News & Commentaries


1. Twelve Reasons the Cross Is Not a Violation of Freedom [weblink]

2. Manila Holds Congress of the Clergy [weblink]

3. Priest’s New Book Challenges Men to Learn ‘True Manhood’ by Following Christ [weblink]

4. Help C-FAM Gather 1,000,000 Signatures [weblink]

5. Argentinian Governor: I Will Not Accept Abortion or Homosexual Marriage [weblink]

6. Massachusetts Man Fired From Corporation Over Christian Belief in Traditional Marriage [weblink]

7. Marriage Victory in Maine [weblink]

8. Statement by Mike Heath on Defeat of Homosexual Marriage Law in Maine [weblink]

9. Quebec Priest Denies Possibility of Sexual Reorientation Therapy on TV [weblink]

10. United Nations Report Pushes for Right to Sex-Change Operations [weblink]



Quote:

"It is love alone that gives worth to all things.” - St. Teresa of Avila

It Is Appointed For Men (Part 2)

All provisionality makes us uneasy. And here on earth, as St. Paul reminds us, we have no abiding city. Time surely runs its course. And with time, so too does our life ebb away. Through the years, our vitality begins to diminish, the organism ages, our strength fails us. And finally – if we ever last long, we reach that age when we begin to realize to what extent life is but a puff of air. All we need do now is simply contemplate the ravages that time has worked upon us. Everything time may once have offered us – pleasures, successes, honors, prestige – will be but things of the past, things that used to be but not longer are. We may perhaps retain some memories of the “good old days.” But that is all they are, memories and nothing more, a little like those old snapshots of forty or fifty years ago. We take a look at them now and again, and we find them quaint. They reflect realities that were once desirable, realities which now after long usage have worn curiously thin. They are nothing but the insubstantial remnants of what once was.

Important realities are not those that vanish like this but rather those that last, that remain. They are not those that flit away and are lost forever, but rather those that persist when all else has passed away. I think we could learn a great lesson from our awareness of death’s inevitability. We could learn how to manage our lives. We cannot go through life with our eyes shut, refusing to look at the inescapable reality of death for no better reason that that it is not an event we relish the thought of. Such behavior is not worthy of men gifted with reason. On the contrary, it is a salutary experience for man to think about death. We should be vying to learn now how to face it when it comes, to face it with dignity, with integrity, with hope, and, yes, even with joy. This is the reaction proper to a man who believes that Jesus is God and that he once said: “he who believes in me, even if he die, shall live.” (Jn 11:25)

But please do not think it is easy to acquire this attitude that is to enable us to face death manfully. Do not think that faith, hope, and charity, the practice of a supernatural life, and all the pious considerations we may entertain about death produce an effect within us in an automatic way, the way some drugs remove feelings of depression and dark thoughts by inducing a state of euphoria in which everything takes on a rosy hue. It is something altogether more serious. In the Dialogue of the Carmelites, Bernanos puts the following words in the mouth of a grievously sick nun who has served God in her monastery for many years and who has already been told she is soon to die: “In all the hours of my life I had piously meditated on death, but now all that is of hardly any use to me at all.” And it is not superfluous to recall that, even if Jesus humbly accepted his death on the cross in obedience to the will of his Father with whom he was totally identified, it was nevertheless preceded by an agony in Gethsemane and was accompanied by that awful cry: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mk 15:34) It seems that Christ himself did not want to deprive himself of feeling the natural repugnance that all men feel towards death. By recalling Our Lord’s own experience of dying, I want to show that the Christian view of death – and even its acceptance – does not necessarily produce a joyful feeling when the actual moment comes.

When we reflect on death in a general manner, considering it in abstraction as an idea, we may not find it bothersome at all. Something similar happens to us whenever we think or write about something in general: for example, about evil in general, or about torture and hunger in general. However, when we consider death as a particular event, as an unavoidable personal occurrence that comes nearer to us with each passing day, as something that will surely happen to us when we least expect it, then we may experience that instinctive reaction of repugnance, of fear, because the separation of the body and the soul which have been created to form a united whole and to constitute an integrated human person is at variance with human nature. (And this is true no matter that death is a natural occurrence for man). Thus, death may even appear to us to be a perplexing event of dubious meaning. And at times it may even incite us to an act of protesting rebellion against God. In spite of knowing death is one more happening in man’s real life and that we will all have to die some day, we still find ourselves asking, “Why?” Why are we made to live if we have to die? Why did God make things this way?

