Si palam res est, repetitio injuria non est....

When a woman asked a Bishop why Pope Francis, during his trip to the United States, failed to mention that marriage is between a man and a woman, the Bishop responded that the Holy Father wanted to avoid a "negative polemic."

Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand refutes this intellectual sophistry.  He writes, "Some might be tempted to believe that the rejection of error and falsehood [ and here, again, we are speaking of ideas not persons] is something "negative" and even cult-like....Perhaps never before has there been as much intellectual fraud as there is today. In the mass media - and even in discussions on university campuses - this intellectual fraud appears chiefly as the manipulation of slogans designed to bluff the hearer or reader, and prevent him from thinking clearly. For a typical example, let us consider how the terms positive and negative are now most often used to discredit the refutation of pernicious errors and to give credit to the most shallow speculations. The intellectual swindlers who play such an important role in public discussions will often denominate as 'positive' propositions and attitudes they favor. They thereby seek to forestall questions of truth and value by enveloping their prejudices in a vague suggestion of 'creativity,' 'originality,' 'openness,' 'unaggressiveness.' This is the device of the cuttlefish. The moment one tries to grasp it, it emits a murky substance to confuse and deceive.

In reality, the popular slogan usages of positive and negative is a distortion of the genuine meanings of the terms. In proper usage they can refer to existence and nonexistence or to value and disvalue. They can refer to desirability and undesirability, or to answers to questions and demands, or to results of tests and inquiries. But when these terms are applied to attitudes of mind or to theses - by way of suggesting an evaluation - an intellectual fraud is committed; for they are then being used to evoke vague associations that distract from the question that alone matters - namely: Is this attitude objectively called for? Or: Is this thesis true?...It is the nature of truth to exclude every contradiction of itself. Thus, the rejection of errors and falsehoods can never be separated from the affirmation of truth. The one implies the other...

To give the impression that affirmations are 'positive' and denials 'negative' is to misrepresent completely the nature of judgments and propositions. This abuse of the language transforms the terms positive and negative into deceptive slogans and thus amounts to an intellectual swindle..." (The Charitable Anathema, pp. 45-47).

Si palam res est, repetitio injuria non est: "To say what everybody knows is no injury."

In one of his last homilies, Archbishop Oscar Romero, the martyred Archbishop of San Salvador [whom Francis claims to admire], said: "A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good so that they become entrenched in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's call. A preaching that does not discomfit sinners but lulls them in their sin leaves Zebulun and Naphtali in the shadow of death. A preaching that awakens, a preaching that enlightens -- as when a light turned on awakens and of course annoys a sleeper -- that is the preaching of Christ, calling, "wake up! Be converted!" this is the church's authentic preaching. Naturally, such preaching must meet conflict, must spoil what is miscalled prestige, must disturb, must be persecuted. It cannot get along with the powers of darkness and sin."


Francis has to decide whether he wants to please men or serve Christ (Galatians 1: 10).  I believe he has already decided.

Here is what the Archdiocese of Boston wants for the priesthood...

In a Blog post which may be found here, Deacon Ryan Duns argues that same-sex "marriage" could actually be beneficial to society.

Deacon Duns quotes from Louis Dupre, who said that,  "The quality of a civilization may be measured both by the complexity of its ingredients and by the harmony of their order. The more diverse elements it succeeds in integrating within a harmonious and unified balance, the greater its potential and, usually, its achievements are." (Louis Dupré, Passage to Modernity, 29).

Then this confused soul writes, "...the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) has yielded simultaneously great rejoicing from some, much hand-wringing from others. From Twitter to Facebook, blogs to news sites, the Court's actions were debated and discussed, celebrated and denounced. Mike Huckabee tweeted that 'Jesus Wept' and the USCCB called it a 'tragic day for marriage and our nation.' The New Ways Ministry website likens the experience to 'justice rolling down like a river,' washing away what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg referred to in March as 'skim-milk marriage.'

I find the above quote from Louis Dupré particularly helpful this morning as I reflect on yesterday's events. For, to my mind, a new question begins to emerge and demand response: if gay marriages are considered equal and of the same standing as heterosexual marriages, will this contribute to or detract from the harmony of society? Can this so-called marriage equality contribute to unification or will it result in further fracturing?

In their press release, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops rightly stresses 'the common good of all, especially our children, depends upon a society that strives to uphold the truth of marriage. These decisions are part of a public debate of great consequence. The future of marriage and the well-being of our society hang in the balance.'

Yesterday's SCOTUS decision is hardly the final word on the issue of marriage. As the USCCB asserts, it is 'part of a public debate of great consequence.' Indeed, it may be better to see these decisions less as offering the definitive word on marriage than on opening up a space for new words to spoken. The words to be spoken can come only through the lived witness of same-sex couples living lives of love and commitment that contribute to, rather than detract from, the common good of our nation.

Pope Francis has managed in three months to capture the attention of a skeptical world and an increasingly jaded flock. The credibility of his words arises from his actions and it's hard to deny that the Holy Father is active. His is a faith that works, his works are born of faith.

In the months and years ahead, a great burden will continue to be shouldered by those same-sex couples in the United States willing to commit themselves to one another. Great attention will be focused upon them and many Christian communities will remain skeptical of their relationships' ability to witness to the values of God's Kingdom. Gay and Lesbian Christians must now accept the shadow of the Cross falling long upon them. Many will deny that God's Spirit can be active in their commitments. It is only through the testimony of their lives, the witness of fidelity and love, that they have any chance in changing the hearts and minds of others.

In the Acts of the Apostles, the Pharisee Gamaliel offered the following counsel concerning the nascent movement growing around the claim that Jesus had been raised from the dead:
"...in the present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone; because if this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them - in that case you may even be found fighting against God." (Acts 5:38-39).

I accept that, whether we like it or not as a faith community, a new path has been opened up to citizens of our nation. My prayer is that marriage will continue to be the glue that holds the fundamental unit of our society together: the family. Whether same-sex couples can contribute to the common good in and through their witness of socially sanction and legally protected fidelity, we must wait and see. We must, all of us, keep our hearts and eyes and ears open so that if we begin to see the movement of God's Spirit, we can respond with joy and gratitude. Should the trace of God's life not be found, should only greater disharmony and rancor reign, we will find confirmation of our received Tradition's wisdom."

Got that?  According to this Deacon of the Boston Archdiocese, waiting to be ordained while my own vocation to the priesthood is thrown into the garbage heap because I accept, defend and promote the Church's perennial teaching, especially in the area of sexual morality, God has allowed "a new path" to be opened up - one that permits homosexual and lesbian sex and even sacramental marriage - and we should all keep our hearts and minds open in order to discern "the movement of God's Spirit."

Isn't it amazing how people will strain to rationalize sin (especially those sins they are engaging in themselves)? But homosexual acts may never be approved of.  They are intrinsically evil acts.  They cry to Heaven for vengeance.

These intrinsically evil acts are not the result of the movement of the Holy Spirit but the movement of the Evil spirit.  They are the fruit of the demonic spirit.

Because I accept and promote the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which teaches authoritatively that, "...In the sanctorum communio, 'None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.'  'If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.  Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.'  'Charity does not insist on its own way.'  In this solidarity with all men, living or dead, which is founded on the communion of saints, the least of our acts done in charity redounds to the profit of all.  Every sin harms this communion." (CCC, 953), my vocation is relegated to file 13.

Paragraph 817 of the Catechism assures us that "ruptures that wound the unity of Christ's Body...do not occur without human sin."

Granted that when an evil act, such as a homosexual act, is done in public, the resulting scandal compounds its intrinsic evil.  But an intrinsically evil act does not become good or neutral simply because it is performed in private.  The evil nature of the act remains unchanged.  Pope John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, explains that, "If acts are intrinsically evil, a good intention or particular circumstances can diminish their evil, but they cannot remove it.  They remain 'irremediably' evil acts per se and in themselves they are not capable of being ordered to God and to the good of the person." (No. 81).

