Obedience

Today I decided to go to daily Mass downtown at noon. So I packed up my one year old and drove 30 minutes, paid for parking, and walked to the church. When I got in, I noticed a dress code posting. That was not new to me. And I believe in dress codes for churches. However, as I was wearing shorts, I did not meet the dress code.

At this point, I could have ignored the sign and rationalized my disobedience. Who are they to say what I can wear? (My spiritual leaders). What if I was poor and had no other clothes? (I'm not, and the rule wouldn't apply, since I would be dressed in my very best). My choice was to obey or disobey. I chose to obey and respect the rules, which I support, even though it was inconvenient for me.

Obedience is a forgotten virtue. It merits us many graces. Legitimate superiors demand obedience and we must give it, provided we are not commanded to do something contrary to God's law (such as wed two men or two women).

posted from Bloggeroid

Keep thy religion to thyself

I saw that quote from George Carlin on my Facebook feed. So should Christian hospitals only heal Christians? Should Christian food banks turn away non believers? Should Catholic schools and universities have a faith requirement, even for general studies majors? After all, that is still me sharing my religion with you. Preach always, use words when necessary... And such.

posted from Bloggeroid

USCCB speaks

The USCCB has released a statement on the SCOTUS ruling.

Regardless of what a narrow majority of the Supreme Court may declare at this moment in history, the nature of the human person and marriage remains unchanged and unchangeable. 

Herein lies the most important point: five justices do not have some magical ability to change the nature of reality. Marriage is still only between a man and a woman. What we have now is, simply put, state-sponsored mass delusion.

Read the rest over there. Do penance!

posted from Bloggeroid

Divorce and today

Could we have had today without divorce first? No! Memes justifying gay marriage on the basis of ”the bible condemns divorce, which Christians take part in all the time” abound.

Yes, it is hypocritical to accept divorce despite the Bibles’ condemnation and oppose gay marriage for that reason. Thankfully, the Catholic church is consistent. Protestantism, however, is not and bears a good portion of the blame.

posted from Bloggeroid

Consequences

I think few are surprised by the SCOTUS ruling today. The consequences will be seen. I ask everyone to bookmark, print, and otherwise save all doomsday predictions and naysayers' rejoinders to look back in the days, months, and years to come.

Go to confession and pray the Rosary!

posted from Bloggeroid

Closing the cafeteria

Let's pay heed to Ladato Si.... And Summorum Pontificum....And Humanae Vitae...

Let's have lots of kids, raise them to responsibly respect and care for the environment, and teach them this in a quality CCD class following a traditional High Mass.

That's what I'm doing.

posted from Bloggeroid

Dirty sinks

Reason #1 for Ladato Si: If you leave your sink dirty, you can get roaches. Roaches bring diseases. Likewise, if we fail to care for the planet, humanity will suffer. Ladato Si is not a neo-pagan encyclical calling to canonize "St. Mother Earth." Rather, it recognizes that care for the environment is a human issue. Harming the environment harms people.

Thus, as the Holy Father states in the introduction, we are the stewards of the Earth, not its master and lord. That right is reserved to the Lord God Himself. Dominion does not mean license to take and pillage the land as we please, but to responsibly care for it.

posted from Bloggeroid

An ineffective solution

Fr. Longenecker has proposed a
solution to gay marriage that I proposed a decade ago, but then peoplestill felt that gay marriage would never be accepted and wouldn't be the law of the land (can you imagine what a man waking up from a ten or twenty year comma must think?)

In short: get the Church out of the civil wedding business. Make the religious and civil process separate, as it is in countries like Russia, that way priests aren't "ministers of the state" subject to state laws and won't be forced to do gay weddings. However, I don't feel gay activists will be content at stopping here. They will sue for the state to intervene in private religious affairs, and, judging by how things are going, they will likely win (pray the Rosary daily, by the way!)

This will be unprecedented, as far as I know. Would a neo-druid and an atheist who wanted to get married in a Catholic church for aesthetic reasons seek to force the Church? Probably not. Would they win? Probably not. It's the same principle, but homosexuals are the favored victim class today. I could see them winning, indeed.