Yet it is not true to say that God made man in this way, subject to death. He had other plans for man. Revelation teaches us that “God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things that they might exist and the creatures of the world are wholesome, and there is no destructive poison in them” (Wis 1:13-14). So death was not part of God’s original plan for mankind. Immortality is not an essential quality properly belonging to human nature. Yet God conceded it to man from the very beginning. God created man immortal. Adam was endowed with the preternatural gift of immortality. He was empowered to live forever. According to God’s plan, man would have attained glory after his sojourn here on earth without passing through death. The plague of death (together with many other plagues) was introduced into the world through sin: “Therefore, as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all men sinned.” (Rom 5:12) Death is the destruction of man, whose soul was created to be the substantial form of a particular body. Both body and soul constitute a human person. Both body and soul were created to be one, to be united to one another. Death, the separation of the soul from the body, does violence to human nature. It is the result of and also the price to be paid for an act that goes against nature: sin. The Book of Wisdom continues to tell us more about death: “God created man for incorruption, and made him in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy, death entered the world, and those who belong to his party experience it’ (Wis 2:23-24). And we all belong to his party because we have all sinned in Adam. And thus, death will ultimately overpower all of us. With the exception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, all human beings carry the mark of sin. And consequently the mark of death. Thus, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, St. Thomas Aquinas talks about the “necessity of dying,” an expression that is certainly peculiar, and yet full of significance, because we necessarily have to pay the price for original sin and for our personal sins, and that price is death.

It was Jesus Christ who, through his passion, death, and resurrection restores the order and harmony that sin had destroyed. Christ never knew sin and he overcame death. Thus, St. Paul was able to exclaim: “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (1 Cor 15:55).

Death, therefore, is not the end, but the real beginning. It is not a door that is closed, but rather one that is opened. And even if death has not lost its natural repugnance, the Redemption has robbed it of its wickedness and transformed it into the threshold of our hope. The attitude of an atheist facing death is very different from that of a believer, of one who has faith.

At times, these two attitudes are diametrically opposed. This essential difference in attitudes is succinctly expressed by Blessed J. Escriva in The Way: “For others, death is a stumbling block, a source of terror. For us, death – Life – is an encouragement and a stimulus. For them, it is the end; for us, the beginning” (no. 738)

It is significant to note that in all the Masses celebrated for those who have died, the Church talks to us about life and not about death. Her liturgy for the dead is a canticle of hope in the resurrection and in everlasting life. It is not a despairing lament over what has been irretrievably surrendered. The liturgy gently lead us to remove our attention from what we have just lost and to lay it to rest upon what we have just acquired, because life is changed, not taken away (this is how it is phrased in the Preface for the Masses for the Dead). A temporal life is transformed into an eternal life, a mortal life is changed into an immortal life. St. Paul could then write to the suffering Thessalonians: “Do not grieve as others do who have no hope.” (I Thess 4:13)

God’s revelations concerning life and death should not become for us a dead word or a dry and useless piece of intellectualism. To avoid this, it is now necessary to assimilate all those revealed truths not only with the intellect but also with the will, if I may express myself in this manner. If we accept death as a punishment that accompanies sin, if we accept the consequences triggered off by our conceited pretensions to becoming equal with God (“You shall be like God!”), then we may still manage to be serene when faced with death’s awful atrocity. We shall attain peace only when we have paid the price of the debts incurred by us.

Now is the appropriate time for us to consider those words of Jesus on the Cross. They would situate us where we will be enabled to acquire a more total, more positive, and more exact perspective on the nature of life and death. You do surely remember those words of Christ who, at a precise moment at the end of his agony on the Cross, said: “I am thirsty.” “Then,” St. John’s quotation continues, “one of the soldiers, wetting a sponge with a vinegar, held it up for him to drink. After having drunk the vinegar, Jesus said: “It is finished; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (Jn 19:30). For Christ on the Cross, at this very moment, death is the culmination: everything has been consummated. After the last prophecy that referred to him had been fulfilled, everything was then accomplished. There were no more loose ends to tie. There was nothing more to be done. What significance would it then have had if he had continued on earth with his mortal life, when he had already accomplished everything, when he had already fulfilled the mission for which he became man? For Jesus, death was the completion of a task. But for others it may be otherwise: it may be an aborted effort, an unfinished job, a commission neglected, a task that could have been completed but was not. We should never lose sight of this possibility, because it could indeed happen to anyone of us if we do not try hard to avoid it.

How, then, to avoid it? First, we must never forget that this life set apart by itself has no meaning whatsoever, since then, given the reality of death, it would amount to living for nothing, which is in clear contradiction with reason. Therefore, we must necessarily seek its meaning in the afterlife, in that other life which escapes the dominion of time because it transcends temporarily.

Consequently, here on earth is our opportunity, the only one granted to man so that he may freely decide what his eternal lot may be. In some manner we may say that each one of us has been given the very same option that was originally given to Adam, the Father of the human race. Like Adam, we may choose to unite ourselves with God forever through faith and obedience, believing in his words and doing what those words indicate, accepting and loving the plan designed in his infinite wisdom for our present and future life, or we may decide to reject that plan because – like Adam – we too may think that we are fit to decide by ourselves the course our life should take without counting on God’s will for us.

