Romney looks more like a leader

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20120729/DA0AQGP80.html

On the sexualization of our children

A dear friend of mine from California and I had a long discussion on the sexualization of children. The entire society of the West has turned a horrible corner into darkness regarding children and sex.

The EU and some Muslim countries want to lower the age of sexual consent to twelve. Some groups in the States have been politically working on this as well. But the most obvious area of sexualization is in the clothing industry. In America and in England for several years now, clothes which would have been termed "slutty" or "sexy" are being manufactured and sold to very young girls, as early as six.

Even clothes of older women, and my friend is seventy but extremely attractive, are now immodest and sexy.

What has happened is that those in charge of fashion have an agenda-sorry, this is true. If one looks at the pushing of the limits on clot'hing and tries to find modest fashions in most ordinary stores, one can be shocked Victoria Secrets are no longer secret and have sifted down to WalMart and higher end stores.

I gave up shopping at some stores years ago and could give a list of those which push sexy, immodest and trollops' clothes for all ages of women.

Many of my friends shop at Talbots, as the clothes there tend to be modest and not provocative.

But, mothers are to blame for how their girls dress.      

We Catholic women need to stop the sexualization of our children and grandchildren. Please pay attention. Pray to Mary Our Mother and Our Queen.

On the Stages of Perfection and a Warning.

Before I continue with the definitions of virtues and sins, it is very important that I re-iterate both the warnings of St. John of the Cross and Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange concerning the stages of growth in holiness towards perfection.

Knowing that God has called all of us to perfection, not merely chosen, obvious saints, Garrigou-Lagrange warns of becoming complacent, or falling into self-deceit regarding where one is in the levels of growth,

Now, we must work with the Holy Trinity in this walk, but we must not be deceived into thinking we are holier than we are.

Here are some of the points to remember:

1) Find a good confessor and/or spiritual director who understands and preferably has Thomistic, Scholastic background. In my limited experience, post-Vatican II trained priests without Scholastic understanding of sin and virtue cannot help one grow. The tendency too often is for priests to have lower expectations for holiness for the laity. This is not the believe of Garrigou-Lagrange.

2) Be absolutely honest with all sins, failings and weaknesses. Confessing weaknesses as well as sins helps a priest understand one better. If there are areas of healing which are necessary, share those in context of sinful behaviors.

3) If one's memory is not good, write down both sins and virtues combatting those sins. This can be done after the daily examination of conscience. I find mornings are better than evenings for this. But, one can do an examen in the evening.

4) Be honest about going backwards. St. John of the Cross and others refer to "Generous Souls", who do not avoid pain and are willing to be realistic about sin and weaknesses. If one avoids the Purgative Stage, for example, one will stay in that place until God is finished working.

5) Realize that we all have a duty to the Church to pursue perfection. No one has the real power of the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit without the life of the virtues. We cannot kid ourselves. The Holy Spirit can only work in power through a person who is humble, has purity of heart and a deep selflessness.

The rewards include a great intimacy with God, Christ and the Holy Spirit.

As always, I warn all against private revelations not approved. I think that the great saints, such as St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila have enough to say to us to keep us busy for a lifetime.

Also, be careful of extremes, which can indicate pride. My own namesake, St. Rose of Lima, did extreme things, but is a one-off type of girl. We cannot harm ourselves or not be able to meet the duties of the day in our pursuit of holiness. God bless you all.

Meditating on the Feeding of the Five Thousand

I am thinking today of the reading from Sunday on the Loaves and the Fishes. Apparently, there are still priests who insist it was just people being generous with what they had with them, instead of the Eucharistic miracle so clearly noted by St. John.

St. John was in exile when he wrote the Gospel. He had a keen mind and a pure heart. He was the apostle closest to Jesus and could say easily, that Christ had already decided He would create a miracle.

For those who believe in the Eucharist, this event is a prophecy, a pointing to the great miracle which occurs daily in every country of the world across the globe. This miracle of bread and wine becoming the Body and Blood of Christ reenacts the Passion and Death of Our Lord on Calvary.

I wonder it the priests who do not believe in the Feeding of the Five Thousand are also doubting, or do not believe in the True Presence?

Posts, comments and a few notes....

I have been astounded at the negative and personally insulting comments on the subject of femininity. I find this totally ironic, that a subject on Catholic culture, which has been obviously a problem in modern times, should cause such virulent reactions. I am most surprised at my sisters in Christ who are so angry. Why anger?

I would like to address a few points.

1) As on all blogs, this is my blog with both my opinions and Catholic teaching. When I give Catholic teaching, I use sources and quote texts. That should be clear to most readers. All blogs are similar and if one does not like a certain blogger, there are many others to look at on the Net.

2) Ad hominem arguments are never allowed to be printed. If one attacks the Pope, a teacher, or me, your comment goes into the bin. One needs to learn how to argue and not merely vent. I taught logic for years, as well as argumentation and some comments get an "F" grade. Follow the arguments and do not interject your own off the subject or use personal attack.

3) Why women are so upset at the clothing and modesty posts is really interesting to me. I am going to think about this fact a bit more.

4) Why some people keep referring to before and after Vatican II is also a mystery. Modesty is timeless, and acting life a woman and looking like a woman is timeless. Vatican II has nothing to do with how women dress. Sin does. There were books on modesty before Vatican II. They were in my classrooms at school and in my mother's classrooms. This is not a new topic in Catholic education or culture, but it is more pressing.

5) Men do not cause women to behave badly and women do not cause men to behave badly. We are all responsible for our own behavior.

6) I write for Catholics and those interested in Catholicism and for Christians who are open to hearing a Catholic point of view. I do not write for the entire world. Look at the title of the blog-A Traditional Catholic Blog. If one does not want a traditional Catholic viewpoint, I am sure there are hundreds of liberal blogs one can follow. Why waste my time and yours trying to change the blog?