Go to confession and pray the Rosary!

posted from Bloggeroid

One last HP post: backbiting

Earlier I posted about the sin of backbiting, and I also commented on poor morals of Harry Potter. These two go well together, as the example Harry sets for kids is one of backbiting. He and his friends often denigrate Snape, Malfoy, and Filch among others. They're often wrong, especially about Snape, yet they never learn (and this the reader never taught) the lesson of not backbiting. How unfortunate.

posted from Bloggeroid

Rebels contra Americam

The Confederate flag is in the news a lot lately. Regardless of whether or not you think it's a racist symbol, undeniably it is a symbol of rebellion against these US of A. By definition. So it's never made much sense to me to see the Southern Cross flown at July Fourth parties, as if it is a patriotic symbol.

Really, though, does it matter? The fight over the flag is a diversion. In the absence of a real enemy, or when we are afraid to face the real enemy, we must create phantom enemies. For both sides of the debate, the opposition are nothing more than such a phantom enemy.

posted from Bloggeroid

Post script: calling names

J. K. Rowling may not believe in the power of names, but she does believe in the power of calling names. "Mudbloods" is the magic world's n-word and is highly offensive.

posted from Bloggeroid

Names matter

I've been rereading the Harry Potter books this week. A lot of the excitement over the books had died down, but they're still very popular. At my local libraries, there's always a waiting list of at least 4 to 5 people. The elementary school students at my school still love to read them. The books are not going away.

The controversy surrounding then largely has, so it seems. I've always been a little ambivalent about them. I've read all the books at least twice, and they're fun and exciting. But they definitely reflect a modernist and at times, neopagan, world view. Good children's literature should have positive morals; it doesn't. Hogwarts is unfair. Harry gets away with things he shouldn't. The people who do discipline home are horrible tyrants (eg Snape, the Dursleys).

Furthermore, Dumbledore is an awful headmaster who makes poor hiring decisions. He knows Trelawney isn't a seer (with the single exception), not to mention Quirrell and Lockhart.

One thing that stuck out to me this time is how Dumbledore tells Harry not to fear the name of Voldemort. Seemingly, names only have the power we let them have. Compare this to philosopher Peter Kreeft's commentary on The Lord of the Rings. When the name of Mordor is invoked, all the power of Mordor is present there. Gandalf somewhere says that it is rightly to be feared. Kreeft says that we must learn that we fear evil too little rather than too much. In Tolkien's Catholic world, the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are regularly invoked, causing demons to flee at the power in the name.

It is ironic that in a book where words literally have power that the importance and power of a name should be so explicitly diminished. In my opinion, this is a major flaw, both literarily and philosophically, of the Harry Potter novels.

posted from Bloggeroid

Who are you to judge?

Do you ever get the "who am I to judge?" comment thrown back at you?  Bookmark this article below:

In the end, the pope issued a ringing affirmation of traditional marriage and the importance of children having both a mother and a father. In the current context, this is rather a rather shocking statement and worthy of coverage, even though it is basic, orthodox, 2,000 year-old Christian doctrine.

This is the kind of statement, in other words, that was granted a 250-word, bare-bones news report by the Religion News Service. Yes, imagine an RNS story that short about a topic linked to LGBT rights.

Of course there won't be much mention of this. It doesn't fit the image of the Pope the media wants to project.

posted from Bloggeroid

Didn't you know the Catholic Church is anti-science?

Fr. Lamaitre and some other famous scientist guy.

Oh look! Another article enlightening the world to how backwards and anti-science the Catholic Church is!  This article should be especially shocking to the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, as well as famous historical Catholic scientists like Fr . Georges Lamaitre. It was posted on 18 June 2015, of the Gregorian Calendar, named for Pope Gregory XIII, whose astronomers realized problems with the Julian calendar, particularly with respect to the dating of Easter.  I wonder what Fr. Robert Barron would have to say!

The Blood Stained/less Stars and Bars

So the SCOTUS said that Texas can choose not to have the Confederate Flag on license plates, and that it's not unfairly discriminatory to deny the Sons of Confederate Veterans the "speech."  The question is not whether or not someone should have the right to place the flag on their car.  They can.  The question is not whether or not someone should have the right to yearn for the South to rise again.  They do.  The question is whether or not the State can have the right discretion to refuse to be mixed up with the symbol of the Confederate flag.  It should, and it does.

First Confederate Flag: The Stars and Bars

Second Confederate Flag: The Stainless Banner

Third Confederate Flag: The Blood-Stained Banner

 Those who wave the Confederate flag say that it represents, "Heritage, not hate."  I believe them, or at least their sentiments.  To them, it is not a hate symbol.  It is a way of honoring their ancestors who fought (and often died) during the Civil War, but for "the other side."  Besides, around Texas and other places in the south there are monuments honoring Civil War soldiers.  There are cities, counties, and even mountain ranges honoring Jefferson Davis and others.  The Civil War was not about slavery, but about the right of states' (and the people's) self-determination.  It was no different from the American Revolution, except that the rebels lost.