In any case, it is nevertheless good for us to know that things are what they are, whether it pleases us or not whether we like it or not. And it is a fact that this life exists with relevance to the other life, such that everything a man thinks, desires, says, does, or omits in this life is related to his definitive destiny in the hereafter. Every single temporal human act has repercussions of eternal consequence, whether positive or negative.

The entire world is subject to God’s creative and redemptive plan: consequently creation gives glory to God through the salvation of all men. Thus, all human destiny is inextricably bound up with the redeeming task of Christ. Man is not only the beneficiary of the Redemption, he also co-redeems with Christ. This is true to some extent because, on the one hand, man’s cooperation is needed if Christ’s redeeming action is to benefit man himself, and, on the other hand, with reference to the Mystical Body, man is obliged to cooperate for the good of the entire Body. This means that he must help in the redemption of others. He must help the greatest number possible to attain the salvation Christ has obtained for all men.

In this context our life can be considered as our personal participation in the passionate drama of salvation staged in this great theater of the world. It is not for us to choose the role we wish to play. It has been assigned to us. And our task is to study our role well in order to perform it properly. Death marks the moment when each actor makes his final exit from the stage, as his part in the play comes to an end, and his presence on stage is no longer required. Then there will no longer be the possibility of interpreting our role again in the hope of improving on our previous performance, of correcting our mistakes, of learning our lines better and taking our performance more seriously. In the end, what will count most is not that we will have been given a magnificent role to play, the role of a star performer, but rather that we will have played our part well, whatever it be.

Throughout these pages we have been reflecting on the reality of death. And we have learned a principal lesson: this life on earth that passes away is not really as important as that other life that will last forever. It is that other life that is really worth all our efforts. During the reign of King Henry VIII of England, the Duke of Norfolk tried to convince St. Thomas More to give in to the King’s wishes and to submit himself to the royal will. If he did so his life would be spared. However, Thomas More replied, “Is that all, my Lord? Well, the truth is that between your Lordship and myself there is very little difference: I will die today and you tomorrow.” In fact, that is what happened. The one death came not long after the other. But Thomas More is now a saint. More played the shorter role, but his interpretation of the part assigned to him in the work of redemption was worthy of the greatest reward. It is a man’s love for God manifested in the fulfillment of his loving will that measures the degree of perfection attained by each man in performing his role. And since death marks for each the end of time, and with it the end of all pain, suffering, or misfortune, the best thing to do is to acquire eternity in exchange for brevity, and not lose eternity for the sake of a bit more of wasted time that runs away like water through our fingers.

And it does us well to know that if we are not capable of learning this particular lesson, then any other lesson we may team in this life will be totally ineffective.


“…just as it is appointed unto men to die once and after this comes the judgment, so also was Christ offered once to take away the sins of many.” Hebrews 9:27-28

It Is Appointed For Men (Part 1)

I am not going to scare you to death with this article, but we must learn to accept that there are things which are not pleasant to ponder. Death is an inescapable reality in our life regardless of who we are and so it is profitable for us to reflect upon this subject from a Christian perspective. In his book The Afterlife, Fr. Federico Suarez discusses this topic at great length and provides us with a deep insight.


Some truths are not very enticing to reflect on and their recollection usually makes us decidedly uncomfortable. And yet in a strangely paradoxical way, or, better still, in a way that is rather more than just obviously paradoxical, the Church seems to possess some kind of propensity for frequently urging those very truths for our consideration.

I am referring to three of those four truths traditionally called “The Last Things,” the subject of what is known as eschatology: death, judgment, and hell. The fourth truth – heaven – though as much a truth as the other three, does not provoke the same allergic reaction as do these others.

Since some decades back and up to our present times, these truths have, it seems, slowly been consigned to oblivion, Circumstances of diverse characteristics have brought about such a state of affairs, but I do not intend to enumerate them here now. What is indisputable is that hardly anyone nowadays ever speaks about these truths. Most certainly, they are not pleasant topics to talk about. They are obviously not popular. In general, men do not seem to be too interested in knowing more about them. Somehow the teaching of these truths has been interrupted: someone has enclosed them in parenthetical brackets. And it is possible and even very probable that those who introduced such a parenthesis harbored the illusion that people who have strayed away from the Church would the more easily be able to return to her fold if these truths were allowed discreetly to fade into obscurity. Also, if we try to keep man’s attention away from them, who knows? Maybe even non-believers might be attracted to the Church. Perhaps there are some who have come to think that without such gloomy realities – death, judgment, and hell – the Catholic Church would project a much-improved image. Maybe it would become more youthful and even more dynamic? Would not such an image be attractively enhanced if the Catholic Church would refrain from exhibiting such gloomy and inhibiting visions of punishment and death, and instead present a panorama of inspiring programs with goals that are more appealing to men, with objectives that more immediately concern them?