Pope John Paul II insists that, "No damage must be done to the harmony between faith and life: the unity of the Church is damaged not only by Christians who reject or distort the truths of faith but also by those who disregard the moral obligations to which they are called by the Gospel (cf. 1 Cor 5: 9-13).  The Apostles decisively rejected any separation between the commitment of the heart and the actions which express or prove it (cf. 1 John 2: 3-6).  And ever since Apostolic times the Church's Pastors have unambiguously condemned the behavior of those who fostered division by their teaching or by their actions." (Veritatis Splendor, No. 26).
Deacon Dun's vocation is accepted, nurtured and encouraged.  Mine is rejected.

The difference: I stand with Jesus Christ and the Church He founded.  I'm not a spiritual whore.  I won't promote sodomy for the sake of being accepted. I refuse to sell my soul for a bowl of porridge.

For what does it profit a man to gain the entire world...you know the rest!

Related reading here.

Bishop Johan Bonny chooses insanity

As noted here:


"The Bishop of Antwerp, Johan Bonny advocates an ecclesiastical recognition of homosexual relationships. The dogma that the Catholic Church can only accept male-female relationships, he put in question in an interview with this newspaper. "There should be a diversity of recognition forms."

With his plea Bonny, is one of the first church leaders who attacks the absolute monopoly of the male-female marriage. "We have to look inside the church for a formal recognition of the relationality which is also present in many gay couples. As a variety of legal frameworks in society exist for partners, he wants to instate a diversity of recognition forms in the church."

Bonny, the designated (in fact, for the time being, most likely) successor of Archbishop
André-Joseph Léonard, who will retire in 2015, believes that gay couples should be able to get a church blessing. Moreover, he argues that a homosexual relationship can also satify the criteria of a religious marriage. "The intrinsic values are more important to me than the institutional demand. The Christian ethic is based on lasting relationships where exclusivity, loyalty and care are central to each other.

Bringing up children
With a subtle formulation Bonny also puts the male-female Catholic monopoly for bringing up children in question. "Then there is the openness to new life, or at least the responsibility taken up by partners to be generous in what they provide to children."

In September, the Antwerp bishop wrote a letter to the Vatican on this matter. Among others, he include the idea that the church urgently needs to find a connection in modern society, explains why Bonny emphasises the matter. "Everyone gets to make his or her life with relationships, friendship, family and children's upbringing. We should not deny that this existed within the church injuries and traumas. Too many people were excluded for a long time."

Canon lawyer and the Rector of the (Cathcon-once) Catholic University of Leuven, Rik Torfs considers Bonny's message as a turning point: "Do not underestimate the significance of this.  Bonny advocates a  change in long-held unshakable principles, something that the dogmatic pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI no bishop could afford to do. "

In his Encyclical Letter Libertas Humana, Pope Leo XIII explained that:

"It is manifest that the eternal law of God is the sole standard and rule of human liberty, not only in each individual man, but also in the community and civil society which men constitute when united. Therefore, the true liberty of human society does not consist in every man doing what he please, for this would simply end in turmoil and confusion, and bring on the overthrow of the state; but rather in this, that through the injunctions of the civil law all may more easily conform to the prescriptions of the eternal law . . . the binding force of the human laws is in this, that they are to be regarded as applications of the eternal law, and incapable of sanctioning anything which is not contained in the eternal law, as in the principle of all law . . . where a law is enacted contrary to reason, or to the eternal law, or to some ordinance of God, obedience is unlawful, lest while obeying man we become disobedient to God."

Human laws are "incapable of sanctioning anything which is not contained in the eternal law." This is crystal clear Catholic teaching. There is no room for doubt. All other "laws" are unjust and are, therefore, not laws at all. And Catholics are not bound to obey them. In fact, Catholics have a duty to resist them. As I mentioned in a previous post, "Any law supportive of same-sex 'marriage' is no law at all. This because any law which is promulgated must correspond to the divine law. No human authority can declare what is morally evil to be morally good. Laws permitting slavery, abortion, euthanasia, divorce and "marriages" between persons of the same gender are immoral, and therefore unjust (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 96, a.5)."


In our sin-sick and confused world, there are homosexuals who are now play-acting at getting married, much as a young boy might play at being a priest. We don't say that the child's play at being a priest really makes him a priest. Likewise, homosexuals might play at being married, but this doesn't make it so. We are sane when our minds conform to reality. I might tell people that I am Napoleon. But my saying so doesn't make me Napoleon. And if I really believe that I am Napoleon, I am not sane.

Men might actually believe that they have the right to change the definition of marriage, but this is merely symptomatic of an illusion which is rooted in pride. As such, it represents a form of insanity. Men are not free to change God's eternal law to suit their own pleasures. Recall the teaching of Pope Pius XI in his famous Encyclical "On Christian Marriage":

"First of all, let this remain the unchanged and unshakable foundation: Matrimony was neither established nor restored by man but by God. It has been protected, strengthened, and elevated not by the laws of men, but by those of God, the author of human nature, and of Christ who restored that same nature. Consequently, these laws cannot be changed according to men's pleasure, nor by any agreement of the spouses themselves that is contrary to these laws. This is the teaching of Sacred Scripture (see Gen 1:27; 2:22f.; Mt 19:3ff.; Eph 5:23ff.); this is the constant, universal tradition of the Church; this is the solemn definition of the holy Council of Trent, which in the words of Sacred Scripture teaches and reasserts that the permanent and indissoluble bond of matrimony, its unity and strength, have their origin in God."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos. 1603-1605, explain marriage in the order of creation:

"The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage." The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity, some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures. "The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life."


God who created man out of love also calls him to love the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love. Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator's eyes. And this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation: "And God blessed them, and God said to them: 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.'"


Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: "It is not good that the man should be alone." The woman, "flesh of his flesh," his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a "helpmate"; she thus represents God from whom comes our help. "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been "in the beginning": "So they are no longer two, but one flesh."

Again, we may choose to reject these truths. But in so doing, we lose our grip on sanity as it were. In the words of the late (great) F.J. Sheed:

"..if we see anything - ourself or some other man, or the Universe as a whole or any part of it - without at the same time seeing God holding it there, then we are seeing it all wrong. If we saw a coat hanging on a wall and did not realize that it was held there by a hook, we should not be living in the real world at all, but in some fantastic world of our own in which coats defied the law of gravity and hung on walls by their own power. Similarly if we see things in existence and do not in the same act see that they are held in existence by God, then equally we are living in a fantastic world, not the real world. Seeing God everywhere and all things upheld by Him [such as marriage, my note] is not a matter of sanctity; but of plain sanity, because God is everywhere and all things are upheld by Him...To overlook God's presence is not simply to be irreligious; it is a kind of insanity, like overlooking anything else that is actually there." (Theology and Sanity, p.6).

The choice is ours: We either view marriage within the context of the order of creation with God as its Author, or we sink into insanity.

Bishop Bonny has made his choice.  Let's see if Pope Francis will muster the necessary fortitude and moral integrity to do the right thing and remove him from office.

A funeral Mass for Mayor Thomas Menino, promoter of abortion and sodomy

The website ontheissues.org notes that:

"Since an abortive run for Congress in 1992 while still a City Councilor, Menino has supported legal abortion and the public funding of abortion. In his first campaign for Mayor in 1993, he indicated that he would continue the practice of taxpayer finance abortions at Boston City Hospital."  See here.

As Mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino marched with homosexuals, promoted same-sex "marriage," and expressed his desire to keep the restaurant chain Chick-fil-A out of Boston because of its adherence to Biblical values.  See here.

Now WCVB is reporting that this confused soul who railed against Catholic moral teaching will now receive (as did Senator Ted Kennedy before him), a funeral Mass, to be held at Most Precious Blood Parish in Hyde Park.

