Italian Pop Star Sings About Triumph Over Homosexuality

Link to article courtesy of LifeSiteNews.com.

Makes me wish I knew Italian.

Here's a YouTube clip of a live concert performance of the song:



I'm not exactly a fan of songs with a chaotic beat; but given the inner turmoil the song speaks of, maybe it's appropriate in this case.

I don't know the exact translation of the song, so I'm not really able to comment at length on whether the lyrics are fully in agreement with Catholic belief. I am curious, though, about the sign that is posted at the end of the YouTube clip. "Nessuno ha sempre ragione" apparently translates to "No one is always right." Without knowing the full context, I'll withhold comment on it for the time being.

Anyway, I submit this for your perusal. Feel free to discuss. God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald

"Well, I'm Personally Opposed, But Unwilling To Impose," Said The Smiling Politician As He Handed The Scissors To The Doctor...

Have you ever noticed how every single politician who uses the "personally opposed, but unwilling to impose" argument as a cop out when confronted about their views on abortion just happens to have a 100% voting record in support of abortion according to NARAL and seems to have no problems with imposing support for abortion on unwilling taxpayers? Seems to me that anyone who is genuinely conflicted on abortion would just abstain from voting on the issue rather than consistently voting against their conscience. Then again, politics and common sense did go through a messy divorce well before my time.

Still, why is it that the "personally opposed, but unwilling to impose" argument gets used only when referring to abortion? Why is it alright to express this idea on abortion but not, say, on racism? I can only imagine how quickly the press would devour the politician who says, "I'm personally opposed to racism, but I don't see how I have the right to tell a restaurant owner that he can't hang a 'Whites Only' sign in the front window of his establishment." If such a politician were given a 100% rating for his voting record on race issues by the KKK (no offense meant to any elderly senators from West Virginia), I imagine he would be tarred and feathered and run out of Washington. Certainly, this politician's claims to be "personally opposed" to racism would be ridiculed, and Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would do their usual round of chasing down the nearest available TV camera and calling for this politician's resignation in righteously indignant tones.

And if a politician whose voting record consistently favored capital punishment were to say, "I'm personally opposed to capital punishment, but I don't see where I would get off telling a government how to punish its convicted felons," I seriously doubt anti-capital punishment activists would shrug their shoulders and say, "To each his own." Instead, they'd come out in full force and denounce the politician as a supporter of capital punishment who was trying to have it both ways.

Yet the politician who says, "I'm personally opposed to abortion, but I don't see what right I have to tell a woman what to do with her body" is not only not challenged by the media on such a stance, but is usually praised for having such strong "principles." Well, I'm used to the double standard the media employs concerning the issue of abortion (and in general concerning Christian moral teachings they happen to reject), but that doesn't make this any less cowardly or pathetic.

I have just one question for those who think they can pass themselves off as pro-life despite refusing to oppose the horror of abortion just because they claim to be "personally opposed": do you or do you not believe that it is a human being growing inside a pregnant woman's body? If the answer is yes, then no amount of "personal opposition" will change the fact that you are condoning the slaughter of innocents by others on a scale that King Herod could never have imagined. If the answer is no, however, then you do not believe that abortion is murder; and if this is the case, then what logical reason can there be for being "personally opposed"? No matter how you view it, the "personally opposed but unwilling to impose" argument is a dishonest and cowardly way of trying to avoid having to make one's true beliefs on the issue of abortion known.

I'd like to say that in this case actions speak louder than words; but given the proliferation of obnoxiously loud politicians infesting our nation's capital, I think it's better to say that actions speak more forcefully. God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald

10 Commandments for Classy Girls

I came across a great article today on Townhall.com, courtesy of author Doug Giles. Entitled "Ten Commandments for Classy Girls", the article shines a much-needed spotlight on today's not-so-modest teenage girls, the parents who lack the backbone to curb the behavior that leads to such tendencies, and the plastic culture that encourages these girls to embrace their sexual dysfunctionality as a symbol of "self-empowerment."

