Sunday, June 28, 2015

Dies Irae

For behold the sovereign the Lord of hosts shall take away from Jerusalem, and from Juda the valiant and the strong, the whole strength of bread, and the whole strength of water.  The strong man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the cunning man, and the ancient.  The captain over fifty, and the honourable in countenance, and the counsellor, and the architect, and the skillful in eloquent speech.  And I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them. 
Isaiah 3:1-4

One thing we have to realize about this week's Supreme Court catastrophe is that it is not merely calculated to bring down the wrath of God upon us.  This is the wrath of God.

We have lain under God's wrath for many years now, and most of us can't see it.  Many of us -- maybe most of us -- are positively pleased with the way things are going, both within and without the Church.  That is part of the punishment.

The Church is filled with bad priests and bishops.  Sorry, but I just do not subscribe to the Pollyanna view that most priests and bishops are good and that it is just a few bad apples that give the rest a bad name.  If that were true, the bad apples would be swiftly dealt with and would have no influence.  But the reality is that they are not dealt with at all, and run riot throughout the Church, doing incalculable damage.  Good priests and bishops are vastly outnumbered by those who, at best, are negligent, and at worst, are devoid of the Catholic faith and actively seeking to stamp out faith in their flocks.  Even most of the good ones are a mixed bag.  We have, in our time, hardly any outstandingly holy priests, and these are despised and persecuted by their own people and by the bad bishops who are over them.  This is a chastisement, as St. John Eudes declared:
The most evident mark of God's anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clergy who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than charity and affection of devoted shepherds....When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people, and is visiting His most dreadful anger upon them. That is why He cries unceasingly to Christians, "Return O ye revolting children ... and I will give you pastors according to My own heart". (Jer. 3:14,15) Thus, irregularities in the lives of priests constitute a scourge upon the people in consequence of sin.
A wicked secular government is also a sign of God's wrath.  We as a nation gleefully threw ourselves into the arms of a lawless president who is an enemy of this country and all the ideals enunciated at her founding, who rules by executive fiat, who has swept away the last remnants of constitutional government and the rule of law, and -- make no mistake about it -- has pitted himself irrevocably against the Catholic Church.  We suffered an unmitigated defeat the day he was elected, and many of us still don't know it.

Why is this part of the punishment?  Consider the story of the Exodus out of Egypt, where we read repeatedly about the hardening of Pharaoh's heart:
And the Lord said to Moses: Behold I have appointed thee the God of Pharao: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.  Thou shalt speak to him all that I command thee; and he shall speak to Pharao, that he let the children of Israel go out of his land.  But I shall harden his heart, and shall multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, and he will not hear you: and I will lay my hand upon Egypt, and will bring forth my army and my people the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, by very great judgments.  Exodus 7:1-4.
The excellent gloss in the Douay-Rheims Bible explains what God means here:
I shall harden: not by being the efficient cause of his hardness of heart, but by permitting it; and by withdrawing grace from him, in punishment of his malice; which alone was the proper cause of his being hardened. 
Every thinking person ought to find this frightening.  Spiritual blindness is a punishment for continually hardening our hearts against the graces God sends us.  To be so steeped in sin as to not recognize it for what it is is to be foreclosed from repentance and conversion; and if we persist in that state until death, we are damned.  Sometimes God even permits people in this state to be surrounded at the moment of death by others who make sure they are cut off from the Sacraments and confirmed in their errors to the end.  That is why it is so horrible that the popular culture supports the gay lifestyle.  In the name of "compassion," society hermetically seals its practitioners into their prison of lust, cutting them off from their only real avenue of retreat, until they die, despairing.

There are some delusional Catholics who think that, if only we just believe, any minute now, God will just swoop down and rescue us from our dire straits, as though we are somehow entitled to such.  Scripture is indeed full of promises that God will rescue us from disaster, and we even have the example of the Ninevites, whom God decided to spare from destruction.  But the Ninevites were spared because they listened to Jonah's warnings and repented and did penance.  If we want to be spared, we must do likewise; there has been no shortage of warnings.  But so far, it seems, we are going to continue to ignore them.

Saturday, June 27, 2015

You Will Be Assimilated. Resistance Is Futile.

