Some Good Local Catholic Art…….. September 30, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in Admin, Art and Architecture, awesomeness, fun, General Catholic, Glory.comments closed
……and then have a nice weekend.
Reader SL is also an artist, a couple of whose works I have posted before. He has a new one I like quite a bit:
And a previous work:
I’m off. I pray you have a blessed weekend.
San Diego Bishop Makes a Mockery of Faith, Reason to Justify Voting Hillary September 30, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in abdication of duty, Abortion, different religion, disaster, episcopate, error, foolishness, General Catholic, horror, Revolution, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sickness, unbelievable BS.comments closed
What tangled webs we weave, when first we practice to deceive – apparently, the motto of the Bishop of San Diego, widely known liberal Robert McElroy.
McElroy recently published some electoral guidance for his flock. The core of it, the conclusion, it’s raison d’ etre, is that intrinsic evil – as he defines it – is a poor standard by which to make electoral decisions, because ALL candidates support one intrinsic evil or another, and thus Catholics have to make “complex moral calculations.” If it sounds like shades of grey, the return of the discredited seamless garment, and not much more than an elaborate attempt to justify that H! sticker on his car, you’re not wrong at all. I will lay it all out, providing my own analysis of where the wolf in sheep’s clothing errs:
Many widely circulated independent Catholic voter guides propose that the concept of intrinsic evil provides an automatic process for prioritizing the elements of the political common good in the United States.
The church teaches that certain acts are incapable of being ordered to God since in their very structure they contradict the good of the person made in God’s likeness. Such actions are termed “intrinsically evil” and are morally illicit no matter what the intention or circumstances surrounding them. Those who focus primarily on intrinsic evil make two distinct but related claims: 1) that the action of voting for candidates who seek to advance an intrinsic evil in society automatically involves the voter morally in that intrinsic evil in an illicit way; and 2) Catholic teaching demands that political opposition to intrinsically evil acts, like abortion, euthanasia and embryonic experimentation, must be given automatic priority over all other issues for the purposes of voting. [Well what other moral issues, bishop, rise to the level of the murder of over a million innocents a year? You bring us “starting a major war,” below, apparently still reeling from an offhand remark Trump made 6 or 9 months ago, but there hasn’t been a war anywhere in the world in the past 20 years that has killed as many people in its totality as are killed by abortion in this country in a single year. THERE IS NO MORAL EQUIVALENT TO ABORTION ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD AT THIS TIME!!!!! So if you want to use elaborate moral calculus to make your electoral choice, abortion gets a value of infinity, and everything else, some finite value which doesn’t matter, because infinity trumps all. That is what Bishops Farrell and Vann said in 2008, that there is simply no issue that compares with abortion in this country at this time, and it is an issue of such overwhelming moral import that it is impossible for Catholics to support an openly pro-abort candidate for any reason at any time whatsoever. And now we have democrat candidate and party platform calling for repeal of all limits on abortion and federal funding for it, which funding would surely cause a MASSIVE EXPANSION in the number of abortions in this country. There is no other comparable evil being endorsed, or even fleetingly addressed, by any major candidate. You cannot draw a false equivalence between limiting numbers of immigrants, or reducing welfare expenditure, or ]
The recent statement of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” shows why this argument is simplistic and thus misleading. The bishops’ statement clearly asserts the absoluteness of the prohibitions against concrete intrinsically evil acts, emphasizing that no circumstances or intentions can justify performing or illicitly cooperating with such acts. At the same time, “Faithful Citizenship” recognizes that voting for a candidate whose policies may advance a particular intrinsic evil is not in itself an intrinsically evil act. Voting for candidates is a complex moral action in which the voter must confront an entire array of competing candidates’ positions in a single act of voting. It is crucial that in voting for a candidate who supports the advancement of an intrinsic evil, Catholic voters not have the intention of supporting that specific evil, since such an intention would involve them directly in the evil itself. But voters will often find themselves in situations where one candidate supports an intrinsically evil position, yet the alternative realistic candidates all support even graver evils in the totality of their positions. [“Forming Consciences” is an extremely dubious and problematic document that Bishops Farrell and Vann more or less repudiated in 2008. This kind of false moral equivalence is oriented towards doing little but giving false “moral cover” to those who endorse candidates supporting the most evil acts imaginable. And I think many moral theologians would disagree that there is no culpability in supporting such a candidate, that saying “voting for” but not supporting this or that evil is a very weak moral defense]
This is particularly true in the United States today. The list of intrinsic evils specified by Catholic teaching includes not only abortion, physician-assisted suicide and embryonic experimentation but also actions that exploit workers, create or perpetuate inhuman living conditions or advance racism. It is extremely difficult, and often completely impossible, to find candidates whose policies will not advance several of these evils in American life. [THERE IS NO MORAL EQUIVALENCE BETWEEN “ADVANCING RACISM” AND THE MURDER TO 1-2 MILLION BABIES (IF NOT MORE, IF WE FACTOR IN CHEMICAL CONTRACEPTIVE ABORTION!!!!!! This is really clever and insidious. He’s trying to say “Oh, all these things are evil, and thus equal,” when that is not at all the case. When we look at the Left today, which defines racism not by some real prejudice or hostile acts directed at members of a certain race, but some invisible “privilege,” can the bishop not see that what he is advocating is basically an endlessly false moral equality that can be made to justify everything and nothing?!? This is naught but a most sorry exercise at self-justification and provision of the flimsiest of moral covers. And since this is all really about giving cover to Hillary supporters, does the bishop really think that allowing millions of illegal immigrants to come here is a way to prevent exploitation of workers?!? The entire reason for allowing them here is to drive down wages and to give seedy employers the ability to pay people pennies on the dollar. I would say that controlling and limiting immigration is the best way to prevent exploitation of workers in this country]