Why are parents so surprised when - after forgoing their parental responsibilities and entrusting the development of their children to the "flower power" moral degenerates of yesteryear - their children turn into insufferable little brats? And why are these parents so surprised when the aforementioned degenerates of yesteryear keep cramming measures down our throats that make it increasingly more difficult to hold our children accountable for bad behavior?

As the old saying goes, you lose your right to complain when you refuse to act. No one is more fond of reciting this saying than the "nanny state" politicians and lobbyists who enact measure after measure specifically designed to make it harder for parents to take decisive action that is in the best interest of their children. The best action we can take is to vote out the politicians who insist on trying to raise our children for us. And while we're at it, let's make sure that the role models our children embrace are honorable, self-sacrificing, and virtuous and not the latest of the shallow, self-absorbed, and scandal-plagued MTV divas. But I digress...

Read the article; and if you have a daughter that is either a teenager or is destined to become one, have them read it too. God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald

Barack Obama on Abortion: the Basics

A brief summary from the National Right to Life Committee about Barack "The Great Uniter" Obama's unconditional opposition to any measure that can even remotely be construed as benefiting unborn children. The summary can be found here.

Obama's callousness towards the unborn is nothing short of bone chilling. Make no mistake about it: if this man becomes President, the pro-life movement will have a "War on Terror" of its own to wage.

I've always found it humorous that my Microsoft Outlook spell checker does not recognize the word "Obama," and always offers "Osama" as an alternate spelling. There are those who would caution me to tread carefully when making that point, but really: who among the two should be more offended by the comparison? After all, Bin Laden may be working to destroy the blessings of liberty the Constitution secures "to ourselves;" but Obama is just as zealously working to destroy the blessings of liberty the Constitution secures "to our posterity."

3rd District Court Denies Christians the Right to Act Like Christians Around Homosexual Militants

From World Net Daily.

PHILADELPHIA, PA: 11 Christian demonstrators were arrested for peacefully protesting "Outfest," a publicly-funded annual celebration of the homosexual lifestyle. The "criminal" charges were promptly dismissed as "having no basis in fact" by a local judge (who, aside from the so-called "Philadelphia 11," appears to be the only person of sound mind involved in this whole sorry episode). The 11 Christians immediately sued the city for damages as a result of their treatment.

But the 3rd District Court - a dreary place since Justice Samuel Alito moved on to bigger and better things - decided that the city was within its rights to deprive Christians of their civil rights so a bunch of hypersensitive amoral sexual degenerates could be spared the "trauma" of being reminded that their lifestyle is inherently sinful.

Anyone still think that the homosexual rights movement is compatible with Christianity? Or, for that matter, compatible with a free and democratic society?

If you still think the answer is yes, then perhaps I can interest you in some beach front property in Tibet...

Once, again, to quote Mark Shea, it's not enough to simply tolerate the homosexual lifestyle. YOU. MUST. APPROVE.

Planned Parenthood Opposes Conscientious Objector Clause for Medical Providers...Again

No need to explain this one. You can read the article here, courtesy of Lifenews.com.

This multi-billion dollar business/special interest group continues to clamor for tax-payer funds to promote ideas most taxpayers find abominable, and while pretending to protect and promote "free choice" continue their crusade to deny the first amendment rights of anyone who does not wish to participate in their demonic ritual of human sacrifice.

Liberal politicians continue to throw money at Planned Parenthood, pretending it is some kind of "charitable organization."

The only thing anyone should be throwing at Margaret Sanger's brainchild is holy water. God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald

On the Virtue of Sweetness

I've often said that, despite my insistence on the importance of knowing our Catholic faith for the purposes of educating others and incorporating Catholic teaching into our own lives, the greatest Catholics I've ever know - and you will see them in almost every parish - are the sweet, devout elderly women who are daily communicants and pray the Rosary daily. Their love for the Blessed Mother is surpassed only by their love of the Triune God, including the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Their every action speaks of true charity in that those actions are founded upon and directed toward a love of God above all things and for His own sake. Their knowledge of theology may not be vast, but their faith and devotion is virtually unparalleled; and I thank God every day for their presence.

