"We cannot violate our vows by participating in the government's program to provide access to abortion-inducing drugs,” Sister Loraine Marie said of a class-action lawsuit filed against the mandate on behalf of multiple religious organizations that provide health benefits.
I write for my fellow Catholics who still believe in this government. I write for my fellow Catholics who voted for Obama twice. I write for my fellow Catholics who do not seem to know that all the Popes for over one hundred years have condemned socialism.
You have not been paying attention. A marriage tax in Obamacare...
Late term abortionist to speak in Dublin: RTÉ presenter chairing talk
Dear Lynda,
This Saturday, a US based late-term abortionist, Shelley Sella, will speak at the Irish Film Institute before the screening of a movie paying homage to those who specialise in late-term abortion.
Sella has been accused by a former abortion nurse, Tina David, of stabbing to death a 35 week old baby who survived an abortion in her care. She, and three other late-term abortionists are feted in the movie, After Tiller, which glosses over the horror of late-term abortion.
One of those three is LeRoy Carhart, an abortionist based in Maryland, where Jennifer McKenna Morbelli, and her 33-week-old preborn daughter, Madison Leigh, died in his clinic of February of this year.
Let's be clear: Sella and her colleagues perform abortions right up until birth. This is grim, horrific stuff - yet it is all santised in the movie, After Tiller, which portrays late-term abortionists as kindly, compassionate doctors.
No mention is made, of course, of Kermit Gosnell or other 'house of horrors' abortion clinics where almost full term babies are killed every day. The Irish media have, predictably, done all they can to promote the movie - with the Irish Times running a wholly uncritical and sympathetic interview with Sella last week, where adoption, foetal pain, and better options for mothers were all dismissed with standard propoganda statements from the abortion industry.
Keelin Shanley will interview Sella prior to the screening; no doubt another soft conversation where abortionists are held up as modern-day saints.
SPEAK UP FOR UNBORN BABIES AND AGAINST THIS PROMOTION OF LATE-TERM ABORTION.
Call or email the following organisations and tell them you wish to complain about their sponsorship of an event which is condoning and praising the barbaric practice, and practitioners, of late-term abortions, and indeed the fact that your taxes are funding it.
Ask them, as a taxpayer, to demand that this film - and its 'protagonist' - which commends this sickening practice be withdrawn from the program. Should this be refused, demand that your taxes are withdrawn as sponsorship.
*On foetal pain, an anesthesiology professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Dr. Ray Paschall, who has done more surgeries with foetal anesthesia than any doctor in the world, said that babies feel pain not only before birth but before viability.
His statement follows the work of Dr. Kawaljeet Anand, who has argued that a foetus or premature newborn may actually feel pain more intensely than an older newborn. He asserted in a 2007 congressional testimony on foetal pain legislation that a "foetus at 20 to 32 weeks of gestation would experience a much more intense pain than older infants or children or adults" because certain pain mechanisms are in play much earlier, while "fibers which dampen and modulate the experience of pain" are delayed until between 32-34 weeks.
When a wave of attacks on churches and Christian properties swept across Egypt last month, this city was hit the worst.
Minya's streets are now lined with burned-out hulks. Church interiors have been reduced to ash. The once-cheerful turquoise exterior of a Christian orphanage is now streaked black from the fire that gutted it. Destroyed wheelchairs sit outside a burned-out Jesuit center that worked with disabled people. Torched schools, shops, and monasteries lie in ruins. On one street, several Christian-owned shops are reduced to scorched rubble. Nearby, an untouched snack shop blares a song that proclaims “Egypt is Islamic ...
I copied this list from an old novel I have been reading which is sickening sweet about a country priest in the 19th century. The book is not worth reading. The word I would use it cloying. However, the little list of papers the priest wanted to write and never did reminded me how far seminary training has fallen into disarray. Can you imagine your modern priests having the ability to wax eloquent on these subjects?
Pray for seminarians in America, Europe, Africa, South America, etc. They need to have the mental training to fight modernism and the evils of the day not only with prayer and fasting, but with their good minds.
The classical education reinstated by St. Anselm in the seminaries has all but disappeared.
