Mindless Perpetuation...

"Wait for complete life stability before you get married."

"Two children families are the perfect size, especially if you have one boy and one girl."

"The homosexual lifestyle is normal and should be accepted or even celebrated in our culture."

"Women must work to fulfill what it means to be a true woman in our culture."

"Freedom comes from management and control of fertility."

"Sterilization is encouraged for those who have already had children."

"Contraception should be free and available to all."

"Abortion is a woman's right."

Readers of this blog should be disgusted by those statements. Our current culture is being taught to accept this nonsense, and to provide sophistic argument to support it. Men and women both rattle off these slogans of population control without giving them a second thought. People cling to these concepts as if they were sacred religion, and those who rail against this insanity are treated as blasphemers of this new found fertility goddess. The birth of this "Venus" is the death of our civilization.

Today I came across an article by Abby Johnson about the Jaffe Memo. I believe that the memo is authentic and I have no reason to doubt it. Even if the memo was forged, the listed population control concepts are proposed in other eugenic based literature. The memo lists a number of the concepts covered in the above quotes.

When I worked at Planned Parenthood, there was something that we were not allowed to talk about. If we didn’t talk about it, then maybe no one else would either. It was called the Jaffe Memo. In 1969, Planned Parenthood was asked by the government to produce some ideas to help with overpopulation. They did just that. What is in the memo as a “solution” to overpopulation is astonishing. And, I’m sorry to say, it looks like the Jaffe Memo is starting to show its face in our culture.

I encourage you to read through the article, and look over the memo. Also note that RealCatholicTV.com has produced some documentaries on the subject of population control. To list a few: "CIA : Global Warming Unmasked, the Hidden Agenda", "CIA : The Rockefeller Foundation", and "CIA : The Contraception Deception".

The Trees and the Axe

As with most of Aesop's fables there are various "morals" that can be gathered from the story. Without searching the internet for an answer, what "moral" can you provide? This is intended to be a creative exercise, and not an in depth conversation on Aesop's contradictory morality.

A man came into a forest, and made a petition to the Trees to provide him a handle for his axe. The Trees consented to his request, and gave him a young ash-tree. No sooner had the man fitted from it a new handle to his axe, than he began to use it, and quickly felled with his strokes the noblest giants of the forest. An old oak, lamenting when too late the destruction of his companions, said to a neighboring cedar: "The first step has lost us all. If we had not given up the rights of the ash, we might yet have retained our own privileges and have stood for ages."

Need and Want...

Here we are the day before the holy season of Advent begins. Here we are the day after "Black Friday". The reports of materialism driven shopping violence fill the media headlines. I recognize the desire of people to be frugal and to make their dollar stretch, but I see the "Black Friday" sales as a psychological gimmick that also happens to be very telling.

The masses who participate in the madness to gain mere gadgets and gizzmos provide a glimpse of another possible scenario. Imagine a situation where these people are not salivating over iPods and plasma screens... but instead are starving from lack of nutrition and thirsting from lack of clean water. If our fellow man can act as they do over their "wants" how might the act over "needs" if the resources for them are lacking?

I am not criticizing all of the people who went out shopping yesterday. I am not criticizing those who purchase electronic devices, or spend money on entertainment. I only desire to point out the danger of forfeiting even simple common respect for our fellow man for worship at the altar of materialism.

Pius XII wrote:

45. But the world, which today affords so many justifiable reasons for pride and hope, is also undergoing a terrible temptation to materialism which has been denounced by Our Predecessors and Ourselves on many occasions.

46. This materialism is not confined to that condemned philosophy which dictates the policies and economy of a large segment of mankind. It rages also in a love of money which creates ever greater havoc as modern enterprises expand, and which, unfortunately, determines many of the decisions which weigh heavy on the life of the people. It finds expression in the cult of the body, in excessive desire for comforts, and in flight from all the austerities of life. It encourages scorn for human life, even for life which is destroyed before seeing the light of day.

47. This materialism is present in the unrestrained search for pleasure, which flaunts itself shamelessly and tries, through reading matter and entertainments, to seduce souls which are still pure. It shows itself in lack of interest in one's brother, in selfishness which crushes him, in justice which deprives him of his rights -- in a word, in that concept of life which regulates everything exclusively in terms of material prosperity and earthly satisfactions.

48. "And I will say to my soul. the rich man said, Soul, thou hast many good things laid up for many years; take thy ease, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, Thou fool, this night do they demand thy soul of thee."

49. To a society which in its public life often contests the supreme rights of God, to a society which would gain the whole world at the expense of its own soul and thus hasten to its own destruction, the Virgin Mother has sent a cry of alarm.