These lights went up the same day the opinion was published.
This photo is from the White House's Twitter feed, which also now has a cartoon of a rainbowed White House as its avatar.  The Executive Mansion, owned and kept up by the American taxpayer, is currently the residence of a man who, just a few short years ago, declared that he believed marriage to be between one man and one woman.  Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has discovered the "right" to same-sex "marriage" in the Fourteenth Amendment -- a right hitherto undetected by any human being since the Constitution was ratified -- that same man has turned the house first lived in by Thomas Jefferson into a gigantic billboard for homosexualism. 

But, lest we be too distracted by this puerile display and mockery of an historic monument of the nation's founding, let us take special note of Obama's speech celebrating the Supreme Court's travesty.  You can read the whole thing here; this is the money quote:
I know that Americans of good will continue to hold a wide range of views on this issue. Opposition, in some cases, has been based on sincere and deeply held beliefs. All of us who welcome today’s news should be mindful of that fact and recognize different viewpoints, revere our ["]deep["] ["]commitment["] to religious freedom.

But today should also give us hope that on the many issues with which we grapple, often painfully, real change is possible. Shift in hearts and minds is possible. And those who have come so far on their journey to equality have a responsibility to reach back and help others join them, because for all of our differences, we are one people, stronger together than we could ever be alone.
Let us leave to one side the hypocrisy in this divide-and-conquer president of appealing to national unity.  I have already been ridiculed as a paranoiac because I perceive this new development as a frontal assault on my free exercise of my Catholic faith as formerly guaranteed by the First Amendment.  Now along comes Obama, vindicating my point and proving that, like always with leftists, this victory is not enough.  It was never going to be enough, just like all the previous victories garnered after long years of shoving gay propaganda down everyone's throats.  Nothing is never enough.  It's not enough that government at all levels supports the gay lifestyle. It's not enough that big business supports it.  It's not enough that the entertainment industry supports it.  It's not enough that the education system, from kindergartens to universities, supports it.  It's not enough that the media support it.  It's not enough that popular culture supports it.  It's not enough that some heretical Catholic bishops and priests support it.  It's not enough that Disneyland supports it.  It's not enough that now five out of nine Supreme Court justices support it.  No: I must also support it.  And since I must support it, if I will not do so voluntarily, the next step is to use force to make me.  And if I still refuse to give way, then I guess the next step is liquidation.  Because leftists think they can only have peace when there is an absence of opposition.

Yet that still will not be enough.  Even after all the intractables are liquidated, opposition will continue to be redefined.  One day, opposition will consist in all those who are not actively participating in the gay lifestyle and gay sex, even though they condone it.  Meanwhile, the misery of homosexuals increases as they struggle, pathetically, to re-invent reality in the face of nature, reason and God, their carefully-constructed edifice of imaginary "rights" having turned into a maximum-security prison from which there is no escape -- not even death.

Martin Luther said: "Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God."  This idea of reason as a whore has borne much evil fruit over five centuries, and perhaps none more poisonous than the current assault on marriage and the free exercise of religion.  We are in a mess now that can be fixed only by divine intervention; we had better pray and strive to somehow deserve it.

Psalm 36

Be not emulous of evildoers; nor envy them that work iniquity.
For they shall shortly wither away as grass, and as the green herbs shall quickly fall.
Trust in the Lord, and do good, and dwell in the land, and thou shalt be fed with its riches.
Delight in the Lord, and He will give thee the requests of thy heart.
Commit thy way to the Lord, and trust in Him, and He will do it.

And He will bring forth thy justice as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.
Be subject to the Lord and pray to Him. Envy not the man who prospereth in his way; the man who doth unjust things.
Cease from anger, and leave rage; have no emulation to do evil.
For the evildoers shall be cut off: but they that wait upon the Lord shall inherit the land.
For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: and thou shalt seek his place, and shalt not find it.

But the meek shall inherit the land, and shall delight in abundance of peace.
The sinner shall watch the just man: and shall gnash upon him with his teeth.
But the Lord shall laugh at him: for He foreseeth that his day shall come. The wicked have drawn out the sword: they have bent their bow. To cast down the poor and needy, to kill the upright of heart.
Let their sword enter into their own hearts, and let their bow be broken.

