Weekend reading/viewing June 14, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, awesomeness, Basics, contraception, disaster, disconcerting, Domestic Church, error, family, General Catholic, scandals, self-serving, sexual depravity, Society.Tags: NFP
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Reader TC sent me a link to one of the best analyses of the crisis in the Church and one of its prime aspects, Natural Family Planning, that I’ve ever read. It’s about 12 or so pages long, but it’s a fast read. You can read it in maybe 40 minutes or so, and it is very, very worth your time. A little taste, one of the best paragraphs in the document, but really do trust me and go read the entire thing. I think you will find it very rewarding, or maybe even maddening, but either way it will cause you to think!
While NFP, if used properly [and licitly, a highly dubious proposition to start] , is undoubtedly a licit dispensation according to Holy Mother Church, its use as an affirmative counter-cultural movement has been a spectacular failure for a variety of reasons. Polling data confirms the anecdotal: Catholics use contraception at very high rates and evidently have little moral qualms about it. If results matter, and they should, NFP as a movement has utterly failed in its intended mission to present a viable alternative to a contraception-crazed world.
Why should that be? Because by emphasizing the exception and what essentially is a negative – as opposed to the rule and what is essentially the positive – we have given unnecessary credence to the contraception zealots. By conceding the argument that we should be “responsible parents” – implied by limiting the occasion of our parenthood for whatever good that comes to mind – we hjave concedeed our very best and even divince argument atht Christians should bear the burden of sacrificing for large families and, paradoxically, find much greater joy here and now because of it [I can attest to that! Having a big family so ROCKS! And I think my folks have figured that out, too!] . Instead of attacking the banality of the contraceptive concept of “respnosible parenthood,” we lost the battle before it ever began by essentially advertising “contraception-light” as a way to keep up with the Joneses. [And that actually started with Humanae Vitae, as I argued here a long time ago]
The emphasis on NFP as a positive has created a creeping contraceptive mentality that is suspicious of Grace and faith. NFP is ultimately distilled to the faithful as a natural way to obtain the same results as our contracepting neighbors – a couple of kids, jobs for mom and dad, two new cars, a vacation to Disneyland and a white picket fence – albeit wrapped in a soft and cozy mantra of “prayerful consideration.” [This guy is absolutely eviscerating NFP] One has to wonder why the discovery of “responsible parenthood” and the wonders of NFP have been revealed only during the second half of the 20th century – and in first world countries alone, at that? Historically speaking, there have never been fewer grave reasons not to have children as there are in the United States today given its sheer material and economic wealth. [Booyah! This guy is clubbing baby seals!] One cannot help wondering whether NFP has been devised precisely in response to the ennui and selfishness of that rich culture in the first instance: i.e., only in rich cultures like the decadent post-Christian West could NFP have even been dreamed up as a postive development.
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That’s enough of that for now. It’s a brilliant piece.
The other submittal for your review, is sort of goofy, but what with all the NSA PRISMs and phone intercepts and all that going on – things which were it a Republican Administration, the media would be absolutely bananas over – I was reminded of a movie from 1998 called Enemy of the State. Lo and behold it’s on Youtube, for now, whole and entire. The movie is goofy in parts, and does have some scenes a faithful Catholic will want to try to skip (sexual content, language), but for a description of the reality of the current surveillance society, it’s pretty accurate. The one major gaffe is that we do not have over 100 high-resolutoin surveillance satellites, and even if we did, on the spot, almost nonstop coverage of even most locales would be impossible. So, that’s kinda dumb, but much of the rest is spot on, including mid-high level bureaucrats just completely trashing the Constitution as a matter of course and their own personal, parochial views.
I do not recommend the movie for kids or those with a more senstive conscience than mine. I wish I had yours! Pray for me!
