NFP (Natural Family Planning) in New Jersey in Spanish

Please note that yesterday's post is an advertisement for a new Spanish Natural Family Planning (NFP) course in New Jersey. The course is the Billings Ovulation Method http://www.woomb.org/and will be taught in one evening for a nominal fee. Being medically based it is most effective and, with some basic instructions, easy to learn and very easy to practice. And, above all, it is good.

NFP is moral and, therefore, harmonizes with the beauty and integrity of the marital act. While promoting marital responsibility, NFP helps build true marital unity! Every form of contraception and sterilization, however, destroys marital love by contradicting the beauty and the integrity of the marital act (the two never become one, never really giving and opening themselves to each other!). Contraception kills! (cf. Genesis 38:8)

http://www.matt1618.freeyellow.com/birthcontrol.html

Please pass on the link to any young Hispanic couples or any parishes or organizations which serve them in the New York metropolitan area.

Mater Misericordiae

Tomorrow I have to give a retreat on "The Fruits of Divine Mercy" and one of the insights that I found in re-reading Faustina's Diary is the reason that our Lord gives her for promoting this devotion which to her seemed redundant (since the Church is already primarily focused on the Mercy of God in Christ, why is He entrusting her with the urgency to spread His message of mercy and it's accompanying devotions). His answer: yes, but the Feast of Divine Mercy is unknown and neglected in the teaching and in the preaching. This devotion provides a fresh illustration of the Mercy of God in Christ and a practical way to promote it today and to make it better known and better preached and better lived.

"But, Jesus,...I am very surprised that You bid me to talk about this Feast of Mercy, for they tell me that there is already such a feast and so why should I talk about it? And Jesus said to me. And who knows anything about this feast? No one! Even those who should be proclaiming My mercy and teaching people about it often do not know about it themselves. That is why I want the image to be solemnly blessed on the first Sunday after Easter, and I want it to be venerated publicly so that every soul may know about it. (Diary, 341)


She also has a beautiful hymn to our Lady which greatly impressed and moved me.

O Mary, Immaculate Virgin,
Pure crystal for my heart,
You are my strength, O secure anchor,
You are a shield and protection for a weak heart.

O Mary, you are pure and unparalleled,
Virgin and Mother at one and the same time;
You're beautiful as the sun, by nothing defiled.
Nothing is worthy of comparison to the image of Your soul.

Your beauty enthralled the Thrice-Holy One's eye.
That He came down from heaven, forsaking th'eternal See's throne,
And assumed from Your Heart Body and Blood,
Hiding for nine months in the Virgin's Heart.

O Mother, Virgin, this will no one comprehend,
That the infinite God is becoming a man;
It's only love's and His inscrutable mercy's purpose.
Through You, Mother--it's given us to live with Him for ever.

O Mary, Virgin Mother and Heaven's Gate,
Through You salvation came to us;
Every grace to us streams forth through Your hands,
And only faithful imitation of You will sanctify me.

O Mother, Virgin--most beautiful Lily.
Your Heart was for Jesus the first tabernacle on earth,
And that, because Your humility was the deepest,
Wherefore You were raised above Angel choirs and Saints.

O Mary, my sweet Mother,
To You I turn over my soul, my body and my poor heart.
Be the safeguard of my life,
Especially at death's hour, in the final fight.
(Diary, 161)

Lenten Resolution Suggestions

Here is a numbered list of recommended Lenten resolutions from the Saint Escriva excerpt of my blog entry below (what is best is to commit to just one thing and to fulfill it) http://plinthos.blogspot.com/2010/02/lenten-penances-for-holiness.html.

1. Resolve to fulfill exactly the timetable you have fixed for yourself, even though your body resists or your mind tries to avoid it by dreaming up useless fantasies.

2. To get up on time and also not leave for later, without any real reason, that particular job that you find harder or most difficult to do.

3. To learn how to reconcile your duties to God, to others and to yourself, by making demands on yourself so that you find enough time for each of your tasks.

4. To lovingly keep to your schedule of prayer, despite feeling worn out, listless or cold.

5. To be very charitable at all times towards those around you, starting with the members of your own family.

6. To be full of tenderness and kindness towards the suffering, the sick and the infirm.

7. To give patient answers to people who are boring and annoying.

8. To interrupt your work or change your plans, when circumstances make this necessary, above all when the just and rightful needs of others are involved.