Well, we cannot but admit that death, judgment, and hell are not exactly pleasant topics to consider. They are agreeable neither to the listener nor to the preacher. They are equally disconcerting for the one and for the other. And the Church knows this perfectly well. Yet in spite of them, these truths continue to occupy a firm place among the teachings of the Church. Throughout the centuries, she has not refrained from recalling them to us. I presume that there are many reasons to warrant such an insistence. At the moment, though, I would like to refer to only two of them. First, it is because such truths as death, judgment, heaven, and hell reflect realities that we will all one day inevitably encounter. And since the Church is our mother, she frequently reminds us of these realities, so that we may be sufficiently prepared to face them when the moment comes. She is under the weightiest obligation to teach us the truth: she should, therefore, not deceive us by hiding part of it from us simply because it may seem too somber, too inconvenient, or too exasperating for us to accept. Second, it is because such truths are useful for us that we may live our lives the right way here on earth. They provide us with light and perspective that enable us to journey through life like people in control (and not like slaves), who can confront reality, head-on, and who dominate events rather than allow themselves to be swept along by them.

Any exposition on the last things should logically begin with an explanation of death, since this truth is the door that leads us to the others. Chronologically, it is the first of them to take place – only after death can the other truths become reality for a man. And the first thing that we can affirm about death is its inevitability. In fact, I don’t think there is anyone who looks upon death as something that must necessarily happen to everyone else except himself. On the contrary, we all know that we are bound to die. We are so sure of this that it is impossible to find a man in his right mind who thinks that he is not capable of dying, that he is immortal. What we are most certain of in this stage of our existence is that no one ever leaves it alive.

And yet, though we are very certain about dying, there are a number of other things about death that we can never be sure of. Certainly, we are all convinced that we shall one day die, but no one knows when this will happen, where it will take place, and how he shall meet his end. It could happen any day now and in any place whatsoever. We can never know in what circumstances it will happen to us and what the experience will be like when it comes. No one who has ever been through what has been called “the trance of death” can be of assistance to us with information about what our death will be like. First, because death is an absolutely personal experience that is unique to each individual and untransferable. And also because no one who has gone through this “trance” has ever emerged alive from the experience. Neither can our observations about the deaths of other men give us much information about our own death since we can never know whether our own death when it comes will be caused by similar circumstances and whether it will trigger anything like the same reactions in ourselves.

To complete this first stage of our reflections on death, we can go on to look at one more fact about it that we are equally sure of. We find it solemnly expressed in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “It is appointed unto men to die once” (Heb 9:27) Thus, each man’s death is an absolutely unique event. This means that we live out our lives on earth once, and that is it. In other words, regardless of whatever value or content we might give to our existence here on earth, regardless of whatever significance we might give to our exit from it, this life, our life here on earth, appears as a once-and-for-all opportunity. It is unrepeatable. Consequently, it is final. Early in our reflections on death, therefore, we have stumbled upon three certainties concerning it: it will most certainly happen to us; it without doubt happens only once; and we have not the faintest idea when or how it will come upon us. We might now wonder whether an awareness of these certainties is going to be beneficial to us in some way. And we could provide our own answers. Yes, absolutely speaking, it is clearly beneficial for man to be aware of such certainties and it is well for us to have foreknowledge of them. Yet, relatively speaking, the knowledge may be useful to some people but useless to others, depending on the attitude they adopt towards death and the consequences for their conduct that may derive from such an attitude. This is what I will try to explain now.

Suppose we begin reflecting on the transitoriness of this life here on earth, as an immediate conclusion that we might come to as a result of considering those three certainties about death. Man is a pilgrim here on earth: he is a wayfarer. This life is no more than a place of transit where we cannot stay very long. Life is like a road to be traversed: we do not detain ourselves along the path of our journey to build a permanent abode. We keep moving on. It is a road for covering the miles and not for lingering on. This sense of impermanence, of precariousness, can provide different reactions in men depending on whether or not they permit themselves to believe in a “hereafter,” in life after death. Some men do believe in an eternal life, another life after this one. Others, on the contrary, choose to consider death as the conclusive reality: death extinguishes life, they maintain, as if it were the flame of a candle, dissolving man’s being into nothingness.

For those who consider death as the ultimate reality beyond which there is nothing more, life and death become equally meaningless considered as realities. They continue being real but without meaning. This attitude is best described in the Book of Wisdom, written, as you may know, several centuries before the coming of Christ: For the reasoned unsoundly, saying to themselves, “Short and sorrowful is our life, and there is no remedy when a man comes to his end, and no one has been known to return from Hades. Because we were born by mere chance, and hereafter we shall be as though we had never been; because the breath in our nostrils is smoke, and reason is a spark kindled by the beating of our hearts. When it is extinguished, the body will return to ashes, and the spirit will dissolve like empty air. Our name will be forgotten in time, and no one will remember our works; our life will pass away like the traces of a cloud, and be scattered like mist that is dispersed by the rays of the sun and overcome by, its heat. For our allotted time is the passing of a shadow, and there is no return from our death, because it is sealed up and no one turns back.” (Wis 2:1-5)