When the same Archdiocese of Boston scandalized the faithful with a funeral Mass for Senator Kennedy (where this enemy of the Church was hailed as "our brother and our friend) John-Henry Westen, writing for LifeSiteNews, in an editorial entitled, "The Kennedy Funeral - A Golden Opportunity or Capitulation for the Catholic Church," said that:

"Saturday's grandiose Catholic funeral for Senator Ted Kennedy has the potential to be a scandal that will make Notre Dame's Obama Day a walk in the park. With all four living former Presidents in attendance and an address from President Barack Obama, the funeral is set to be a royal crowning, right inside a Catholic Church, of a man who betrayed the most fundamental moral teachings of the faith.

What example will this give to Catholics and the rest of the world looking in? It will surely belie the Catholic teachings on the sanctity of life and sexuality. 'Surely,' they will say, 'if one of the most vociferous proponents of abortion and homosexuality in politics is so feted in the Church, the Church cannot possibly regard abortion as murder.' Would anyone so honor one who so advocated what the church officially considers an 'unspeakable crime'?"

The same could be said here.  But don't expect the Archdiocese of Boston to do the right thing.  This local church has a history of genuflecting before the world and scandalizing the faithful.

This is what happens when spiritually and psychologically healthy heterosexual men are excluded from ministry and the Chancery is staffed by weak, effeminate and morally depraved individuals.

Evil celebrates evil.  This is why the Archdiocese of Boston will fete Thomas Menino as brother and friend.

Justice Elena Kagan: Not as clever as she thinks on same-sex "marriage"

Surpreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, responding to Charles Cooper, the lawyer defending Proposition 8, the California "gay marriage" ban, after he insisted that the primary purpose of marriage is procreation, responded sarcastically, "..if the couple - I can assure you, if both the woman and the man are over the age of 55, there are not a lot of children coming out of that marriage."  See here.

Yes, it's entirely true that people marry for a variety of motives: for love, for companionship, for money or economic considerations, for position.  And the idea of having children may be very secondary and perhaps only tolerated rather than desired, in the minds of couples marrying.  The idea of having children need not be uppermost in their minds.  But there is no doubt that within marriage, procreation is primary in nature's design.  We eat mostly for the pleasure we obtain from eating and we rarely think of its necessity for sustaining life.  Nevertheless, the latter is the primary purpose of eating.  The same is true for the sexual act.  It may be done for pleasure, but its primary purpose is to sustain the race - procreation.

Marriage must conform to the natural law which is promulgated by God and is the objective order established by Him.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that, "The 'divine and natural' law shows man the way to follow so as to practice the good and attain his end." (CCC, 1955).  And again: "The natural law, present in the heart of each man and established by reason, is universal in its precepts and its authority extends to all men.  It expresses the dignity of the person and determines the basis for his fundamental rights and duties." (CCC, 1956).

The eternal law is in God.  When applied to creatures, this eternal law is called the natural law.  In nature we see that all things are bound by constant and uniform inclinations to attain definite ends.  For example, it is natural for the sun to rise and light and heat the earth, for flowers to grow and bloom, for fish to swim and birds to fly, and for man to think thoughts and to share them with others.  In each case, these things are simply obeying the law which is stamped on their natures by their Creator.  This temporal effect of the eternal law which shows itself in creatures is what we mean by the natural law.  It is called natural law because it is grounded in nature itself and manifests itself through nature, or essence or the constitution of things.

Now, getting back to Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.  Her response to attorney Charles Cooper was not amusing and betrays her ignorance of the natural law, which is the basis for all civil law.  The primary purpose of marriage is procreation.  Besides this primary purpose, marriage has secondary ends, the mutual material and spiritual assistance to the married parties and protection from the abuse of sex life.  But the primary purpose of marriage is essential for its validity to the extent that the right to marital commerce may never be excluded.  The marriage contract is valid even when it is certain that there is no possibility of having children (some couples are unable to have children), provided that the primary purpose of marriage, which is procreation, is not excluded.  But two people of the same sex are not able to have children.  In a homosexual union, procreation is excluded.  As we read in the Catechism, homosexual acts are, "..contrary to the natural law.  They close the sexual act to the gift of life." (CCC, 2357).

Justice Kagan's response to attorney Cooper does not invalidate his argument.  It only serves to highlight her paucity of intellect.  But then, this is the same Elena Kagan who issued a Socialist call to action to change America

and to defeat the "entrenched foe."  Presumably, this entrenched foe is the Judeo-Christian foundation upon which America was built.

The New York Times gets it wrong again

Miguel Woites, a confidant of Pope Francis while he served as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, is denying that the Holy Father ever endorsed homosexual civil unions as an alternative to same-sex "marriage."  Such was the claim of The New York Times.  See here.

Even those who produce The New York Times should know better than that.  But then the newspaper hasn't exactly been a bastion of journalistic integrity.  Pope Francis would never have endorsed "gay" civil unions.  For the acceptance of such unions would essentially redefine the concept of marriage in total disregard for its true nature. If such unions are endorsed, law loses its foundation in the natural order and right reason and thus its legitimacy. As St. Augustine says: 'that which is not just seems to be no law at all' (De Lib. Arb. i,5).


The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its document titled "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons," had this to say: "The inevitable consequence of legal recognition of homosexual unions would be the redefinition of marriage, which would become, in its legal status, an institution devoid of essential reference to factors linked to heterosexuality; for example, procreation and raising children. If, from the legal standpoint, marriage between a man and a woman were to be considered just one possible form of marriage, the concept of marriage would undergo a radical transformation, with grave detriment to the common good. By putting homosexual unions on a legal plane analogous to to that of marriage and the family, the State acts arbitrarily and in contradiction with its duties." (No. 8).

his Encyclical Letter Libertas Humana, Pope Leo XIII explained that: "It is manifest that the eternal law of God is the sole standard and rule of human liberty, not only in each individual man, but also in the community and civil society which men constitute when united. Therefore, the true liberty of human society does not consist in every man doing what he please, for this would simply end in turmoil and confusion, and bring on the overthrow of the state; but rather in this, that through the injunctions of the civil law all may more easily conform to the prescriptions of the eternal law . . . the binding force of the human laws is in this, that they are to be regarded as applications of the eternal law, and incapable of sanctioning anything which is not contained in the eternal law, as in the principle of all law . . . where a law is enacted contrary to reason, or to the eternal law, or to some ordinance of God, obedience is unlawful, lest while obeying man we become disobedient to God."

Human laws are "incapable of sanctioning anything which is not contained in the eternal law." This is crystal clear Catholic teaching. There is no room for doubt. All other "laws" are unjust and are, therefore, not laws at all. And Catholics are not bound to obey them. In fact, Catholics have a duty to resist them. As I mentioned in a previous post, "Any law supportive of same-sex 'marriage' is no law at all. This because any law which is promulgated must correspond to the divine law. No human authority can declare what is morally evil to be morally good. Laws permitting slavery, abortion, euthanasia, divorce and "marriages" between persons of the same gender are immoral, and therefore unjust (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 96, a.5)."

Many homosexuals are now play-acting at getting married, much as a young boy might play at being a priest. We don't say that the child's play at being a priest really makes him a priest. Likewise, homosexuals might play at being married, but this doesn't make it so. We are sane when our minds conform to reality. I might tell people that I am Napoleon. But my saying so doesn't make me Napoleon. And if I really believe that I am Napoleon, I am not sane.

Men might actually believe that they have the right to change the definition of marriage, but this is merely symptomatic of an illusion which is rooted in pride. As such, it represents a form of insanity. Men are not free to change God's eternal law to suit their own pleasures. Recall the teaching of Pope Pius XI in his famous Encyclical "On Christian Marriage":"First of all, let this remain the unchanged and unshakable foundation: Matrimony was neither established nor restored by man but by God. It has been protected, strengthened, and elevated not by the laws of men, but by those of God, the author of human nature, and of Christ who restored that same nature. Consequently, these laws cannot be changed according to men's pleasure, nor by any agreement of the spouses themselves that is contrary to these laws. This is the teaching of Sacred Scripture (see Gen 1:27; 2:22f.; Mt 19:3ff.; Eph 5:23ff.); this is the constant, universal tradition of the Church; this is the solemn definition of the holy Council of Trent, which in the words of Sacred Scripture teaches and reasserts that the permanent and indissoluble bond of matrimony, its unity and strength, have their origin in God."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos. 1603-1605, explain marriage in the order of creation: "The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws. . . . God himself is the author of marriage." The vocation to marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics. Although the dignity of this institution is not transparent everywhere with the same clarity, some sense of the greatness of the matrimonial union exists in all cultures. "The well-being of the individual person and of both human and Christian society is closely bound up with the healthy state of conjugal and family life."