Even more important, a fatal shortcoming of the category of intrinsic evil as a foundation for prioritizing the major elements of the political common good lies in the fact that while the criterion of intrinsic evil identifies specific human acts that can never be justified, it is not a measure of the relative gravity of evil in human or political acts. Some intrinsically evil acts are less gravely evil than other intrinsically evil actions. Intrinsically evil action can also be less gravely evil than other actions that do not fall under the category of intrinsic evil. For example, telling any lie is intrinsically evil, while launching a major war is not. But it would be morally obtuse to propose that telling a minor lie to constituents should count more in the calculus of voting than a candidate’s policy to go to war. [Excuse me, but did he just say that? Am I the only one who takes this as a most pathetic attempt to explain away Hillary’s manifest perjuries and constant recourse to public lies? Man he has really gotten twisted off by some PuffHost articles on Trump and supposed warmongering. Clutch that woobie tight, Bishop McElroy. It’ll protect you from the mean, awful monster Trump] It is the gravity of evil or good present in electoral choices that is primarily determinative of their objective moral character and their contribution to or detraction from the common good. Moreover, because voting is a complex moral action involving mitigating circumstances, a vote for a candidate who supports intrinsic evils often does not involve illicit cooperation in those acts. For these reasons the category of intrinsic evil cannot provide a comprehensive moral roadmap for prioritizing the elements of the common good for voting
With “shepherds” such as these, there is no wonder at all that the Church is in the state she’s in. It is almost a diabolical mixture of truth and falsehood. Notice how he switches subjects there at the end, when he does mix in some truth (that there are different grades of intrinsic evil), from a ludicrous example of a small lie vs. starting a major war, as opposed to addressing the single most pressing issue facing the country (and most of the world) today, which is the mass slaughter of innocents in the womb. Why suddenly make this switch (of which evils he is highlighting, having brung up abortion previously), unless to press a dubious comparison between the two primary candidates? “Hillary may be a pathological liar, but Trump’s going to start wars all around the world!” Please.
Who was Secretary of State that was on watch, and may even have caused, the Mideast to erupt in flames? Which administration helped precipitate (if it was not the direct cause of, as many think) the most grievous ongoing war in the world right now, one that has caused even more deaths than our disastrous adventure in Iraq? Which administration has caused the worse relations with Russia in nearly 30 years?
Here It Comes? Obama SecEd “Concerned” About Homeschooling September 29, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in asshatery, disaster, error, foolishness, General Catholic, horror, persecution, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sickness, Society, unadulterated evil.comments closed
Oh, please do share your enlightened, benevolent, and always self-giving knowledge with the rest of us. Please do show us how you plan to frame “homeschooling” as a “crisis” or “problem” to be addressed by the federal government:
The opening shot in a widely anticipated establishment crackdown on educational freedom may have been fired last week. Speaking at a breakfast with reporters, Obama’s controversial Education Secretary, pro-Common Core activist John King (shown), said he was “concerned” that some home-educated children were not getting the “breadth of instructional experience” they would get at a traditional school. While the senior Obama bureaucrat acknowledged that many homeschool families are doing it well, he also repeated the debunked smear that homeschooled children lack opportunities for socialization. Experts and critics, though, promptly lambasted King for his naive or malicious comments, suggesting that, if anything, he ought to be far more concerned about children in public schools. Some experts even offered to help educate Obama’s education chief on the issue.
Secretary King’s controversial remarks about home education were made during an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. While the Monitor‘s website did not report about the home-education comments, several other outlets, including Politico, did so. According to Politico, King said he was “concerned” that homeschooled students are not “getting the range of options that are good for all kids.” [Like exposure to crime, early sexualization, having to around kids from bad homes, leftist indoctrination, and all that sweet, sweet government money that is dependent upon headcount!] He also claimed to worry that “students who are homeschooled are not getting kind of the rapid instructional experience they would get in school,” unless parents are “very intentional about it.” [Rapid instructional experience? What does that even mean?] He said the “school experience” includes building relationships with “peers, teachers and mentors,” something that he claimed was “difficult to achieve in homeschooling unless parents focus on it.”
Ah, the old, tired, socialization meme. I guess I’ll just retort, for about the 500th time, that my homeschooled kids interact with both peers, and especially adults, far, far better than most public school kids. They haven’t been traumatized by bullying, exposed to drugs or pornography, or taught to teach adults as a weird and alien phenomenon. They’ve been taught to respect adults and to treat other kids with Christian charity. I can’t say how many times adult strangers have marveled at the behavior of our kids, and they are nothing extraordinary by homeschool standards.
It seems our friends on the left can’t make up their minds. While decrying the absence of your kids and mine from their schools, some are advocating that the ideal way to deal with climate change is to more or less snuff ourselves out by refusing to reproduce. Ah, with environmentalists, it all comes back to Malthusian misanthropy. As Gordon Gekko said in Wall Street, WASPs love animals, but hate people:
Carbon dioxide doesn’t kill climates; people do. And the world would be better off with fewer of them.
That’s a glib summary of a serious and seriously provocative book by Travis Rieder, a moral philosophy professor and bioethicist at Johns Hopkins University………
………After years of policymakers’ yammering about carbon-light or carbon-free this-or-that, Rieder basically zeroes in on the fact nobody wants to acknowledge: The number of people in the world—particularly in affluent countries—is literally a part of the equation.