Through the eyes of an atheist, of one who says he does not believe in God, death is viewed as nothing more than just that, the end of life, darkness, senselessness, a blank, nothingness. And through the very same unbelieving eyes and with the very same light, life itself becomes nothing more than “traces of a cloud,” “a mist that is chased by the rays of the sun and overcome by its heat,” hardly “the passing of a shadow.” If everything must have a stop, if everything is annihilated and nothing of anything remains at all, then what meaning could we possibly give to existence, to the world, and to man himself? Could love and suffering conceivably have any meaning at all for us? Would there be any meaning in pain? In joy? Would man’s endeavors be worth anything? His striving for survival? His attempts to become someone or to achieve something? The endeavors of entire generations to attain knowledge? Would such expenditure of energy make any sense at all? In the final analysis, would we have any reason to work? To struggle to dominate nature and to overcome sickness? The only possible motive would be to obtain the greatest possible pleasure for ourselves during the few years of our life here on earth. Well, with such a way of thinking we could justify any amount of egoism, and even an egocentricity brutal in the extreme. If everything ends with death, then this is the only logical attitude to adopt: “Let us eat and drink now for tomorrow we die.” Thus, to the extent that faith and hope in an afterlife diminishes and disappears, the world runs the danger of being cruelly transformed, metamorphosed into a jungle, and life itself into a fight to the death for the acquisition of the greatest personal satisfaction possible. This is a logical consequence: if absolutely everything is resolved into nothingness, then man has nothing intelligible left to do but to maximize the advantages he can obtain during his lifetime. He may use any means whatsoever to maximize his private gain. He may do whatever he pleases, since there is nothing that could serve him as the foundation for a set of norms by which to guide his behavior. Yet, of course, this happens to man only when he refuses to think; once he begins to use his intellect, all sorts of questions arise that show up such profitable hedonism as self-contradictory. And they are questions that clamorously make demand for an answer.

Death: this is the key to the whole mystery, to the entire puzzle. It is a reality that requires an explanation, that needs to be explained. It has to be integrated with the life of man and of the world, so as to provide the universe with a minimum of coherence. Otherwise, it would have been vain for man to have been provided with an intellect. We know that death has a purpose because God has told us so. Through divine revelation, we know more about death than we could possibly have learned through observation and through our natural power of reasoning, although it by itself can tell us much. But when divine revelation is rejected or thrown aside and forgotten, then death becomes for many, as it is described in the Book of Wisdom, a useless absurdity, meaningless, and empty. When faced with the utter pointlessness of death, the only way to escape the crushing effects of its immense vacuity would be to refuse point-blank to think, to fall into a state of stupor, to become somehow anesthetized against its prospect.

And there are many ways of attaining this state of stupefaction. For our so-called democratic western civilizations, the process usually followed consists in keeping oneself continuously occupied in the pursuit of material well-being, the more energetically sought after, the better. Such activity is usually accompanied by the search for a way to pretend not to see what we have no wish to see, because of the distaste it produces, there being simply no pleasure in its contemplation. At times such pretensions border on the ridiculous, like the expensively soothing burial practices savagely satirized by Evelyn Waugh in The Loved One. On the other hand, the countries which used to belong to the eastern bloc, the former Marxist states, espousing as they do a more philosophical materialism, have followed a quite different stupefying process. They achieve a similar effect by dedicating all their efforts to the “historically determined” struggle against the capitalist oppressor, supposedly for the benefit of the working classes, until the imaginary final utopia of a classless society will be attained. In both cases, due on the one hand to an ignorance about reality and on the other to a refusal to accept it as it truly is, man has provided himself with a theory that serves as a tranquilizer. He has not solved the problem at all, but at least he no longer feels the need to think further about it. In end, however, no matter how stylishly and ingeniously we devise our theoretical alternatives to avoid confronting a problem, a problem ignored or side stepped can never be transformed into a problem solved. We may choose to ignore reality, but, in spite of our choosing, things continue to be what they really are. And everything that refers to the meaning of life and death continues being what it truly is. We either know it or we ignore it. We know it when we accept divine revelation and through faith acquire truths which to an appreciable extent the human intellect alone is capable of acquiring through its own power. We ignore the intellect as well when we dispense with revelation. No theory can every change reality.

The Church is greatly concerned with keeping us vividly aware of the transitory character of this life. It is vital for us to refrain from deceiving ourselves about this. Guided by a solid common sense, St. Teresa of Avila rightfully characterized as things of “little weight,” all that accumulation of objects and concentration on activities that paradoxically enslave us and attract the attention of not a few Christians impeding them from seeing those things that are permanent and consequently possess a value that is the reverse of the ephemeral. St. Teresa could not help but spot, with shrewd and piercing clarity, the lack of significant firmness in what is provisional, the scant entity of what is fleeting, the tenuous substance of what is temporary. She once wrote that “all these things are as light as air and lack weight, such that they are carried away by the wind, because even if they have meant much to us, what is it of them that we retain?” And let us admit it, we have all experienced the very temporary character of any delight derived from a good once it has been possessed. Such transitoriness keeps us from enjoying that good to the fullest. It seems that the evanescence of any pleasure permeates it with dissatisfaction and disillusion.


