasis on relaying to the faithful and the world – for the Pope is responsible not just for all Catholic souls, but all the souls in the world – the dire reality of satan and the forces of evil that are constantly prowlling around, looking for unwary souls to devour. May he continue to do so, and clearly link the amoral acts of so many of his sheep – contraception, divorce and remarriage, divorce, unnatural sex, etc., etc. – with both the influence of satan AND the consequences of sin: death for the soul, and eternal torment.
As for the world, we know it will always be against us. “But fear not,” Our Blessed Lord says, “for I have overcome the world!”
Indeed, He has.
No, Cardinal Dolan is not being patiently prudent in failing to publicly condemn NY Gov. Cuomo May 21, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, Abortion, Basics, contraception, disaster, episcopate, error, foolishness, General Catholic, scandals, secularism, self-serving, the return.comments closed
I posted on NYC Cardinal Dolan’s latest failure to defend the Faith last week. This story, wherein Cardinal Dolan stated he would “talk turkey” with NY Governor Andrew Cuomo over the governor’s repeated heresy, even apostasy, and then quickly walked back even this – it wasn’t even criticism, was it? – implication of concern with the governor, stating through a proxy that Cuomo remained “a Catholic in good standing?” Good Lord, who is not, then, a Catholic in good standing? Judging from this, I am virtually certain Cardinal Dolan subscribes to the papally condemned theory of universal or near-universal salvation, the so-called “fundamental option.” There is no other way to explain his behavior, unless he is just a radically indifferent modernist, which is just 
another way of saying the same thing.
Over at Acts of the Apostasy, I saw a soul who, I think, with very misplaced charity and sense of obedience, defended Cardinal Dolan’s actions as being patient and prudent. I profoundly disagree, and replied with the following:
There is patience, and then there is scandalous indifference. Let us see what Andrew Cuomo has done just in the past few years: helped ram through a radical redefinition of marriage, essentially destroying marriage as it has been known for thousands of years, with the aid of a New York Catholic Church that effectively neutered itself in the debate. He’s been a stalwart champion of baby murder, to the extent that whereas abortion is being rolled back by small efforts around the country, his state is planning the largest expansion of abortion access in the nation. And, he continues to live with a concubine who is not his wife, and his former marriage was never annuled. He also routinely undermines moral behavior in scads of other areas, all the while receiving the Blessed Sacrament, even from the very hands of bishops.
Failing to discipline this man, publicly, is not prudent patience. It is a massive failure of leadership which actually encourages Cuomo (and so many like him) to remain in his sins (which, if he were to die, his chances of salvation, objectively speaking, would be grim at best), causes scandal and confusion to millions of souls trying to be faithful, and endangers the shepherd’s own soul due to his disastrous failure to defend the Faith and use all the tools the Church has available to bring souls back to the right practice of the Faith. There is a word for this disastrous situation: scandal. Dolan’s action and inaction are the very definition of scandal.
This is not even debateable. Private “dialogue” while public sin continues, causing untold damage to souls, is a totally insufficient response. It is so insufficient as to be damnable, in the sense that lay Catholics have the right and duty to point out the Cardinal Archbishop’s failure. It is profoundly imprudent and uncharitable to leave souls mired in sin, and use only very small, politically safe means to try to redress the situation – if he even does that. We have only the Cardinal’s word that he actually engages with Cuomo on his manifestly sinful behavior – and we have the continuing scandal of the Cardinal dispensing the Blessed Sacrament to those objectively persisting in the state of grave sin.
When I think about how great Saints of the past behaved, the risks they took, the sufferings they endured, and then compare them to the current crop of 
shepherds……it’s a very bleak comparison. St. Anthony Marie Claret did not fear to publicly rebuke scandalous sinners in Cuba, he did not fear to use all the tools the Church has to bring souls back into the life of Grace, including interdict and excommunication. He got his face slashed for his trouble (the fact that he did not get his throat – the intended target – slit, was a minor miracle). He was violently persecuted by the sinners in government there. There were constant threats on his life. But he persevered, because God makes the Grace available to all of us to be Saints. It is our duty to cooperate with that Grace. For those who hold exalted offices in the Church, much more Grace is available, which is why the office of bishop has produced so many great Saints. But for decades, there have been very, very few men willing to cooperate with that Grace, it seems. It is exceedingly difficult not to see in this failure a profound tendency to have greater concern for the opinions of men and worldly affairs than for Jesus Christ and the good of His Church.
I pray for the conversion and sanctification of our shepherds every day.
Thus ends my comment at Acts of the Apostasy. But I will add a bit more. I don’t like saying this, it’s a very ugly thing, but I think it needs to be said. We’ve 
had a couple years to know Cardinal Dolan now, and I think the conclusion is inescapable: he is a politician in roman collar. His main or even secondary concern is not with the eternal destinies of souls, but his, and occasionally the Church’s, political position with all the “right” people. The USCCB is a primarily political entity, and Cardinal Dolan strategizes and conducts his affairs with that in mind. In most of the Western world, that is the case: the national episcopal conferences are primarily political entities, and that construct drives them to behave in ways that are very difficult to reconcile with the good of souls. Which is why I have argued for years that all these conferences – national, regional, international, whatever – need to be closed. It’s all about souls, and these conferences have not proven good for them. And they have proven disastrous for the cohesion of the Doctrine of the Faith and the administation of discipline.
Shut them down.
UPDATE: I should have added that LarryD’s post at AoA was a re-post of Terry Nelson’s comments here regarding the hypocrisy of many in the “Church-approved” Catholic punditocracy, who won’t breathe a word of criticism regarding Dolan, because such could be death for their careers, but they have no problem calling out Lila Rose as a public sinner for the undercover anti-abortion stings LiveAction conducts. Big surprise – those folks know who butters their bread, and they aren’t about to make them mad. It’s much safer to pick on a lay woman.
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