For Heather Mallick, columnist for The Star, Catholic teaching is irrelevant and the role of men today is to keep their views to themselves

Heather Mallick, columnist for The Star, is angry.  What has her so upset?  The fact that a young man who attends a Catholic school should have the audacity to exhort young women to be modest in their attire.

Matt Gurney, writing for the National Post, said that the 17 year old Catholic student, "clearly believes that many of his female peers do not treat each other, or themselves, with due respect, and he wishes that everyone would focus more on how wonderful they are on the inside and not how attractive they can make themselves on the outside."  This is a message any sane person would stand behind.  And it is, in fact, a message which Sister Mary of the Immaculate Heart (Lucia dos Santos of the Fatima apparition), had for the young women of today: "When I think of the United States I think about this: one of the things which Our Lady especially asked for was modesty in dress.  There does not seem to be much modesty in the life of the women of your country.  But modesty would be a good sacrifice to offer Our Lady, and it would please her if the Catholics in your country would make a league for modesty in dress."

But Mallick believes she knows better.  So enraged is she that a young man should embrace Catholic teaching on modesty and the dignity of women that she lashes out with that vitriolic rage which is so characteristic of today's intellectually impoverished radical feminist.  She writes, "There’s a kind of man universally unpopular with women. He is Controlling Man. Just say 'he’s kind of controlling' to your women friends and they hiss and draw back as if they’d been sprayed with lemon juice. From whence do controlling men come? I always wondered and now I know. Paul Gomille, a 17-year-old student at Archbishop Denis O’Connor Catholic High School in Ajax, wrote a message to the girls and women at his school, a declaration that he claimed 'strikes at the very core of humanity itself, in an attempt to make a revelation of truth apparent to all of you, with awe inspiring certainty.' Really, Martin Luther could take lessons from this guy. Who taught him this nonsense?...Females from age 2 to 92 speak as one: We do not care to hear male opinions on our clothes unless it’s 'You look fabulous in that. Radiant. Wow.' When we ask you if the sweater works with the scarf, the word we want to hear is 'yes.' And then, frankly, we’ll change the sweater. If he’s a Controlling Man who says it’s too tight or uses the phrases 'no wife of mine will . . . ' we detach...Gomille may be 17 but he sounds 102 and we hear from males like him all our lives. They’re correctors, judges, buzzkills...There’s a worrying prescriptiveness in Gomille’s unasked-for definition of how his fellow students should dress. We women are half the world. In the workplace men and women stand side-by-side and are gradually learning how to accommodate each other’s differences. Keep your advice to yourself, preacher. Trust me, girls like that in a boy." (See article here).

For radical feminists like Mallick, Catholic teaching has no place in society and the only legitimate function of men today is to keep their mouths shut unless they are willing to totally agree with the women who surround them.  This is a necessary corrective since all of the world's evils originate in "male supremacy" and a "patriarchal culture."

The reality is, of course, something far different  In the words of Robert Bork, "..feminism is by far the strongest and most imperialistic [on today's college campuses], its influence suffusing the most traditional academic departments and university administrations. Feminists are revising and radicalizing textbooks and curricula in the humanities and the social sciences. They have a major say in faculty recruitment. Feminists increasingly control what is taught in high schools and elementary schools as well. Speech codes and 'sensitivity' training severely limit what can be said on campus. The feminists have not only done harm to the intellectual function of universities and schools, they have made campuses extremely unpleasant, especially for white males, who are subject to harassment and demands that they toe the feminist cultural and political line." (Slouching Toward Gomorrah).

For Mallick, Paul Gomille is attempting to be a "controlling man" because he had the sheer unmitigated gall to....offer his opinion.  And for that, this young man deserves to be silenced.  And suspended from his school.  For the role of men today is one of subservience - one of complete subjugation to women.  This is what women like, this is what they demand, from men today according to the radical feminist creed. Which is why she writes, "Keep your advice to yourself, preacher. Trust me, girls like that in a boy."

Not all girls Heather.  Only angry and bitter feminists like you who are frozen in 1960s nostalgia.  We've all heard your act.  And it didn't play well.  It's time for you to move on. 

In any case, we've heard enough from the Controlling Woman - the radical feminist.

Catholic Free Press columnist Stacy Trasancos: Faithful to the Magisterium?