7) I am a word-smith. I choose my words carefully. If one does not like a word, then give me a good argument on the word choice, not some rant about your ideology.

8) Catholic culture is fast disappearing. If one has never experienced it, I am sorry. I am trying to revive concepts which were taken for granted a mere 40 years ago. If young people do not believe that women wore hats or veils and dressed up for Mass, or that men also dressed up, you only have to look at old photos online of Mass attendance. I do not make things up.

9) Even when I was in graduate school in the early 1980s, most students wore skirts to Mass. Most girls dressed up. Where and when the rot set in I am not sure.

10) Androgyny is an evil ploy of the devil to fight the fact that God created us male and female. Satan hates the family structure, the Church, real men and real women. Satan hates Beauty, Who is God. Satan has created the Cult of the Ugly and androgyny. That can be a subject of another post here.

On Pride, Eustace and Peter Pan Men

It is in adversity that we are released from pride. However, Garrigou-Lagrange also tells us that we need to be healed of pride. But, he is not easy on us. The healing takes place in the adversity, in the contradictions.

Too many people fall for pop psychology which basically tells us we should go out and buy chocolate, or even sin in order to find healing. I sometimes think the mad dash for holidays and vacations for which western people spend millions of money each year is a misplaced seeking for healing and refreshment which can happen in one's own home.

Healing of the spiritual life is not a 20th century invention. The Catholic Church, especially in the Thomistic, Scholastic tradition has built upon the Scripture passage, Jeremiah 3:22. When I first read this passage many years ago, I almost jumped out of my seat at university. I realized that I had to cooperate with God as to healing my sins. Return, you rebellious children, and I will heal your rebellions. Behold we come to thee: for thou art the Lord our God.


This is why Confession is such a great sacrament and if possible, we should go weekly. God can heal us then.


So, the purification IS the healing. This concept may be earth-shaking to many people. We think in our modern era that healing is "warm fuzzies". No, healing is like the skinning of the dragon's layers in C. S. Lewis' The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (I have read the book, but not seen the new movie). Eustace must be healed of his horrible character defects learned and formed in a liberal family and liberal school environment. Lewis was prophesying future generations of awful kids growing into awful self-centered adults, who cannot see their own sin of pride.

We really hate Eustace and cannot stand his complete insensitivity to the needs of others. He is a dragon inside as well as outside. Without purification, Eustace would have grown up as another Peter Pan man, a theme on this blog. He would have been horribly without courage and self-less-ness. He would have remained a dragon within, only wanting to sit on gold with poisonous breath and deceitful eyes.

Let us hope we can all be so healed and repentant, allowing God to purify us.

Again on Pride and Its Remedy

Catherine of Siena is quoted by Garrigou-Lagrange. She states, " O cursed pride, based on self-love, how hast thou blinded the eye of their intellect, that while they seem to love themselves and be tender to themselves, they are in truth cruel. . . . They are really in the greatest poverty and misery, for they are deprived of the riches of virtue and have fallen from the heights of grace into the depths of mortal sin. They seem to see, but are blind for they know neither themselves nor Me." 


We must be hard on ourselves. So what are the virtues which remedy pride?


The Dominican tells us this:...a profound purification is needed. That which we impose on ourselves is not sufficient; there must be a passive purification by the light of the gifts of the Holy Ghost, which causes the bandage of pride to fall away, opens our eyes, shows us the depth of frailty and wretchedness that exists in us, the utility of adversity and. humiliation, and finally makes us say to the Lord: "It is good for me that Thou hast humbled me, that I may learn Thy justifications." (29) "It is good for us sometimes to suffer contradictions, and to allow people to think ill of us. . . . These are often helps to humility, and rid us of vainglory." (30) It is in adversity that we can learn what we really are and what great need we have of God's help: "What doth he know, that hath not been tried?" (31)
After this purification, pride and its effects will gradually be felt less. A person, instead of letting himself fall into jealousy toward those who have more natural or supernatural qualities, tells himself then that, as St. Paul remarks, the hand ought not be jealous of the eye, but, on the contrary, it should be happy because it benefits from what the eye sees. The same is true in the mystical body of Christ; far from becoming jealous, souls ought to enjoy in a holy manner the qualities they find in their neighbor. Though they do not possess them themselves, they benefit by them. They should rejoice over everything that cooperates in the glory of God and the good of souls. When this is the case, the bandage of pride falls away and the soul's gaze recovers its simplicity and penetration, which make it enter little by little into the inner life of God.

How hard this is to be contradicted. How hard it is not to really care what others think of us, and we must ask God to purify us. The remedy is thinking on God and realizing that all we have is from Him-all.


The remedy is the opposite of what the modern world tells us.


The remedy for pride is to tell ourselves that of ourselves we are not, that we have been created out of nothing by the gratuitous love of God, who continues freely to preserve us in existence; otherwise we would return to nothingness. And if grace is in us, it is because Jesus Christ redeemed us by His blood.


The remedy for pride is also to tell ourselves that there is in us something inferior to nothingness itself: the disorder of sin and its effects. As sinners, we deserve scorn and all humiliations; the saints have thought so, and they certainly judged better than we.
  
If we feel the sting of honest criticism, we are too proud. If we dislike people speaking against us, even unfairly, we are too proud. Better that I am thought less and not considered, than to be living in pride.


St. Catherine, pray for us.

A test...