Think of Rieder’s as the argument waiting in the wings should the 195-nation Paris Agreement, which came within a shade of enactment this week, fail to address the problem. [And yet the world is not warming. All those “warmest year ever!!11!” claims are based on junk science from ground-based thermometers placed over an asphalt parking lot, or next to an air-conditioner condenser, or adjacent to a large roadway, etc. See Anthony Watt for verifiable proof of that – almost all the purported warming, which satellite data continues to refute – is due to bad placement of US-based thermometers. Did you know, for instance, that US-based thermometers make up over 60% of worldwide ground-based temperature sensors? That’s a severe bias right there]
……….Total emissions is per-capita emissions times population, minus technological advances. We’ve been trying to get you to give up your toys—to change per-capita emissions. So if you’re really going to continue to show reluctance, well, here’s the other option: We’ll start putting pressure on families. If that pressure’s really, really, really undesirable, then, well, maybe people decide to start doing the other thing. [He actually tries to attribute this to a tiny slice of the population – the very rich, with private jets and 10,000 square foot homes. But to drastically reduce carbon dioxide emissions – a substance we all exhale! – he knows, though he does not say, that average people like you and I would be the ones that would have to suffer an incredible decrease in our standard of living, to such a degree, I’m sure, that living in the Sun Belt would become untenable since not many folks could continue here in the 100 degree heat without AC. Of course the leftist elite, however, especially the academics, would continue in very comfortable sinecures, well-paid, well-fed, well-housed, and enjoying all the accouterments of 21st century living, the freaking hypocrite]
If we could fix everything through decarbonizing our economy, then it’s likely that the population variable wouldn’t be a real concern.
So here’s your choice: freeze to death in the dark, mostly starved, or don’t have any kids. He actually speaks of using very heavy moral and even physical/financial pressure to bar people from having “too many” children. Enjoy that total economic implosion about 30-40 years later.
This is a literally insane religious conviction with very little, and mostly very poor, scientific backing. This is the anti-fat craze, the anti-eggs/butter/use chemicals instead craze, this is the phrenology, the eugenics of the 21st century. It seems the Left always has to hang its hat on some unsupported/unsupportable claim from dubious or plainly false science. It’s their substitute religion for real religion, but with a seeming compulsion to latch onto the more authoritarian and frankly false aspects. Of course, the compulsion is a feature, not a bug, extremists like this guy cast about from one purported looming disaster to another, all with one goal in mind: power for them and/or bending society to their preferred vision. Personal liberty and individual choice are anathema to such types, unless it has to do with the groin.
Every single left-wing movement has resulted in a mass catastrophe for humanity, almost always with millions of people dead. Babies that fail to be born through chemical or surgical abortion/contraception are just as dead as the millions who perished in Stalin’s GULAG or Hitler’s death camps. There is something utterly diabolical and full of hate for mankind – people not like themselves, specifically – in these kinds of insane extremists.
Only a PhD “ethicist” totally detached from the Truth of Jesus Christ could arrive at so macabre a conclusion. Perhaps instead of killing children, we should look for another course, like doing away with “ethicists” twisted by ideology and possessed of a reprobate sense.
In reality, this man desperately needs prayers. A soul so lost is a massive tragedy, not only for his evil influence, but in and of itself.
h/t reader TT both links
The Question Is Who Is To Be Master, That Is All September 29, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in asshatery, Basics, disaster, error, family, foolishness, General Catholic, horror, Revolution, sadness, scandals, self-serving, sexual depravity, sickness, Society.comments closed
So said Humpty Dumpty in the child-predator Lewis Carroll’s fantasy Alice in Wonderland. This thought sprang into my head, after being sent the following link from regular reader RDLG, which demonstrates that now that devotees of the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah have achieved what they wanted in the culture using the “born that way” argument, they are now proclaiming sexual orientation to be “fluid,” probably because they think that will prove convenient and beneficial to their cause.
At least as far as the socio-political Left has been concerned – and many with same-sex attraction fall under this banner – this movement has been primarily about power. “Born that way” was an incredibly convenient defense, intended to appeal entirely to emotion rather than reason, while the sexual revolutionaries were in the process of making their next big “advance.” Now that they have it, either they feel “fluidity” serves their ends better now, or they feel there is little harm in the real truth coming out.
I’d say that even more than sexual orientation being fluid, for a certain time in some people’s lives (though in most people’s, especially those living in the state of Grace, the natural orientation is very much fixed), there is almost a push, a drive, a peer pressure towards at least experimenting with the same-sex, most especially among young women but as a growing phenomenon among boys/young men, as well (which……ick). Early and frequent exposure to porn can certainly cause children to develop such disordered appetites that even coming to have a certain curiosity or attraction for the same sex cannot be ruled out. And, we’ve all probably known a few kids growing up who, for various reasons, usually related to issues with the father or some trauma, but sometimes also, inexplicably, who seem to have a hard time figuring out who and what they are. A certain professor at the University of Texas at Dallas Department of Arts and Humanities, at which my mother worked for over 20 years, derailed his career for preying on just such a confused young boy.
Anyway, it seems that now that they have what they want, the truth can now be told:
A top researcher with the American Psychological Association (APA) and lesbian activist has acknowledged that gays are not “born that way.”
Dr. Lisa Diamond, co-editor-in-chief of the APA Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology and one of the APA’s “most respected members,” says sexual orientation is “fluid” and not unchangeable.
As clinical psychologist Dr. Laura A. Haynes summarizes Diamond’s APA Handbook chapters, her book and YouTube lectures, “The battle to disprove ‘Born that way and can’t change’ is now over, and (Diamond) is telling LGBT activists to stop promoting the myth.”
Contrary to the typical argument that homosexuals are “born gay” as “who they are” and cannot change, the APA officially recognized sexual orientation change in 2011.
Diamond summarized relevant findings in a lecture at Cornell University (2013), stating that abundant research has now established that sexual orientation — including attraction, behavior, and self-identity — is fluid for both adolescents and adults and for both genders.
This flies in the face of recent laws promoted by gay activists and passed in several states banning “reparative therapy,” which seeks to help patients experiencing same-sex attraction to change.