In a previous post, I noted how Catholic Free Press columnist Stacy Trasancos implied in a Blog post that the faithful can challenge the Church's Magisterial teaching.  Mrs. Trasancos became very angry and left a comment here in which she said, "My attitude toward the Magisterial teaching of the Church is one of complete assent."  I was prepared to take her at her word even though her post seemed to imply that the faithful can indeed challenge the Magisterium.

Now I really have my doubts about Stacy Trasancos' fidelity to the Church's teaching.  In a Blog post on the subject of women's ordination, Mrs. Trasancos writes, "We know that by the end of the first century the Roman Catholic Church was established and there can be little doubt that the cultural influences of that time and place affected the doctrine [that only men are called to the ministerial priesthood].  We do also know that the Church has evolved over time and that part of theology's goal is to communicate faith to changing cultures.  For these reasons, maybe the question of women in the priesthood will remain unsettled.  There isn't any hard logic to support the idea that the concrete forms of the ecclesiastical offices cannot be changed....Whether women should or will someday be priests, isn't for this single writer to say." (See here).

The Church's doctrine was affected by cultural influences?  Really?  The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood (Inter Insigniores), which was approved for publication by Pope Paul VI on October 15, 1976, refutes this asinine thesis: "Jesus Christ did not call any woman to become part of the Twelve. If he acted in this way, it was not in order to conform to the customs of his time, for his attitude towards women was quite different from that of his milieu, and he deliberately and courageously broke with it.


For example, to the great astonishment of his own disciples, Jesus converses publicly with the Samaritan woman (cf. Jn 4:27); he takes no notice of the state of legal impurity of the woman who had suffered from hemorrhages (cf. Mt 9:20-22), he allows a sinful woman to approach him in the house of Simon the Pharisee (cf. Lk 7:37 ff); and by pardoning the woman taken in adultery, he means to show that one must not be more severe towards the fault of a woman than that of a man (cf. Jn 8:11). He does not hesitate to depart from the Mosaic Law in order to affirm the equality of the rights and duties of men and women with regard to the marriage bond (cf. Mk 10:2-11; Mt 19:3-9).

In his itinerant ministry Jesus was accompanied not only by the Twelve but also by a group of women: "Mary, surnamed the Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, Susanna and several others who provided for them out of their own resources" (Lk 8:2-3). Contrary to the Jewish mentality, which did not accord great value to the testimony of women, as Jewish law attests, it was nevertheless women who were the first to have the privilege of seeing the Risen Lord and it was they who were charged by Jesus to take the first paschal message to the Apostles themselves (cf. Mt 28:7-10; Lk 24:9-10; Jn 20:11-18), in order to prepare the latter to become the official witnesses to the Resurrection.

It is true that these facts do not make the matter immediately obvious. This is no surprise, for the questions that the Word of God brings before us go beyond the obvious. In order to reach the ultimate meaning of the mission of Jesus and the ultimate meaning of Scripture, a purely historical exegesis of the texts cannot suffice. But it must be recognized that we have here a number or convergent indications that make all the more remarkable the fact that Jesus did not entrust the apostolic charge to women. Even his Mother, who was so closely associated with the mystery of her Son, and whose incomparable role is emphasized by the Gospels of Luke and John, was not invested with the apostolic ministry. This fact was to lead the Fathers to present her as the example or Christ's will in this domain; as Pope Innocent III repeated later, at the beginning of the 13th century, "Although the Blessed Virgin Mary surpassed in dignity and in excellence all the Apostles, nevertheless it was not to her but to them that the Lord entrusted the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven."

III - THE PRACTICE OF THE APOSTLES

The apostolic community remained faithful to the attitude of Jesus towards women. Although Mary occupied a privileged place in the little circle of those gathered in the Upper Room after the Lord's Ascension (cf. Acts 1:14), it was not she who was called to enter the College of the Twelve at the time of the election that resulted in the choice of Matthias: those who were put forward were two disciples whom the Gospels do not even mention.

On the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit filled them all, men and women (cf. Acts 2:1; 1-14), yet the proclamation of the fulfillment of the prophecies in Jesus was made only by "Peter and the Eleven" (Acts 2:14).