The Feeding of the Five Thousand

John 6: 1 - 15

---

After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiber'i-as.2 And a multitude followed him, because they saw the signs which he did on those who were diseased.3 Jesus went up on the mountain, and there sat down with his disciples.4 Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a multitude was coming to him, Jesus said to Philip, "How are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?"6 This he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.7 Philip answered him, "Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little."8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him,9 "There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?"10 Jesus said, "Make the people sit down." Now there was much grass in the place; so the men sat down, in number about five thousand.11 Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted.12 And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, "Gather up the fragments left over, that nothing may be lost."13 So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten.14 When the people saw the sign which he had done, they said, "This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!"15 Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

This is a personal passage for me and has been since 1972. What I heard for the first time in Sunday Mass was the fact that Christ was testing the apostles. As the priest said, they were managing the feeding as if they were company managers-how much money do we have, how much do we need, what about this, what about that?

We must stop and trust in Providence for all things. All.

Thought on Perfection

See how the perfection of the Cross is folly in the eyes of the world precisely because it embraces what is abhorrent to human nature. It loves correction and submits to it; it not only takes pleasure in being corrected, but has no greater pleasure than in being reproved and corrected for faults and failings. They will arrive at the highest degree of perfection.

 St. Francis de Sales

God, give us the grace to have joy in correction. Give us patience and purity of heart. Help us to desire correction. Help us to desire community and relationship and open the doors for this to happen.

The Sin of Pride and Connected Sins

Continuing the discussion on Garrigou-Lagrange, one can see the definitions of sin clearly in his book. Some readers have asked me to define some of these sins, so  I shall continue to do so. The opposing virtue which combats the sin is extremely important. Before that, I want to give some reasons why we must intellectually understand sin and virtue.

Father Ripperger gave a great series of talks years ago, which may be online. He was in the Midwest at the time and some of my seminarian friends have heard him as well. One of the things he stressed over and over was that only the perfect see God and that we all must cooperate with God in our intellect, wills, appetites and all our faculties. I remember years ago a young person telling me that it was "too hard" to be a Catholic. He had a good point. But, one can chose the narrow way or the wide way.

We have to perfect our faculties. We cannot change our human nature. Father Ripperger pointed this out. Who we are, he stated, are adopted children of God and heirs of heaven. We can only be just in Christ. This is a paraphrase from one of his talks:


If God see Himself in you, He sees our Love for Him. He love us in and as our Nature, But...to please God is more..


Ripperger said that all the saints go through the same spiritual stages of the spiritual life. We cannot skip any stages.

Now, I am going to share one of the biggest points he made which is why I am using Garrigou-Lagrange. Ripperger notes that many theologians lost their faith when spirituality dissolved into feelings. 

I cannot stress this enough. In order to participate in the Indwelling of the Holy Trinity, Who comes to us in Baptism and Confirmation, we must be aware that grace builds on what God has given us in nature. We must use our faith and our reason, allowing grace to infuse our minds.

This is why I write this blog. This is why I started writing in 2007.


Now back to the Great Garrigou-Lagrange.

I could write on pride for a year and a day and not finish all the ins and outs of this sin. It is the primal sin.

For us, it could mean thinking we are better and smarter than anyone else. It could mean that we want to micro-manage our lives and those of others. It would mean that we speak down to others, or think evil of them when there is no evil there.

In another post, I mentioned that pride leads to other sins: vainglory, lying, curiosity, arrogance, presumption, rebellion, and failure to recognize one's faults.

This last one is why we need to be in community and why we need to be in relationship with others.

In slang, some of us say "Oh, she is full of herself". That is the person who has given in to the list of sins above. One of the sins under pride according to St. Bernard, to whom we owe the above list, is singularity.

Singularity is the sin of wanting to be the odd person out all the time. This sin is like purposeful eccentricity.  We may even think we are unusual, and not like others. This is distinctly pride.

That we are like all our brothers and sisters is true and that we are unique is true. But to purposefully try and be different for the sake of difference is pride. Garrigou-Lagrange says that pride perverts judgement, as it colors the way we see things.

To be continued...

Article from The Weekly Standard-Pelosi is losing it....

Daniel Halper has called attention to Nancy Pelosi's remarkable
 interview with Al Hunt on the topic of Barack Obama and Israel.
 I'd note one comment in particular:
 Pelosi's claim that President Obama "has been there [Israel]
 over and over again."

Wow. I'm involved with the Emergency Committee for Israel.
 We have an ad up in several states calling attention to the fact
 that President Obama, who's been quite the world traveler,
 has never visited Israel as president. Did we make a terrible mistake?
 Were we unjust to President Obama? Do we have to pull down the ad?

No, no, and no. Contrary to Pelosi's apparent claim, President Obama
 hasn't been to Israel over and over again. He's never been as president,
 which is certainly what Pelosi implied. Well, maybe he visited Israel
 "over and over" before becoming president, and that's what Pelosi meant to say?
 No. When he was senator, Obama went on two trips to Israel,
 once with several other freshmen members of Congress, and
 then as a presidential candidate. And he'd never been interested
 enough in Israel to visit as a private citizen. So much for the notion
 that Obama's been "over and over again." 

So Pelosi is wrong, and the Emergency Committee is right.
 But Pelosi's resort to a whopper to try to reassure pro-Israel 
voters does suggest how worried Democrats must be about 
the reaction to Obama's attempt to create distance 
between his administration and Israel, as Obama's Israel policy gets more scrutiny.

Article by William Kristol found here.

Day for Life

Our Lady of Walsingham Ordinariate supports the English Dioceses which have a Day of Life today and it is not too late to say a rosary or visit a Church and pray for life issues. I apologize for the lateness of this message, but the e-mail came late. I encourage all my Ordinariate friends to join in this day of prayer. Humanae Vitae is not an option.

Day for Life is the day in the Church’s year dedicated to celebrating

and upholding the dignity of human life.

The Church teaches that life should be protected and nurtured from conception

 to natural death.

This year's Day for Life falls on 29 July 2012. 

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor once wrote that we need to build

"an ethos of life that protects persons from womb to tomb - especially the most vulnerable". 