The stated justification for anti-reparative therapy laws is that anyone who experiences same-sex attraction is not only gay and born gay, but his/her homosexuality is unchangeable and so “reparative therapy,” it is argued, is not only unfruitful but cruel. The argument goes, “You can’t change who you are.”
Additionally, many gay activists call sexual orientation “the civil rights issue of our time,” and analogous to race. Diamond and the APA, however, refute this argument.
Fr. Johannes Jacobse, founder of The American Orthodox Institute, called Diamond’s “course correction” a “stunning reversal” of oft-repeated gay justification. “Sexuality desire is fluid, homosexual desire is not ‘hard-wired;’ that ‘born that way and can’t change’ is a myth; feelings don’t overrule volition (behavior is a choice, one does not need to act on every feeling — especially sexual feelings); the ‘born that way’ argument is political, not scientific; sexual orientation is subject to change among others.”
“The idea that what a person feels defines who he is — who God created him to be — is false,” Fr. Jacobse wrote. “If a person feels homosexual desire, it does not mean he is created homosexual.”
We can surely expect this “revelation” – which is no revelation at all – to be hotly debated and vehemently opposed by the promoters of the sexular pagan revolution. Should this fact gain broad acceptance – how can I even have to say that! – it could obliterate moves for things like banning “reperative therapy” and really destroys the fundamental argument in favor of pseudo-sodo-marriage (how can you be so mean as to deny someone “born that way” of the right “to be happy?!?”)
I’m sure we’ll hear a great deal, both ways, depending on who is speaking and what their agenda is.
The horrifying part is how this revolutionary advocacy plays out in the lives of real people. Lives are ruined. Families are torn apart. Souls are lost, sometimes, in an unbelievable tragedy, forever. And even in lives that are not “ruined,” a relatively brief youthful error, a falling into the wicked ways of this perverse and darkened world, can lead to a lifetime of regret and self-loathing.
And it’s happening to families very close to many of us. May God have mercy on them, and all of us, in these despicable times. Please pray for those undergoing this terrible suffering. I also pray I may never be put in this awful position, of having to choose between endorsing a child’s wickedness and having a relationship with them.
My wife and I have discussed, and we know which way we shall choose:
Start Novena to Our Lady of Victory/Most Holy Rosary TODAY! September 29, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, Christendom, General Catholic, Glory, Grace, history, Novenas, Our Lady, sanctity, Tradition, true leadership, Virtue.comments closed
That’s today Sept. 29. Really should have started yesterday, but I’m late.
Thanks to MJD for the two prayer options below:
To the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary
Queen of the most holy Rosary, in these times of such brazen impiety, manifest thy power with the signs of thine ancient victories, and from thy throne, whence thou dost dispense pardon and graces, mercifully regard the Church of thy Son, His Vicar on earth, and every order of clergy and laity, who are sore oppressed in the mighty conflict. Do thou, who art the powerful vanquisher of all heresies, hasten the hour of mercy, even though the hour of God’s justice is every day provoked by the countless sins of men. For me who am the least of men, kneeling before thee in supplication, do thou obtain the grace I need to live righteously upon earth and to reign among the just in heaven, the while in company with all faithful Christians throughout the world, I salute thee and acclaim thee as Queen of the most holy Rosary.
Queen of the most holy Rosary, pray for us!
Our Lady Of The Holy Rosary Novena Prayer (start either Sept. 28 or 29)
My dearest Mother Mary, behold me, your child, in prayer at your feet. Accept this Holy Rosary, which I offer you in 
accordance with your requests at Fatima, as a proof of my tender love for you, for the intentions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in atonement for the offenses committed against your Immaculate Heart, and for this special favor which I earnestly request in my Rosary Novena:
(Mention your requests).
I beg you to present my petition to your Divine Son. If you will pray for me, I cannot be refused. I know, dearest Mother, that you want me to seek God?s holy Will concerning my request. If what I ask for should not be granted, pray that I may receive that which will be of greater benefit to my soul.
I offer you this spiritual Bouquet of Roses because I love you. I put all my confidence in you, since your prayers before God are most powerful. For the greater glory of God and for the sake of Jesus, your loving Son, hear and grant my prayer. Sweet Heart of Mary, be my salvation.
This novena is to be said along with a daily rosary.
Either Saint Paul Is a Blazing Hypocrite, Or protestants Are Dead Wrong September 29, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, Bible, catachesis, Ecumenism, error, foolishness, General Catholic, history, reading, Restoration, Society, Spiritual Warfare, Tradition, Virtue.comments closed
Strangely enough, I doctor I have seen for many years is also an evangelical protestant minister. He, quite improperly, really, likes to try to evangelize his patients. I walked into his office with a copy of St. Francis de Sales in my hand recently, and he gave me a stern look at told me to read Galatians iii. Galatians chapter 3 verse 10-11 are one of those go to Bible phrases, taken completely out of context, that protestants love to quote to try to prove the rightness of their false and short-lived version of Christianity. Others include Romans 3:28 and even, amazingly, Romans 1:17, which is also taken out of context and is all the more silly for what follows, viz, Romans i:29-32, wherein Saint Paul, like our Blessed Lord in Saint Matthew Chapter xxv:31-46 among many other places, makes certain behaviors – sins – so contrary to the Faith as to deny one eternal salvation:
29 Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers,
30 Detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31 Foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy.
32 Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they, who do such things, are worthy of death: [eternal death, denial of salvation] and not only they who do them, but they also who consent to them that do them.
Here Saint Paul is saying two things – one, those who lack sanctifying Grace will almost invariably fall into myriad sins, but also that those who commit such sins lack – or LOSE – sanctifying Grace, if they already had it, and thus will be damned when previously they could have been saved.