God who created man out of love also calls him to love the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being. For man is created in the image and likeness of God who is himself love. Since God created him man and woman, their mutual love becomes an image of the absolute and unfailing love with which God loves man. It is good, very good, in the Creator's eyes. And this love which God blesses is intended to be fruitful and to be realized in the common work of watching over creation: "And God blessed them, and God said to them: 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.'"

Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: "It is not good that the man should be alone." The woman, "flesh of his flesh," his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a "helpmate"; she thus represents God from whom comes our help. "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh." The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been "in the beginning": "So they are no longer two, but one flesh."

Again, we may choose to reject these truths. But in so doing, we lose our grip on sanity as it were. In the words of the late (great) F.J. Sheed: "..if we see anything - ourself or some other man, or the Universe as a whole or any part of it - without at the same time seeing God holding it there, then we are seeing it all wrong. If we saw a coat hanging on a wall and did not realize that it was held there by a hook, we should not be living in the real world at all, but in some fantastic world of our own in which coats defied the law of gravity and hung on walls by their own power. Similarly if we see things in existence and do not in the same act see that they are held in existence by God, then equally we are living in a fantastic world, not the real world. Seeing God everywhere and all things upheld by Him [such as marriage, my note] is not a matter of sanctity; but of plain sanity, because God is everywhere and all things are upheld by Him...To overlook God's presence is not simply to be irreligious; it is a kind of insanity, like overlooking anything else that is actually there." (Theology and Sanity, p.6).

Bishop McManus calls for prayer and fasting to instill spiritual stamina and fortitude

In an editorial published in this week's Catholic Free Press and entitled 'Proclaim the Gospel of Life," Bishop Robert J. McManus, Bishop of the Worcester [Massachusetts] Diocese, reflecting on the 40th anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, writes, "As we reflect on this unspeakable tragedy, we recall that Jesus told us that certain evils are only overcome by prayer and fasting.  Currently we are assailed by many increasing threats in our culture, most especially in the ongoing assaults on life, marriage and religious liberty.  In light of these unprecedented attacks on these most fundamental pillars of society, the U.S. Bishops recently launched a special initiative that will continue throughout the Year of Faith.  This Call to Prayer for Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty is something that all of us can participate in both personally and communally....I wish to personally invite everyone to take this opportunity to increase our spiritual stamina and fortitude by joining with our fellow Catholics across the country through participation in the monthly holy hours that will be offered in our parishes, saying the rosary regularly, fasting and abstaining from meat on Fridays, and other devotions and events that will take place in the diocese..."

It's real nice that Bishop McManus is finally beginning to wake up to the realities of our times by recognizing that only through prayer and fasting will certain evils be driven out since there is an element of the demonic behind them.  But before Catholics can convert the culture, they must first convert themselves.  About a month back I wrote Bishop McManus about his promotion of Servite Sister Joyce Rupp, a confused religious who promotes New Age spirituality and dissent from the authoritative teachings of the Magisterium.  Specifically, I asked His Excellency if he felt that it was truly appropriate for the Chancery to be offering her books for sale given her peculiar beliefs [such as the "godess" Sophia] and her angry, hate-filled attacks on the Church's hierarchy [see my previous posts on Joyce Rupp].  His response?  There was none.  So much for increasing spiritual stamina and fortitude.  Or perhaps His Excellency believes that it is only the laity who are in need of metanoia?

If the Bishop has no time for a Christian believer who accepts, promotes and defends the Magisterial teaching of the Church and cares little for the right of the faithful to receive Catholic teaching in its purity and integrity [Veritatis Splendor, No. 113], then it is a safe bet that his own prayer life is suffering.  It was Pope John Paul II who wrote that, "A bishop should try to ensure that as many as possible of those who, together with him, make up the local Church can come to know him personally.  He for his part will seek to be close to them, to know about their lives - what gives joy to their hearts and what saddens them.  Such mutual acquaintance cannot be built through occasional meetings: it comes from a genuine interest in what is happening in their lives regardless of age, social status, or nationality, whether they are close at hand or far away....It is very important for a bishop to have a rapport with his people and to know how to relate to them well...Interest in others begins with the bishop's prayer life: his conversations with Christ, who entrusts 'His own' to him.  Prayer prepares him for encounter with others." (Rise, Let Us Be On Our Way).

If a bishop cannot even maintain a rapport with faithful Catholics in his own diocese, then it is difficult to take him seriously when he writes, "Let us unite our hearts and minds through special acts of prayer, fasting, and sacrifice....to uphold the inherent dignity of all human life from conception to natural death."

Where was the bishop's recognition of my "inherent dignity" when I wrote him a letter detailing how one of his priests was encouraging a couple in their senior years to live together while assuring them that any sexual acts outside of marriage were not sinful at their age and mentioned my interest in pursuing a priestly vocation within the diocese?  Readers of this Blog know that this letter of mine also received no response.  And I had requested the Bishop's blessing each time I wrote him!  Dignity?

Long before Bishop McManus' call for prayer and fasting, I issued a similar call.  In fact, over the years, I have issued this call.  See here and here for example.  But along with prayer and fasting, we Catholics - all of us - must first take the plank out of our own eyes if we are to see clearly enough to take the speck out of the eyes of our fellow citizens throughout the broader culture.  And this goes for our priests and deacons and religious as well.  More so, for they should be shining examples of the faith life.  Needless to say, this sort of behavior will never convert our broken, sin-sick culture. 

As Father Vincent Miceli, S.J., reminded us some years back, "Rampant immorality is [an] obstacle opposing the work of evangelization.  Since conduct follows from convictions, once Catholics cancel their creed from their lives, their conduct inevitably becomes depraved....The decay on all sides of Christian morals makes it not only difficult to bring in those outside the Church, but even to stay in themselves and hold their fellow Catholics within the Church." (Essay entitled The Evangelization of the United States).

It is a spiritual maxim that we cannot give to others what we ourselves do not possess.  The Bishop of Worcester, and the priests who serve with him, should reflect very carefully on this truth.

The Open Conspiracy: Religions in general, and in the first place the Catholic religion, must be neutralized

Speaking about the Earth Charter and related globalism, Msgr. Michel Schooyans said, "In order to consolidate this holistic vision of globalism, certain obstacles have to be smoothed out and instruments put to work. Religions in general, and in the first place the Catholic religion, figure among the obstacles that have to be neutralized."  Which certainly explains the HHS contraception mandate - one step in an ongoing process.  And now, President Obama has come out in full support of same-sex "marriage."  The Open Conspiracy is emboldened.  As H.G. Wells, himself a Socialist, had argued, traditional Christianity has been rendered "old-fashioned and unserviceable" [read obsolete] and religion must now "adapt itself" to our modern "forward looking turn of mind."


Enter the Earth Charter.  According to its founders, the Earth Charter is "a declaration of fundamental principles for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century." The Earth Charter Commission hopes that the Charter will become the common standard "by which the conduct of all individuals, organizations, businesses, governments, and transnational institutions [such as the Roman Catholic Church, my note] is to be guided and assessed."

The globalists who are behind the Earth Charter seek to promote a New Age religion which will neutralize the supernatural faith of Roman Catholicism. In the words of Archbishop Javier Lozano Barragan, "Clearly, we are faced with the total denial of Christianity." Which is why Mikhael Gorbachev, at the three separate press conferences at the RIO + 5 Conference, said that, "The Ten Commandments are out of date. They will be replaced by the [then] fifteen principles of the Earth Charter.