I posted a comment on a blog a few years back and mentioned this point, and received an almost immediate response from a woman who took offense to my post. She said she was one of the elderly women I described, and that she was neither sweet nor given to mere sentimental devotion. Not in a mood to pull to punches that day, I proceeded to tell her that she was mistaken in her assumption that she was among the women I had described. With the help of a few other well-informed Catholics on the board I also explained to this woman the difference between "mere sentimental devotion" and devotion borne out of a deep and abiding faith (those who practice the latter possess an abiding inner strength that is generally lacking in those whose devotion is based primarily on sentiment). We then engaged in a lengthy discussion about the meaning of the word sweetness and how it related to our Catholic faith.

We begin the conclusion of the Salve Regina with the invocation: "O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary..." As Catholics, we recognize sweetness as a part of the character of the Blessed Mother. She was, among other things, a person of good humor and kindly disposition. This is not a coincidental part of her nature. Let us remember that she was free from sin, and that what we know of her and of her divine Son gives us an insight into the nature of man prior to the Fall.

It is easy to confuse sweetness with other character traits, especially in a day and age where man's knowledge of his own nature has become so horribly distorted by secular humanism and the various other isms that seek to direct man's focus away from God and toward fleeting things. As was the case with the woman above, there are those who identify sweetness with being ignorant or naive about the ways of the world, as though man must necessarily be emotionally scarred by the knowledge he acquires. I trust we have all met living examples of people who have put this stereotype to rest, be they parents, priests, teachers, or other mentors in our lives who were both knowledgeable and of a sweet disposition. Indeed, if they're anything like the mentors I've known, their knowledge and experience helped them grow in sweetness, rather than the reverse.

Another common misconception regarding sweetness is the notion that someone with a sweet nature can never behave in a way that others may deem unpleasant (this is very similar to the fallacy concerning the modern notions of charity, which I previously addressed here). A man may be of sweet disposition towards his newborn son, and that sweetness may persist throughout the son's life. However, a father who catches his son in the act of doing something wrong may need to address that particular situation with something other than a kind word and a smile. This may not affect the generally sweet disposition of the father toward the son, though the son may certainly wonder where the sweetness has gone while he is being punished.

By the same token, the person who treats his enemy with kindness is certainly displaying a form of heroic virtue. However, at times that kindness may have to be exercised in the form of restraint while using force. Being sweet does not mean being a doormat, and it certainly does not mean letting others get away with murder (literally or figuratively). It is, as are all virtues, a disposition of the heart that requires a well-informed understanding of right and wrong in order to be exercised properly.

So we see that sweetness, contrary to being the product of ignorance, is in fact an exercise in virtue; specifically, an exercise in the theological virtue of charity. And like any other exercise in charity, it is exercised most appropriately in ways the secular modern world either cannot or will not understand.

The thoughts for this blog post did not flow as smoothly as I would have liked, but I hope it served the purpose of getting you to look at the virtue of sweetness in a new light. There are parallels here to the virtue of innocence that I would like to address sometime soon. In the meantime, I pray all is well with each of you. God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald

Two Great Articles

Greetings all,
Just thought I'd link to a couple of great articles I came across today on the Townhall.com website:

Pornography Pretensions - The author of the article, Alan Sears, served in the Reagan administration in many capacities. One of the roles he served was as a member of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography (here's to guessing no such commission has existed since the beginning of the Clinton administration). Sears pulls no punches in delving into the real motivations behind the movement to elevate all forms of pornography - including child pornography - to the status of protected free speech under the First Amendment (yet condemning homosexual acts during a Catholic homily gets labeled a "hate crime." Anyone else see something horribly wrong with this?). The article reinforces the truth that sin is by its very nature regressive.

Jesse Helms Vilified Worldwide - Jesse Helms, an icon of the late 20th century conservative movement, died on the 4th of July at the age of 86; and already I've lost count of the number of tributes (and hit pieces from his bitter ideological opponents) directed his way in the time since. Despite the title of the piece, anyone who's read Humberto Fontova won't be surprised to learn that this article pretty quickly segues into a full-frontal assault on the Communist Castro regime in Cuba. Actually, that's what makes the article - and Humberto Fontova in general - an entertaining read. Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra's most fervent apologists hate Fontova almost as passionately as they embrace Marxism. This article should leave no doubt as to why.

