Fides et Ratio

The one thing I still can't get over in my discussions with Buddhists and Atheists is the separation of reason and faith. The real problem, though, lies not with the people I can discuss things with in a reasonable fashion, but rather those who separate faith from reason and can't be talked to at all.

Life and love

I've got a bit of a love-hate relationship with Michael Voris. I've been banned from commenting on his youtube channel for asking about a scathing comment he made about Social Justice Catholics and Soup Kitchens a while back. I also often don't like his strong Republican Catholic Politics that seem to run through his videos. It often reminds me of Thomas E. Woods telling the pope that morality doesn't have anything to do with economics.

Having said that, every once in a while Michael Voris hits upon something very good and orthodox that can heal the pro-life/social justice divide. Today's video on the job of Catholics being primarily saving souls rather than saving lives, is an excellent inroad to that divide. I've often said our best weapon against abortion and euthanasia, is simple charity- and same against the lust filled, love denying scourge of homosexual "marriage" that is now attacking so many young people, trying to teach them to ignore love and substitute lust instead.

Laws will never solve the problems that an authentic Catholic pro-life movement faces; but charity and conversion can. You can't stop Planned Parenthood very easily- but you can rob them of patients by providing food, clothing, and shelter to a young woman who has had her chastity violated. You can't stop a terminally ill patient from taking poison to preserve his family's inheritance, but you CAN donate to provide hospice care so that such a patient is not tempted to suicide. You can't stop a bank from making a family homeless- but you can give that family the support they need to get back on their feet. You can't stop those who hate authentic love from spreading a contraceptive, lust separated from love and procreation mentality to our young people, but you CAN organize chaperoned social activities for those same young people that protect their chastity while letting them learn about the opposite gender.

Social justice and pro-life need not be enemies. Nobody should, by analogy, tell the poor to have as many children as possible then refuse to let the father earn enough money to feed them (Republican anti-union side); and nobody should tell the pregnant single mother with four children that she will only be admitted to the soup kitchen if she kills the fifth (Democratic pro-abortion side). In respecting life- all life- even the unwanted and unplanned and children of rape and incest- even the unhoused and unfortunate victims of capitalism- we can begin to find truly Catholic Unity. And when we find that unity, we will find converts by our very example.

Rowan Atkinson in 'We are most amused' - YouTube

If the Gospel According to John had been written by a modern English Comedian....

Rowan Atkinson in 'We are most amused' - YouTube:

Leo XIII - Libertas

Pope Leo XIII on the word Liberty.  It doesn't mean what the Libertarian Party and the Libertines and even the Republicans and Democrats want you to think it means.


Leo XIII - Libertas

Baby boomers have raised 3 generations who don't date

Catholics, Awake! Marriage Doesn’t Just Happen! | Crisis Magazine:

An interesting bit of data from a professor on even a supposedly Catholic campus.  Young people have forgotten how to date.

They have lost the ability to be romantic- they have changed love into mere lust, and are all the more lonely because of it.  They don't hold hands anymore!

Is it any wonder they are for gay marriage, having mistaken lust for love?

Is it any wonder that even when marriage happens, as it will for less than 10% of the Millennial generation, it often ends in divorce or annulment?

Is it any wonder that our society is teetering on a fiscal cliff, with no children to take care of the old and more people depending on government for retirement?

America, you had the sexual revolution to create "free love" (by which you meant widespread indulging of lust) and in response, you have destroyed LOVE itself!

Adultery is NORMAL?

Now, let me get this straight: I do not think a man usually should have been fired for having sex with a woman not his wife. To me, that is just what men and women do. wrote Ben Stein on the whole General David Petraeus affair (and I do mean affair- he was caught with a woman 20 years younger than he is). If that is what passes for Conservative Values these days, that adultery is "just what men and women do", then it is no wonder Obama won: We've abandoned anything resembling morality at all.

Ode to the Death of America, 2012

With Apologies to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel beforehand:

Hello Darkness my old Friend, I've come to talk with you again, About visions that others want me to believe, About darkness falling quite swiftly.

And the vision, that is planted in my brain, Still remains. Amid the ruins of Obammy.

Restless pondering I ponder alone, Amid the victory of Death, And the profits softly creeping, Dow Jones falling quite swiftly, And the Layoffs! As households quickly fall!

Homeless sleeping on the sidewalk, Babies killed by their mothers, Grandma shoved off a cliff in her wheelchair.

These visions, implanted in my brain, All remain Among the end, of innocence.

Yet First World Problems these really are, At least the drones won't attack tonight, At least not here, in the Homeland.

Little children being burned alive, Just because siblings are Jihadists, And the hunger, as rain never falls.

These are the visions I should work on, Increasing justice so that more can live, Feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, And wanting the uns!

The results of the election

This is what my church looks like to me

I really need to get to confession this weekend before Mass.

How do Calvinists do it?

Perhaps believing in the total Sovereignty of God and Predestination helps. But right now, I don't have much evidence for those (I'm still a relatively good Catholic) but I do have overwhelming evidence for the Total Depravity of the American Voter.

Or rather, at least 99% of them.

98% of American Catholics.

50% of which voted for Bush, er, Obama.

48% of which voted for Bush, er, Romney.

Which means 98% of American Catholics voted AGAINST CHRIST and for INTRINSIC EVIL.

How do you contemplate that and NOT be tempted to suicide? Right now,it is obligation and duty alone keeping me in line.

The polls are in

Obama has won, and America officially hates Catholics. I held out some hope until the last second, but knew in my heart that the Eugenicists have always seen us as a danger to their false happiness. Forward! Obama's definition of forward is extinction of his enemies. Included in his enemies are his own future grandchildren.

An inauspicious omen

From the final poll commentary on Electoral Vote.Com, a poll aggregator:

"A sign of the closeness of the race comes from the first actual election returns, as usual, from Dixville Notch, NH. Traditionally all the voters assemble at the polling station at midnight on the start of election day and vote. The votes are then reported at 12:01 A.M. The village has correctly predicted the past three presidential elections. This morning the results were announced. It was a tie, 5 votes for Obama and 5 votes for Romney. An inauspicious omen."