The Termite Nations have dispensed with God and His Commandments in their quest for unbridled hedonism. We are being prepared for the Reign of Antichrist. The Rev. P. Huchede, in his work entitled "History of Antichrist," explains the religious preparation, both intellectual and moral, for the Reign of Antichrist which will arrive after economic collapse: "But how shall he deprive the world of Christianity and have himself adored as God? Alas, it is only too true that the minds and hearts of men are admirably disposed for revolution and consequently ready to accept and bear the cruel yoke of such a tyrant. Revolution as the word itself implies means a subversion, but a subversion of all that is true, good, beautiful, and grand in the universe. It is the subversion of religion, representing its dogmas as myths and its moral teachings as tyranical. It is the subversion of authority...

Licentiousness under the name of liberty becomes the order of the day; each one is invested with the right to govern himself. It is the subversion of reason: and do we not find leading minds in some of the most enlightened nations denying the principle of contradiction and maintaining the absolute identity of all beings? Revolution is therefore essentially destructive, and it becomes cosmopolitan by the action of secret societies scattered throughout the world. Is it not true to say that the 'mystery of iniquity' is prepared in secret revolutionary dens? But it does not suffice to destroy; it is absolutely necessary to build up again. The world cannot subsist long in a vacuum. It must have a religion; it must have a philosophy; it must have an authority. Revolution will furnish all these. Instead of the reasonable and supernatural religion of Jesus Christ, Revolution will preach Pantheism. The God-humanity will impart the theurgic spirit and thus lead men to adore the demon as the author of universal emancipation...What frightful immorality must follow in the train of this shameless prostitution of religion! Never has the threefold concupiscence made greater ravage among mankind. And this is the religion sought and hoped for as the cherished boon of the aspirations of our modern free thinkers. To our Christian philosophy, the honor of humanity's revolution will substitute a babel of extravagant and absurd ideas. Instead of a mild and efficient authority consecrated alike by Church and state, despotism and anarchy will rise up and contend for the shreds of religious liberty and human policy...if the state of perversion continue for a while longer, he [Antichrist] will find the world prepared to receive and serve him." (Rev. P. Huchede, History of Antichrist, pp. 13-14, Tan Books).

Father Huchede addresses the fact of the open conspiracy: "Is it not true to say that the "mystery of iniquity" is prepared in secret revolutionary dens?"   This is the revolution called for by atheists, socialists, freemasons and all those who hate the Lord Jesus and His Mystical Body which is the Catholic Church.  H.G. Wells described the goal of the Open Conspiracy as, "an adequately implemented Liberal Socialism, which will ultimately supply teaching, coercive and directive public services to the whole world" and added that this, "is the immediate task before all rational people...There must be a common faith and law for mankind" and this will be achieved through a "World-State."

Saint Mary's Church in Seattle deserves better than Tricia Wittmann-Todd

Tricia Wittmann-Todd, the "pastoral life coordinator" who refused to circulate petitions in support of Referendum 74, the ballot measure to roll back Washington's same-sex "marriage" law, even though Archbishop J. Peter Sartain asked parishes throughout the Archdiocese of Seattle to do so, is at it again.  This time, in her weekly message to parishioners of St. Mary's Church in Seattle, Tricia is commenting on the sixth and seventh chapter of Acts to imply that same-sex unions are called for because of the demands of "justice." 

She writes, "This story is a good reminder that ours is a very long and complicated history, and that the Holy Spirit chooses to manifest Herself in first one and then another.  Certain things remain constant in our faith: worshipping God, care for the widows and orphans...and a radical equality for justice that includes all people all the time."

Note Ms. Wittmann-Todd's use of vertical inclusive language when referring to the Person of the Holy Spirit.  This even though the Vatican has made it clear that, "..in keeping with the Church's tradition, the feminine and neuter pronouns are not to be used to refer to the Person of the Holy Spirit." (See here).  Apparently Wittmann-Todd has a problem not only with her Archbishop's authority but with authority in the Church in general.  For this reason alone, her competence to serve in any capacity, even at the parish level, is in question.

In her weekly message, Wittmann-Todd writes, "Many have expressed concern and anger that Archbishop Sartain has been appointed to 'overhaul' the Leadership Conference of Women Religious...What will this mean for the countless women religious who have been and continue to be foundational for most of us in our spiritual lives.  They have taught us the faith in school and church..."

Some foundation.  We are witnessing its fruits in the United States today: emptying churches, seminaries and convents and a Church which needs to be re-evangelized, a mission territory where so many Catholics, like Wittmann-Todd herself, do not even understand the fundamentals of the faith.

If Wittmann-Todd had been given a solid foundation in the faith she would understand, as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith affirmed in its document entitled Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, that "civil law cannot contradict right reason without losing its binding force on conscience.  Every humanly-created law is legitimate insofar as it is consistent with the natural moral law, recognized by right reason, and insofar as it respects the inalienable rights of every person." (No. 6).  Thus, "laws in favor of homosexual unions are contrary to right reason...the State could not grant legal standing to such unions without failing in its duty to promote and defend marriage as an institution essential to the common good." (No. 6).

Wittmann-Todd lacks a solid foundation in the Catholic faith.  For this reason, she should be removed immediately from her position as "pastoral life coordinator."  Faith, as defined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is "..a personal act - the free response of the human person to the initiative of God who reveals himself" (CCC, 166).  Faith is a response to what has been divinely given.  In other words, a response to divine revelation.  Faith is not merely a subjective feeling which we work up within ourselves.  St. Thomas Aquinas says [Summa Theologiae II-II, I, 2, ad 2] that: "The believer's act [of faith] does not terminate in propositions, but in the realities which they express."

If Wittmann-Todd has difficulty accepting the Church's teaching, which is divinely revealed, and her authority, how can she faithfully serve a Catholic community?

Archbishop Sartain?

Tricia Wittmann-Todd believes she knows what's best for "her" Catholic Parish

As this article notes, even though Archbishop J. Peter Sartain has asked parishes throughout the Archdiocese of Seattle, Washington to circulate petitions in support of Referendum 74, the ballot measure to roll back Washington's recently passed same-sex "marriage" law, several parishes have refused to do so.  One of these parishes, St. Mary's Parish in the Central Area, issued a statement through its "pastoral life coordinator" Tricia Wittmann-Todd.

In her "weekly message," Ms. Wittmann-Todd writes:

"Dear People of St Mary's,


I am writing to share with you my decision regarding collection of signatures at St Mary's for Referendum 74, to repeal the redefinition of marriage. This is a very sensitive issue, impacting people at the very core of our lives. Archbishop Sartain has sent a letter to all Catholics. I have attached the letter. He has given permission to parishes to collect signatures for the Referendum and encouraged us to do so. He has also expressed that each parish leader must decide how best to proceed, given the pastoral considerations within the parish. After much prayer and reflection, I have decided we will not collect signatures at the parish. I am certain you will find ample opportunity elsewhere to sign whatever petitions you choose.

This decision is based on two primary considerations. St Mary's mission is "House of God, Home for Everyone". One of our highest values is inclusion and welcome. I fear that the collection of signatures would be hurtful and divisive to our parish. I am particularly concerned about our youth who may be questioning their own sexual identity and need our support at this time in their lives.

The second consideration is that as Catholics, each of us is asked to form our conscience and decide how to vote on this and other issues, ie tax policies, services to the poor, environmental laws, capital punishment, etc. We form our conscience through studying the Word of God in the Bible, listening carefully to the teachings of the church from our Tradition and the discernment of the Spirit within our own experience. Many of our parishioners have not had sufficient opportunity to form their consciences and those who have represent a wide variety of beliefs. Some believe the church should marry all committed couples, others that the state should marry all but not the church, others that the term "marriage" should be preserved for a man and a woman, while other relationships are "domestic partnerships", and there are those who believe only heterosexuals should have partners. Our Archbishop is trying to help us in the process of conscience formation by articulating the reasons he believes we should support Referendum 74. I ask you to prayerfully read his letter, hearing all that is being said. In addition, read the Bible, particularly those passages cited by the church on marriage. (you can find these documents at the USCCB website.) Finally, pray and reflect on your own experience of marriage and listen to what God is telling you. Sometimes I think when God is speaking to us, we respond-"call the Bishop, I don't have time to listen. " But as Archbishop Sartain writes "The church calls everyone to holiness."