Eschewing sin and leading a moral life is most definitely a work. Similarly Galatians iii:10-11, which says:
10 For as many as are of the works of the law, are under a curse. For it is written: *Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.
11 But that by the law no man is justified with God, it is manifest: *because the just man liveth by faith.
What was the context of Saint Paul saying this? He was writing to the Galatians because they had fallen under the influence of “Judaizers,” Christian converts from Judaism who demanded that all Christians must submit not only to the Law of Christ but also the Law of Moses, including abstaining from various meats and receiving circumcision. Saint Paul was rejecting this Judaizing influence, telling his readers that the Law of Moses was dead, and had been totally supplanted by the new Law of Christ? But is Saint Paul saying that all works, then, are useless for salvation?
Absolutely not. Quite the contrary, as we see in Philippians ii and iii, Saint Paul knew quite well – as did the entire early Church he helped found – that works are extremely necessary for salvation, and that “faith alone” is a shabby lie and a sign of a boundless effrontery before God.
Philippians ii:10-14 (I include the surround verses only for context, which protestants almost always leave out):
10 *That in the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth; [bowing/kneeling, showing reverence/penitence before God, is also a work]
11 And that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father. [confessing the Lord is a work over and above internally held faith, which protestants judge to be sufficient for salvation]
12 Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more now in my absence) work out your salvation with fear and trembling. [If one is saved by faith alone, why would one ever need to work out his salvation with fear and trembling? I was arguing with a protestant once not long ago, and as we were being forced to go our separate ways, I told him I would pray for his conversion and salvation, and he hit back with what I think he thought was the ultimate rejoinder – “I don’t have to worry about my salvation, I know I’m saved.” And I thought, what immense narcissism, what unbelievable effrontery. Anyone of us, at any time, can lose our faith at any moment. Faith isn’t a magic spell that immediately changes our consciences and makes us 100% proof against sin. This is an obvious lie. Faith, especially protestant faith, is no guarantee against any sin, even mortal sin. Once saved always saved is an American invention from the late 19th century and is one of the most perverse, reductive heresies ever visited upon the world. Faith is in fact demonstrated by works. Otherwise, why would protestants evangelize Catholics so hard? If Catholics accept Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, which any observant Catholic certainly does, they are irretrievably saved. Is it just about money, then, that evangelicals pursue Catholics with such gusto?]
13 For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish, according to the good-will.
Accomplish what?!? Good works, done in sanctifying Grace, which are eminently helpful to our sanctification and salvation, just as Christ commanded, “Take up your cross and follow ME!!!” Yes Jewish works done outside sanctifying Grace are profitable for nothing, which was Saint Paul’s message to the Galatians, but not that all works are useless, that a one time profession of faith assures salvation, else why would he say this in Philippians iii??!!?:
17 Be followers of me, brethren, and observe them who walk so, as you have our model.
18 *For many walk, of whom I have told you often (and now tell you weeping) that they are enemies of the cross of Christ:
19 Whose end is destruction [damnation] whose God is their belly: and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.
20 But our conversation is in heaven: whence also we expect the Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ,
Saint Paul is speaking directly of people here who were of the Faith, who had accepted Jesus Christ and were in a state of Grace (saved, in protestant parlance), who due to their sinful attractions and appetites, fell away from the Faith, fell out of the state of Grace, and whose end is subsequently destruction!!
But what is avoidance of sin, but a work? What is practicing restraint in food and drink and sex and money and all the rest, but a work, the practice of the great virtue of temperance?!?
But that is not all. Regular readers will know that I am reading the Victories of the Martyrs by Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori. He recounts the deaths of martyrs from the 1st through the early 4th centuries (so far – I haven’t read it all).
What did these martyrs die for? Faith in Jesus Christ? But why on earth would they die, if their faith alone assured their salvation, if no work or failure of work could ever cause them to lose that salvation?!? Why should any Christian ever die for his faith, if we are saved after a one time altar call and pronouncement of acceptance? And don’t give me this garbage about “higher levels of Heaven” and all that claptrap, that’s not what the martyrs thought at all.
No, quite the contrary, every single one of these martyrs, when tempted by the Roman magistrates to burn just a pinch of incense to the “god” emperor, refused, not because they would lose a better seat in the heavenly movie theater, but because they knew acknowledging any other god – even under the most severe duress – would be a violation of the 1st and 2nd Commandments and cause not the loss of their place in the heavenly pecking order, but their entire salvation!
Again, these martyrs testified to this fact going all the way back to the 1st century. This martyrdom was most assuredly a work, and a work that the Church judged worthy of salvation from her earliest days.
Protestants like to pretend – they are compelled by their disobedience and rejection of authority to pretend – that the early Church somehow apostasized from the Truth of Jesus Christ and imposed some evil Babylonian cult upon millions of Christians, somehow. This is a rather amazing claim, given the REAL heresies the early Church endured and overcame. These ill-educated souls even try to claim it was Constantine that tried to force this erroneous belief on the Church, when in reality, it was the Church that fought off Constantine’s attempt to impose the Arian heresy (Christ is just a man) under severe punishment!
What we see clearly from the martyrs, and from every other early source we have available to us, from Saint Ignatius of Antioch to Saint Justin Martyr to Saints Basil and John Chrysostom clear through to the present day, is a constant attestation to the SAME set of beliefs, the SAME set of practices, as what is outlined in the Dogmas of the Church. Even more, we see the SAME beliefs in all the ancient Churches, those dating back to the first 4-5 centuries of Christianity, even though most of these fell away on some error or another such as the nature of the Will and Person of God or the Authority of the Roman See. On all these issues related to the Eucharist, the efficacious nature of works, gaining/losing Grace, all these ancient Churches share the same beliefs.