(to be continued...)

News & Commentaries


1. Pope: Spread the Word Using New Media [weblink]

2. “We Visit Cemeteries to Pray for the Dead, Not to Disturb Them,” Says Catholic Editor [weblink]

3. Catholic Leader Lash Out at Halloween [weblink]

4. Believe It: Abortion Funding Is In Healthcare Bill [weblink]

5. Gay Activists Despise AFTAH Because We Expose their Radical Agenda [weblink]

6. New Study Shows Parents Play a Significant Role In Teen Sexual Decisions [weblink]

7. Kenya to Launch Homosexual Census [weblink]

8. Google Supports Ref. 71 Favoring Same-Sex Unions [weblink]

9. Study: Fatherless Childhood May Injure Brain Development [weblink]

10. Book Review of "Light in the Closet: Torah, Homosexuality, and the Power to Change" [weblink]

11. Catholics in Spain, France and Chile find Christian alternatives to Halloween [weblink]





Quote:


"Gaily I lived as ease and nature taught,
And spent my little life without a thought,
And am amazed that Death, that tyrant grim,
Should think of me, who never thought of him."

~ René Francois Regnier

Prayer Warriors of the Holy Souls

This post will be short. Come all Soul's Day, many will troop back to the cemeteries to remember their dear departed. I really hope that we will all pray for our dead loved ones from our hearts and not merely make this occasion as some sort of mini-family reunions and Halloween trick or treat affair, or we might find ourselves one day in the awful fires of Purgatory for our neglect. That one is definitely not a treat.

Praying for the dead is a spiritual act of mercy and there is a local apostolate in the Philippines dedicated for creating and spreading awareness of the plight of the Poor Souls in Purgatory. They are called Prayer Warriors of the Holy Souls. I urge you to visit their beautiful website at http://www.pwhs-mfi.org/ and be a prayer warrior.

"Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen."



"It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be loosed from their sins" (2 Mac 12:46)

Queer Rosary?

It's still the Rosary Month and so I think this post is still relevant . It's a disturbing report about some homosexual activist groups who are making an attempt to make the rosary more LGBT friendly. They call it the "Relational Rosary". Here's some backgrounder information about it:

According to the California Catholic Daily, McMullan and a Rev. Jim Mitulski taught a two-part class on “Praying the Queer Rosary” at an event for the New Spirit/MCC Church of Berkeley. The announcement for the class said it is “based on stories from the bible [sic] which depict Queer Families or Relationships.

Another event was hosted at Berkeley’s Newman Hall – Holy Spirit Parish, which announced a Rosary “in solidarity with LGBT Catholics” facilitated by McMullan and Mike Campos, another doctoral student at the Graduate Theological Union.

The "Relational Mysteries" are listed as:

Fidelity — Ruth's pledge to Naomi (Ruth 1:16-18)
Grief — The parting of David and Jonathan (I Sam 20:35-42)
Intercession — Esther intercedes for her people (Est 4:9-5:2)
Restoration — The raising of Lazarus (John 11:38-44)
Discipleship - The two encounter Christ on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35).


Commentary:

I have no issues about persons with SSA praying the rosary. In fact, we need to pray the rosary to fortify us in our struggle to live chaste lives. What I don't like about this whole thing is when certain people distort and twist something in order to suit their own agenda, in this case the rosary. We as Catholics should not condone this sacrilege. Being accepting and tolerant towards our radical LGBT brothers does not mean condoning and accepting their "twisted" sense of spirituality.

If you examine closely this "queer rosary", it's not a rosary at all. The true rosary is always Christocentric, i.e., Christ-centered and also Marian. Notice the absence of this crucial element in the so-called "relational mysteries".

One pro-gay blogger's comment goes something like this:

"Praying a queer rosary is a way of healing the divide that has existed between religion and LGBT people. It's a practice meant to foster love and acceptance, and a practice meant to honor peaceful representations of Mary. There should be nothing blasphemous about that."

Well, I don't agree with his views. Some things in this world simply don't mix well. I can sense his desire to reconcile his ideologies and find acceptance within the Church, but that is where the main conflict lies - the gay agenda is radically incompatible with Christ's teachings - and the only way for anyone in the gay community to come into full communion with the Church is to take up his/her cross of same-sex attraction and follow Him. There is simply no other way and we at Courage strive to live this commitment despite the hardships and persecutions.

At this point, let us remember to include our separated Catholic LGBT brothers and sisters in our rosary in order that they may come to know the truth and embrace it.