Better is a little to the just, than the great riches of the wicked.
For the arms of the wicked shall be broken in pieces; but the Lord strengtheneth the just.
The Lord knoweth the days of undefiled; and their inheritance shall be for ever.
They shall not be confounded in the evil time; and in the days of famine they shall be filled:
Because the wicked shall perish. And the enemies of the Lord, presently after they shall be honoured and exalted, shall come to nothing and vanish like smoke.

The sinner shall borrow, and not pay again; but the just sheweth mercy and shall give.
For such as bless him shall inherit the land: but such as curse him shall perish.
With the Lord shall the steps of a man be directed, and he shall like well his way.
When he shall fall he shall not be bruised, for the Lord putteth His hand under him.
I have been young, and now am old; and I have not seen the just forsaken, nor his seed seeking bread.

He sheweth mercy, and lendeth all the day long; and his seed shall be in blessing.
Decline from evil and do good, and dwell for ever and ever.
For the Lord loveth judgment, and will not forsake His saints: they shall be preserved for ever. The unjust shall be punished, and the seed of the wicked shall perish.
But the just shall inherit the land, and shall dwell therein for evermore.
The mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom: and his tongue shall speak judgment.

The law of his God is in his heart, and his steps shall not be supplanted.
The wicked watcheth the just man, and seeketh to put him to death,
But the Lord will not leave in his hands; nor condemn him when he shall be judged.
Expect the Lord and keep His way: and He will exalt thee to inherit the land: when the sinners shall perish thou shalt see.
I have seen the wicked highly exalted, and lifted up like the cedars of Libanus.

And I passed by, and lo, he was not: and I sought him and his place was not found.

Keep innocence, and behold justice: for there are remnants for the peaceable man.
But the unjust shall be destroyed together: the remnants of the wicked shall perish.
But the salvation of the just is from the Lord, and He is their protector in the time of trouble.
And the Lord will help them and deliver them: and He will rescue them from the wicked, and save them, because they have hoped in Him.

Sunday, June 07, 2015

Starri, Starri Blight

If you pay a creepy-looking, tattoo-covered, bushy-armpitted, ritual sex magick-performing New Age guru-ette up to $7,000.00 a year to educate your children at a place founded on pagan principles, named after a pagan earth goddess and staffed with pagans and womyn's studies majors, should you be surprised to find out that "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" at that school?

Apparently it does come as a surprise to parents at Minneapolis' Gaia Democratic School, whose kids were taken on a field trip to a sex shop as part of a year-long (!) sex ed classSchool director Starri Hedges, who arranged and led the field trip, claimed that the children were not exposed to anything that was considered pornographic, although they could see sex toys and other unspecified products.  "What I saw happening on our trip, I thought it was beautiful because kids could talk to these sex educators without any shame, without any fear," said the delusional Hedges.  Regarding the outrage of parents, who were not consulted ahead of time, Hedges said: "It was certainly the first time we have taken that kind of field trip and it will probably be our last, which I feel bad [about] because the kids had so much fun" -- "fun" being a core principle upon which the school's educational philosophy is based.  Hence, no doubt, the school's board of directors' issuance of a press release defending Hedges and her misbegotten field trip.

Nevertheless, many of the parents of children enrolled at Gaia Democratic are calling for Hedges' ouster, and several have pulled their children out of the school.  One parent has instigated a criminal investigation on the grounds that children were exposed to pornographic material -- an allegation that may be supported by the fact that the sex shop has since been cited for keeping sexually explicit materials in the view of minors.  “I want her done and out, and that school closed,” said one parent. “I want her away from children.  It’s borderline predation.”  It seems that otherwise progressive, forward-thinking, open-minded, neo-pagans do not want their own kids to be groomed for early sex, proving that the Age of Aquarius has its limitations after all.

Concerning this imbroglio, a few observations:

-- We are constantly preached at that one should not judge another based on appearances.  This is true -- up to a point.  We should not automatically assume that a person who is physically beautiful must therefore also be beautiful on the inside, lest we cast aside ordinary prudence.  Likewise, we should not think ill of a person based on external factors that are more or less out of his control, like skin color or body type or poverty or illness.  But what about deliberately self-inflicted physical oddities?  Should we not pay attention to the red flags raised by persons like Starri Hedges who give the appearance of great personal creepiness based on things she's done to herself?  Does not her willingness to take children as young as 11 to a sex shop prove this creepiness to be more than skin-deep?