It is only the johnny-come-lately protestant heretics who have thought differently, even while they endlessly bicker amongst themselves as to which of their tens of thousands of sects is the “right” one.
That is, Catholics have myriad sources confirming our beliefs – Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, the testimony of the martyrs and Saints, the confirmation of sadly separated brethren like the Orthodox and Copts, hostile works written against the Church by those outsider her but confirming her core beliefs, etc., etc.
All protestants have is the Bible – a great source, to be sure, but a bible their early leaders mangled in order to try to better support their errors – and the private judgment of a few very fallible men, outside the State of Grace, who imposed an interpretation on the Bible based on their pre-conceived notions and desires rather than conforming themselves to the constantly understood beliefs and practices of the Christian Church.
I know which side I’ll be sticking with, thank you very much, and I thank God every day for making me an aspiring good Catholic, rather than the protestant I once was.
Targay Getting Pummeled by Boycott? September 29, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in asshatery, Basics, disaster, error, foolishness, General Catholic, It's all about the $$$, persecution, rank stupidity, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sexual depravity, Society.comments closed
That’s the implication of the data below from The American Thinker, which shows that Target’s sales have slid much farther than their competition’s, and that their market cap has taken a serious tumble. I frequently read or hear that boycotts don’t really work, but could this be an exception, or is this sudden collapse at Targay simply coincidental?
In the wake of its five-month-long bathroom policy, Target (TGT) Corporation continues to implode.
Within a month after the misguided policy, the company’s market cap had already declined by $9 billion compared to where it should have been had Target kept its pre-April 19 correlation with its primary competitors, Walmart (WMT) and Costco (COST).
By late May, the market cap hit reached $10.5 billion. As of the second week of June, the loss was $11 billion.
Second-quarter earnings data are now out, showing that Target’s earnings plummeted nearly 10%, with projected lower sales estimates for the remainder of 2016. Net sales declined more than 7% from the same period year over year.
Corporate executives are leaving in droves. Just 10% of the most senior executives in place two years ago remain with the company, including two major losses during the past month.
Had Target’s market cap continued to follow close pace with Walmart, as it had done in the months before the bathroom policy was implemented, it would have increased 1% compared to its value on April 19 of this year. Instead, Target’s market cap is now down 23.3% over this time frame. [That’s the kind of thing that gets a CEO fired, usually within a few quarters. I’d say if things don’t improve markedly by year’s end, the CEO who instituted this disastrous transgender policy will be gone. But will his replacement have the will to withstand the firestorm of criticism that will almost certainly attend its reversal?]
This adds up to a $12.2-billion market cap decline that is likely to be directly attributable to the failed bathroom policy.
The American Family Association’s boycott of Target, which has collected 1.42 million signatures, appears to have driven much – if not nearly all – of this drop. In response, Target recently announced it would spend $20 million to install single-stall locking bathrooms for those customers who are concerned over its “inclusive” washroom policy.
Whether its the boycott or not, Targay is hurting. Now they are caught in a quandary of their own making, where no matter what they do they are sure to experience a fiery backlash. Continue with the policy, continue offending many customers, and sales continue to tank. Reverse the policy and the extremely powerful pro-perversion lobby and their media allies with absolutely pillory them. It’s refreshing to see the kind of cheap moral posturing and virtue signaling – which in reality forms a powerful form of persecution against Christians – far too many businesses are engaged in can come with a real cost. Target thought they could sow the wind, now they get to reap the whirlwind.
Maybe we should boycott the NCAA and Atlantic Coast Conference next.
The Profound Hypocrisy of Business Elites Masquerading Business Decisions as Moral Outrage September 28, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in asshatery, disaster, error, General Catholic, It's all about the $$$, persecution, rank stupidity, Revolution, scandals, secularism, self-serving, sexual depravity, sickness, Society, unbelievable BS.comments closed
Some great commentary from Franklin Graham, scion of the well-known evangelical family, on the blatant hypocrisy of the NCAA, ACC, and other business organizations punishing North Carolina for forbidding sick and/or perverse men from using women’s restrooms in public, while doing business with organizations with far more problematic, even immoral ties (via Pertinacious Papist with my comments):
As a lifelong resident of North Carolina and current CEO and president of two organizations employing nearly 1,500 North Carolinians, I am saddened — even outraged — by the vote of the ACC Council of Presidents to move conference championships from our state in protest of legislation requiring people to use public bathrooms that correspond with their birth gender.
While I recognize this legislation — and legislation like it in other states — is complicated by society’s continued blurring of the lines of gender and sexual identity, I also recognize the profound hypocrisy of the ACC, the NCAA and other companies and organizations who are making calculated business decisions disguised as moral outrage. [Great point. Do tell more]
For example, the football championship game your conference voted to move from Charlotte in December is called the “Dr. Pepper ACC Football Championship.” Dr. Pepper and its parent company, Cadbury Schweppes and Carlyle Group, proundly sell their products in countries where homosexuality is illegal. Will ACC drop its title sponsor? And why isn’t the LGBT community demanding you sever ties with such a “bigoted” corporate sponsor? [Of course they won’t. Because moving the championship game costs the ACC or NCAA nothing, while it hurts North Carolina a bit. But severing ties with all corporations that conduct business in lands with violent, repressive governments would have HUGE cost, so that, of course, goes out the window. This is the very definition of hypocrisy, and is also how the left-dominated elite works on a daily basis. Targeted outrage, targeted punishment, all directed towards a political goal, a goal that yields a tangible economic benefit. Support the leftist power structure, get amazing $$$$, oppose it, and get crushed]
Currently, LGBT relationships are illegal in more than 70 countries — including 10 where homosexuality is punishable by death. Dr. Pepper is often bottled under contract by Coca-Cola bottlers — yet Coca-Cola conducts business in virtually every nation on earth, including nearly every country where homosexuality is currently criminalized. Can your conference continue to tolerate that?