Pornography and Communism...I'm pretty sure I can draw a theological link between the two, aside from the obvious fact that lovers of both display a wanton disrespect for the dignity of the human person. I'll give the idea some more thought and get back to you :-). God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald

Makes Sense to Me...

When I read it, this is what I understand it to say:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

More and more though, it seems like a certain segment of society is reading:

"We hold that there are no self-evident truths, but will in the name of tolerance vigorously persecute anyone who disagrees with the following: that everyone who makes it out of the womb is equal, and that there is no such thing as complimentarity because being equal means that we are all exactly the same; that once our mothers affirm our worth as human beings - by allowing us to make it out of the womb we entered into through a completely random and meaningless sequence of events - we are entitled to certain rights; that among these are a woman's right to choose without concern for any consequences to herself or to others, the right not to be subjected to any speech we find offensive (while tolerating no constraints on our own speech, no matter how vulgar or vitriolic), and the pursuit of equality of outcome for all, regardless of the individual efforts put into achieving that outcome."

Begs the question of what the kids in our public school systems are being taught these days, doesn't it?

For those of you who understand that freedom goes hand in hand with accountability and sacrifice, I wish you a happy 4th of July. For those of you who think the second interpretation of the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence mentioned above makes more sense than the first interpretation - which happen to be the words the Declaration actually contains - I wish you a happy 4th as well, and want you to know that I will pray for you. I will also pray that none who think like you are ever given the power to be able to constrain true freedom. God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald

ACLU Strikes Another Blow for the Culture of Death

I'm not really in a mood to wax poetic tonight, so I'll just be blunt and say that the ACLU is a demonic organization. This article from Lifenews.com describes yet another successful ACLU lawsuit on behalf of Planned Parenthood. Never one to leave an open wound unsalted, this blight on morality turned around and forced the state of Idaho - which lost the lawsuit in court - to pay its legal expenses.

So not only was the state of Idaho embroiled in a lawsuit it did not instigate, it is now forced to subsidize the ACLU's unprovoked legal assault upon the will of Idaho's voters, who also happen to be the taxpayers that will be forced to bear the brunt of the bill.

American Civil Liberties Union? "ACLU" might stand for a lot of things, but "America" and "civil liberties" are not among them.

On the Hierarchy of Values

It is no small source of frustration for me that I seem to get ideas for blog posts like these - where I could literally write for hours on end - just before my bedtime every night. As such, I rarely touch on all the subjects I want to address, and this is no exception.

I want to do this topic justice, so I'll start with a bit of an intro and hopefully develop the topic further in related posts in the coming days and weeks.

To begin simply, our sense of right and wrong is largely governed by the priority we assign to values. For instance, the devout Catholic places a great value on human life in all its stages, and regards the taking of human life at any stage as a great tragedy. The only thing the Catholic faith calls us to value more highly than the dignity of the human person and his right to live is the Triune God Himself. This explains why choosing martyrdom before denying God or the true faith by which we express our devotion to Him is considered an act of heroic virtue, while sacrificing one's life for the sake of something less valuable - like, say, a tree - is considered a waste of a human life.

Or take, for instance, the value we place on the safety and well-being of the people we love. Ordinarily, it would be wrong to cause harm to another human being; but when acting in the defense of a loved one who has come under assault, the use of force against the assailant can be justified, even if the force exerted harms the assailant in the process (taking care, of course, that the harm caused is not disproportionate to the harm intended or feared. It is not right to kill someone who was trying to slap your sister in the face, though it might be justifiable to use lethal force against someone who was trying to attack your sister with a knife, as the latter case clearly requires a greater use of force than the former case).

Understanding the proper hierarchy of values plays a large role in understanding the basic principles of right and wrong in moral theology and philosophical ethics. This is a topic that has been in my heart of late because I have seen first hand how a relativistic mindset can severely warp how a person views right and wrong actions. The relativist is inclined to deny the concept of a hierarchy of values, believing in principle that all values are equal (even if the relativist does not truly believe this in practice). This warped view of the hierarchy of values explains, for instance, how a group like PETA can consider animals to have the same intrinsic worth as human beings. It also plays a large role in explaining how a pro-abortionist can argue that a "woman's right to choose" can take precedence over the life of the unborn child.