-- Sex is a basic human drive and an instinct so deep as to require no training, except in self-control.  Why, then, does any school have a year-long course in sex -- manifestly not about self-control, since it includes a trip to a sex shop -- except to break down the inhibitions of children?  This is what is known as grooming, a practice formerly restricted to child molesters, but which now parents are paying schools to do to their children.

-- What is the rationale for keeping kids away from porn if it's okay for them to be exposed to sex toys?  What is the rationale for keeping kids away from sex toys if it's okay to subject them to a year of sexual indoctrination in the classroom?  Where were the outraged parents while this was going on?

 -- Incidents like this prove that when you reject the natural law -- as these parents did implicitly by sending their kids to a school that operates explicitly on principles directly opposed to the natural law -- you leave yourself defenseless in the face of evil.  Worse, you leave defenseless those who are entrusted to your care.   

-- Do any of these parents think it's okay or even actively support the exposure of other people's children to the filth that they do not now want their own children exposed to?

The father who has filed a complaint with Minneapolis police against Starri Hedges has been quoted as calling the incident "a major breach of trust," and observing that "you just can't erase those images."  He is absolutely right; and he is absolutely right in declaring Hedges unfit to have anything to do with children.  But there is a legion of reasons why neither he nor any of the other parents should ever have reposed any trust in Hedges or her school in the first place, and no knowing when, if ever, the damage to their children will ever be undone.

Tuesday, June 02, 2015

The New Alchemy

Bruce Jenner is now officially pretending to be a woman, and we are advised from nearly every quarter that he deserves respect and support and plaudits for this "courageous" and "difficult" decision to pursue his "right" to be whatever he wants to be.

This sort of thing is possible only in a world that rejects (a) God, and (b) objective reality.  The recognition of an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good and loving God necessarily rules out the idea that a person can be a woman "trapped in a man's body" and vice versa.  God cannot make mistakes or fail to carry out His ordaining will.  And contrary to the fevered imaginings of the so-called Enlightenment philosophers, it is possible to perceive and grasp reality, and to distinguish it from that which is unreal.  Sex (not "gender": funny how, in an age saturated with sex, we cavil at using the word) is inescapable.  The sex chromosomes, which inhabit every single cell in the human body, are inescapable.  Persons who think they can create their own reality should think about trying to apply that principle to their checking accounts.  Go ahead and decide you're a billionaire, and then start trying to spend accordingly.  See where that gets you.

With God and objective reality out of the picture, no one is safe, not even from himself.  Now anything is not only possible, but permissible.  The willingness to traverse boundaries previously understood as being impassible marks the death of human dignity.  The body is nothing more than fodder for experimentation, to be used and abused as we please.  We are just human chattels.  We are reverting back to the slavery that our forebears fought and labored so hard to abolish, only this time it will be without even the minimal protection of the law.  The idea of the integrity of the human person is meaningless.

And since we need not respect our own integrity, others need not respect it either.  Maybe someone else should be able to decide for us that we should be the opposite sex.  That day in fact has already come: already we are seeing stories about parents putting their children -- even five-year-olds! -- through this process, and attributing it to the child's "choice."  Is it not the height of immorality to hold a child -- manifestly too immature to make life-changing decisions, possibly not even having yet attained the use of reason -- to a whim?  What if the child decides to pretend to be a dog or a cat?  Should he be held to that, even to the extent of being surgically mutilated to look like a dog or a cat?  Where are the laws to protect children from this extreme form of abuse inflicted on them by those whose duty it is to love and care for them?  In the end, where will we get laws to protect adults from this kind of treatment?

Bruce Jenner is not a woman, and he is not a hero for trying to live like one.  He is properly an object of pity, not only on account of his deep disorder but also because he is surrounded by people who do not love him enough to uphold the truth to his face.  And the truth is this.  God made him a man, on purpose, and it is His will that Bruce live like the man he was made to be.  He can put on women's clothes; he can fill himself full of hormones; he can go through the "counseling"; he can pay some quack tens of thousands of dollars to mutilate his body; he can even bully the rest of the world into playing along with his fantasy.  But he can never, ever make himself into something that he is not, much less find happiness in the effort.