9. To put up good-humouredly with the thousand and one little pinpricks of each day.

10. To not abandon your job, although you have momentarily lost the enthusiasm with which you started it.

11. To eat gladly whatever is served, without being fussy.

12. For parents and, in general, for those whose work involves supervision or teaching, to correct whenever it is necessary. This should be done bearing in mind the type of fault committed and the situation of the person who needs to be so helped, not letting oneself be swayed by subjective viewpoints, which are often cowardly and sentimental.

13. To keep yourself from becoming too attached to the vast imaginative blueprints you have made for your future projects, where you have already foreseen your master strokes and brilliant successes. What joy you give to God when you are happy to lay aside your third-rate painting efforts and let him put in the features and colours of his choice!

[14. To give at least one (real) smile a day, (i.e. God's way), to someone who needs it.]

Iesu Tentationes

Here is the Catechism of the Catholic Church's (par. 538-540) explanation of the meaning of the temptations of Christ in the desert.

Jesus' temptations

538 The Gospels speak of a time of solitude for Jesus in the desert immediately after his baptism by John. Driven by the Spirit into the desert, Jesus remains there for forty days without eating; he lives among wild beasts, and angels minister to him.(Cf. Mk. 1:12-13) At the end of this time Satan tempts him three times, seeking to compromise his filial attitude toward God. Jesus rebuffs these attacks, which recapitulate the temptations of Adam in Paradise and of Israel in the desert, and the devil leaves him "until an opportune time".(Lk. 4:13)

539 The evangelists indicate the salvific meaning of this mysterious event: Jesus is the new Adam who remained faithful just where the first Adam had given in to temptation. Jesus fulfills Israel's vocation perfectly: in contrast to those who had once provoked God during forty years in the desert, Christ reveals himself as God's Servant, totally obedient to the divine will. In this, Jesus is the devil's conqueror: he "binds the strong man" to take back his plunder.(Cf. Ps. 95:10; Mk. 3:27) Jesus' victory over the tempter in the desert anticipates victory at the Passion, the supreme act of obedience of his filial love for the Father.

540 Jesus' temptation reveals the way in which the Son of God is Messiah, contrary to the way Satan proposes to him and the way men wish to attribute to him. (Cf. Mt. 16:21-23) This is why Christ vanquished the Tempter for us: "For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sinning." (Heb 4:15) By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert.





Please see also Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth, chapter two, bearing this same title of the Catechism "The Temptations of Jesus" (pp. 25-45)

Lenten Penances for Holiness

From Friends of God, Escriva

138 Are you trying to make sincere resolutions? Ask Our Lord to help you to take a tough line with yourself, for love of him; to help you apply, with all naturalness, the purifying touch of mortification to everything you do. Ask him to help you to spend yourself in his service, silently and unnoticed, like the flickering lamp that burns beside the Tabernacle. And if you can't think of anything by way of a definite answer to the divine guest who knocks at the door of your heart, listen well to what I have to tell you.

Penance is fulfilling exactly the timetable you have fixed for yourself, even though your body resists or your mind tries to avoid it by dreaming up useless fantasies. Penance is getting up on time and also not leaving for later, without any real reason, that particular job that you find harder or most difficult to do.

Penance is knowing how to reconcile your duties to God, to others and to yourself, by making demands on yourself so that you find enough time for each of your tasks. You are practising penance when you lovingly keep to your schedule of prayer, despite feeling worn out, listless or cold.

Penance means being very charitable at all times towards those around you, starting with the members of your own family. It is to be full of tenderness and kindness towards the suffering, the sick and the infirm. It is to give patient answers to people who are boring and annoying. It means interrupting our work or changing our plans, when circumstances make this necessary, above all when the just and rightful needs of others are involved.

Penance consists in putting up good-humouredly with the thousand and one little pinpricks of each day; in not abandoning your job, although you have momentarily lost the enthusiasm with which you started it; in eating gladly whatever is served, without being fussy.

For parents and, in general, for those whose work involves supervision or teaching, penance is to correct whenever it is necessary. This should be done bearing in mind the type of fault committed and the situation of the person who needs to be so helped, not letting oneself be swayed by subjective viewpoints, which are often cowardly and sentimental.