News & Commentaries


1. Pope Benedict Approves Structure for Admitting Large Groups of Anglicans Into Catholic Church [weblink]

2. Pontiff Praises Bankers Studying Encyclical [weblink]

3. Lack of Concern for Sanctity of Life Due to Lack of Catechesis, Says Prelate [weblink]

4. Archbishop Chaput: "God Will Demand an Accounting" for Our Moral Indifference [weblink]

5. Christians on High Alert Over Hate Crimes Passage [weblink]

6. Condoms Promote Promiscuity and Lead to More HIV Infections, Says African Bishop [weblink]

7. Homosexual Activists Take U.N. Diplomat to Task [weblink]

8. New York Governor Says Gay "Marriage" Bill Back on Table for Upcoming Special Session [weblink]

9. U.S. House Bill Would Coerce States to Allow Homosexual Adoption [weblink]

10. Novelist Anne Rice Goes 'Angelic' [weblink]




Quote:

"The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running." - Author unknown

Religion and Homosexuality

This post is an excerpt taken from Dr. van den Aardweg's book The Battle For Normality pp. 85-87. Here, he makes a succinct observation on the interest and attraction of people with SSA to the religious life. The author also touched briefly on the incompatibility of reconciling the gay lifestyle with authentic Christian morality.


A young, homosexually inclined Christian told me he had studied the Bible and found reasons to reconcile his conscience with his homosexual relationship of that moment, provided he remained faithful. Predictably, after some time he dropped that pretension, but he continued on his course, and his Christianity withered. That is the history of many young persons who try to reconcile the irreconcilable. If they convince themselves that homosexuality is morally good and beautiful, they either lose their faith or invent one of their own, which sanctions their desires. Of the last possibility, examples abound as well as of the first. A well-known homosexual Dutch actor from a Catholic background, for instance, presently plays the role of a self-appointed priest, "blessing" young couples at marriage celebrations (not excluding homosexual "couples", of course) and "ministering" at funerals.

This brings up a topic of current interest: Why are so many Protestant and Catholic homosexuals, male and female alike, interested in theology, and why do they not infrequently want to be ministers or priests? Part of the answer lies in their infantile need for sympathy and contact. They view church professions as soft and sentimentally "caring" and imagine themselves in them as being honored and revered, elevated above common human beings. They see the Church as a noncompetitive, friendly world where they may enjoy high status and be protected at the same time. For male homosexuals, there is the additional incentive of a rather closed men's community where they need not prove themselves as men; women with lesbian feelings, on their part, may feel drawn to an exclusive women's community, like a convent. Unctuous ways, which they associate with "pastoral" manners and ways, moreover, appeal to some, being in line with their overfriendly, soft manners. And in the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches, there is the attraction of the garments and the aesthetic rituals, which male homosexuals may, in their childish perception, experience as feminine and which enable a narcissistic showing off, comparable to the exhibitionistic joys of homosexual ballet dancers.

Remarkably, lesbian women may also feel attracted to the role of vicar and priest. In their case too the attractive element for those who feel they don't belong is the social recognition as well as the enjoyment of being able to dominate others. It is interesting that the attraction of homosexuals to priestly functions is not restricted to modern Christianity; in several primitive societies, as in antiquity, homosexuals have fulfilled the priestly role.

These interests stem for the most part, then, from an infantile, self-centered imagination and have precious little to do with the objective contents of Christian belief. What some homosexuals thus see as their "calling" to the priesthood is an attraction to an emotionally rewarding, but self-centered, way of life. These are self-imagined or "false" vocations. Needless to say, these ministers and priests are inclined to preach a soft, humanistic reinvention of traditional beliefs, especially of moral principles, and a distorted concept of "love". Moreover, they tend to create a homosexual subculture within their churches. There they undoubtedly pose a subtle threat for the orthodoxy and undermine church unity by their habit of forming subversive coteries that do not feel responsible to the official church community (the reader may recall the homosexual complex of "not belonging"). Otherwise, they generally lack the balance and the strength of character necessary for giving fatherly guidance.

Do real vocations never go along with homosexual interests? I do not dare to affirm that fully; perhaps I have seen a few exceptions in the course of the years. But, as a rule, a homosexual orientation, whether acted out or experienced only in the private emotional life, must certainly be regarded as a contraindication to the supernatural source of priestly interests.

The Battle for Normality

I want to give an overview of this book by Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, Ph.D. entitled The Battle For Normality: A Guide For (Self-) Therapy For Homosexuality. I remember having bought this book while still in college in National Bookstore, but for some reason it came on as "too heavy" for me and so I just let it sit idly in my closet for years. Now, I am leafing through the pages of the book once again in search of answers that I hope I would be able to share with you through this blog.


About the Author

This is the latest book of Dr. Aardweg on homosexuality. He is a Dutch psychologist (a Catholic one I guess) who has treated hundreds of persons with SSA and has cured many of them. He dedicates this book to "men and women tormented by homosexual emotions who do not want to live as homosexuals, who want constructive help and support, and who are forgotten, have no voice, and get no answers in our society, which recognizes only the emancipatory homosexual who wants to impose his ideology of "normality" and "unchangeability" and thus discriminates aginst those who know or feel that that is a sad lie."