I hope to have a gathering soon where we can learn more about how to form one's conscience in general and particularly on the question of marriage. In this, as in all things, I pray we will treat one another with love and respect, building up our community of faith.

Please feel free to share your thoughts and questions with me.

Blessings on this Easter Season,

Tricia"

Well, you asked us to share our thoughts Tricia.   Here are mine.  Vatican II, which you obviously have little or no respect for, teaches quite clearly that, "In forming their consciences, the Christian faithful ought to give heed to the sacred and certain doctrine doctrine of the Church.  For the Catholic Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth.  It is her duty to give utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that truth which is Christ, and also to declare and confirm by her authority principles of the moral order flowing from human nature itself." (Dignitatis Humanae, No. 14).

The faithful have a responsibility, a duty, to assent to the Church's teachings and to obey the Church's pastoral leaders just as the Lord Jesus obeyed the Father.  The duty of the faithful to obey the Holy Father and one's own Bishop is analogous to the responsibility which the faithful have to give religious assent to their teachings which call for such assent.  Canon Law makes this clear: "The Christian faithful, conscious of their own responsibility, are bound by Christian obedience to follow what the sacred pastors, as representatives of Christ, declare as teachers of the faith or determine as leaders of the Church." (Can. 212).

In your arrogance, you have decided that St. Mary's Parish will not collect signatures in an effort to oppose homosexual unions even though your Archbishop has asked the faithful under his care to do so.  As a result, you are not only being disobedient to your Archbishop but you have set yourself against the teaching of the Church.  The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its document entitled "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons," makes it clear that the homosexual movement takes advantage of legal tolerance to promote its idoelogy and to place people at risk, particularly youth.  The very youth you claim you are concerned about.  And this authoritative document warns that "the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of evil." (No. 5).  And even where homosexual unions have been legalized, "clear and emphatic opposition is a duty." (No. 5). 

What do the words "clear and emphatic opposition is a duty" mean to you Tricia?  Jesus is Our Lord.  And the Church's Pastors govern in His name. And yet you have chosen to reject the clear and unambiguous teaching of the Church's Pastors. Reflect on these words of Pope John Paul II Tricia: "Being of sacramental origin, this authority is exclusively of divine origin, and remains such; it has no need, therefore, of ratification by anyone else." (Address to the Bishops of Brazil, February 26, 1990).

You have succumbed to pride Tricia.  You are opposing the Church's Pastors.  This means you are opposing the will of Christ.

I am praying for you.

Jeannine Gramick and associate adhere to an erroneous interpretation of the sensus fidelium

In an article for The Washington Post entitled "A Catholic case for same-sex marriage," Jeannine Gramick and Francis DeBernardo write, "As Catholics who are involved in lesbian and gay ministry and outreach, we are aware that many people, some of them Catholics, believe that Catholics cannot faithfully disobey the public policies of the church’s hierarchy. But this is not the case. The Catholic Church is not a democracy, but neither is it a dictatorship. Ideally, our bishops should strive to proclaim the sensus fidelium , the faith as it is understood by the whole church. At the moment, however, the bishops and the majority of the church are at odds. A survey published in September by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 52 percent of Catholics support marriage equality and 69 percent support civil unions..." (See full article here).

As Wikipedia relates, "After a review of her [Jeannine Gramick's] public activities on behalf of the Church that concluded in a finding of grave doctrinal error, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) declared in 1999 that she should no longer be engaged in pastoral work with lesbian and gay persons. In 2000, her congregation, in an attempt to thwart further conflict with the Vatican, commanded her not to speak publicly about homosexuality. She responded by saying, "I choose not to collaborate in my own oppression by restricting a basic human right [to speak]. To me this is a matter of conscience."

So intelligent Catholics will take anything Gramick has to say cum grano salis.  What is most interesting is that Gramick, who could never be accused of being a scholar, first acknowledges that, "The Catholic Church is not a democracy" and then proceeds to assure us that, "a survey published..by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 52 percent of Catholics support marriage equality and 69 percent support civil unions."

What difference do these statistics make if the Catholic Church is not a democracy [and it is not]?  Gramick wants us to believe that the "sensus fidelium," "the faith as it is understood by the whole church," is calling for acceptance of homosexual unions.  But Gramick's understanding of the sensus fidelium is about as cogent as her understanding of Catholic moral teaching.

What does the Church mean by the sensus fidelium? We [those of us who are still sane] find an excellent explanation from the pen of Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. In The Catholic Catechism - A Contemporary Catechism of the Teachings of the Catholic Church. Fr. Hardon explains that: "Those who believe, and insofar as they believe, are one community not only or mainly because they subjectively believe but because what they believe is objectively true, indeed is the Truth that became man and dwelled among us. Against this background, it is easier to see what universal agreement among the faithful must mean. They are faithful insofar as they are agreed on the truth, where the source of their agreement is not a semantic use of the name 'Christian' or 'Catholic,' but the deeply interior adherence to what God has revealed.

Consequently, whether they realize it or not, all who agree on the revealed truth, under the guidance of the sacred magisterium, belong to the faithful. Their agreement on the truth and allegiance to the magisterium gives them universality, i.e., spiritual unity. The truth interiorly possessed gives them consensus, and not the other way around, as though their consensus on some doctrine made it true." (pp. 226-227).

There are those within the Church, like the imbecilic Gramick, who would appeal to the sensus fidelium in an attempt to justify dissent. Their argument is that if a significant portion of those who identify themselves as Catholics hold or adhere to a dissenting opinion, the Holy Father and Bishops should submit their minds and wills to that group's opinion. In other words, such people would have us believe that the sensus fidelium is something independent of the Magisterium.  This is simply a back-door approach toward making the Church a democracy.

Such an attitude is in direct opposition to the teaching of Vatican II:

"The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One (cf. Jn 2:20, 27), cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole people's supernatural discernment in matters of faith when 'from the bishops down to the last of the lay faithful' they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals. That discernment in matters of faith is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth. It is exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority, in faithful and respectful obedience to which the People of God accepts that which is not just the word of men but truly the Word of God (cf. 1 Thes. 2:13). Through it, the People of God adheres unwaveringly to the faith given once and for all to the saints (cf. Jude 3), penetrates it more deeply with right thinking, and applies it more fully in its life." (Lumen Gentium, No. 12; citing St. Augustine, De Praed. Sanct. 14, 27:PL 44, 980).

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, had this to say: "Although theological faith as such then cannot err, the believer can still have erroneous opinions since all his thoughts do not spring from faith. Not all the ideas which circulate among the People of God are compatible with the faith. This is all the more so given that people can be swayed by a public opinion influenced by modern communications media" (No. 35).

Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria for 45 years, opposed emperors and a world in love with heresy by patiently presenting and defending the truth of Christ's divinity.  Such was his fortitude in opposing the multitudes who preached heresy that he was exiled five times and suffered intense persecution.  But because he remained faithful to Revelation, against what Jeannine Gramick would incorrectly term the "sensus fidelium," history has crowned him Athanasius Victor contra mundum: Athanasius Conqueror of the world of heretics.

No, Jeannine Gramick and associate fail to make a Catholic case for same-sex "marriage."  But they do make a strong case for the idea that some Catholics should be fitted for a straight-jacket.

Clark University is, in effect, attempting to criminalize reason

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its document entitled Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, emphasized that: "Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition.  Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race." (No. 7).