The ACC website proudly features Toyota as an “Official Corporate Champion,” yet Toyota maintains factories and distribution centers in several of these discriminatory countries, including Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Egypt. Where is the moral outrage of the presidents of Boston College, Clemson, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami, UNC, North Carolina State, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Wake Forest?[Once again, this inconvenient fact reveals the monetary scheming at the heart of this duplicitous “stand” against North Carolina’s bathroom law]
Indeed, the ACC’s member schools compete in 25 sports divided by gender — 12 men’s sports and 13 women’s. Though gender issues may be becoming more complicated in higher education and other parts of society, the athletic conference you serve as commissioner doesn’t seem to have any problem distinguishing between the two genders — male and female. Yet, when a state like the one I live in seeks to make the same distinction with regard to use of public bathrooms in an effort to protect its citizens from those who would use the men’s room today and th women’s room tomorrow, the academic elites who comprise your conference fake a moral outrage that is frankly shameful.
Ironically, the NCAA is more discriminatory towards transgender people than the public policy they apparently wish to see as law in America. For example, opponents to legislation like NC House Bill 2 support permitting people to use the bathroom which corresponds to the sex they identify with on a given day — meaning someone might feel like a man today and a woman tomorrow, switching bathrooms at will.
Yet even the NCAA doesn’t allow such casual gender identity for participation in collegiate athletics. The NCAA Policy on Transgender Student-Athlete Participation states, “Any transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatment related to gender transition may participate in sex-separated sports activities in accordance with his or her assigned birth gender.” [Lying money-grubbing self-serving Christian-persecuting blankety blank…….]
I think I represent the views of millions who would rather preserve gender-specific public bathrooms — a mainstay for generations — than to attend a football game in my state to determine the champion of a conference governed by politically-correct, morally hypocritical academics.
Commissioner, in your statement today you said, “the ACC Council of Presidents made it clear that the core values of this league are of the utmost importance, and the opposition to any form of discrimination is paramount. Today’s decision is one of principle.” Will this same paramount “opposition to any form of discriminatin” have you now sever ties with Toyota and Dr. Pepper?
Again, we know the answer to that. Cutting ties with Dr. Pepper would not only deny the conference a shoot-pot full of money, it could cause a lot of other corporate sponsors to bail out and really hurt their bottom line. And they can’t have that. It’s entirely a moral outrage of convenience. No cost to the ACC, Google, NCAA, Facebook, and all the others virtue-signalling saps out there who only care about today and tomorrow’s profit, and care nothing for the destruction of the moral order in this nation or the souls whose lives – and prospects of salvation! – will be ruined in the process.
If these self-serving business interests had a moral bone in their bodies, they would immediately stand in staunch and total opposition to abortion and contraception, but I’ll be King of Mars before that happens.
But, of course, the self-anointed elites don’t believe Heaven, hell, or any of that kind of crap anymore.
Sign the Declaration of Fidelity to the Church’s Unchangeable Teaching on Marriage September 28, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in awesomeness, Basics, catachesis, disconcerting, episcopate, Francis, General Catholic, Grace, manhood, priests, sadness, sanctity, scandals, the struggle for the Church, true leadership, Virtue.comments closed
I’m not sure I like the word “teaching.” Teachings are changeable, a bit amorphous. Doctrines are better, Dogmas are the best. Dogmas cannot change. They are fixed. The Church’s belief regarding marriage most certainly rises to the level of a Dogma.
That quibble aside, we’ve had 1500 odd priests in the US and Britain sign a pledge to uphold Church Dogma on marriage and urge Francis to do the same, we’ve had 42 leading prelates and theologians privately dissect Amoris Laetitia and implore Francis to return to the perennial Dogma, we’ve had cries of the heart from The Remnant and many other organizations and individuals, and now this: an attempt by even more leading Churchmen, theologians, apologists, clergy, and faithful to declare their fealty to this unchangeable Doctrine, and imploring Francis to stop undermining the constant belief and practice of the Faith.
Some 80 leading lights in the Church today signed onto this petition at its launch. 2200 other souls have done so in the past few days. I have done so. Perhaps you will, too. An overview of the effort via Rorate:
80 Catholic personalities reaffirm their loyalty to the Magisterium of the Church on the family and Catholic moralsA Declaration of Fidelity to the Church’s Unchangeable Teaching on Marriage and to Her Uninterrupted Discipline was disclosed today by a group of 78 Catholic personalities, including cardinals, bishops, priests, eminent scholars, leaders of pro-family and pro-life organizations and influential figures of civil society.The statement was disclosed by the association Supplica Filiale [Filial Appeal], the same organization that collected, between the two Synods on the family, nearly 900,000 signatures of Catholic faithful (including 211 prelates) in support of a petition asking Pope Francis a word of clarification to dissipate the confusion disseminated in the Church on key issues of natural and Christian morality since the consistory of February 2014.Noting that the confusion has only grown in the faithful after the two Synods on the family and the subsequent publication of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia (with its more or less official adjacent interpretations), the signatories of the Declaration of Fidelity feel the urgent moral duty to reaffirm the immemorial teaching of the Catholic magisterium on marriage and family and the pastoral discipline practiced for centuries with regard to these basic institutions of a Christian civilization. This grave duty, according to the signatories, becomes even more urgent in view of the growing attack that secularist forces are unleashing against marriage and the family; an attack that does not seem to find any more the accustomed barrier in Catholic doctrine and practice, at least in the way they are now generally presented to public opinion.Solidly supported by a crystalline and indisputable teaching, confirmed by the Church in recent years, the Declaration is concatenated around 27 statements upholding those truths explicitly or implicitly denied or rendered ambiguous in the present ecclesial language. According to the signatories, what is at stake are unchangeable doctrines and practices concerning, for example, faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the respect due to this Sacrament, the impossibility of receiving Communion in a state of mortal sin, the conditions of true repentance that enable to receive sacramental absolution, the observance of the Sixth Commandment of the Law of God, the most serious obligation not to give public scandal and not lead the people of God to sin or to relativize good and evil; the objective limits of consciousness when taking personal decisions, etc.The Declaration of Fidelity is already available in English and Italian and it will soon be available also in French, German, Spanish and Portuguese. Whoever wants to adhere to it can do so by signing at the address http://www.filialappeal.org/
When you go to the link, click on the “XXXX signatures worldwide” to add your own name. There, you can also read either a summary of the declaration, or the lengthy text itself.