Just a snippet for starters. I really want to develop this topic more. In the meantime, feel free to comment or even to offer suggestions on how to get this started. God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald

The Semantics of "Choice"

A few months before I left Gainesville, FL for Steubenville back in 2003, the University of Florida chapter of NOW decided to stage a "protest" at the University plaza in support of "reproductive rights." They announced this several weeks in advance in order to increase their numbers, not realizing that all their hard-core supporters - who could be counted on the fingers of Major League Baseball pitcher Antonio Alfonseca's hands with digits to spare - had already joined the group and pledged to show up at the protest.

The day before, a friend of mine placed a handful of phone calls to some friends to see if anyone was interested in going to the plaza to peacefully counter-demonstrate. With that modest effort, he managed to round up more than twice as many people as the feminists could muster despite all their efforts.

When the feminists saw that their unwelcome detractors were attracting more attention from passersby than they were and that people were receiving greater exposure to the pro-life view as a result (in short, that their eagerly anticipated event had not only been a miserable failure, but counterproductive to boot), the main organizer of the pro-abort protest apparently forgot herself and began screaming, "What about my right to f**k?! What about my right to f**k?!"

To answer her question, it's not a right; it's a privilege, and it requires the consent of another person of legal age acting without compulsion (and a lot more besides in order to do more good than harm). But more on that another time.

One can't help but wonder, given the glaring inconsistencies in the pro-aborts' point of view, what exactly they mean when they say they support "a woman's right to choose." They insist that they are "pro-choice" rather than "pro-abortion," but I can't recall the last time they held rallies to support women who actually chose to keep their babies.

They claim women should have a right to choose what kind of life they want to lead, but scorn women who choose to embrace their roles as wives and mothers, saying that such women "set the women's liberation movement back."

They claim that government has no right to tell a woman "what to do with her body," but I can't recall the last time they denounced China's demonic one-child policy, by which the Chinese regime forces women to abort pregnancies of which they do not approve.

So while they claim to be "pro-choice," it really seems as though you have to make the "choice" they would make in order to win their approval.

Let's set that hypocrisy aside for a moment, though, along with the obvious fact that a genuine right to choose does not extend to taking the life of another human being for the sake of one's own convenience, and let's look at the semantics behind their application of the word "choice."

By "choice," of course, they ostensibly mean the choice of whether or not to have a child or to voluntary terminate a pregnancy. And this choice applies only to women. Men don't get pregnant, so the reasoning goes, so they don't get a say in the matter (this scornful view of the complementarity of the sexes in the act of parenting is yet another common bond the abortion rights movement shares with the gay rights movement, by the way).

But let's look at this matter a bit more closely. Is this really a choice? If a woman truly has the power to choose not to have children, then it would stand to reason that she would have the power not to become pregnant in the first place. Planned Parenthood exploited the lust for this type of power (itself inspired by a different kind of lust) beautifully, making artificial contraception its centerpiece in the decades prior to Roe v. Wade, and then using the (Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, Estelle) Griswold v. Connecticut decision - which made it illegal for the government to ban the sale of over-the-counter contraceptives and also created the previously non-existent right to privacy - as a stepping stone and legal precedent for the Roe v. Wade decision. Women who wanted absolute control over their fertility looked to artificial contraception as the means to prevent pregnancy while still being able to engage in sexual activity. Since that time, the "sex-without-consequences" mentality has been the calling card of the culture of death.

The problem was, the pill did not give women nearly as much control over their fertility as its supporters promised (and dishonestly continue to promise). No matter how hard they tried, they simply could not stop conception at will. Herein lies the first fatal weakness in the "pregnancy is a choice" argument. If pregnancy were truly a choice, there would be no need for contraceptives. Likewise, there would be no need for abortion. Because women who did not want to become pregnant simply would not become pregnant.