Yeah, on second thought, I really probably don’t need that movie on here. I removed the video. I had forgotten how bad such movies can be, and just stupidly gratuitous in the sex and language departments! There was a qoute in the movie that is particularly good, however, that I’ll go ahead and repeat. In the movie, a retired spook played by Gene Hackman tells the Will Smith character, who is the hero, that the “government has been in bed with the telecommunications industry since the 40s.” And then words to the effect that the more technology we use, the easier it is for the government to both track us and find out anything they want to about us. All this is very true. Bell Labs/Western Electric – who built out the entire US telecommunications network until the mid-80s – worked very closely with the federal government, especially security and espionage agencies, on a number of fronts. That there were and are numerous portals left in the network for government purposes, many of which may well be unconstitutional, I have no doubt. We of course have had it confirmed that Verizon, AT&T, and a number of other huge communications companies have been cooperating with the NSA to turn over vast amounts of data on citizen’s activities for that Agency’s review and………who knows? Whatever they want to do with all that data, I suppose, which would, with certain unscrupulous actors, allow them to wreck just about anyone’s life. That was the main reason for showing the movie, because they show that capability in all its horror.
Italian press finds gay hookup site for priests – in Rome June 14, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, asshatery, Dallas Diocese, disaster, error, foolishness, General Catholic, priests, religious, scandals, self-serving, sexual depravity, shocking, sickness, the enemy, unadulterated evil.comments closed
It’s St. Sebastian’s Angels all over again. But much worse. In Rome! A gay hookup site specifically tailored for priests and seminarians in ROME! Good Heavens what is to become of us?:
It is not easy to talk about some things, but Pope Francis’ statement of a gay lobby in the Catholic Church draws waves. As the Catholic writer, Vittorio Messori made known, there is a page on the Internet called Venerabilis which is run by a fraternity of Homo-Sensitive Roman Catholic Priests.
The homo Sensitive priestly society claims to be a loose association of gay and homophile Catholic priests. The website serves as a gay dating site, so that aberrosexual priests can find contact among themselves, or homosexual laity can meet like-minded priests and vice versa. This page offers chat rooms in five languages, including in German, a Twitter service to the Catholic Church and some news from a “homo sensitive” view. The ads are unique. Anyone who registers on the Venerabilis and gives a personal ad or responds to one, seeks homosexual sexual contact…………….Since the 1st of May the [homosexual]-brotherhood, which calls itself Fraternitas Sacerdotalis.[Is this a catty shot at the masculinity of FSSP priests?] is a “meeting place” in order to meet “personally” and at “no risk”. And in fact, Rome Feltrinelli bookstore in Largo Argentina has a “6- 8pm” at the cafeteria or in the department “Philosophy and Religion”. “For the seminarians of the Jesuit university Gregorian University and the Dominican Angelicum from 11 to 12 clock in the same place. ” [So now the great colleges of Rome, erected at great expense by religious orders that shook the world, are now reduced to being hookup sites for sexual deviants. Nice. I wonder how much is taught at these former bastions of orthodoxy and erudition that would challenge these lost souls in their depravity? Anything?]
Great commentary on how the culture of death really feels about the “different” June 14, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, Abortion, Basics, contraception, demographics, disaster, error, family, General Catholic, horror, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sickness, Society.comments closed
One thing our liberal cultural elites love to pride themselves on, is their fawning deference of, their tolerance of, the sainted “other.” So long as that “other” fits into certain predetermined categories, that is. Categories that just so happen to advance the sexular pagan agenda, like sodomy and “free speech” for porn producers. Others tend to get shorter shrift, from the rights of the Church to the individual rights this country was ostensibly founded on: speech, assembly, religion, etc.
One group that is particularly targeted by our liberal elites are the old and the infirm. To deal with them, the sexular pagans have advanced the idea that it’s really better to die, than to be around and remind them of their mortality, of that judgment they know in their heart of hearts they will face. Michael Coren has a piece examining the fact that more and more states are passing laws allowing doctors to, in effect, murder their patients, and not just the old. Some of the most “progressive” states in Europe have passed laws to allow doctors to “euthanize” children, such as those who have autism or “severe depression” or whatever. Michael Coren has a niece with what some would see as severe “problems,” but he relates how what so many see as terrible disadvantages can in reality be very beautiful things:
Belgium is a troubled country on any number of levels. Its unity has been tenuous for decades, it is increasingly challenged by an Islamic immigrant community that rejects European virtues, and just like its neighbor, Holland, it is clumsily eager to embrace the latest in eugenics and social engineering. Only last month the Belgian Federal Parliament seriously considered legalizing euthanasia for children and it now appears it is “about to expand its controversial ‘right to die’ policies to include access to euthanasia for some gravely ill children.”Don’t be shocked. I have debated “assisted suicide” zealots who believe that if depressed teenagers want to take their own lives—and, tragically, many teens travel that bumpy road of despair at some troubled point—they should be empowered by the state to do so. Poor old Belgium, once so faithful and brave.
