Slow news day pic post October 8, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in Art and Architecture, awesomeness, Christendom, fun, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, Interior Life, Our Lady, Tradition, Virtue.comments closed
I didn’t see a lot of pressing news today, and I’m plum out of my own original material, so here’s a post of funny/pointed/beautiful pics culled from various sources recently. One area of critical import to rebuild Catholic culture is to improve the quality of Catholic aesthetic efforts! Beautiful art uplifts the mind and soul and reminds one of the grandeur of Church and God!
Immodest?
Pope Francis calls extraordinary synod to deal with marriage and family for Oct ’14 – UPDATED October 8, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, Christendom, disconcerting, episcopate, General Catholic, Papa, Sacraments, self-serving, the return.comments closed
The article below is plainly implying this synod will somehow “change” the Church’s belief and practice regarding certain aspects of marriage, especially divorce and remarriage. That may be incorrect (Lord, I pray it is). I doubt they really know. But I won’t take too much comfort in the Vatican slapping down the Diocese of Freiburg, Germany and their now retired from office ultra-liberal bishop, which issued it’s own “rules” regarding admitting the divorced and remarried – without a valid annulment – to Holy Communion, thus undermining marriage and causing those engaged in the grave sin of bigamy to “eat and drink condemnation on themselves” (1 Cor 11:29) The Vatican declaration against this presumptive German act did not condemn the principles of the act – violating 2000 years of Tradition and Scripture to proclaim bigamists holy – but merely decried a local Diocese taking on an issue that can only be decided by the Church universal through the Pope and bishops working in concert with him. Collegiality, here we come:
Pope Francis has called for an extraordinary synod in October 2014 to discuss the subject of the family.
The extraordinary synod will see heads of Eastern churches, presidents of the bishops’ conferences, [I pray this is not the beginning of some equivocation between the heads of national conferences and the heads of national Eastern Churches]
According to the Code of Canon Law, an “extraordinary general session” of the synod is held to “deal with matters which require a speedy solution.” This will be only the third extraordinary synod since Pope Paul VI reinstituted synods in 1965, to hold periodic meetings to advise him on specific subjects….
…..Pope Francis had told reporters accompanying him on his plane back from Rio de Janeiro in July that the next synod would explore a “somewhat deeper pastoral care of marriage,” including the question of the eligibility of divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion.
He added that at the time that Church law governing marriage annulments also “has to be reviewed, because ecclesiastical tribunals are not sufficient for this. It is complex, the problem of the pastoral care of marriage.” Such problems, he said, exemplified a general need for forgiveness in the Church today.
“The Church is a mother, and she must travel this path of mercy, and find a form of mercy for all,” the Pope added.
The announcement of the synod came amid news that the Archdiocese of Freiburg, Germany, had issued new guidelines making it easier for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion.
The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said that such matters were more properly dealt with at a Church-wide level, “under the guidance of the Pope and the bishops.”
“For persons or local offices to propose particular pastoral solutions runs the risk of generating confusion,” he said. “The Holy Father is placing the pastoral care of the family at the heart of a synod process that will be larger, involving the reflection of the Universal Church
Do you think the heads of national episcopal conferences – most often dominated by the most progressive of progressives – and the curial heads will try to push to change 2000 years of clear teaching and practice with regard to the divorced and remarried? Will the Pope? Is the invitation of the representatives of Eastern, schismatic Churches a dangerous sign, since they already admit those divorced but not annuled to Communion? What of this synod, and what it bodes for the Church? Are all such major doctrinal matters now to be reviewed in concert with bishops?
Lots of questions, and very few answers. We shall have to wait, and pray.
UPDATE: In my haste, I probably conveyed the wrong impression. The comments at the top were just noting that the Catholic Herald (UK) seemed to be pushing the idea that the synod would try to radically define doctrines surrounding marriage. I think it highly debateable those doctrines CAN be reformed. But I wasn’t trying to give an endorsement of that position, in fact, I tried to dispute it a bit.
At the end, the series of questions were honest ones, trying to gage if people really think this synod will make any serious change. I don’t know. I doubt it on one hand, but if you review the history of the 1985 synod on the same subject, there were many calls for radical change, but Pope John Paul II would have none of it. Those same calls will be present at this synod, I think, at least from Europe and parts of the Americas (and the Philippines, and……). So, it may all come down to what position Pope Francis wants to move the synod towards.