Gerard van den Aardweg studied psychology at Leiden University, and received his Ph.D. in psychology at Amsterdam University. He has had a private psychotherapeutic practice since 1963 in Holland, specializing in the treatment of homosexuality and marriage problems.


Preface

This book is essentially self-therapy intended for persons with SSA who want to do something about their "condition", but do not have the time or opportunity to visit a therapist with healthy ideas on the matter for there are very few of them. The author clarifies though that it does not mean anyone can "go it alone".

According to him, "He who wants to overcome emotional problems needs a realistically understanding and encouraging guide to whom he can speak his mind, to help him discover important aspects of his emotional life and of his motivations, and to coach him in his struggle with himself. That guide need not necessarily be a professional therapist. Preferrably, he should be, but on the condition that he has healthy ideas about sexuality and morality; if not, he may do more harm than good." I agree.


Contents

Here is a general outline of the topics covered in the book which might be of particular interest to you.

Introduction

Part One: Insights

1. Homosexuality: An Overview
Insights in Brief
Not Normal
The Role of Self-Labeling

2. Development of Homosexuality
Homosexuality in the Genes? In the Brain?
Irreversibly Programmed in the First Years of Life?
Psychological Childhood Factors
The Masculinity/Femininity Inferiority Complex
Self-Dramatization and the Formation of an Inferiority Complex

3. Homosexual Drives
The "Search for Love and Affection"
Homosexual "Love"
Homosexual Sex Addiction

4. The Neuroticism of Homosexuality
Homosexual Relationships
Self-Destructive and Dysfunctional Tendencies
Remaining a Teenager: Infantilism
Neurotic from Discrimination?
Nonneurotic Homosexuals?
Normal in Other Cultures?
Seduction

5. The Question of Morality
Homosexuality and Conscience
Religion and Homosexuality

Part Two: Practical Rules for (Self-) Therapy

6. The Role of Therapy
Sobering Remarks on "Psychotherapy"
The Need for a Therapist

7. Knowing Oneself
Working through Childhood and Adolescence
Knowledge of the Present Self
Moral Self-Knowledge

8. Qualities to Cultivate
Beginning the Battle: Hope, Self-Discipline, Sincerity
Fighting Neurotic Self-Pity; Humor
Patience and Humility

9. Changing Patterns of Thought and Behavior
Fighting Homosexual Feelings
Fighting the Infantile Ego
Mending the Sex Role

10.Relating to Others
Changing One's Views of and Relationships with Others
Changing Relations with the Opposite Sex; Marriage


Book Reviews

"There is a need for such a practical "guide" because there are very few able therapists who want to help the well-intentioned homosexual to change, and because most existing works on homosexuality - no matter how excellent their content may be - are chiefly about theory, not about every-day self-therapy. Theoretical subjects are discussed, too, insofar as they are necessary to be able to fight the homosexual inclination and to refute certain myths that may undermine the homosexual's confidence in the possibility of a change." - Richard Fitzgibbons, MD, Comprehensive Counseling Services

"Dr. van den Aardweg's book provides a useful, 'no-nonsense' guide for self-help therapy. His approach calls for an appreciation of traditional gender roles, and demands an unstinting self-examination and strong effort at self-discipline in the struggle the homosexual person faces toward full maturity. Many readers will be helped by this practical book." - Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D. Author, Healing Homosexuality

"This scholarly tome is not for the mildly curious, but for those who are willing to take the time to unearth the depths of the root issues underlying the homosexual issue. The author reveals the key to this mystery, the problematic issue of self-pity. It is well worth the time it will take to digest its complex, detailed, in-depth study of homosexuality." - Anita Worthen, Author, Someone I Love is Gay

News & Commentaries


1. Pope: Access to Food Included in Right to Life [weblink]

2. Manila Prelate Underscores Lessons Learned from Ondoy [weblink]

3. Pro-Life Youth Congress 2009 [weblink]

4. Eucharistic Miracle: 2009? [weblink]

5. Wealthy Homosexual Activist Advises 'Active Measures' Against Religious Opponents [weblink]

6. Gender Ideology Endangers Spanish Education, Expert Warns [weblink]

7. Obama Contradicts Nature and Nature's God by Declaring Homosexuality-based Relationships 'as Admirable' as Normal Couples [weblink]

8. Terminating the GOP Brand: Schwarzenegger Signs 'Harvey Milk Day' Bill and Pro-'Gay Marriage' Legislation [weblink]

9. Ex-Homosexuals Denied Equal Shelf Space [weblink]

10. Harry Potter and Dumbledore Used to Entice Fans into Activism for Maine Gay 'Marriage' Push [weblink]



Quote:

"While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions." - Stephen R. Covey