Outside The Asylum

Stephen Cobert interprets Nostra Aetate for Americans who can't speak Latin. The only thing he misses- even within the Church, some paths to Heaven are straight and narrow and some are wide, twisty, and with cliffs on either side.

This is what I believe, and yes, this only the first generation diagram. I'd LOVE to see a fully detailed one showing all 32,000 "branches". I got this through a comment on: Catholic In The Ozarks: Protestantism for Catholics : This is something very important to understand when doing ecumenicism.

Liberals today have a strange clash between the sexual revolution and the feminist revolution. The one side hates rules about sex, the other side hates rape, which has one potential definition of "sex outside of the rules", three of those rules being force, fraud, and rational thought, the combination of those three items commonly being called consent. The problem with consent is there is no way to know after the fact, even with a video recording, whether or not it has happened. Even Traditional Marriage isn't good enough for some feminists to prove that consent has happened, rape within marriage is possible. In software, when we run into a problem like this, documentation is the key. VERY extensive documentation. Extremely extensive documentation. Legally it's the same, and it is called a contract. So my advice to you kids, is don't have sex without a contract. Ever. Because People are Complicated.

Is that the stories of bullying sound so incredibly familiar to my own experience with autism. And the fact that I know- from personal experience- what happens when the bullied becomes the bully. Much of what I hate in myself, what I've battled in myself- the anger, the PTSD, the attraction away from personal contact- is exhibited in the militant gay agenda. The reason I battle for traditional marriage is because I know where this is headed- because I've seen it in the neurodiversity side of the autistic community as well- and it is sociopathic. The men and women in the video below found the answer- found the only possible answer, the only possible refuge, as Christendom disintegrates into people shouting at each other across a chasm that cannot be bridged.

A radical traditionalist right winger (name withheld because it's just a blog comment after all) responded negatively to the canonization of St. John Paul The Great. Here is my response to each of his points, which NEED to be responded to. The file photo taken on November 30, 2004 which shoes John Paul blessing the forehead of Fr. Marcial Maciel tells an enormous story. This priest(?) was known in the Vatican for FIFTY YEARS as a drug addict, predator of seminarians and young priests, the father of children (whom he also abused)by two women, the founder of the Legionnaries of Christ, a con man who sent millions of dollars to the Vatican, and we are to believe that JP II knew nothing of this despite serving as pope for 26 years! Then add Assisi I and II, kissing the Koran, praying in a glade in the South Pacific with natives who believed it was the home of their gods, Communion in the hand while standing, altar girls, allowing the Traditional Mass to be denied for his entire ponti...

God strikes the earth roughly twice a year , most of the time smiting nothing important. But with an average of two strikes a year for the last decade; and no indication that this average is in any way abnormal, suddenly the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is scientifically plausible.

I've finally finished reading Papal Economics , a lot got in my way in the mean time. The final part of the book dealt with the main argument Fr. Zieba had been building to- that a knowledge of Original sin leads one to endorse regulated free markets under democracy- for the simple reason this forces those embroiled in Original Sin to provide work for their neighbors while satisfying those temptations to sin. This is true as far as it goes. But I go a step further. People are more likely to sin in an anonymous relationship than in a personal relationship, and the chance of sin goes up with the number of relational links in the transaction chain. In other words, two neighbors or family members that have to live with one another have a very low probability of force or fraud entering into a transaction. Two strangers meeting in a local marketplace, is still extremely low, because they might have family or friends in common, living locally to where they were born. A large scal...

Then some of your electricity is coming from Aborted Canadian Babies (story on page 3 of that newspaper link) . Yep, that's right- the Brooks Plant is now a crematorium for aborted babies, among other medical waste. UPDATE---------- Channel 12 is now reporting on this story, an investigation is starting at the Brooks Plant.

Seven jobs that conservative Christians may no longer hold in America Photography - A Christian photographer in New Mexico was fined $6700 for politely declining to photograph a lesbian commitment ceremony. The Supreme Court allowed this fine to stand. Baker - A Christian baker in Oregon is facing both civil and criminal penalties, including jail time, for politely declining to bake a cake for a gay wedding ceremony. Her business has closed. Florist - Baronelle Stutzman, a Christian florist in Washington, is being sued by the state attorney general for politely declining to prepare an arrangement for a gay wedding ceremony. Broadcasting - Craig James was fired by Fox Sports Southwest after only one day on the job for expressing his support for natural marriage while he was a candidate for the United States Senate. Counseling - Jennifer Keeton was dismissed from the counseling program at Augusta State University for her religious reservations about the homosexual lifestyle. Innkeep...

We're all human. That means that every human endeavor contains the possibility of Original Sin. I don't often write about software engineering but here's a list of 12 potential sins often overlooked.

Russia is now a distributist paradise with 80% of the vegetables and fruit consumed being home grown, and 50% of the milk production being home grown. Compare this with the central planning of enforced by swat team large scale agriculture . Yes, it's true that Capitalism drives progress , but the progress for the many is usually a decade or two behind the progress for the centralized wealth of the minority.

It isn't just theists who are into myth , but at least we admit that our myths are trying to teach some other dogma. Atheists don't admit it, but they do it to- parables such as the execution of Galileo, the Medieval Flat Earth Church, and Bruno's scientific poweress keep coming up and having to be debunked.

All of the United States is 350 million, not 8 million, Mr. President. Let me know when you have 350 million signed up for Obamacare before you declare victory. Better yet, wait until even one of those 8 million has actually paid a premium.