Homosexual unions violate the common good on both the individual and social plane. On the individual plane, as Dr. Germain Grisez explains, "...although it is true that partners in sodomy also could conceivably share in a committed relationship with sincere mutual affection and express their feelings in ways that would be appropriate in any friendship, the coupling of two bodies of the same sex cannot form one complete organism and so cannot contribute to a bodily communion of persons. Hence, the experience of intimacy of the partners in sodomy cannot be the experience of any real unity between them. Rather, each one’s experience of intimacy is private and incommunicable, and is no more a common good than is the mere experience of sexual arousal and orgasm. Therefore, the choice to engage in sodomy for the sake of that experience of intimacy in no way contributes to the partners’ real common good as committed friends."


On the social plane, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith explains that, "The inevitable consequences of legal recognition of homosexual unions would be the redefinition of marriage, which would become, in its legal status, an institution devoid of essential reference to factors linked to homosexuality; for example, procreation and raising children. If, from the legal standpoint, marriage between a man and a woman were to be considered just one possible form of marriage, the concept of marriage would undergo a radical transformation, with grave detriment to the common good. By putting homosexual unions on a legal plane analogous to that of marriage and the family, the State acts arbitrarily and in contradiction with its duties." (Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, No. 8).

At Vatican II, the Council Fathers spoke on fostering the nobility of marriage and the family and said, "The well-being of the individual person and of human and Christian society is intimately linked with the healthy condition of that community produced by marriage and family. Hence Christians and all men who hold this community in high esteem sincerely rejoice in the various ways by which men today find help in fostering this community of love and perfecting its life, and by which parents are assisted in their lofty calling. Those who rejoice in such aids look for additional benefits from them and labor to bring them about.

Yet the excellence of this institution is not everywhere reflected with equal brilliance, since polygamy, the plague of divorce, so-called free love and other disfigurements have an obscuring effect. In addition, married love is too often profaned by excessive self-love, the worship of pleasure and illicit practices against human generation. Moreover, serious disturbances are caused in families by modern economic conditions, by influences at once social and psychological, and by the demands of civil society..." (Gaudium et Spes, No. 47).
In No. 48 of this same document, the Fathers of Vatican II teach that, "The intimate partnership of married life and love has been established by the Creator and qualified by His laws, and is rooted in the conjugal covenant of irrevocable personal consent. Hence by that human act whereby spouses mutually bestow and accept each other a relationship arises which by divine will and in the eyes of society too is a lasting one. For the good of the spouses and their off-springs as well as of society, the existence of the sacred bond no longer depends on human decisions alone. For, God Himself is the author of matrimony, endowed as it is with various benefits and purposes. All of these have a very decisive bearing on the continuation of the human race, on the personal development and eternal destiny of the individual members of a family, and on the dignity, stability, peace and prosperity of the family itself and of human society as a whole. By their very nature, the institution of matrimony itself and conjugal love are ordained for the procreation and education of children, and find in them their ultimate crown. Thus a man and a woman, who by their compact of conjugal love "are no longer two, but one flesh" (Matt. 19:ff), render mutual help and service to each other through an intimate union of their persons and of their actions. Through this union they experience the meaning of their oneness and attain to it with growing perfection day by day. As a mutual gift of two persons, this intimate union and the good of the children impose total fidelity on the spouses and argue for an unbreakable oneness between them.

Christ the Lord abundantly blessed this many-faceted love, welling up as it does from the fountain of divine love and structured as it is on the model of His union with His Church. For as God of old made Himself present to His people through a covenant of love and fidelity, so now the Savior of men and the Spouse of the Church comes into the lives of married Christians through the sacrament of matrimony. He abides with them thereafter so that just as He loved the Church and handed Himself over on her behalf, the spouses may love each other with perpetual fidelity through mutual self-bestowal.

Authentic married love is caught up into divine love and is governed and enriched by Christ's redeeming power and the saving activity of the Church, so that this love may lead the spouses to God with powerful effect and may aid and strengthen them in sublime office of being a father or a mother. For this reason Christian spouses have a special sacrament by which they are fortified and receive a kind of consecration in the duties and dignity of their state. By virtue of this sacrament, as spouses fulfil their conjugal and family obligation, they are penetrated with the spirit of Christ, which suffuses their whole lives with faith, hope and charity. Thus they increasingly advance the perfection of their own personalities, as well as their mutual sanctification, and hence contribute jointly to the glory of God."

And No. 50 says that, "Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the begetting and educating of children. Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute very substantially to the welfare of their parents. The God Himself Who said, "it is not good for man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18) and "Who made man from the beginning male and female" (Matt. 19:4), wishing to share with man a certain special participation in His own creative work, blessed male and female, saying: "Increase and multiply" (Gen. 1:28). Hence, while not making the other purposes of matrimony of less account, the true practice of conjugal love, and the whole meaning of the family life which results from it, have this aim: that the couple be ready with stout hearts to cooperate with the love of the Creator and the Savior. Who through them will enlarge and enrich His own family day by day."

The Catholic Church respects reason and the Natural Law.  And because she does, she understands, as Cicero articulated so well, that, "..right is based, not upon men’s opinions, but upon Nature. This fact will immediately be plain if you once get a clear conception of man’s fellowship and union with his fellow-men. For no single thing is so like another, so exactly its counterpart, as all of us are to one another…And so, however we may define man, a single definition will apply to all." [ Cicero, Laws I x 28-30]

But Clark University does not respect the Natural Law, which is known through the use of reason alone.  Having succumbed to radical homosexual ideology, that institution is attempting to impose a false morality on the rest of society while attempting to criminalize those who respect the Natural Law.  And this pseudo-morality rests on the philosophical premise that objective moral norms do not exist and that the individual's choice, and that alone, should determine human behavior.

Clark University officials would do well to ponder this warning from Pope John Paul II in his Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae:

"Democracy cannot be idolized to the point of making it a substitute for morality or a panacea for immorality. Fundamentally, democracy is a 'system' and as such is a means and not an end. Its 'moral' value is not automatic, but depends on conformity to the moral law to which it, like every other form of human behavior, must be subject: in other words, its morality depends on the morality of the ends which it pursues and of the means which it employs. If today we see an almost universal consensus with regard to the value of democracy, this is to be considered a positive 'sign of the times,' as the Church's Magisterium has frequently noted. But the value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes. Of course, values such as the dignity of every human person, respect for inviolable and inalienable human rights, and the adoption of the 'common good' as the end and criterion regulating political life are certainly fundamental and not to be ignored.


The basis of these values cannot be provisional and changeable 'majority' opinions, but only the acknowledgement of an objective moral law which, as the 'natural law' written in the human heart, is the obligatory point of reference for civil law itself. If, as a result of a tragic obscuring of the collective conscience, an attitude of skepticism were to succeed in bringing into question even the fundamental principles of the moral law, the democratic system itself would be shaken in its foundations and would be reduced to a mere mechanism for regulating different and opposing interests on a purely empirical basis." (Evangelium Vitae, No. 70).

Signs of the Times...

Persecution Watch.

As Monsignor Schooyans details in his book entitled "La face cache de L'ONU" (which exposes the agenda of the United Nations for a world government and dictatorship): "In 1948, the United Nations worked out and ratified the 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights,' which recognized the dignity and primacy of the human person. Today, the UN and some of its agencies behave more and more openly as if the had received a mandate to develop a conception of human rights that is radically different from that expressed in 1948. According to the UN, man is a fragment of the cosmos, and has no eternal destiny. Man is the product of evolution and his final destiny is death. He is but an individual in search of pleasures, unable to recognize truth. This is the source of the new 'human rights' of the UN. These new rights are no longer recognized and declared; they are rather imposed, and are the expression of the will of the mightiest. Man must revere Mother-Earth, Gaia (the goddess of the earth in Greek mythology), in place of God, his Creator and the Creator of the earth. Under the pressure of some radical feminist and homosexual movements, the competence of the International Criminal Court...could be extended to 'crimes' against the so-called new human rights. For example, to the extent that abortion, homosexuality and euthanasia are recognized as 'new rights,' the opponents to these rights could be judged and sentenced by the International Criminal Court."