Consequently, the Catholic community in England and Wales gathers on the last Sunday

 in July every year to pray for all who care for and nurture life from its

 very beginnings and growth to its final years. We also pray for legislators and

 those in authority that they respect and protect human life in all its stages.

On Cromwell and Cheesecake

There is a dessert company named Gü, which has this list on a package of miniature cheesecake thingies and all over the website; sounds like a to-do list of a particularly narcissistic 15 year-old. I do not think I shall buy these again.

Pleasure is everything
Give in to happiness
Reject propriety; embrace variety
Prudence is sooo 1658
Life is fleeting; clasp it hard with both hands
Seek delight
Trust your impulses
Ordinary is pointless
Break free.

Even though the lemon curd was above average, after typing out the list, I defiantly will not be buying anything of this brand again. Who wants the mix of Post-post-Modernist philosophy and neo-paganism on the back of one's dessert box? Yuck.

1658 was the year Oliver Cromwell died. So, I suppose the reference is to Puritanism and the stringent rules of the Protectorate. However, as a Catholic, my people were never bound by such silly no-cheesecake rules. I mean, really....

JonathanCatholic Post on The Protector Male

In my last post, I talked of the importance of culture and religion in developing men, the modern West as to a system encouraging the development of Peter Pans, and the Islamic system as to a system that prompts the development of men into Predators. Now, however, I would like to focus on the positive male characteristic: the Protector. As Supertradmum has noted often, the Protector is rare in our world today. There are very few of this type of men left, and it is a duty for all men, I feel, to grow by the grace of God into a Protector and bring good to the world. I had the wonderful opportunity in my life of knowing a Protector, and it is from this experience that I would like to flesh out an image of this type of man, as a goal to work toward, as it is for me, or as a filter to discern other men by.

The man that I knew and loved is my great-uncle, now quite elderly. I have not had many years with him, but I still have gotten quite the impression of him, and when I was a child my mother would tell me stories about him. He grew up in a good, Christian home, of Norwegian descent and in a small town. Born of two very devout Christians, he was raised with the values of hard work, duty, virtue, honor, and integrity. He lived them out throughout his life, marrying and having three children, and raising them to love God and neighbor. All three model him to this day, and are good people with their own children, and grandchildren. He is the type of man who always worked hard and reaped the benefit of this work by always having more than enough money for a comfortable life. He is the type of man who would walk up to a family member he hadn’t seen in many years, and say to him, “I expect great things of you,” as he did for me when I was young. He is the type of man who has shepherded and been the strength of his wife for twelve and going on thirteen years, through the throes of Alzheimers, visiting her every day to feed her, pray with her, and be with her. He is the type of man who spontaneously and generously gives money to family and friends for a meal or for ice cream, as he did with his young nieces and nephews, and would help anyone in need at any time. He is to this day a pillar and a foundation of his family, a patriarch, and an intercessor, living to see his great-grandchildren growing strong in Christ and supporting generations of people under him like rings on such a great family tree. This is my dream, and this is the type of life that is well-lived as a man. He isn’t perfect, but he models the devout Christian life of a Protector, filled with virtue and duty. He is an inspiration to me, and hopefully he is to you as well, as we all find our way to more fully fit, as a key in a lock, into that place in Christ’s Sacred Heart carved out for us from eternity. JonathanCatholic

Olympic disgust again

Olympic disgust 1,999. I may give this up. Even Mr. Bean seemed trite and lame. The Queen was obviously bored.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hK3ZHgHyRLFGgFylJyPxUfH0kOtg?docId=CNG.2249ee77cd214cd016f6cfc488472e87.2a1

Many posts today.

On priests, schools and Tony Blair from "The Catholic Herald"

Item one: priests as employees

Last week in The Catholic Herald, the government of Great Britain decided that priests were employees of the bishops. This has horrible repercussions in many areas of Catholic Church life. This means a diocese is responsible for all the actions of their priests. I disagree with this. Each priest should be responsible, and be seen as an "independent, self-employed person." This ruling complicates tax laws, and of course, relates to the sex scandals.

My home diocese was brilliant in 1910 creating a situation where every parish was a legal, independent charity, separate from the diocese. Personally, as a small business and small charity supporter, I think this is a much better arrangement. The dioceses are too big and too unrelated to what happens on the ground for this type of law. Is the general or the entire military responsible legally for one soldier or naval officer?


Item Two: suppression of schools

This week, in the same newspaper, the government stressed that free Catholic schools, (which I am against on principle that state curriculum is not Catholic curriculum), must allow as many as 50% non-Catholics in these schools. When will the British stop giving into the government on education and abandon these truly non-Catholic Catholic schools? A Catholic ethos cannot be maintained under these circumstances. This rule means that the schools MUST accept these quotas, turning away Catholic parents who want to send their children to a Catholic school.

It is obvious that this government is against Catholic education, as this law, and the secular curriculum forced on the schools undermines Catholic teaching and culture.

Wake up, British Catholics, and take matters into your own hands.

Item three: the Blairs strike again. (And, I cannot get this extra enter line out!)


In the same issue, July 27th, yet another article on Tony Blair reveals, (as if we did not know), that he is not a practicing Catholic. In fact, did you know that we faithful who follow the teachings of the Church regarding abortion, contraception, and homosexuality are "doctrinal ideologues"? Tony and Cherie should just be quiet. They make theological statements and doctrinal statements revealing not only their ignorance, but their arrogance. See my earlier article on Cherie. What a couple...not good advertisers for the Catholic Church. 

They cause scandal.