As a spiritual exercise and an Examen for Holy Thursday, a day that truly speaks to one of the basic causes of my own gluttony, I offer this rewording of CCC 2258: "The number of men and women who have deep-seated eating disorders is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. Are you willing to let fat people die because you're afraid to tell them that they are fat? After all, the well known effects of Cholesterol are at least as dangerous as HIV. Written by a man who is struggling with a sudden upswing in weight after the age of 40- who also wasn't exactly thin in his 30s, or in fact, hasn't seen ideal weight since age 26.

It has taken me nearly 25 years, but I now believe Trust me, I'm from the Government to truly be the scariest words in the American dialect of English. Longtime friends know that I was intensely involved in politics as far back as grade school, and did NOT support the Reagan Revolution, going through my liberal stage back then. Barak Obama has put the final nail in the coffin of liberal thinking for me. If you have to fudge the data to make your signature program look good, then perhaps it is because your signature program is evil.

An interesting timeline showing that slippery slopes are indeed real, and seemingly, inescapable. For more than 141 years, the United States has been heading towards this dictatorship of relativism, failing utterly to instill the values and morality of the previous generation into the next and embracing the racist and genetic theories of eugenicists to reduce diversity.

An interesting take on the old saying, that there is no good without evil. Well, there's no evil without good either.

250 million years ago a bunch of farting microbes caused global warming and a mass extinction. Global warming doesn't have to be man made.

The Dictatorship of Diversity | Crisis Magazine : I've noticed this as well.  That Diversity is only touted as a good, when it is destroying religion.

From the good folks at Sword of Peter, an object lesson in sexuality and home electronics.

Is mapreading skills , or at least, that's what it seems to me. I can understand urban camping in a place like Portland, which is so homeless friendly we have private charities helping out and open emergency shelters when it gets cold. But Palo Alto is no place to be homeless- and if you really find the city's ban so offensive, why don't you look at a map and park your RV just beyond the closest city limit? Better yet, why not move to a national forest where your right to camp is guaranteed? I think there is significantly more to this guy's story than meets the eye, and he needs to learn how to read a map, not how to program a smart phone.

And now the punishment of the losers has begun , which will only create a new generation of homopobic reaction to gays.

An interesting history from a Jewish website lends some explanation to the second half of Matthew Chapter 1.

By this article on Catholic Vote I should be a liberal urban progressive Catholic. I'm still relatively young, only 43, and I have one of those higher paid jobs that allow me to invest in Community Supported Agriculture for my family, enjoy the local farmer's market, and live on the rich western side of the Portland Metro area. But I grew up rural, and I've never forgotten the values that taught me, even as I struggle to impart those same values to my own son, who can't even bring himself to pet the dogs when we visit the country cousins. It's hard to teach a fetus is a baby if the child has no direct experience of eggs coming from chickens.

A very interesting Playwright's view of the interaction between President Obama and Catholics. Unfinished- leaving us to wonder if we will be asking the Supreme Court "Et Tu?"

It takes a French Catholic Convert looking in on American society, to show us a truth.

Under cover of religion Islamic men in England were running a child sex slave ring, targeting mainly non-Islamic schoolgirls between 11 and 14.

And our former tolerance is now backfiring . So much for tolerating sin, maybe we should have tried actually converting people instead.

Ecoterrorists fund communes by blackmailing capitalists . Ok, it happened in San Francisco, but this is just so Portlandia it needs to be a future episode. Perhaps a group of ecoterrorists could travel to Vernonia to do this to Mike Phil- maybe they'd even get History Channel's Ax Men to do a crossover.

Pope Francis gave an interesting talk on March 31st to a group of young people, claiming a rather mystical belief that those who seek truth and goodness, will find God. Given the inoculation of postmodern philosophy against religion , I for one am not so sure that is true. I have to wonder if we've hid from God more effectively than truth and goodness can defeat.

I missed an encyclical in my reading, Laborem Exercens published by soon to be Saint Pope John Paul the Great on the 90th anniversary of Rerum Novarum. I've updated the list of the history of Papal Encyclicals on Economics. . Fr. Zieba glosses over it in one line in his praise of how Centesimus Annus celebrates capitalism, and almost misses the idea that the right to private property is limited to the use of the public good. But it is his light treatment, and my utter lack of knowledge of Laborem Exercens, that I'm more interested in. For Laborem Exercens deals with the correct relationship between labor and capital- not a materialist one, not a economist one, but a community rightly ordered towards the common good. Profit becomes not a sign of sin, but Profit becomes instead a sign that business is being conducted properly, accruing not just to capital, but also to Labor. I've always wondered about the value of management and how in a disordered business, quite of...

March 23/25, Sunday, Tuesday, 2014 Bulletin The Word was made Flesh . . . Following Baby Jesus in the womb This year, between the Annunciation (March 25) and Christmas, we will remember the nine months Jesus spent growing inside the Blessed Virgin Mary. Everybody loves the beauty and innocence of a newborn Baby. We hope to reveal the beauty of babies before birth by describing their steps of growth, as Jesus experienced. He, like each of us, lived through the amazing stages of prenatal development. While the mechanism of His miraculous conception (the Incarnation) is unknown, it is likely that His subsequent journey followed the normal milestones of early human life. At the very moment of conception, a new and unique individual is formed. All of the inherited features of this new person are already set –whether it’s a boy or a girl, the color of the eyes, the color of the hair, the dimples of the cheeks and the cleft of the chin. He or she is smaller than a grain of sug...

Or at least, I said that partially in jest, in response to an April Fool's blog post by Mama Homophile on Jesuits accepting women into the Society of Jesus and of course, fake-quoting Fr. James Martin SJ as pushing for Women's Ordination. The reason I said what I said is because Fr. James Martin and America Magazine have indeed become quite famous for opposing Church teaching with whatever heresy liberal Democratic America wants to champion this week. But that's what made the joke good- because it is so incredibly believable.