Family

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What Happens When You Take God Out of the Reproductive Process?

If you reduce the human right to life to a mere positive right, granted by human law, then its relationship to God and the natural law disappears.

Then the whole reproductive process becomes subject to the “will of the people.” Therefore marriage becomes optional. Fornication and concubinage become acceptable. Unnatural sex acts become legitimate. Divorce and remarriage is approved. Bestiality and pedophilia could also be justified.

Artificial birth control becomes moral, since acts conducive to reproduction are subject to the will of the people, namely the onanistic couple. Abortion, even up to the very day of giving birth, becomes a right of the woman.

By taking God out of the “chain” of reproduction and rearing of children, the right to life of human beings becomes subject to the will of the people, that is, subject to human laws which can change with time as man “evolves.”

So murder could be justified, even mass murder. We are horrified by the thought of a Hitler, a Stalin, or a Mao slaughtering millions of people. But if these peo-ples’ right to live is subject to the State and not to God, then why not? So just as farmers might kill millions of chickens because of bird flu, or cremate millions of cattle because of hoof and mouth disease, so the reduction of the human right to life to merely human law logically results in mass murder.

Consequently, our United States has become a mass-murdering nation based on the logic which I have just described, namely the removal of God from the chain of the reproductive process, starting with matrimony, then the proper use of sex, then the gestation of the child, birth, upbringing, and finally maturity. If you remove God from even one step, one link, from this chain, then, like a house of cards, the entire thing falls apart. What we are left is that our lives are subject to the “will of the people.”

Ask the millions who died in the twentieth century genocides how they feel about this. Ask the sixty mil-lion+ babies who have been murdered in their mothers’ wombs since 1973.

The God-given natural chain, therefore, is this: matrimony—sexual intercourse—conception—development in the womb—birth—upbringing in a stable home—maturity—natural death. All these things are under the direct control of God. Remove God from one of them, and it all falls apart.

The godless chain is this: fornication, concubinage, sodomitic marriage—artificial birth control—abortion—killing the baby after birth—divorce and remarriage—murder—suicide—euthanasia—school shootings—mass murder—genocide.

Mr. Trump thinks that abortions should be permitted up to fifteen weeks. To permit abortion even at one minute after conception, however, is to destroy all of the logic of forbidding it at any time. Who are politicians to make these decisions of when you can abort your baby? The leftists know this logic. It plays right into their blood-stained hands.

Can Novus Ordo Baptisms be Trusted as Valid?

Why Do Not the Clergy of Saint Gertrude the Great

Investigate the Validity of Novus Ordo Baptisms?

Recently Father Lehtoranta, a priest of the clergy of Saint Gertrude the Great [SGG] in West Chester, Ohio, wrote an article criticizing the position of the Roman Catholic Institute [RCI] regarding Novus Ordo Baptisms. Since the matter is somewhat complicated, I will present our response in a question and answer format.

Father Lehtoranta’s assertions are essentially two: (1) SGG denies that there is prudent doubt  concerning the validity of Novus Ordo Baptisms; instead they opt to presume their validity until they are proved doubtful or invalid by positive evidence; (2) the doubts which the RCI alleges concerning Novus Ordo Baptisms are negative doubts, “baseless suspicions and scruples,”, “utterly imprudent and void,” and without foundation.

I will respond to both of these assertions.

Continue reading →
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Plenty to Mourn About

We read recently about a tragic event in Nashville, Tennessee, in which a transgender person killed six people in a Presbyterian school.

From the note that was left, part of the motive was suicide. It means that this person was severely depressed over a long period of time (for the act was planned months in advance).

Continue reading →
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The Reason Why America Became Decadent

What happened? How did this country decay? How, in one person’s lifetime, did America descend from being a nation, if not Catholic, at least one which abided by the natural law in most cases, which had a sane and decent culture and way of life, and an abhorrence of socialism and communism?

There are a number of reasons for this, but the main reason lies within its own principles.

Continue reading →
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Salvation Through Piety Alone

Everyone is familiar with Luther’s heretical teaching known as salvation through faith alone. This means that the single act which is necessary for salvation is faith, which for him, and for protestants in general, means trust in God. For Catholics faith means the assent of the intellect, by means of a supernatural virtue infused by God, to the truths revealed by God and proposed as such by the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore for Luther, and for those who follow him, sins do not count against you in the order of salvation. There is no need to mortify yourself. No need to do penance. Luther said: “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly…No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day” [1]

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Ratzinger blames the sex abuse by priests on the 1960’s sexual revolution

Not our fault!

In a recent letter commenting on clerical sex abuse, Ratzinger said that the cause of it was the sexual revolution of the 1960’s.

This is a stunning statement. Why? Because it is the mission and purpose of the Church to resist moral corruption, and especially to protect the clergy from it. The clergy should practice mortification of their sexual passions, devoted as they are — and canonically obliged — to celibacy and perfect chastity. One could just as easily say: “The monks are all fat because of the eating revolution.” Are they not supposed to practice mortification? It would be the equivalent of saying that the Titanic sank because there was an iceberg in front of it. The reality is that the Titanic sank because the crew was recklessly speeding at 22 knots (at that time very fast for an ocean liner) through “Iceberg Alley” in the springtime when icebergs are most commonly seen. The crew had also committed gross negligence in ignoring the warnings of ice by other ships.

Continue reading →
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The Recent Abortion Laws

There has been a good deal of outrage recently about the very liberalized abortion laws which were passed in New York and Virginia, permitting the child to be murdered even as it is in the process of being born. In Virginia the governor said that, even if the child survived the abortion, the parents and the abortionist “would have a discussion,” implying very clearly that if the parents did not want the child, the abortionist would kill it.