Thus we now know with certainty of at least five public and who knows how many private intervention attempts that have been made to change the direction of this most radical and destructive pontificate and affirm the Sacred Deposit of Faith. That these efforts have all been directed at the pope himself is, to put it mildly, unprecedented in the history of the Church.
The Church is being “fundamentally transformed” just as the US was.
PS – I finally get into Rorate! Wish I had known Adfero was going to be there, I should have liked to have met him:
I’m gonna make it after all, dun dun dun duuun da!!
Actually, Rorate has linked to my stuff a few times, for which I am appreciative. The Rorate post seems to express the view that the parish is small in size but crowded. Perhaps by New York standards. I haven’t been in many traditional parishes substantially larger (though primarly NO parishes that offer the TLM often are). They did note the crowds, which is always the case especially on Sunday.
My Sunday pal Hugh Sheridan wasn’t to my left as he was for almost every Sunday for 5 years or so straight. RIP.
I think we need a bigger altar with a massive reredo with many niches for Saints statues and/or paintings. What do you think?
A New Cristiada Brewing in Mexico? September 28, 2016
Posted by Tantumblogo in Basics, disaster, error, General Catholic, horror, persecution, priests, secularism, shocking, Society, unadulterated evil.comments closed
I was stunned to read in the article excerpted below, that 31 priests have been murdered in Mexico in the past 10 years. The killings have most often been associated with the drug cartels, which are also, not coincidentally, tightly associated with the same Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that instigated the original Cristiada under communist President Plutarco Elias Calles in the 1920s. Tensions have risen markedly between the PRI and the Church in recent years, as the PRI has legalized abortion in Mexico City and is atttempting to impose pseudo-sodo-marriage on a quite strongly opposed Mexican populace.
Three priests were murdered in Veracruz this past week, and the PRI-run government there engaged in a smear campaign against the priests, strongly implying they had been engaged in something nefarious and earned their demise. The people would have none of this, as these priests were too well known as good and pious men, relatively speaking, for such an accusation stick. Of course, in the original Cristiada, the PRI-run government accused priests and religious of all manner of immoral acts and perversions, engaging in the time-honored left-wing practice of psychological projection. Amazing to see how little has changed in almost 100 years:
Mexico’s Roman Catholic Church on Monday harshly criticized what it called a campaign to smear three priests murdered in less than a week by suggesting the victims had been involved in questionable behavior.
The outrage came in response to a state prosecutor’s allegations that two of the dead clerics had been drinking with their killers beforehand and media reports suggesting the third had last been seen with a young boy. [This kind of guilt-by-insinuation has been a hallmark of the PRI since its inception in the dark days of 1917. Of course, the PRI was taught much of its tradecraft by the more radical elements of the Lodge in the US]
“In these cases it has become clear that state governments that cannot handle the drug cartels are criminalizing the victims, depicting some as drunks and another as a pedophile, making it look like the crimes were not related to drug cartels but because of some immoral conduct,” said the Rev. Hugo Valdemar Romero, spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico City.
“To physical death they are adding moral assassination, slandering the priests and holding them up to ridicule,” Romero said, “and that has caused deep indignation in the church,” Romero said.
Two of the slain priests were shot to death in Veracruz state last week and their bodies dumped on a roadside. On Sunday officials confirmed that the other priest had been shot to death in Michoacan state after being abducted……..
………Parishioners in the Veracruz city where the two priests were killed have also said they were skeptical of the prosecutor’s account and suspected an attempt to quickly shelve the case.
Romero said of the government, “the least we expect is a public apology.” [Since I first read this article on Saturday, and when I accessed it today, it appears to have changed. It formerly included a statement from the prosecutor’s office largely retracting the nasty implications first made against the priests. That text appears to be missing from the article now]
It is unclear whether drug gangs were directly involved in last week’s killings, though most attacks on priests in Mexico in recent years have occurred in areas plagued by cartel violence. [And most areas plagued by cartel violence are led by the PRI, where government officials willingly accept heavy bribes to use the power of the state to help enforce the will of the cartel]
Prosecutors have suggested the robbery of a couple hundred dollars in church collections may have been a motive in the Veracruz killings.
But Cardinal Francisco Robles Ortega [of Guadalajara, one of the best Mexican prelates] of the western state of Jalisco said priests there have been subjected to extortion demands, a common practice among drug cartels in Mexico.
Mexico’s Catholic Media Center says 28 priests have been killed in Mexico since 2006, not counting last week’s slayings. It says Veracruz, Guerrero and Mexico states are the most dangerous for priests; along with Michoacan, they are some of the state with the worst drug-cartel problems.
The original article also spoke of the growing conflict between Church and state over such matters as pseudo-sodo-marriage, but that apparently was also judged inconvenient and so was flushed down the memory hole, too.
This is the danger of electronic media, it is subject to endless revision at the behest of political, economic, and cultural elites, becoming little more than a tool for propaganda, or at least the suppression of embarrassing evidence.
Buy as many books as you can. But, of course:
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