I mention this because I have, I suppose, a particular insight into how terrifying euthanasia can be and into the vulnerability of those who it especially horrifies.
Let me introduce you to Katie, who is what society describes as “handicapped”. She was born several months premature and spent a long time in hospital. She came home accompanied by a nursing team, to a house wired for oxygen. It’s ironic, in that the same hospital advised Katie’s mother to abort her because there were likely, they said, to be “complications.”
I know all this because her mother is my sister, and Katie is my niece.
Katie had two strokes when she was tiny and is now classified as being autistic. Which means many things to different people. I’ll offer one example. My dad lies in bed, in a large hospital in England, having also suffered a serious stroke, but he is at the other end of life. We all sit around and do the usual hospital things: make jokes that aren’t funny, pretend that everything is okay, be abnormally normal. Katie walks in. No inhibitions, none of our silly preconceptions and prejudices. She climbs on the bed, gets under the blanket, puts her arms around her grandpa and cuddles up to him. And for the very first time since he was hit by fate’s cruelty, my father shows emotion. Emotion as wide and grand as the world itself.
I sat down and chatted to my sister. Has it been difficult? “Yes, but also joyous beyond belief. A new adventure every day and a new path of discovery. Wouldn’t change it for the world. Katie has made us all grow so much, taught us things we didn’t know about ourselves, about what it really means to be human. Yes, we cry, but yes we laugh. Actually being a mum to Katie is about saying ‘yes’ to things. Yes to life, yes to love. Yes.”
At which point Katie trots her way into our conversation, into our world. She wants to watch the DVD of The Jungle Book. She’s seen it hundreds of times but that doesn’t matter. It pleases her and she learns from it. Katie doesn’t need expensive toys or fashionable luxuries. She’s so much more than that. Perhaps so much more than us.
I increasingly believe that the handicapped are God’s gift to us, to act as a catalyst to produce and provoke love in hearts that are sometimes hard and cold. I know Katie is that, along with so many other holy and godly things. But Katie and so many others just liker her are under such threat. They are already slaughtered in the womb to a genocidal level, and now euthanasia seeks to have its gruesome way with them. All in the name of progress and putting them out of their misery.
No, not out their misery but out of yours. To make you feel easier about life, to satisfy your perverse perception of what normal and healthy and meaningful are now supposed to mean. [I think Coren has very perceptively diagnosed the root cause behind all these “right to die” movements. I think much of the compassion talk is a sham, or at least reveals a perverse idea of life and what it means. An idea which is so very far from Christianity. I think much of the euthanasia movement is really about not having to be reminded of one’s own mortality, to put the sick and the old out of our misery, just as Coren says. I fear that we will, out of ultimately selfish motives dressed up as “compassion,” become a society that has an entirely utilitarian view of human beings and destroys those that are somehow found to be deficient. That could one dark day even include those who profess a certain faith.]
An unborn baby with the gene indicating the likelihood of Down Syndrome, for example, has around a 15% chance of being allowed to be born, and once alive is treated with a discrimination that if applied to a fashionable sexual minority group would lead to a criminal persecution. [I’m glad Coren mentioned the genocide of the Downs babies. This is a catastrophe and shows the narcissistic cancer eating away at this culture’s soul. There is very little evidence Downs people suffer in any exhorbitant way. I really have to wonder if the “suffering” being alleviated by this genocide is not that of the parents?]
All this goes to show that when you reject Christianity, you don’t get an enlightened secular paradise, your get hell on earth.
Claiming unbaptized souls go to Heaven is sooo problematic June 14, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in Abortion, Basics, contraception, disconcerting, episcopate, error, Four Last Things, General Catholic, sadness, secularism, Society, Virtue.comments closed
Reader D pointed me towards a pro-life video that is really good in many respects, but it’s got a gaping hole in the middle that is really problematic. Here’s the video:
Now, before I make any critique, I would like to say that Kalley Yanta gives a very good defense of life, Catholic moral theology, and other matters. She is honest to the point it is almost painful. I am certain that cannot be easy for her to say. She’s obviously also had a career in TV or radio, because she is a very polished speaker. So, her delivery has a great deal of effect. She even gets right the part about contraception, which most pro-life Catholics don’t! There is much to recommend in this video.