I do not understand the outrage, since all of the logic for performing the heinous crime has been with us since Roe vs. Wade in 1973. In fact, it has been with us since the legalization of artificial contraception.

The Catholic doctrine is that sexual intercourse has a single purpose, which is the procreation of a human being. Notice that the word is procreation and not creation, since the prefix pro means that the parents are accomplishing the creation of a child for God. This means that the parents are given a role in the production of a human being, in which they provide the flesh, whereas God provides the immortal soul. The result is a human being, who has, on the one hand, a body, like that of the animals, but on the other hand, an immaterial and immortal soul, like the angels. This soul is what makes human beings different from animals, possessing as it does an intellect and will. These faculties enable the soul to know immaterial things, and to freely choose to do good things. Animals choose their good things by being programmed by God through instinct, and their choices are not free.

Hence the Catholic doctrine sees the child as primarily and essentially the work of God the Creator, and as something which is rightfully God’s. The parents have a merely vicarious role in the order of creation, permitted as they are to provide the material part of the child. Consequently, the entire reproductive process is under God’s direct control, and must be ordered according to God’s law, which is the natural law.

God the Creator has attached pleasure to the reproductive act in order that human beings be motivated to propagate the human race. The pleasure is therefore something entirely subject to the use of sexual activity according to the rules of nature.

Pope Pius XI

Pope Pius XI, in his encyclical Casti Connubii, said that the parents act “as ministers, as it were, of the Divine Omnipotence.”

Listen to the same pope in the same encyclical:

Since, therefore, openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition some recently have judged it possible solemnly to declare another doctrine regarding this question, the Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense of the integrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain, raises her voice in token of her divine ambassadorship and through Our mouth proclaims anew: any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.

To sum up: (1) Sexual intercourse is is essentially ordered to reproduction; (2) the pleasure associated with it is essentially ordered to reproduction, and exists only to promote reproduction; (3) the entire reproductive act, from conception to birth, is completely under the control of God, and must be carried out in accordance with the natural law; (4) the child, from conception to birth, is God’s child primarily, and continues to be God’s child forever; (5) The parents have a merely vicarious role in the creation of a child inasmuch as God permits them to partake in His creative process; (6) it is therefore the role of the parents to conceive according to nature, and to protect the unborn child until birth, and thereafter to rear the child both in regard to his or her spiritual needs and temporal needs.

The atheistic/materialistic/secularistic/evolutionistic view is the complete opposite. Human beings are essentially animals, having evolved from gorillas or gorilla-like animals. They have no immaterial or immortal souls. Their intellects and free wills are functions of their material brains. There is no judgment after death, no reward for virtue, and no punishment for moral depravity. Like animals, human beings exist to have pleasure, and the most pleasurable thing is sex. Reproduction is a side effect of the pleasurable sex act. The conception and bearing of children is completely under the control of the woman, who bears a child as a part of her own body. It is entirely her possession and she makes all the decisions concerning its conception, and its survival after conception.

So it is evident that contraception is at bottom the cause of abortion. If reproduction is entirely under the control of the woman, and if we are merely animals, then what is the harm in terminating the life of the child, either through contraception or by abortion? Why should there be any limit on the time of abortion? Indeed, what stops a mother, in this macabre logic, from ordering the death of her child even when it has exited the womb, and has become physically independent from her? How would it differ from putting a litter of unwanted puppies to death?

The only reason why some are horrified by these new abortion laws in New York and Virginia is that a late term abortion seems more grotesque and monstrous. The steely liberal logic, however, puts its blessing upon it.

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Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

Youcat-243x300

The Youcat (“youth catechism”) published under Ratzinger’s non-papacy. 

In all three countries, Ireland, Argentina, and Poland, the guilt for this defection from Catholic morals (see my previous post) must be placed upon the Novus Ordo clergy. For of all the countries of the world these three are among the most predominantly Catholic, and the Catholic clergy were in a perfect position to influence the population away from these moral atrocities. Continue reading →

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Shame. Shame. Shame.

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“Catholic Ireland”

Shame on Ireland. While strolling through Rome last month, Bishop Selway and I met an Irish lady who asked us to pray for Ireland, because in a few days (May 25th) there would be a referendum concerning abortion.

Ironically the woman was a Protestant, although she was from Galway, which is in the Republic of Ireland, nearly entirely Catholic.

A staggering 66.4% of the Irish, nearly all Catholics, voted in favor of legalizing the murder of innocent babies. The voting followed lines of age: those against were mostly from the older generation; those in favor mostly from the younger generation. My Irish grandfather must be turning in his grave to think that his race would have voted for the legalization of such a heinous crime. If he were alive I could just imagine what he would say, perhaps not entirely repeatable.

Shame on Argentina. The Congress of Argentina, another nearly entirely Catholic country, recently voted to permit abortions to take place up to fourteen weeks of pregnancy.

Shame on Poland. Yet another nearly completely Catholic country, Poland, with deep roots of Catholicism and many well-known saints to its name, recently permitted a “gay pride” parade in Warsaw.

This parade, entirely legal, came only a few months after Poland’s government declared that Christ was the King of Poland.

King of Poland? To proclaim Christ as King of your country, and at the same time to permit sodomites to parade in your capital to show off their pride in their sexual perversions is an act of the grossest hypocrisy. It is pure pharisaism, that is, to pretend piety and devotion on the outside, but to be corrupt interiorly.

It is the same thing as to hang a picture of Christ the King in your home, and then to spit upon it.

Our Lord had very hard words for the Pharisees. The holy Gospel is filled with these hard words, showing a particular disgust that Our Lord had for those who would give God fine words on the outside, but love sin on the inside. In Saint Matthew Our Lord addresses these hypocrites in this way: “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones, and of all filthiness.” (Matthew XXIII: 27)

Poland has placed a crown of thorns upon the head of their King.