When they and Paul went beyond the confines of the Jewish world, the preaching of the Gospel and the Christian life in the Greco-Roman civilization impelled them to break with Mosaic practices, sometimes regretfully. They could therefore have envisaged conferring ordination on women, if they had not been convinced that their duty of fidelity to the Lord on this point. In the Hellenistic world, the cult of a number of pagan divinities was entrusted to priestesses. In fact, the Greeks did not share the ideas of the Jews: although their philosophers taught the inferiority of women, historians nevertheless emphasize the existence of a certain movement for the advancement of women during the Imperial period. In fact, we know from the book of the Acts and from the Letters of Saint Paul that certain women worked with the Apostles for the Gospel (cf. Rom 16:3-12; Phil 4:3). Saint Paul lists their names with gratitude in the final salutations of the Letters. Some of them often exercised an important influence on conversions: Priscilla, Lydia and others; especially Priscilla, who took it on herself to complete the instruction of Apollos (cf. Acts 18:26); Phoebe, in the service of the Church of Cenchreae (cf. Rom 16:1). All these facts manifest within the apostolic Church a considerable evolution vis-a-vis the customs of Judaism. Nevertheless, at no time was there a question of conferring ordination on these women.

In the Pauline Letters, exegetes of authority have noted a difference between two formulas used by the Apostle: he writes indiscriminately "my fellow workers" (Rom 16:3; Phil 4:2-3) when referring to men and women helping him in his apostolate in one way or another; but he reserves the title "God's fellow workers" (1 Cor 3:9; cf. 1 Thes 3:1) to Apollos, Timothy and himself, thus designated because they are directly set apart for the apostolic ministry and the preaching of the Word of God. In spite of the so important role played by women on the day of the Resurrection, their collaboration was not extended by Saint Paul to the official and public proclamation of the message, since this proclamation belongs exclusively to the apostolic mission."

The Church is viewed by the egalitarians as archaic because it will not go against the Lord Jesus and ordain women to the ministerial priesthood. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was Pope Pius XII who recalled that, "The Church has no power over the substance of the sacraments, that is to say, over what Christ the Lord, as the sources of Revelation bear witness, determined should be maintained in the sacramental sign." (Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis).


This is the teaching of the Council of Trent: "In the Church there has always existed this power, that in the administration of the sacraments, provided that their substance remains unaltered, she can lay down or modify what she considers more fitting either for the benefit of those who receive them or for respect towards those same sacraments, according to varying circumstances, times or places." (Council of Trent, Session 21, chap. 2: Denziger-Schonmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum 1728).

The practice of not ordaining women to the ministerial priesthood has a normative character. This norm is based upon the example of the Lord Jesus and has an unbroken tradition throughout the history of the Church. Which is why Pope John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, nos. 2-4, wrote: "In the Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, I myself wrote in this regard: 'In calling only men as his Apostles, Christ acted in a completely free and sovereign manner. In doing so, he exercised the same freedom with which, in all his behavior, he emphasized the dignity and the vocation of women, without conforming to the prevailing customs and to the traditions sanctioned by the legislation of the time.'


In fact the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles attest that this call was made in accordance with God's eternal plan; Christ chose those whom he willed (cf. Mk 3:13-14; Jn 6:70), and he did so in union with the Father, "through the Holy Spirit" (Acts 1:2), after having spent the night in prayer (cf. Lk 6:12). Therefore, in granting admission to the ministerial priesthood, the Church has always acknowledged as a perennial norm her Lord's way of acting in choosing the twelve men whom he made the foundation of his Church (cf. Rv 21:14). These men did not in fact receive only a function which could thereafter be exercised by any member of the Church; rather they were specifically and intimately associated in the mission of the Incarnate Word himself (cf. Mt 10:1, 7-8; 28:16-20; Mk 3:13-16; 16:14-15). The Apostles did the same when they chose fellow workers who would succeed them in their ministry. Also included in this choice were those who, throughout the time of the Church, would carry on the Apostles' mission of representing Christ the Lord and Redeemer.

Furthermore, the fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, received neither the mission proper to the Apostles nor the ministerial priesthood clearly shows that the non-admission of women to priestly ordination cannot mean that women are of lesser dignity, nor can it be construed as discrimination against them. Rather, it is to be seen as the faithful observance of a plan to be ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the universe.

The presence and the role of women in the life and mission of the Church, although not linked to the ministerial priesthood, remain absolutely necessary and irreplaceable. As the Declaration Inter Insigniores points out, 'the Church desires that Christian women should become fully aware of the greatness of their mission: today their role is of capital importance both for the renewal and humanization of society and for the rediscovery by believers of the true face of the Church.'