Another study reveals negative outcomes for children of same sex couples October 8, 2013
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, Basics, disaster, Domestic Church, family, foolishness, General Catholic, horror, sadness, scandals, self-serving, sexual depravity, Society.comments closed
I once had a brief e-mail exchange with the author of the piece below, University of Texas Professor Mark Regnerus. He is a great credit to my alma mater, so sadly lost in sexular paganism. I spoke to him of suffering and willingness to bear the cross Christ presents to us. He is a still pretty recent convert to the Faith. I got the sense from him he is the rare man today, and even rarer academic, who is willing to let the Faith guide his moral choices, rather than have his decadent immorality try to dictate to the 2000 year old Church which of its beliefs he will, or will not, accept. I expect he will be attacked more and more savagely as he continues to present evidence contrary to the prevailing sexular pagan shibolleth that homosexual relationships are just as wonderfully wholesome and good for raising children as any other arrangement. In his latest reportage, he informs us of a Canadian study which shows that children of same sex couples have dramatically poorer graduation rates than those raised in households with both mom and dad:
There is a new and significant piece of evidence in the social science debate about gay parenting and the unique contributions that mothers and fathers make to their children’s flourishing. A study published last week in the journal Review of the Economics of the Household—analyzing data from a very large, population-based sample—reveals that the children of gay and lesbian couples are only about 65 percent as likely to have graduated from high school as the children of married, opposite-sex couples. And gender matters, too: girls are more apt to struggle than boys, with daughters of gay parents displaying dramatically low graduation rates.
Unlike US-based studies, this one evaluates a 20 percent sample of the Canadian census, where same-sex couples have had access to all taxation and government benefits since 1997 and to marriage since 2005. [Thus, the usual left wing and radical homosexual attempts to blame these poor outcomes on lack of “acceptance” of homosexual behavior is inoperative in this case. The children in question have lived almost their entire lives in a country that showers all the benefits reserved for holy matrimony on homosexual simulation of same.]
…..children of married opposite-sex families have a high graduation rate compared to the others; children of lesbian families have a very low graduation rate compared to the others; and the other four types [common law, gay, single mother, single father] are similar to each other and lie in between the married/lesbian extremes.
Employing regression models and series of control variables, Allen concludes that the substandard performance cannot be attributed to lower school attendance or the more modest education of gay or lesbian parents. Indeed, same-sex parents were characterized by higher levels of education,[I feel this is because lesbianism in particular is the pastime of a mortally decadent post-Christian elite] and their children were more likely to be enrolled in school than even those of married, opposite-sex couples. And yet their children are notably more likely to lag in finishing their own schooling.
The same is true of the young-adult children of common law parents, as well as single mothers and single fathers, highlighting how little—when you lean on large, high-quality samples—the data have actually changed over the past few decades. The intact, married mother-and-father household remains the gold standard for children’s progress through school. [Shocking! It’s almost as if God intended it to be that way, that there is something intrinsic to the developing human psyche – or the soul – that requires a healthy home environment with both mom and dad present] What is surprising in the Canadian data is the revelation that lesbian couples’ children fared worse, on average, than even those of single parents.
…….the particular gender mix of a same-sex household has a dramatic difference in the association with child graduation. Consider the case of girls. . . . Regardless of the controls and whether or not girls are currently living in a gay or lesbian household, the odds of graduating from high school are considerably lower than any other household type. Indeed, girls living in gay households are only 15 percent as likely to graduate compared to girls from opposite sex married homes……..
That’s to graduate from high school, not college, for those of you keeping score at home.
Look, as Dr. Anthony Esolen pointed out in a great piece last week, chldren have always been the primary bearers of the social devastation wrought by the sexual revolution. Of course, there are the billions of children who do not exist due to contraception and abortion. But even among those that are born, those kids so afflicted by the divorce of parents, or being raised by their mother alone, or with serial changes in parents, tend to suffer terrible consequences in life outcomes and, in turn, then perpetuate and magnify the crisis by modeling those behaviors as adults they were exposed to as children. So, we are now having in many families 4 or 5 consecutive generations all raised by mom alone, to the extent that male presence in the family is becoming not just increasingly rare, but some bizaare, abnormal outlier. The very foundation of our culture is crumbling, but no one (save for a few religious nuts – heh) seems willing to point to the elephant in the room and scream at the top of their lungs “it’s your <fornication adultery contraception abortion> that are destroying the culture!
Back to the topic at hand, is it odd that girls raised in lesbian households perform worst of all? Or is that the product of girls being raised in profoundly troubled environments where hatred of all things male, including some perception that the school system is somehow a tool of TeH Patriarchy!11! (hint: it’s not, in fact, strong arguments can be made at how the school system feminizes boys) and therefore something to be rejected out of hand?
At any rate, normalization of homosexual relations will only lead to more massively mal-adjusted children growing up into horribly confused and destructive adults. The data has always shown this, but the left wing “rational thinkers” among us disbelieve any data that contradict their sexular pagan religious beliefs.
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