On August First, All American Businesses Come Under the Obamacare Death Mandate in America

But, there is good news. Here is an article from the ever excellent LifeSiteNews online. By the way, if Obamacare stays as a law, potentially thousands of Catholics who do not want to support contraception and abortion for girls as early as twelve and women, will lose their businesses, creating an underclass of Catholic poor. This may be what POTUS wants in his war against Catholicism. Do not kid yourself. This is war, and as the Church Militant, we must fight in this war.
By Ben Johnson of LSN

DENVER, July 27, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) –  A federal judge has given a Catholic family business a temporary injunction against the HHS mandate, exempting that family from providing no-cost contraception, sterilization, or abortifacient medicines in its employees’ health care plans.

The Newlands, a Catholic family, argued that the controversial provision of the Affordable Care Act violated their First Amendment rights by forcing them to purchase something that violates their consciences. 

Attorneys for the Obama administration justified the mandate as part of the fight for sexual equality, arguing it was a necessary part of “improving the health of women and children…so that women who choose to do so can be part of the workforce on an equal playing field with men.”

But Senior Judge John L. Kane of the U.S. District of Colorado ruled on Friday that the government’s interests, which he called into question, “are countered, and indeed outweighed, by the public interest in the free exercise of religion.” 

Judge Kane ruled that the plaintiffs could prevail on the grounds of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act alone. That law states the government may not “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless it is to further “a compelling governmental interest” and it uses “the least restrictive means” possible to implement the law.

Judge Kane, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Jimmy Carter in 1977, instructed the Obama administration it must “demonstrate that there are no feasible less-restrictive alternatives.”

“The government need not tilt at windmills; it need only refute alternatives proposed by Plaintiffs,” he wrote in his decision.

He declined to comment on the ADF’s constitutional arguments altogether.

The Newlands own Hercules Industries, a heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) manufacturer founded in 1962.  The Denver-based HVAC company now employs 265 people, and their business practices reflect their Catholic beliefs. 

“The cost of freedom for this family could be millions of dollars per year in fines that will cripple their business if the Obama administration ultimately has its way,” said Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly “Alliance Defense Fund”) Legal Counsel Matt Bowman, who represented the family inNewland v. Sebelius. 

It is significant that Hercules Industries is a private employer. This winter the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate narrowly voted down the Blunt Amendment, which would have respected the religious liberties of private business owners.

“Religious liberty goes far beyond merely the ‘freedom of worship’ - an alarmingly narrow term the Obama administration has adopted - to include peacefully living out your faith in every area of life,” said Ken Klukowski, director of the Family Research Council’s Center for Religious Liberty, in a statement e-mailed to LifeSiteNews.com. “For private business owners, that includes their right to showcase their faith through their business policies.” 

Pro-family leaders are happy at the temporary victory but hope the infringement on religious freedom will be rolled back, by the court or by law after the November election.

“For now, the family will not be forced to violate their religious beliefs as demanded by President Obama’s abortion drug and contraceptive mandate,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. “While this ruling is a victory, it is limited to the Newland family, which underscores why Congress must act soon to protect all families.”

Priest shortage...

From DICI

A survey conducted in the diocese of Moulins the 1st and 2 October 2011, at 92 Masses on Saturday evening and Sunday shows that 71% of worshipers are women, 60% are over 60 years, and that the lack of priestly ordinations should lead to an impressive drop in the number of priests in the coming years: they would soon be more than a fortnight only to exercise a pastoral ministry.
With these alarming statistics, there are other alarming predictions: 500,000 euros deficit in 2015, a decrease of the faithful from 40 to 50% in the next 15 years and only 2.2% of the population who attend church ...


Now, in my home diocese in the Midwest, there will be only 15 priests for 100,000 Catholics by 2015.


Although we are seeing across the globe, in most countries an increase in vocations, the numbers are still not up to replacement numbers....


Reasons:


Materialism
Modernism
Contraception
Abortion
Poor Catholic Education
Selfish Parents
Bad Priests

Selfish Singles


No priests, no Masses, no Eucharist.

St. Paul, pray for us

Because it is Saturday....

World hunger-a mini view

A quick note on the poverty of third world nations: one does not look at the statistics, usually, on poverty and violence. One does not, usually, look at the statistics concerning illiteracy and violence. One does not,usually look at the nature of the governments of the countries which are the most impoverished.

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm

One might be surprised at where the greatest poverty lies in the world. Note this graph above.

There is enough food in the world to feed everyone well.

Pray, think, act.

Perfection and anxiety

I am just coming out of exactly 30 days of anxiety and stress. Part of this was caused by the fact that I had to make a major decision in my life. Part of it has been financial. But, looking back over this month, I realize that this time was exactly what God wanted of me. He is teaching me to trust in Him as my Father. “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” 2 Timothy 1:7

It could have seemed like a "lost month", as I did not get as much work done as I would have liked. But, sometimes, when God is working on the interior life, the exterior life must suffer. 

This Scripture passage shows all of us that power, love and a sound mind come from God. Only in Him can we find peace. And, this peace can only come when we give up and give in. Only God can handle some problems. I was walking about for three months in shoes which did not fit. I had blisters on the top, sides and backs of my feet. Now, I could not afford the type of shoes which would fit me. I cannot wear English shoes. I have Continental feet. I asked, hardly hoping. Then, two women offered to buy shoes for me. I was astounded and humbled. I thank these sisters here on this blog.


I lost my rosary, and another sister in the Lord sent me a new one. I was astounded again at the kindness of people. In the midst of financial difficulties, which have not yet been ironed out, I am learning to do something I really have never done before-trust in God. I ask Him for this grace. You all can pray for me to overcome fear and anxiety regarding this problem.

That God loves us and cares for our every need is written in the Scriptures. So, why do so many of us doubt it? I realized that I have gone through 30 days of intense anxiety so that I can learn to trust. Perfect love and trust drive out fear and that is what anxiety is-fear. I have been afraid of financial embarrassment, even though this situation is not my fault. It is my Luxembourg background. One simply does not get financially straitened, even when it is something out of one's own control. 