The New Testament and the whole history of the Church give ample evidence of the presence in the Church of women, true disciples, witnesses to Christ in the family and in society, as well as in total consecration to the service of God and of the Gospel. 'By defending the dignity of women and their vocation, the Church has shown honor and gratitude for those women who-faithful to the Gospel-have shared in every age in the apostolic mission of the whole People of God. They are the holy martyrs, virgins and mothers of families, who bravely bore witness to their faith and passed on the Church's faith and tradition by bringing up their children in the spirit of the Gospel.'

Moreover, it is to the holiness of the faithful that the hierarchical structure of the Church is totally ordered. For this reason, the Declaration Inter Insigniores recalls: 'the only better gift, which can and must be desired, is love (cf. 1 Cor 12 and 13). The greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven are not the ministers but the saints.'

Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force.

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful."

Got that?  The Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and this judgment is to be definitively held by all of the Church's faithful.  But Stacy Trasancos believes otherwise.  She insists that "maybe the question of women in the ministerial priesthood will remain unsettled."  Mrs. Trasancos believes she knows better than Christ's Vicar and treats women's ordination as something which might still be possible.  For her, there is no "hard logic" to support the idea that women cannot be ordained.

Not even the Holy Father's definitive judgment, made in virtue of his supreme teaching ministry is enough for her.

This is fidelity to the Magisterium?  God preserve us from such nonsense.  Small wonder the Catholic Free Press gave her a weekly column.  Small wonder my views are censored.  I fully adhere to, defend and propagate the teaching of the Magisterium. 

The Sentinel & Enterprise publishes homosexual agitprop from Bonnie J. Toomey

It's Easter Sunday.  Catholics and other Christians are celebrating the Resurrection of their Savior.  And on this sacred day, when Christ's disciples remember the historic event of His reuniting His human body and soul which had been separated by His death on the Cross, the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise has decided to publish homosexual agitprop in the form of an article written by Bonnie J. Toomey and entitled "Why should pink have us seeing red?"

Responding to the controversy which erupted when the president of Abercrombie & Fitch, Jenna Lyons, painted her five year old son's toenails pink, Ms. Toomey writes, "...pink is a beautiful color, and I think it looks great on a guy.  It doesn't mean anything.  But why do we get so uncomfortable when it comes to boys and pink?  Traditions, religions and a patriarchal society have put pink where they want it, not necessarily where it rightfully belongs.  My sons wore their sister's costumes and dresses many times..But did it change their gender?...And what if it did?  Nature is not nurture, and no matter how hard you try, you can't hold back nature..."

But this is to suggest that homosexuality is genetic, dominant and irreversible.  If this were true, then no one would be responsible for deviant sexual acts.  The fact remains, however, that psychological therapy has proven to be very successful in diminishing, and in many cases even eliminating, same-sex attraction.  Personal testimonies from former homosexuals who were healed from the psychopathology may be found here and here.

Ms. Toomey insists though that, "homosexuality is determined by innate characteristics that contribute to sexual orientation and that cannot be changed through medical or psychiatric treatment."  That would indeed come as news to those who have recovered from the psychopathology.  But Ms. Toomey wouldn't be interested in their testimonies.  For these would produce a crack in her wall of conviction.  And Ms. Toomey is not interested in truth.  The fact remains, homosexuality is not innate. In fact, Dr. Francis S. Collins, one of the world's leading scientists who works on the cutting edge of DNA, has said that, "Homosexuality is not hardwired..." and "..there is an inescapable component of heritability to many human behavioral traits.  For virtually none of them is heredity ever close to predictive."  See here. 

It is unfortunate that homosexual propagandists like Bonnie Toomey continue to ignore the hard science about homosexuality.  Dutch psychologist Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, Ph.D., a specialist on homosexuality (unlike Ms. Toomey who has no expertise in this area), says that the claim that homosexuality is normal is one of those statements that are "so foolish that only intellectuals could believe them." It is like saying that anorexia nervosa is healthy. See here. Dr. Aardweg notes that, "The term neurotic describes such relationships well. It suggests the ego-centeredness of the relationship; the attention-seeking instead of loving...Neurotic, in short, suggests all kinds of dramas and childish conflicts as well as the basic disinterestedness in the partner, notwithstanding the shallow pretensions of 'love.' Nowhere is there more self-deception in the homosexual than in his representation of himself as a lover. One partner is important to the other only insofar as he satisfies that other's needs. Real, unselfish love for a desired partner would, in fact, end up destroying homosexual 'love'!" (Dr. Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, The Battle for Normality, Ignatius Press, 1997, pp. 62-63).

Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that 1 in 5 sexually active homosexual and bisexual men in America are HIV-positive but that 44% of them don't know it.  See here.  The health risks associated with the homosexual lifestyle are well documented (see here), but propagandists for the lifestyle - like Ms. Toomey - do not seem to be very concerned about these health risks.  For their goal is to convert others to the homosexal ideology through a planned psychological attack in the form of homosexual propaganda.

In her zeal to promote the sodomite cause, Ms. Toomey engages in one falsehood after another.  She writes, "It's time we accept the fact that as much as 10 percent of the population..is homosexual." But the ten percent myth, which has been based upon research done by the now totally discredited Alfred Kinsey, has been refuted time and again.

For Ms. Toomey, propagandist for the sodomite culture, "Homosexuality..is not wrong."  And she is entitled to her beliefs.  As idiotic as they are.  I'm sure she actually believes the lifestyle is healthy as well.  But those of us who are Christian, Jew and Muslim are entitled to our beliefs as well.  Those of us who are authentically Catholic, as opposed to being Catholic in name only, accept the teaching of the Church's Magisterium, as expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.'  They are contrary to the natural law.  They close the sexual act to the gift of life.  They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity.  Under no circumstances can they be approved." (2357).

And we do not appreciate a second-rate columnist with absolutely no background in theology or the science of DNA telling us that we are backward simply because we do not buy into her radical homosexual agitprop which insists that homosexuality is innate or hardwired.

That the Sentinel & Enterprise would publish such nonsense on Easter Sunday is shameful.  The publication has embarassed itself once again. 

Johann Hari: Journalist Or Fanatical Propagandist?

Credibility Hari Kari?

Johann Hari, a homosexual columnist who writes a column for The Independent and whose credibility has been called into question on several occasions by others working in the field of journalism, has written an anti-Christian rant in which he asserts that, "There is now overwhelming evidence that Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope, was involved for over twenty years in an international criminal conspiracy to cover up the rape of children by priests in his Church." See here for full article.

And what is this "overwhelming evidence" Mr. Hari refers to? He doesn't say. Five years ago I challenged attorney Daniel Shea when he said essentially the same thing. Mr. Shea asserted that "Ratzinger and company" were engaged in an "international conspiracy to obstruct justice." And after five years, he still hasn't produced the slightest shred of evidence to corroborate his claims.

This is the mark of the fanatic. It was the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel, a man whose thought so greatly influenced my own, who said that, "Fanaticism is essentially opinion; opinion pushed to paroxysm; with everything that the notion of opinion may imply of blinded ignorance as to its own nature...whatever ends the fanatic is aiming at or thinks he is aiming at, even if he wishes to gather men together, he can only in fact separate them; but as his own interests cannot lie in effecting this separation, his is led...to wish to wipe his opponents out. And when he is thinking of these opponents, he takes care to form the most degrading images of them possible - they are 'lubricious vipers' or 'hyenas and jackals with typewriters' - and the ones that reduce them to most grossly material terms. In fact, he no longer thinks of these opponents except as material obstacles to be overturned or smashed down. Having abandoned the behaviour of a thinking being, he has lost even the feeblest notion of what a thinking being, outside himself, could be. It is understandable therefore that he should make very effort to deny in advance the rights and qualifications of those whom he wishes to eliminate; and that he should regard all means to this end as fair. We are back here again at the techniques of degradation...fanaticism is, of its very nature, incompatible with any regard for truth; and as truth itself is not really seperable from our regard for it, we need not hesitate to say that the fanatic is the enemy of truth..." (Man Against Mass Society, pp. 149-150).

I challenge Mr. Hari to produce his "evidence" of criminal conspiracy just as I challenged attorney Daniel Shea five years ago. I likewise challenge The Huffington Post to publish this "evidence." Failure to do so will be seen for what it is: an admission that no such "evidence" exists.

The credibility of The Independent*, The Huffington Post, and what little credibility Johann Hari might still enjoy, now hang in the balance.

* The Independent has published an article written by Johann Hari which asserted that, "It is now an indisputable fact that the Catholic Church systematically covered up the rape of children across the globe." See here.

Indisputable fact? Why then has this lawsuit been dropped.