Yet, historical revisionists notwithstanding, the Confederate flag represents one thing: slavery, namely, white slavery of blacks.  So, despite many white people believing that contemporary racism of whites against blacks is non-existence, many people on the receiving end of that racism don't feel that way. "Heritage, not hate" and "racism is dead" are hard arguments to make against the SCOTUS when this article is juxtaposed in newspapers with the news of a white man killing members of a black church in a southern state in order to start a race war.

Oh, media

I saw this headline online.  The Houston Chronicle apparently wants to turn the pope's encyclical into something political.  Surprise, surprise!  Will it have political implications?  Yes.  The Church is in the world (though not of the world) and so will be involved in politics, but she is a Church, not a Super PAC, and so her sole purpose is glorifying God.  Everything she does is to that end.

Backbiting the bishops

I believe many Catholics, on both ends of the liberal/traditional spectrum, can rightly be accused of backbiting against the pope and bishops.  I know I can.

For me, this often comes in the form of questioning motives.  "The Pope said that because..." or "Cardinal so-and-so said that because he secretly hates the church."  That's imparting an impious motive.  The better response is to assume a pious motive, unless given good and substantial evidence to the contrary, and simply say, "I disagree with him because..." or "He is wrong because..."

Earlier this week, after the leak of Laudato Si, one traditional writer I read criticized the Holy Father (before having admittedly read it, and admitting that the document was unofficial) and said something along the lines of that he doesn't understand what it means to be pope or write an encyclical.

It is acceptable, at times, to criticize even popes and bishops.  It is not OK to insult them, and when we insult them privately, that is known as backbiting.  In America we often think public officials are fair game, and indeed, political ads and talk shows are full of backbiting.  But God's word tell us otherwise.  Solomon writes, "Detract not the king, no not in thy thought; and speak not evil of the rich man in thy private chamber: because even the birds of the air will carry thy voice, and he that hath wings will tell what thou hast said." (Ecclesiastes 10:20)

Backbiting

I recently read this wonderful book, available on Amazon for $0.99, about the sin of the tongue known as backbiting.  This is a sin I've barely given any thought to in my life, but I realized that I have frequently been guilty of this sin.  It is a good thing to read a book like this that spurs me onto confession.  How often do we read books just so we can say, "I agree with that! Amen!"

What is backbiting?  It is the "denigration of a neighbor's reputation by means of secret words."  Specifically, there are 8 ways someone can backbite:

1. When a person "imputes things against his neighbor that never happened, or when he adds tot he truth imaginary circumstances that constitutions either a lie or detraction."
2. "When he brings a hidden or unknown fault to light."
3. "When he exaggerates a crime, be it true, or false."
4. When he insinuates an impious or evil motive.
5. By spreading or creating rumors.
6. By means of a simple gesture such as raising an eyebrow or shaking the head.
7. By saying, "nothing about the integrity or morals of his neighbor, especially when he is questioned about them or when his neighbor is accused of some crime."
8. By being publicly blamed for something he is guilty of, but calling his accuser a liar.

Furthermore, we are guilty of backbiting if we listen to the backbiters and allow them to carry on with their backbiting.  We should not give other's a forum for their poison.  

"The passion of this evil has so infested the world that people who have totally renounced other vices still fall into this one.  One might say it is the last trap the devil sets for them." - St. Jerome

It cleans not your soul

My favorite bit of "fine print" I've ever seen was in a commercial several years ago for Orbit gum that involved Snoop Dogg going to Hell.  After cleaning his mouth with Orbit, he went to Heaven.  The fine print said,

Dramatization.  Orbit gum will not get you into Heaven.

Clearly, someone at the advertising agency either had a sense of humor, was very pious, or was superstitious.  I can imagine some designer saying, "I don't want to be responsible before God for that one person who thought Orbit was his ticket to Heaven!"

Most fine print is designed to limit legal liability.  There is no legal liability here, unless someone was afraid of King Hamlet's ghost suing for vengeance.

I suppose it would be too much to ask for the fine print to say, "Dramatization.  Only Jesus Christ will get you into Heaven."  At least we know that Orbit gum is not the Way, the Truth, and the Life.