By the same token, just as no sexually active fertile woman can prevent conception at will, neither can she choose to become pregnant at will. No amount of fertility methods can help a woman conceive at will; and even when such methods do work, women have no control over the number of children that are conceived. Just as it is not possible to prevent pregnancy, it is not possible to dictate when pregnancy is to occur. This is hardly a characteristic of something that can legitimately be called a choice.

So if pregnancy isn't a choice, then what is it? It is a possible outcome of a choice. It is a (here comes a word the abortion rights movement and hedonists in general have come to dread) consequence of a choice, and therefore not really something that women have control over. Unless, of course, women (and men, for that matter) choose not to engage in the activity that leads to the potential consequence of pregnancy. Again, we come to a word that strikes fear into the hearts of the hedonist culture of death: abstinence. The very notion that sexual activity is a choice is antithethical to those who have become slaves to their own passions. Because they can't (or won't) control their own impulses, they naturally assume that no one else can either (the parallels with the gay rights movement continue to pile up here). Therefore, they refuse to acknowledge that sexual activity is a choice, pretending instead that it is a biological necessity that no human being can do without and which no human being can choose to avoid (if that idea was followed to its logical extreme, we'd have to overturn every rape and child molestation conviction in our nation's history on the grounds that the perpetrators were only satisfying what was for them a biological necessity and were therefore not responsible for their actions). Hence the refusal to address what is truly a choice and the need to pretend that it is the consequence (or rather, whether or not to run away from the responsibility that the consequence entails) that is the real choice. Kinda puts the vulgar rant of the unhinged feminist at the beginning of this post into perspective, doesn't it?

You'll hear many pro-lifers say that the abortion rights movement is about the right to engage in sexual activity without consequences. To a large extent, they are correct. But they're only scratching part of the surface. It is, at its core, a movement obsessed with control. Control not only over the whole range of choices they make, but also complete control over the consequences of those choices and - lest anyone serve as a living reminder that what they are doing is morally wrong - control over how others perceive those choices (here we see more common ground with the gay rights movement). It is no coincidence that fraudulent "Catholic" groups such as Call to Action and the atrociously-named Catholics for a Free Choice embrace the views of the culture of death: their constant rantings about not being included in the decision making of the Church screams lust for power, as does the advocacy of such groups for women's ordination (when was the last time you heard an advocate of women's ordination talk about anything other than what kind of power access to the sacramental priesthood would bring? You certainly don't hear them talk about the humbling, self-sacrificial aspect of the priestly ministry, because they want no part of that aspect of the cloth).

Why this ravenous need for control? For the same reason that they are incapable of true Christian charity: namely, the fact that they reject the One who orders all things, the One at whose name every knee shall bend. To reject God is to reject the need to submit ourselves to the authority of One who is greater than ourselves. In the absence of such a One whose authority liberates us, the need for power and control over every aspects of one's own life becomes paramount.

All for the sake of a "right to choose." It hardly seems worth it. God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald

To further illustrate the point...

That "gay rights" activists have to overhype every perceived criticism and turn it into a case of out-and-out persecution.

An usher at a Seattle Mariners home game against the Boston Red Sox tells a lesbian couple to stop making out because a woman a few rows over, who was attending the game with several children, found the behavior inappropriate (kudos to her for speaking up!) and did not want to explain to the children why two women were kissing.

Note the absolute condescension in the tone of the "gay rights" spokesman who rushed to the lesbians' defense:

"'Certain individuals have not yet caught up. Those people see a gay or lesbian couple and they stare or say something,' said Josh Friedes of Equal Rights Washington. 'This is one of the challenges of being gay. Everyday things can become sources of trauma.'"

So apparently telling someone to stop making out in front of impressionable young children is now a source of trauma? You know that if it was a homosexual being offended by heterosexual behavior, there would be a major outcry about the perceived "insensitivity" of heterosexuals.

I'd tell them to suck it up and act like adults, but I'm pretty sure someone, somewhere would find an excuse to construe that as a homophobic remark (the word "homophobia" and its variants being misnomers, but that can keep for another time).

As Mark Shea frequently mentions in his blog, it's not enough to merely tolerate homosexual behavior. As he often puts it: "YOU. MUST. APPROVE."