The entire world may be facing this soon--not just me. Banks make mistakes, people create problems where there are none. Patience and trust are the only solutions. A friend of mine just lost a tremendous amount of money because of the Euro crisis. I have had smaller problems, but stressful. 

Some of you may be able to do this already-trust. God bless you. It is a grace. I pray and I invite you to join me in prayer for my healing, so that I know in my deepest soul and heart that He has not given me a spirit of fear, or anxiety, but one of power, love and a sound mind. 

If we all knew this, how easy some relationships would be, as anxiety interferes with love. I had to apologize for causing another person irritation because of my own anxiety. Silly me. This is a bad habit for women. We can fall into nagging and being so anxious that love is blocked.  But, forgiveness is good, and we need to be reminded that perfect love drives out fear. One must decide not to be anxious. Love and freedom are in the will, not the emotions. The emotions will follow. Believe me on this one. 

In my series on perfection, I add this. In order to be perfect, we must trust in Abba Father. We are not to be presumptuous, but to be like a little child asking for our needs. Be not afraid, 

Be not afraid to ask. That is the key.

"Divine Father, call all men to Yourself. Let all the world proclaim Your fatherly goodness and Your divine mercy... Divine Father, Infinite Goodness poured out on all peoples, may You be known, honored, and loved by all men."

May I also add something which many know. We cannot be made perfect in a vacuum. We need to be in relationship with others. We also need to ask others to pray for us and we need to pray for others. This is our Faith, our baptismal unity in the Church. I saw a note today addressed to someone which was shown to me. The note read something like, "God open her heart so that she knows I really love her." That is God speaking to you and to me. God, open our hearts so that we know your love truly. We close our hearts because of fear and anxiety. What a great wonder this is, to be loved by the Almighty God.

He gave us His Own Son. What Love is this.

I pray for my readers and I hope you pray for me.

By the way, I keep a Thank you Diary. Everyday I try and think of at least ten things for which I can thank God. Clean water, friends, food, shoes, daily Mass, the list can be longer than ten. I highly suggest you try this if you tend to forget Who gives us all. God loves a grateful heart. Thank you God for everything.

Be perfect, even as your Heavenly Father is Perfect. He desires our perfection in Him.

Patron Saints of Banking

As Catholics, we should seriously know which patron saints have been allocated to situations, things, and people in our lives. If we know we have friends in heaven, we can ask them for help. For example, there are four patron saints of banking, which may indicate that the industry needs all the help it can get and that we need support dealing with banks. 

Thanks to Wiki

The first is the Great St. Michael the Archangel. 

Thanks to Wiki

The second is St. Matthew, the tax collector and evangelist. 

Thanks to Wiki

The third is St. Bernardine of Feltre, who has an interesting history setting up a scheme for low interest loans and creating charities. The Duomo at Feltre is shown here.

And the last is St. Secundus of Asti, an early martyr and patrician, beheaded under Hadrian  in 119. He became one of the patrons, apparently, by his association with a banking city, Asti.

If you have any problems with banks, I would highly suggest asking all four saints for help.

More on being female...

There seems to be a misunderstanding regarding male and female traits or activities. Now, I rode bicycles, climbed trees, shot, did archery, fished, camped and played tennis, golf, cross-country skiing etc. However, sports activities at school, when I was a girl were played in skirts with shorts underneath. Then the styles moved to Bermuda shorts, long pants in winter if we skied. We were modest as children. Girls wore sundresses in the summer. And we covered our shoulders in Mass.  By the way, there are several modest clothes websites which make clothes at very reasonable prices. If I had girl children, I would be looking at those. As to climbing trees, I think my mother stopped me from doing that at a certain age, which was correct and good.

Puberty changes things. So does wearing female clothes. I have very few clothes. Ask my friends. I have enough to get through a week summer and a week winter. So what if there are not many clothes, as long as these are feminine. One does not have to be a clothes horse to be feminine. I hate shopping. Ask my son, and my brothers-three out of the four LOVE shopping and I do not.

Being a "tom-boy" may or may not indicate anything. I had 22 dolls, play prams, play dishes, play pots and pans, tea-sets, a doll house, nursing kit, nurses play outfit, play house, play store, doll houses, etc., but I also did all those more daring things. But as adults, we transition into seriously considering who we are and how we act.

This morning at daily Mass, there were about thirty people attending. Ten were men and twenty were women. Out of those twenty women, seven of us had dresses or skirts. The same women daily wear the same types of clothes and those seven always dress in female styles. Two are elderly Irish ladies, one is French, I am the American, and the others are from African countries. The African ladies also always wear a hat or turban. The French woman and I wear mantillas.

The other, and majority of the women, again, daily participants, fall into two groups. One group dresses in rather posh slacks and tops. The others are in jeans. The jeans group is the majority. And, I am afraid, some of the women look like men.

I cannot express how much God wants us to be women and love ourselves as women. I think part of the problem is that some women do not think they are beautiful. We all are in some way.

I remind people that I do not publish anonymous comments, of which there have been many on this subject.

On tags, series, and more posts

Some might not know that there are tags at the bottom of posts. If you want to follow a series, such as the private revelation one or the one on perfection, one can either click on the tag, or put the title in search.

There will be many more posts on both subjects.

Why do not people read and listen before they vote?

I posted in late winter on the fact that Fianna Fáil was pro-abortion. Now, LifeSiteNews has an  excellent artictle showing the deceit of all party members who want it. That the Irish have voted these pro-choice politicians in is their problem and on their consciences. Why do people get upset with those they put in office when we can read and think before they vote? 


http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/do-not-tell-me-eire-is-catholic-fianna.html

The same thing happened in the 2008 presidential election in the States. I had POTUS in my state of Illinois and knew his abysmal anti-life record. Some of us read before we vote. Catholics cannot blindly support parties which are anti-life. Our own souls are at stake.