This Advent, consider prayers and fasting against materialism as one way of preparing for Christmas.

If you could will it to be so...

A question for any and all readers of this blog who are same-sex-attracted:  If you could, by a single act of the will, cease to be attracted to persons of your own gender, would you make that act of the will?

The Shepherd's Rod and Staff

Psalm 22:

A psalm for David. The Lord ruleth me: and I shall want nothing. He hath set me in a place of pasture. He hath brought me up, on the water of refreshment: He hath converted my soul. He hath led me on the paths of justice, for his own name's sake. For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evils, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they have comforted me. Thou hast prepared a table before me against them that afflict me. Thou hast anointed my head with oil; and my chalice which inebriateth me, how goodly is it! And thy mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And that I may dwell in the house of the Lord unto length of days.

Pope Benedict XVI - Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus:

"Your rod and your staff – they comfort me": the shepherd needs the rod as protection against savage beasts ready to pounce on the flock; against robbers looking for prey. Along with the rod there is the staff which gives support and helps to make difficult crossings. Both of these are likewise part of the Church’s ministry, of the priest’s ministry. The Church too must use the shepherd’s rod, the rod with which he protects the faith against those who falsify it, against currents which lead the flock astray. The use of the rod can actually be a service of love. Today we can see that it has nothing to do with love when conduct unworthy of the priestly life is tolerated. Nor does it have to do with love if heresy is allowed to spread and the faith twisted and chipped away, as if it were something that we ourselves had invented. As if it were no longer God’s gift, the precious pearl which we cannot let be taken from us. Even so, the rod must always become once again the shepherd’s staff – a staff which helps men and women to tread difficult paths and to follow the Lord.

Behold the Heart Which Has Loved Man So Much

Please listen to the latest sermon posted on Audio Sancto titled: "Behold the Heart Which Has Loved Man So Much"

Sermon synopsis:

The activity and power of Satanists is greater now than at any time in history. The "great ceremony" of the Satanists is the Black Mass at which consecrated hosts -- the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ -- are ritualistically desecrated. In 1675, Our Lord Jesus appeared to Saint Marguerite Marie Alacoque and said: "Behold this heart which has loved man so much, that has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself in order to testify it's love! And in return, I receive, from the greater part, only ingratitude by their irreverence, their sacrelidge, by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in the Sacrament of Love. But what I feel most keenly is that the hearts which are consecrated to Me treat me thus." Christ asked for a feast honoring His Sacred Heart and that solemn acts of reparation be made for the indignities and insults offered to Our Lord.

Will you join in consoling the Sacred Heart of Jesus which has loved you without measure?

Prayer Given by the Angel at Fatima

Oh Most Holy Trinity,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
I adore Thee profoundly.
I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity
of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world,
in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and
indifferences by which He is offended.
By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
and the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
I beg the conversion of poor sinners.
Amen.

Miserentissimus Redemptor
Encyclical of Pope Pius XI
On Reparation to the Sacred Heart

What doth it profit the Church?

The longer version of the title for this post is "What doth it profit the Church to gain dignity for immigrants but not help them save their souls?" and it's a follow-on post from my previous musing whether American bishops care more about salvation or immigration, which I think is a fair question to ask.

Let's ask the question a little differently: which is more important, to care for the bodily needs of your neighbor or his spiritual needs?  Certainly both are important: caring for the corporal and spiritual needs of your neighbor are the theme of the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy.

Concern for immigrants falls under the Corporal Works of Mercy -- give drink to the thirsty, food to the hungry, shelter to the homeless, etc. -- and these works are good and meritorious but they are INFERIOR to the Spiritual Works of Mercy -- instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, admonish the sinner, etc.  The former tend to the need of our neighbor's mortal body; the latter to his immortal soul.  Hence the title of this little rant: What does it profit the Church to obtain dignity for immigrants if the souls of those immigrants are lost because they received less attention than arguments about legislation in Washington?

The minute my bishop and his priests starts issuing regular communiques about the need to repent, be forgiven, and amend one's life lest they go to hell I will be front and center organizing the soup kitchens and homeless shelter drives at my local parish.  I'll be doing everything I can to bring in the needy and homeless -- even the ones who habla espanol-- because my work of tending to their corporal needs will being them into proximity to the Truth they need to hear, the Truth that can set them free from sin and the punishments of hell... the truth that the only thing that can make a human being more dignified than dirt is Sanctifying Grace.

Without concern for the needs of the soul, corporal works of mercy are little better than a waste of time.

Is it too much to ask...

This news from Kansas: Kansas bishops seek federal immigration reform with 'dignity'

Um... is it too much to ask that bishops express more concern about their flock getting into heaven than about Mexicans getting into the United States?