The article can be found here.

On the True Meaning of Charity

"So faith, hope, charity abide, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

To what exactly does St. Paul refer in his famous discourse of 1 Corinthians 13 when he speaks of charity? In many translations the word love is substituted for charity, but one can get a mistaken notion of what the passage means without a proper understanding of the context. Paragraph 2093 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the Christian obligation to charity in the following manner:

"Faith in God's love encompasses the call and the obligation to respond with sincere love to divine charity. The first commandment enjoins us to love God above everything and all creatures for him and because of him."

Note that the definition goes well beyond the mere act of being nice to others or engaging in corporal works of mercy. Behaving in a charitable manner presupposes that one's actions are motivated by and directed toward a love of God above all things and for His own sake. There are many implications to this definition of charity that are often lost on the modern-day secular world, which in its reductionism has sadly reduced the meaning of charity to the mere act described above.

The first and most obvious, not to mention the most dire, consequence of attempting to separate the meaning of charity from its proper context of loving God above all else is that the failure to love God leads to the failure to love those who are created in the image and likeness of God: namely, man. As mentioned in a previous post, it is no coincidence that the supporters of the culture of death are, without exception, comprised entirely of individuals who do not believe in God (despite frequent pretensions to the contrary on the part of many of them) or, as is more likely the case with those who engage in so-called "militant atheism," devout haters of the One who is Love. Jesus Himself directed us in the proper ordering of love when he gave us the greatest commandment - namely, to love the Lord our God with all of our heart and all of our soul - and the second greatest commandment, to love our neighbor as ourself. Without the former, it is not possible to properly perform the latter. Our modern society has largely decided to ignore the greatest commandment; the results, I think, speak for themselves.

A secondary consequence of the loss of the true meaning of charity is that acts of nicety and other good works lose their primary focus and moral efficacy. Without the desire to please God as their goal, such acts begin to be performed for ulterior motives, and more often than not become ordered towards the personal gain of those who perform the actions. When what appear to be good works are performed primarily for the benefit of the performer, these works are deprived of the selflessness without which charity cannot exist. A person who feels the need to announce his every good work or invite a cameraman along every time he wants to help others is not a charitable person, no matter how much the media chooses to fawn over him.

A loss of the true sense of charity also leads to the very modern notion of "tolerance" - namely, that we must not only be accepting of who others are, but also accepting of what they do. This, of course, means no worshiping One who overturned tables and lashed out at those who turned His Father's house into a den of thieves, for such a person is the very antithesis of what it means to be "tolerant." Modern "tolerance" is very much a product of the moral relativism that rejects truth and the One who came into the world to testify to the truth. G. K. Chesterton once wrote that tolerance was the virtue of the man who lacked convictions. And it is a fact that one who is convinced of nothing must necessarily be accepting of everything, whether the thing in question is good or evil. But the one who has not rejected Christ and understands the true meaning of charity will also understand what is truly called for when it comes to tolerance. In his essay, "The Limits of Dialogue," Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of the Diocese of Lincoln, NE describes it thus:

"Speaking now about toleration. It is my view that this word, and this attitude and procedure must also be treated as desirable in some instances, but can be perilous in others. The scholastic definition of toleration is "Toleratio est permissio negativa mali." Literally, it means that tolerance is a negative permission of evil, a patient forbearance in the face of evil, either real or imaginary. Tolerance and toleration do not really concern human beings. We are not allowed to tolerate human beings; we are required by our religion to love all human beings. Also, we are not allowed to tolerate the good. That which is good must be approved, accepted, and promoted as well as fostered. Tolerance always refers to some kind of evil, physical, moral, intellectual, whether real or imagined."

He goes on to say:

"If we truly love our neighbor we must be impatient with the evil, physical, moral, or intellectual, under which our neighbor suffers, and to the extent we are able or responsible, we are obliged to relieve the suffering that comes from this evil."