Garrigou-Lagrange continued--sins defined--malice and others

This is the sin we understand. The ones we do on purpose are the most evil. Here is the great Dominican on this type of sin. Malice becomes obvious when one has sinned. Malice aforethought is the definition of murder.


THE SIN OF MALICE
In contradistinction to the sin of ignorance and that of frailty, the sin of malice is that by which one chooses evil knowingly. In Latin it is called a sin de industria, that is, a sin committed with deliberate calculation, design, and express intention, free from ignorance and even from antecedent passion. The sin of malice is often premeditated. This is not equivalent to saying that evil is willed for the sake of evil; since the adequate object of the will is the good, it can will evil only under the aspect of an apparent good.
Now he who sins through malice, acting with full knowledge of the case and through evil will, knowingly wills a spiritual evil (for example, the loss of charity or divine friendship) in order to possess a temporal good. It is clear that this sin thus defined differs in the degree of gravity from the sin of ignorance and that of frailty. But we must not conclude from this that every sin of malice is a sin against the Holy Ghost. This last sin is one of the gravest of the sins of malice. It is produced when a man rejects through contempt the very thing that would save him or deliver him from evil: for example, when he combats recognized religious truth, or when by reason of jealousy, he deliberately grows sad over the graces and spiritual progress of his neighbor.
The sin of malice often proceeds from a vice engendered by multiple faults; but it can exist even in the absence of this vice. It is thus that the first sin of the devil was a sin of malice, not of habitual malice but of actual malice, of evil will, of an intoxication of pride.
It is clear that the sin of malice is graver than the sins of ignorance and frailty, although these last are sometimes mortal. This explains why human laws inflict greater punishment for premeditated murder than for that committed through passion.


Adam and Eve knew what they were doing. The Angels did as well. This type of sin is so serious it is mortal. The other sins can be mortal as well, as noted above. 


I would like to continue with a few more definitions. There are connected serious sins in the list this past week which flow from pride. These are seen here in his book:

According to St. Gregory and St. Thomas,(12) pride or arrogance is more than a capital sin; it is the root from which proceed especially four capital sins: vanity or vainglory, spiritual sloth or wicked sadness which embitters, envy, and anger. Vanity is the inordinate love of praise and honors. Spiritual sloth saddens the soul at the thought of the labor involved in sanctification, and at the thought of the spiritual good of good works because of the effort and abnegation they require. Envy inclines us to grow sad over another's good, in so far as it appears to oppose our own excellence. Anger, when it is not just indignation but a sin, is an inordinate movement of the soul which inclines us to repulse violently what displeases us; from it arise quarrels, insults, and abusive words. These capital vices, especially spiritual sloth, envy, and anger, engender a wicked sadness that weighs down the soul; they are quite the opposite of spiritual peace and joy, which are the fruits of charity


Many good Catholics think they are just fine exhibiting these sins. They are self-deceived. We need to pray and do penance. Sometimes accepting the crosses of our lives is penance for these sins.


to be continued...

On girls, dolls, real men and women

My mother use to sew and sometimes we had matching, but not quite, dresses. I was learning to to her. This was a good thing.

The other day, I saw a little girl about five out with her mum shopping. The little girl (British children are so cute) had two dolls with her, not one, but two. They were well-loved and "rag dolls", not high-end specialty, collector dolls. It was charming to see how she cared for them in her little travels on the street of shops and restaurants. Obviously, she was not going to keep them at home.

I have not seen girls with dolls as much as I did 20 years ago. I remember the time, when we were living in Dorset, when the little girls had miniature "push-chairs" and pushed their dollies and teddies around the town where we were living. Role modeling is part of learning gender based roles.

However, as reported here last week, the EU states that gender is a man-made construct. What? We are so far removed from nature and natural law that if we allow our female-children to play with dolls, they will become enslaved by the old ideas of motherhood and stay-at-home moms.

I am not sure we can change the monster of depravity regarding sex and gender around at this time.
By the way, communists leaders years ago pushed for an androgynous society. It serves the state better and omits nasty things, like Protectors; that is males who would fit for their women.

To state that gender is a human construct is to deny the Creator. Men and women are different and God made us that way. I am happy in my femininity. I do not want nor need to be a man.

God bless the three or four men in Aurora, Colorado for giving their lives for their girlfriends. How fortunate for those women that they experienced, although sadly in the death of their men, Protectors. At least three who died were either in the military or had been and were in the process of re-enlisting.

May God raise up a new generation of Protectors before it is too late for Western civilization.

Generation WE vs. Generation ME

Do you think the Millennials are less selfish? If so, why are the Millennials less selfish? When I am writing about singles, I am mostly thinking of Generation X members, which are now in their thirties and forties. The Millennials are younger and less inclined to think in the same ways as the Gen X. They are different, and they are more focused in some ways. Those who are young and know foreign politics are much more insecure than we were as the Baby Boomers. We had the Soviet Union, a big bloc as our national enemy. Now, the younger generation has the awareness of terrorists, who could be in their local grocery store or backyard.

Great privilege and mortality are part of their view. Something worse is always in their future and that is a good thing. They know they are privileged, but they do not take it for granted. If they look at the Dow Jones and it is down, they know their future will be worse, so they decide to work harder to do better. Also, they have witnessed terrible natural, fragile, vulnerable states, such as the Japanese tsunami. Therefore, they do not have the false vision of youthful immortality we and Gen X had. So, they think "What about this life makes it meaningful and what can I do to make it more meaningful? I think this attitude has led to more vocations.

There was no motivation for Gen X to do something worthwhile for themselves or the community. There was too much material success too easily.

This new generation sees death all around them, and that is a good thing for their generation. They do not take life, money, peace for granted.