Which makes what I’m about to say next difficult, but all the more necessary. If you watch the video from ~2:25 – ~3:05, Mrs. Yanta describes how she has had several miscarriages, and that her high degree of fecundity leads her to believe that she probably inadvertantly aborted any number of children at the very protean stages of development due to the way the pill works. Which is all correct. But what is problematic is when she says she’ll meet those children in Heaven. This is a problem, on any number of levels.
First, the Magisterium does not – NOT – teach that the souls of the unbaptized, even those who never make it to birth, go to Heaven. The preponderance of theological opinion – but it is not a formal dogmatic belief – is that such babies go to limbo, a state of perfect natural happiness, but not part of Heaven. This opinion is dominant because of Christ’s words regarding how we can be saved, the ordinary means being through baptism and regular reception of the Sacraments and the extraordinary means being through a martyrdom to blood made for the Faith or a very efficacious confession of the Faith, even though one is not yet baptized (this would apply to a certain thief named Dismas). Of course, the Church has never claimed to know for certainty where any soul winds up in eternity, save the Saints. And I’m sure imagining the souls of aborted babies in Heaven gives certain souls great comfort.
But, practically, it can be disastrous. As I have personally experienced, there are many women out there who justify their abortions based on the belief that their children will go straight to Heaven. The commenter D, who works in the medical profession and has counselled women making this “choice” for many years, has seen this far more times than I ever will. He routinely has to try to convince women that their belief in “Heaven by abortion” is a monstrously wrong one.
To claim that aborted babies go to Heaven logically makes abortion a Sacrament, because it would then be a visible sign of something efficacious of Grace (if Grace doesn’t take them to Heaven, what does?). I know the Lord works in mysterious ways, but this is so upside down and inside out as to be diabolical. Further, you can take this argument regarding unbaptized or in utero souls to it’s logical conclusion: why allow any children to live, if killing them in utero brings them to salvation? Would not parents be committing an act of extreme uncharity to bring them into this suffering world, with the risk of hell, if killing them prior to baptism brought them to salvation? This is a short road to a nasty place.
It was precisely these kinds of questions which led the early Church Fathers to conclude there was another place for the unbaptized who had no personal stain of sin, but only Original Sin. That place is limbo.
I thank Kalley Yanta for her testimony, but I pray she thinks more about the theological consequences of her instant canonizations.
Pelosi’s desperate confusion on abortion June 14, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, Abortion, Basics, contraception, disaster, episcopate, error, General Catholic, horror, sadness, scandals, secularism, self-serving, Society.comments closed
All I can say is, those responsible for the formation of this woman have a great deal to answer for. She has so twisted the Faith into something of her own making she can’t even begin to distinguish between the moral and immoral. It is so hilariously ironic, and pathetic, to watch this woman – of ALL PEOPLE! – lambasting a reporter for making a “political issue” out of abortion! That’s all she’s done for decades!
Where is the justification for this woman to not be excommunicated? Where is the justification for her not to be placed under interdict? Where is the compassion for her soul? Do our prelates really think they are being charitable by allowing this woman to heap up sacrilege on sacrilege by receiving the Blessed Sacrament almost every day of the week in an objective state of mortal sin? She has been counseled by priests, bishops, and even the Pope to change her position! She has been told she cannot hold the views she holds and remain a Catholic in good standing! And still not one of those men has had the love of the Church, of souls, and most of all of this poor, wretched heretic to deny her what she claims she loves in a last ditch attempt to save her eternal soul!
I know this is old news, having come out early yesterday, but I had to comment. Nancy Pelosi is a perfect microcosm of everything that is wrong with the Church. The only possible explanation for the hierarchy’s failure to act in her case – in charity, for Heaven’s sake! – is that these men simply no longer believe in things like judgment, hell, or damnation. In which case one must ask why in the name of all that is holy they even remain Catholic? Because that’s the “career” they’ve chosen?
Pray and fast like mad for our bishops, and for poor lost souls like Nancy Pelosi. I have no doubt she’s been sold a bill of false goods by many a wolf in shepherd’s clothing, but the shock that is awaiting her at her particular judgment is too awful to comprehend.
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