Read what LifeSiteNews had to say:

The Vatican has recognized the disparity in the vision of a world order from the perspective of the United Nations and from a Christian perspective. Writing in the Italian newspaper Avvenire in 2000, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, denounced the UN vision of a "new world order." Ratzinger noted that "at the base of this New World Order" is the ideology of "women's empowerment," which erroneously sees "the principal obstacles to [a woman's] fulfillment [as] the family and maternity." The cardinal advised that "at this stage of the development of the new image of the new world, Christians - and not just them, but in any case they even more than others - have the duty to protest." ( See here).

Landolt warned that the ICC is "a very dangerous thing" and suggested that "the Pope could be called before the ICC." Landolt's comments echo those of Dr. Richard G. Wilkins, Professor of Law at Brigham Young University. Wilkins, a leading authority on the ICC who regularly acts as legal counsel for pro-family NGOs (non-governmental organizations) at the United Nations, told LifeSite that the ICC could eventually be used to try "the Pope or other religious leaders" since issues such as abortion and homosexuality would inevitably fall within the ICC's jurisdiction. He explained that the ICC "currently is without sufficient checks and balances. It has the most powerful prosecutor ever with the vaguest criminal statute passed anywhere. The ICC leaves open to total discretion of the prosecutor and the court the determining of what the 'crimes' mean." (See here).

Cardinal Sean O'Malley: Will you exercise your pastoral authority so that the Father of Lies will not take hold of the minds and hearts of the faithful?

Three days after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill allowing same-sex couples to marry, Archbishop Timothy Dolan reaffirmed the Catholic Church's position on marriage.  Speaking to reporters following a Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral, His Excellency said that, "We as Catholics would oppose any attempt by anybody to redefine marriage...We just don't believe that marriage can be changed and radically altered to accommodate a particular lifestyle." See here.  Archbishop Dolan has said that same-sex "marriage" is "detrimental to the common good" and a "violation of natural law."

In its 2003 document entitled Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith refuted the notion that legalizing homosexual unions would not harm the common good:

"In this area, one needs first to reflect on the difference between homosexual behavior as a private phenomenon and the same behavior as a relationship in society, foreseen and approved by the law, to the point where it becomes one of the institutions in the legal structure.  This second phenomenon is not only more serious, but also assumes a more wide-ranging and profound influence, and would result in changes to the entire organization of society, contrary to the common good.  Civil laws are structuring principles of man's life in society, for good or ill.  They 'play a very important and sometimes decisive role in influencing patterns of thought and behavior.'  Lifestyles and the underlying presuppositions these express not only externally shape the life of society, but also tend to modify the younger generation's perception and evaluation of forms of behavior.  Legal recognition of homosexual unions would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage."

Considerations goes on to explain that, "The inevitable consequence of legal recognition of homosexual unions would be the redefinition of marriage, which would become, in its legal status, an institution devoid of essential reference to factors linked to heterosexuality; for example, procreation and raising children.  If, from the legal standpoint, marriage between a man and a woman were to be considered just one possible form of marriage, the concept of marriage would undergo a radical transformation, with grave detriment to the common good.  By putting homosexual unions on a legal plane analogous to that of marriage and the family, the State acts arbitrarily and in contradiction with its duties."

Now Cardinal Sean O'Malley has reaffirmed this teaching of the Church at his Blog.  What is not understandable, however, is his toleration of a homosexual "rainbow ministry" at St. Cecilia's Parish in Boston's Back Bay which has distorted Catholic teaching on homosexuality while promoting same-sex "marriage."

In a Keynote Address entitled Good Shepherd: Living Christ's Own Pastoral Authority*, which was delivered at the 10th Annual Symposium on the Spirituality and Identity of the Diocesan Priest on March 18, 2011, Bishop Samuel J. Aquila had some important things to say about the role of Bishops.  His Excellency noted that:

"Perhaps most difficult for us who lead in the Church today, due to the influence of the secular world with its rejection of God and the authority of God, along with a real skepticism of authority, is the exercise of the office of governance. Benedict XVI reminds us as bishops and priests again to turn to Jesus Christ to learn how to exercise this authority. No one is really able to feed Christ's flock, unless he lives in profound and true obedience to Christ and the Church, and the docility of the people towards their priests depends on the docility of the priests towards Christ; for this reason the personal and constant encounter with the Lord, profound knowledge of him and the conformation of the individual will to Christ's will is always at the root of the pastoral ministry. (General Audience, May 26, 2010).

Jesus at times was direct in calling people to conversion – to change their way of acting and thinking. This directness makes many of us uncomfortable today. We should follow his example and language, even if we do not use his precise words. His language is good to contemplate and definitely should challenge us to look at how we correct the faithful, including priests and bishops, and speak the truth especially with those who say they are with Christ and the Church but do not accept the teaching of Jesus and the Church.

One has only to read Matthew 23 to hear the forceful language Jesus uses when speaking with the Pharisees and Scribes. He refers to them as ―hypocrites, blind guides, and white washed tombs and towards the end asks them the question, ―You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?  In our politically correct world this type of language would never be tolerated today, and yet the Gospel writers were not hesitant to pass on these exhortations of Jesus.

Furthermore, when Peter began to remonstrate with Jesus about going up to Jerusalem, he did not softly tell Peter, ―You do not understand. Rather Jesus spoke the vigorous words, ―Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men (Mt 16:23). Jesus speaks these words with force to the apostle he has chosen and the one whom he made first among the apostles. In love Jesus makes these direct statements to open the eyes of those whose hearts and minds are hardened. His straight talk, given in love for the person, desires the conversion and holiness of the person to the ways of God.

Jesus provides the Church and her leaders with the criteria for correcting a brother or sister. ―If your brother sins against you; go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector (Mt 18:16-17).

The steps in this passage are clear and Jesus is teaching us, but do we listen and follow his example? If this criteria had been followed with dissenting theologians, priests, religious and faithful in 1968 with the encyclical, Humanae Vitae, would we still be dealing with the problem today of those who dissent on contraception, abortion, same sex unions, euthanasia and so many other teachings of the Church?


One must honestly ask, how many times and years may a Catholic politician vote for the so called ―right to abortion, ―murder in the words of John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae (58), and still be able to receive Holy Communion? The continual reception of Holy Communion by those who so visibly contradict and promote a grave evil, even more than simply dissent, only creates grave scandal, undermines the teaching and governing authority of the Church and can be interpreted by the faithful as indifference to the teaching of Christ and the Church on the part of those who have the responsibility to govern. If we honestly pray with the Gospel we can see that hesitancy and non-accountability are not the way of Jesus Christ, but rather are a failure in the exercise of governance.


Bishops and priests, as an act of loving obedience to Christ, must return to a full exercise of the governing authority of Christ witnessed in the Gospel. If we do not exercise that authority, are hesitant to exercise it, or doubt it, then it only leads to the ―father of lies taking hold of the minds and hearts of the faithful, and their continuing to act in the ways of man and not the ways of God.

Pope Benedict XVI, in his conversation with Peter Seewald in the book Light of the World, made the following observation concerning the sexual abuse crisis among clergy, after speaking with the Archbishop of Dublin. In their conversation they spoke to a mentality prevalent after Vatican II. ―The prevailing mentality was that the Church must not be a Church of laws but, rather, a Church of love; she must not punish. Thus the awareness that punishment can be an act of love ceased to exist. This led to an odd darkening of the mind, even in very good people. Today we have to learn all over again that love for the sinner and love for the person who has been harmed are correctly balanced if I punish the sinner in the form that is possible and appropriate. In this respect there was in the past a change of mentality, in which the law and need for punishment were obscured. Ultimately this also narrowed the concept of love, which in fact is not just being nice or courteous, but is found in the truth (emphasis added). And another component of truth is that I must punish the one who has sinned against real love (Pages 25-26)."

It is time for Boston's Cardinal to exercise his pastoral authority.  If he does not, the Father of Lies will be emboldened and will continue to sow dissension and discord as minds become steeped in darkness.


*  Full Address here.