We must, of course, be vigilant about understanding the extent of that responsibility, and must pray as Blessed Mother Teresa prayed (and continues to pray on our behalf) for the strength to endure that which we cannot change, the courage to change what we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

With God, all things are possible. Without God - or the love for Him that orders all good things - the only thing we can count on are the seeds of chaos sown by the evil one who, as the chief enemy of the One who is Love, is the source of that vice which is the greatest assault upon the virtue of charity. God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald

"Being," "Doing," and the Intrinsic Worth of the Human Person

A common fallacy in modern ideologies is the tendency to associate the worth of a human being with his actions. In my experience, at least, this tendency has been particularly prevalent in two ideologies: the movement for so-called "gay rights" and the movement of eugenics.

In the case of gay rights activists, it becomes clear that their claims to being persecuted and devalued as human beings in today's society rests largely on the fact that most people still do not accept homosexual relations as moral, much less equal to heterosexual relations. To hear them tell the story, anyone who fails to throw a parade in their honor is an intolerant bigot. Of course, the Catholic Church views things differently. Paragraph 2358 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states:
"The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition."

This is hardly a mandate to relegate those with homosexual inclinations to second-class status; and yet, the Pope is constantly derided as a persecutor of homosexuals and often compared to Hitler in his treatment of them.

Gay rights activists, in order to achieve their goal of forcing acceptance of their lifestyle upon the rest of society, must necessarily identify their being with their actions. By convincing others that their person is defined by their actions, they succeed in creating the impression that in order to love and accept them like genuine human beings, their chosen lifestyle must be likewise be accepted in its entirety as equal in validity and dignity to heterosexual behavior (that they do not reciprocate this acceptance towards those who do not subscribe to their view of things is irrelevant; political correctness is notorious for such blatant double standards).

This is wrong, of course. That we are referred to as human beings instead of humans doing is not a semantic accident. Our humanness, and our intrinsic and inestimable worth as human persons, is defined not by our words and actions, but by the fact that we are created in the image and likeness of God. Our actions may enhance or diminish the perception of that worth, but perception and reality are two very different creatures.

The movement of eugenics employs a similar "doing is being" approach in defining the worth of the person, albeit for a different though no less disturbing reason. The hallmark of eugenics is the belief that "less desirable" elements of human society (which has now been extended to include unborn children conceived by unwilling parents) should be systemically eliminated for the "greater good" of mankind. To speak of anyone as "less desirable" or "less valuable" is to inherently deny that man is created in the image and likeness of God, for in this created nature we are given equal value before God; and He equally desires each of us to be reconciled to Him (this desire to reconcile all things to Himself is why He exhorts us to "hate the sin but love the sinner," a sentiment beautifully exclaimed in regards to homosexual persons in CCC 2358, quoted above). The extent to which the eugenicist mindset has taken root in modern society has been made disturbingly clear to us in several ways, most notably in how organizations like Planned Parenthood have gained widespread acceptance and more recently in the shamefully callous and inhumane treatment of Terri Schiavo by her faithless husband and his unfeeling accomplices on the grounds that she was "no longer alive" despite clear and conclusive evidence to the contrary.

I was present as a pro-life witness during the so-called "March for Women's Lives" that occurred in Washington D.C. in April 2004. It came as no surprise to me that a large number of gay rights activists, already in town for a separate demonstration, joined their pro-abortion comrades in the march. It also came as no surprise that they employed remarkably similar anti-life and anti-Christian rhetoric (I will spare you from the worst of this, but I can say that in the four years since this event and in my twenty-seven years prior I never encountered more vulgar or more vitriolic language than what I and other peaceful pro-life demonstrators were subjected to that day). Because they so vehemently denied Christ, they denied that they or anyone else could be created in His image and likeness; and in so doing, they denied the very thing that gives a human being his true worth. It is no wonder that they campaigned so vehemently for the demise of those whose presence in this world presented such an inconvenience to them.

As an aside, do not be fooled by the phenomenon of so-called "militant atheism." This phrase is inherently oxymoronic. The true unbeliever is apathetic to whether or not others choose to believe that which he rejects. It is only the person who hates God who seeks to erase all mention or memory of His existence from the world in which he lives. Such hatred can only come from one source, and that source prefers to remain anonymous.

I bid thee all a good night, and (whether or not you choose to believe) God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald