Homily on St. Augustine and Memorial Day

May 27 - Homily: St. Augustine and Memorial Day by AirMaria

Catholic Culture Clash Links -- 9-19-11

Some in the LGBT community are not only intolerant but have violently threatened a Catholic blogger at the blog Accepting Abundance with whom they disagree.  This is unacceptable!!!! The hypocrisy in the MSM irks me to no end. If the situation was reversed the MSM would be capitalizing on this and saying how the defenders and promoters of the traditional lifestyle were extremists promoting violence against the LGBT.  But.... NO now we only hear silence coming from the MSM. Those who claim to be tolerant are actually the most intolerant of all.  All we traditionalists want is for the LGBT community to keep their perverse sexual escapades (kissing in public and so on) in the bedroom and not harm our kids.  When those in the LGBT community have Public displays of affection they are not only demanding that we are tolerant of them but they in fact want us to approve of their actions. I do not approve of their actions.  Their actions are contrary to Church teachings and the natural law.  Let us stand with Stacy Trasancos as she combats these devilish threatening comments.  Stacy, you are doing an excellent job standing up for the safety and vulnerability of all children as they are exposed to these perverse actions in public.  God Bless Msgr. Pope for defending Stacy and explaining the Church's position on homosexuality is not one of bigotry.

Apparently there is a challenge to the new same-sex marriage law in New York. Yea!! The attorney general of New York is now asking the case to be thrown out.  I hope the challenge to the law is allowed to move forward.  Governor Andrew Cuomo a not so Catholic Catholyc has caused scandal to the Catholic Church and IMO should at the very least be denied Communion if not excommunicated in order to send a crystal clear message to Catholyc politicians who dissent from Church Doctrine to STOP dissenting from Church Doctrine.

I have written an article on one of my other blogs called, Dancing With The Stars and The Natural Law.  This deals with the whole Chastity-Chaz Bono controversy.  Should our children be exposed to this?

Fr. Dominic On Fidelity of Marriage & God's Grace

Aug 12 - Homily - Fr Dominic: Gods Grace is... by AirMaria

Archbishop Dolan Writes An Excellent Article Defending Traditional Marriage

Here is the article by Arhbishop Dolan:

The stampede is on.  Our elected senators who have stood courageous in their refusal to capitulate on the state’s presumption to redefine marriage are reporting unrelenting pressure to cave-in.

The media, mainly sympathetic to this rush to tamper with a definition as old as human reason and ordered good, reports annoyance on the part of some senators that those in defense of traditional marriage just don’t see the light, as we persist in opposing this enlightened, progressive, cause.

But, really, shouldn’t we be more upset – and worried – about this perilous presumption of the state to re-invent the very definition of an undeniable truth – one man, one woman, united in lifelong love and fidelity, hoping for children – that has served as the very cornerstone of civilization and culture from the start?

Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea.  In those countries, government presumes daily to “redefine” rights, relationships, values, and natural law.  There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of “family” and “marriage” means.

But, please, not here!  Our country’s founding principles speak of rights given by God, not invented by government, and certain noble values – life, home, family, marriage, children, faith – that are protected, not re-defined, by a state presuming omnipotence.

Please, not here!  We cherish true freedom, not as the license to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what we ought; we acknowledge that not every desire, urge, want, or chic cause is automatically a “right.”  And, what about other rights, like that of a child to be raised in a family with a mom and a dad?

Our beliefs should not be viewed as discrimination against homosexual people.  The Church affirms the basic human rights of gay men and women, and the state has rightly changed many laws to offer these men and women hospital visitation rights, bereavement leave, death benefits, insurance benefits, and the like.  This is not about denying rights. It is about upholding a truth about the human condition.  Marriage is not simply a mechanism for delivering benefits:  It is the union of a man and a woman in a loving, permanent, life-giving union to pro-create children.  Please don’t vote to change that.  If you do, you are claiming the power to change what is not into what is, simply because you say so.  This is false, it is wrong, and it defies logic and common sense.

Yes, I admit, I come at this as a believer, who, along with other citizens of a diversity of creeds believe that God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage a long time ago.  We believers worry not only about what this new intrusion will do to our common good, but also that we will be coerced to violate our deepest beliefs to accommodate the newest state decree.  (If you think this paranoia, just ask believers in Canada and England what’s going on there to justify our apprehensions.)

But I also come at this as an American citizen, who reads our formative principles as limiting government, not unleashing it to tamper with life’s most basic values.

Explaining Why Marriage Between a Man and a Woman is So Special

Here is an excellent explanation from Mercator Net explaining the importance of traditional marriage, and why marriage between a man and a woman is so special.

What is marriage?

Marriage is a natural institution where a man and a woman give themselves to each other exclusively for life in a sexual relationship that is open to procreation. It is publicly recognised, honoured and supported because of its unique capacity to generate new human life and to meet children’s deepest needs for the love and attachment of both their father and their mother. Marriage is different and distinguished from other sexual or caring relationships because of its permanence, its natural orientation to life, and the way it brings together and expresses the fullness of humanity in male and female.  

Why does marriage have to be about the ability to have children? Older couples and infertile couples have always been allowed to marry.

When a married couple cannot have children, for reasons of age or infertility, they are still truly married because their lovemaking is designed to give life, even if it cannot give life at a particular point in time, or ever. Their sexual union is procreative by its nature, because husband and wife unite in an act that is naturally meant for the creation of a new human being. This is why sex deserves to be treated with a special reverence.

But surely marriage is more about two people in love than what kind of sex they have. Why is procreative sex special?

Sexual intercourse that is open to life is essential for marriage because marriage is not just a caring relationship between two people, but a union of love and life. In marriage a man and a woman pledge to love each other for life and to lovingly welcome and raise any children of their union.

Sadly, through the normalisation of casual sex, contraception, homosexual acts, condoms, abortion and IVF, our culture has denigrated and obscured the life-giving aspect of marriage and sexual intercourse. In spite of this, people still, deep down, know that the sexual act is about life – that it bonds a man and a woman together in a profound way because of the baby they may conceive.

People still sense the grandeur of the sexual act, its implicit promise of life-long love and commitment – “I will be here for you for always” – and this is why there is so much pain and heartache when sexual relationships break down or when a marriage is violated by adultery.

Isn’t the right to marry a basic human right?

“The right to marry and found a family” is written in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). But international human rights law has always understood and affirmed the enduring truth that marriage is a life-giving union of a man and a woman. TheUnited Nations Human Rights Committee, which monitors international human rights treaties, has stated that the right to marry “implies, in principle, the possibility to procreate”. The right to marry and found a family is a basic human right, but this right has an objective meaning and content – forming an open-to-life union with a person of the opposite sex.

But what about human dignity? Homosexual people can never feel that they are fully accepted and worthy of love if they are not allowed to marry their same-sex partner.

To love someone sexually means being able to accept them completely, including their fertility. Sexual acts that are closed to life, like anal sex, oral sex and contracepted heterosexual intercourse, may seem loving.  But they cannot be truly loving because they reject the deepest part of the person’s sexuality – their capacity to give life, to be a father or a mother.

No one can deny that many homosexual persons sincerely care about their same-sex partners. But, as hard and painful as it is for those who suffer from same-sex attraction, real love demands chastity – the integration of sexual desires into unselfish love for the other person. This means abstaining from sex that is not marital and open to life.

Unfulfilled sexual desires can be a painful cross to carry. But a chaste life brings us true inner peace and joy, because we are living in harmony with the way our bodies have been designed and we are treating the person we love as a gift – loving him or her for their own sake, and not for the sexual pleasure they can give us.

CONTINUED 

From the Catechism: 


1601 "The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament."


1602 Sacred Scripture begins with the creation of man and woman in the image and likeness of God and concludes with a vision of "the wedding-feast of the Lamb." Scripture speaks throughout of marriage and its "mystery," its institution and the meaning God has given it, its origin and its end, its various realizations throughout the history of salvation, the difficulties arising from sin and its renewal "in the Lord" in the New Covenant of Christ and the Church.



1603 "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."


1604 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.'"


1605 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."

Catholic News Roundup 10-21-10

This is kinda whacky --  The editor of the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, makes the claim that both Homer and Bart Simpson are Catholic.  This seems quite bizarre on the surface, but I wonder how plausible (or implausible) Father Francesco Occhetta claim actually is?  Do you think that it's possible that Bart and Homer could be Catholic?

Fr. Z has posted Fr. Sirico's Advice to the Tea Parties with some added commentary of his own.  While a majority of the article "hits the nail on the head" with regards to the Tea Party movement, there is one part that I question: "And so we come to what may be the real deficiency of this popular movement — it has yet to define a set of clear principles that permit it to consistently outline its view of society and the proper role of the state."  The Tea Party movement has defined principles in the "Contract From America" but it does seem like the Tea Party needs to refine their principles in more detail.

The Pope names 24 new Cardinals. This is great news! Two of the Cardinal-electors are Archbishop Raymond Burke, the American-born prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, and 20.Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, DC.  They both seem like good picks.

Archbishop John Nienstedt made headlines when he distributed dvd's which explains and reiterates the Church's teaching on marriage. He is defending the Church's involvement in this issue and encourages other Catholics to do the same:

From InsideCatholic: "We're part and parcel of the culture, so it's important for us to be involved with those discussions and have our say," Nienstedt said. He said Jesus Christ directed his followers to "either be hot or cold, but if you're lukewarm, I don't want that. So we want people who live their faith."



. . . [Nienstedt] said Catholics need not fear a smaller church, and the threat of one is not a reason to abandon core tenets.


"I believe that it's important that if you're going to be Catholic, that you have to be 100% Catholic," Nienstedt said. "That you stand by the church, you believe what the church believes and you pass that on to your sons and daughters and your grandsons and granddaughters."

This is not merely a political issue but rather a cultural and a religious issue. This is a direct attack on the traditional family and family values.  We must continue to battle against these attacks.  

Marriage: Unique for a Reason

The USCCB Ad Hoc Committee has just launched a new initiative called Marriage: Unique For a Reason. Here is the first video in a series helping to catechize and educate Catholics as to the uniqueness of marriage and why it is meant to be shared between a man and a woman.

The launch comes with the release of the first of five videos. The first video is called Made for Each Other and includes a Viewer’s Guide and Resource Booklet. It explores sexual difference and the complementarity between man and woman as husband and wife in marriage. Later videos will treat the good of children, the good of society and what constitutes discrimination, religious liberty, and issues particular to a Latino/a audience.

“The Committee’s efforts are grounded in the recognition that marriage, as the union of one man and one woman, is at the heart of a flourishing society and culture,” said Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, chairman of the Committee. “The truth of marriage lies at the very core of a true concern for justice and the common good. Promoting marriage is crucial to the New Evangelization. These initial materials seek to provide a key starting point, a compass, for assisting Catholics and all people of good will in understanding why marriage is and can only be the union of one man and one woman.”

Archbishop Kurtz points out a couple of passages from the bible which support that marriage belongs between a man and a woman. Heterosexual marriage is both sacred and a necessity. "Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh."



Matthew 19:4-6; cf. Genesis 2:23-24

A group of about a dozen evangelical Twin Cities pastors support this Catholic anti-gay marriage initiative.


"A strong and documented case can be made for society being harmed by too much same-sex marriage. No such case can be made for natural marriage. Natural marriage poses no danger to society, no matter how pervasive," said Pastor Jim Anderson.