However, they are still more individualistic than the Baby Boomers and Gen X.

Maybe they will be able to make decisions. But, they still fear commitment, because they have not seen commitment successfully lived with Gen X as parents. Gen X is still stuck in a juvenile state.

The Gen X members may never get out of that. And, their lives have caused the fear of commitment in the next generation-the Millennials.  If all your friends are single and you have a single parent, it is much harder to commit.

Most Millennials had few people to connect to, even in sport. Now, they want to connect. They have had to laboriously create common ground. The Internet has helped them connect.

And, yet, they want to have love and homes and stability. I call them Generation WE as opposed to Generation ME. They just do not know how to do it. They do not say that they are WE. They love social stuff. Their need is for WE. They just have to learn how to do it. This is why Twitter and Facebook are so popular. Self-promotion is the motivation, but now they are finding each other on these social network. The need takes over from the motivation.

In 2005, Facebook users were mostly male, between 16-21, computer literate. It was a male-tech bubble.  Now, in 2012, most of the users are female, with a much older base, and broader groupings. But, it is a random community. The blogging community is not random, but targeted.

The Internet and especially Facebook, have become real societies- with a view of the Western world. And, China is working on its own, by the way.

The Millennials are ripe for evangelization. They are more open to a spiritual life than Gen X.

Types of sins and culpability mark two--perfection

Readers have asked me to look at Garrigou-Lagrange more directly with his definitions of sins. I did a few this past week and here are some more. He divides sins into classifications. After all this negativity, I shall go back to the virtues, which are much more interesting and fun for me.

These categories are connected to Thursday's response as well. The Dominican writes: The sin of ignorance is that which springs from voluntary and culpable ignorance, called vincible ignorance. The sin of frailty is that which arises from a strong passion which diminishes liberty and impels the will to give its consent. As for the sin of malice, it is committed with full liberty, quasi de industria, intentionally and often with premeditation, even without passion or ignorance. We shall recall what St. Thomas teaches about each of them.


This first demarcation reveals that frailty or weakness is culpable, which is hard for modern men and women to understand. We make psychological excuses for many things.


I am not going into all the categories of ignorance, but I want to highlight one. Here is Garrigou-Lagrange again: Voluntary or vincible ignorance cannot completely excuse sin, for there was negligence; it only diminishes culpability. Absolutely involuntary or invincible ignorance completely exculpates from sin; it does away with culpability. As for concomitant ignorance, it does not excuse from sin, for, even if it did not exist, one would still sin.
Invincible ignorance is called "good faith." That ignorance be truly invincible or involuntary, it is necessary that the person cannot morally free himself from it by a serious effort to know his duties. It is impossible to be invincibly ignorant of the first precepts of the natural law: Do good and avoid evil; do not do to others what you would not wish them to do to you; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; one God alone you shall adore. At least by the order of the world, the starry sky, and the whole creation, man can easily obtain a knowledge of the probability of the existence of God, supreme Ordainer and Legislator. When he has this probability, he must seek to become more enlightened and must ask for light; otherwise he is not in genuine good faith or in absolutely involuntary and invincible ignorance. As much must be said of a Protestant for whom it becomes seriously probable that Catholicism is the true religion. He must clarify his idea by study and ask God for light. Unless he does this, as St. Alphonsus says, he already sins against faith by not wishing to take the means necessary to obtain it.


If one does not desire to be free of sin, that in itself is a problem. As the author states, issues involving the human capacity of knowing natural law never excuse a person. I hope this is not confusing. In other words, as I have stated before, all people must learn what they need to know to be free of a vice and pray for help. Counseling and the sacramental life are necessities, not luxuries.


Fraility also involve choice: A sin of frailty is one which springs from a strong passion, which impels the will to give its consent. With this meaning, the Psalmist says: "Have mercy on me, a Lord, for I am weak." (17) The spiritual soul is weak when its will yields to the violence of the movements of the sensible appetites. It thus loses rectitude of practical judgment and of voluntary election or choice, by reason of fear, anger, or concupiscence. Thus, during the Passion, Peter yielded through fear and denied our Lord three times. When, by reason of a lively emotion or of a passion, we are inclined toward an object, the intellect is induced to judge that it is suitable for us, and the will to give its consent contrary to the divine law.(18)
But we must distinguish here the so-called antecedent passion, which precedes the consent of the will, and that called consequent, which follows it. Antecedent passion diminishes culpability, for it diminishes the liberty of judgment and of voluntary choice; it is particularly apparent in very impressionable people. On the contrary, consequent or voluntary passion does not lessen the gravity of sin, but augments it; or rather it is a sign that the sin is more voluntary, since the will itself arouses this inordinate movement of passion, as happens in a man who wishes to become angry the better to manifest his ill will.(19) Just as a good consequent passion, such as Christ's holy anger when He was driving the merchants from the Temple, increases the merit, so an evil consequent passion augments the demerit.


I repeat that there is always culpability, but sometimes this is lessened. Before I get to sins of malice, which we mostly understand, let us look at this warning from the text. It would be a gross error to think that only the sin of malice can be mortal because it alone implies the sufficient advertence, the full consent, together with the serious matter, necessary for the sin which gives death to the soul and renders it worthy of eternal death. Such an error would result from a badly formed conscience, and would contribute to increase this deformity. Let us remember that we can easily resist the beginning of the inordinate movement of passion, and that it is a duty for us to do so and also to pray for help, according to the words of St. Augustine, quoted by the Council of Trent: "God never commands the impossible, but, in commanding, He warns us to do what we are able and to ask Him for help to do that which we cannot." (22)


This is the rub...we must not cover over our own tendencies and weaknesses. As one of my readers noted remembering Barney in The Andy Griffith Show, "Nip it. Nip it in the bud!"

to be continued...