I. Mental Philosophy. I. The Influence of Plato on the Early Christian Church. II. The Influence of Aristotle on the Mediæval Church. III. The Neo-Platonists. IV. The Argument in St. Augustine on the Immortality of the Soul. (Is it Tenable?) V. The Atomic Theory of Democritus, and the Modern Discoveries in Astronomy. VI. The Influence of the Inductive Philosophy on Modern Disbelief. VII. Was Spinoza an Atheist? VIII. Is Descartes the Father of Modern Rationalism? IX. St. Anselm's Proof of the Existence of God. X. The Cosmological Argument of St. John Damascene. XI. The Argument from Intuition. XII. Aspects of Modern Pantheism. XIII. Christian Idealism. XIV. Malebranche and Fénelon. XV. Boëthius. XVI. Catholic Philosophers of the Nineteenth Century. XVII. The Connection between Soul and Body (Tertullian). XVIII. The Chaldæan Doctrine of the Soul (εσσαμενοσ πυριρυρ). XIX. The Idea of Personality. XX. The Identification of Life and Motion. XXI. Maine de Biran. XXII. The Popularization of Catholic Philosophy.
II. Ecclesiastical History. I. The Alexandrian School. II. The Writings of Clement. III. Origen, and his Works. IV. Ephrem the Syrian, and his Works. V. The Apologists. VI. The Three Cappadocians. VII. Julian and his Contemporaries. VIII. The Council of Nicæa. IX. St. Augustine and the Donatists. X. The Saints of the Catacombs. XI. The Discipline of the Secret. XII. The Libyan and Nitrean Anchorites XIII. The Stylites. XIV. Communion in the Early Church. XV. Mediævalism. XVI. The Case of Honorius. XVII. Hildebrand. XVIII. Alexander VI. and Savonarola. XIX. Origin and Spread of Monasticism. XX. The Influence of the Irish Monks on the Continent of Europe. XXI. Schools of Philosophy. XXII. Port-Royal, Pascal, Nicole, Arnauld. XXIII. The Rise and Progress of Jansenism. XXIV. Gallicanism and National Churches.
Can one imagine having such discussions today with the local pp?
As those who follow this blog know well, I have written on the three types of men in our present society. The protector, the predator and the peter pan male represent either maturity and goodness, evil, or stunted growth.
I have been contemplating the reason why so many young male youths fall away from the Church here in Ireland. The numbers of non-practicing youth are staggering. Yesterday, I posted the article on statistics of belief and non-belief among college age youth.
The hidden root of some of this disaffection is weak male leadership in the home, the Church, and in government and business.
The protector male protects not only his wife and children, but society and culture. He has a stake in the national consciousness of being individuals with a common heart, a common purpose.
Negativity is not part of the attitude of the protector, nor is cynicism, signs of the peter pan syndrome.
Here in Ireland, peter pans dominant. Some women have told me they would never marry an Irishman because they do not take their place as heads of families, but prefer passivity to leadership.
Yesterday, a good priest told me that a major evil in the priesthood is sloth. Sloth is the hardest predominant fault to combat and finally destroy according to Garrigou-Lagrange.
Sloth leads to abdication of roles, a nine to five attitude towards duty, a curtailing of personal growth. That sloth can be found in some who are priests is a tragedy for the laity. Without leadership, the ship of the Church crashes on the rocks of sin. This is the case here. The Church has been greatly weakened by sloth and laxity. I think in some places such lax men are called "couch potatoes".
How many men do we know who do not engage in necessary conflict as it is too painful or disturbing for them? They want a quiet life. Sadly, the days of the country curate living a quiet life fishing and reading the classics, doing the minimum for his parish are days gone by, only to be found in literature.
The Church finds Herself in the midst of the worst battles seen for centuries. Sloth does not win battles. Hard work and simplicity do.
Slothful men lay down the staff of leadership and like the bad shepherd allow the wolves to enter the fold.
That one priest can criticize some of his fellow priests shows the depth of the problem here. Youth can spot a hypocrite a mile away and the bad priests and neglectful husbands and fathers will have to face God as to why they did not work on their predominant fault.
Being a Catholic man, like being a Catholic woman, entails hard work.
We are battling for our soul and the souls of others. There is no time for sloth. This quaint phrase from a popular old book on country curates is not true in 2013: 'T WILL BE ALL THE SAME IN A HUNDRED YEARS. No, it will not, despite all those who dream of the old days when men did not necessarily have to measure up to the great role of protector. I shall do a post on Friday on the predominant faults of women.
St. Ignatius asks us to pay attention to the process of using memory, moving to understanding, and then employing the will in prayer.
I have written many times on this movement in the perfection series. Just use the labels below. However, this morning, I want to note that the understanding can lead one to more gratitude in one's life.
This process is found in the Psalms of David. David remembers the goodness of the Lord and thinks of all the graces he has received. Then, he understands Who God Is and who he, one of God's beloved creatures, is.
Understanding is the beginning of gratitude. The praises in the Psalms can reflect our gratitude as well. We think of the good things the Lord has done for us and we embrace great thankfulness.
Thanking God for graces becomes part of meditation. It is also part of the Dark Night of the Soul, when God reveals Himself as He really is. The smallness of the human condition and the reality of the fact that we must rely on God alone and not ourselves comes from gratitude. In other words, real humility, bubbling forth from the truth of who we are makes us grateful.
What does one will? This process leads to love. The grateful heart is one which loves God first. Willing love means following God's Will and not one's own. Willing equals the regime of prayer, fasting, worship. and charity.
Memory, understanding and will demand reflection. A half-hour of Scripture reading, one's Lectio Divina, is all that is necessary.
Psalm 8
Unto the end, for the presses: a psalm of David.
2 O Lord our Lord, how admirable is thy name in the whole earth! For thy magnificence is elevated above the heavens.
3 Out of the mouth of infants and of sucklings thou hast perfected praise, because of thy enemies, that thou mayst destroy the enemy and the avenger.
4 For I will behold thy heavens, the works of thy fingers: the moon and the stars which thou hast founded.
5 What is man that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man that thou visitest him?
6 Thou hast made him a little less than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour:
7 And hast set him over the works of thy hands.
8 Thou hast subjected all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen: moreover the beasts also of the fields.
9 The birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea, that pass through the paths of the sea.
10 O Lord our Lord, how admirable is thy name in all the earth
It has been brought to my attention that there are many, many, many covens of witches in Ireland as well as in Great Britain. I knew about some in England, as friends of mine live in Kent, where this sort of thing proliferates.
But, I did not expect the numbers here. Now, I know that New Agey stuff and neo-paganism is popular in Ireland, as I came across this last year in March and in December. Some friends of mine had pointed out the number of solstice gatherings in the summer and in the winter.
But the reason I am referring to the covens is twofold.
Firstly, not enough parents are talking to their children about the evils of the occult. One of my friend's boys came home from secondary school today and started asking his dad about satanism. Apparently, it is becoming the rage in certain parts of rural England.
Thankfully, my friend, being a catechist and also being a good father could explain things in a doctrinal, yet simple matter. He simply went through the Ten Commandments and showed how satanists did the opposite in each case, starting with the First Commandment.
Young people need parents who can discuss these things. On my previous blog, I had a series on this, as I was living in a place in Iowa where there were too many covens. One of my fellow professors at a college was head of one. I had to deal with students involved, getting involved, or wanting to get out of covens.
But, here, it is the cool thing to do, sadly, which brings me to my second point.
Most young people who get involved do not fully understand what they are doing until it is too late.
They fall for the lies of power and fellowship, coming to a realization that they have damned themselves by cooperating with evil too late.
Sex and drugs are, of course, involved as well. But, the spirit of rebellion leads many young people astray.
Parents must watch for signs of occult involvement. This is one of our duties.
Here are some hints:
One, is your child not telling you where he is going and is not introducing you to his new friends?
Two, is he becoming more reclusive and even moody? Are there personality changes? Is he having identity changes?
Three, has he changed his manner of dressing, wearing animal amulets, or other new jewelry? Is he attached to an animal and buying statues or other representations of that animal? Does he have new tattoos?
Four, is he interested in kabalism, or the ancient religion of the Egyptians, into symbolism and the gods and goddesses of such in a fanatic way?
Five, does he stay overnight with friends you not know and whose parents you do not know?
Six, is he going to Mass every Sunday? Does he go to Communion? Has he stopped doing this?
Seven, is he into tarot cards or deviant art?
Eight, has he dropped his old Catholic friends for a set of new ones?
Nine, does he has new adult friends you have not met and should meet?
Ten, is he going to meetings at night and not talking about these?
Most parents tragically do not pay attention to the adult children living in their home. But, wicca usually starts in secondary school or college. Pay attention. Some kids get introduced to these things on line or at camp. I knew a boy of 12 who was doing blood sacrifices of animals with his friends and following on line wicca sites.
I hate to write about this, but it is a reality in our world. Pray, think, act.
PRAYER TO
SAINT MICHAEL
THE ARCHANGEL
St. Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.