A spirit of penance keeps us from becoming too attached to the vast imaginative blueprints we have made for our future projects, where we have already foreseen our master strokes and brilliant successes. What joy we give to God when we are happy to lay aside our third-rate painting efforts and let him put in the features and colours of his choice!

139 I could continue pointing out a multitude of details (I have just mentioned those that came immediately to mind) which you can take advantage of during the course of the day to come closer to God and to your neighbour. But here let me emphasise that, in giving you these examples, I am not in any way disparaging great penances. On the contrary, they may prove to be very good and holy, and even necessary, when Our Lord leads you by that road, always assuming that they have been approved by the person who directs your soul. But I warn you that great penances are also compatible with great falls, which are brought about by pride. On the other hand, if you continually wish to please God in the little battles that go on inside you — a smile, for example, when you don't feel like smiling; and I assure you that a smile is sometimes more difficult than an hour's worth of cilice — then there is little room left for pride, or for the ridiculous notion of thinking we are great heroes. Instead, we will see ourselves as a little child, who is hardly able to offer even the merest trifles to his father, but who then sees them received most joyfully.

So, does a Christian have to be mortified always? Yes, but for love. For this treasure of our vocation 'we carry it in vessels of clay, to show that the abundance of the power is God's and not ours. In all things we suffer tribulation, but we are not distressed; we are sore pressed, but we are not destitute; we endure persecution, but we are not forsaken; we are cast down, but we do not perish; always bearing about in our body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodily frame.'



Saint Therese made the sacrifice of her own will her primary mortification.


http://www.cptryon.org/compassion/sum97/lisi.html

Give God to Men, That is Justice (Pope Benedict's Lenten Message 2010)

Pope Benedict's key insight for this Lent is his redefinition of justice

(http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/lent/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20091030_lent-2010_en.html).

He says that justice, dare cuique suum (to give each person what is his) includes divine love, because the first element in each man's suum is the gift of God. So that, you have not given a man what is rightly his as a man unless you give him God and His love, and for that you need to go to God to receive Him so as to be able to give Him to others in giving yourself (in the state of divine grace) to them.

He quotes Saint Augustine who says: "If justice is the virtue which gives each man what is his own,...how can you call human justice what takes away the true God from men and puts unclean demons in His place." (De Civitate Dei, XIX, 21)

The first justice is to give men God, the love of God, which is made possible in one's personal communion with Christ. Lenten conversion means turning to Christ in order that we ourselves may become (in our real and personal communion with Him) the very gift of God (Christ Himself in you) for the world. Then we can love others the way that they need to be loved, with the limitless heart of God, of Christ.

He gave us His Son. How can He refuse (not give) us anything else. What is He unwilling to give! (cf. Rom 8:32) His mercy is infinite! Ours too must reach that same level, for our own sake and for the sake of others. The world needs, each man needs the love of God, it is vital, it is right.

For Blogging's Sake

You have probably already heard the ubiquitous and, by now, cliche ridiculing expression about blogging:

"Never before have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few."

It's clever but false!



For "so many people with so little to say say so much to so few" and have done so,

--in all marriages and families from the beginning of time and forever,

--in all small communities, committees, gangs, etc.,

--in all relationships,

--on all cell-phones and e-mail accounts,

--previously, in all town squares of America (which were neighborhood friendly), and all ethnic clubs in our big city neighborhoods (often composed of Catholic men) before they were systematically dismantled (cf. E. Michael Jones The Slaughter of the Cities: http://www.culturewars.com/Reviews/SlaughterReviews.html).



A cliche is a clever and popular lie or exaggeration. It is the opposite of a proverb.

A proverb is an ornate and deep truth. A cliche is a disguised lie.



As Father L. says http://wdtprs.com/blog/2010/02/%e2%80%9cbroadcast%e2%80%9d-to-%e2%80%9cnarrowcast%e2%80%9d/, there are great advantages to the "narrow casting" of the blogosphere versus the "broadcasting" of the propaganda giants.

It is a great advance from uninvited highway billboards, TV commercials, pop-ups of elite marketing, and from the never ending general e-mailings and spam. It also beats the highly monopolized major news sources. This is the very definition of democracy, people freely exchanging their own ideas rather than only spouting the politically correct ideas from the "acceptable" angle. Perhaps the coiner of this cliche would prefer a dictatorship, one voice for everyone. I prefer the blogging model.

Why? Well, the small, discriminating and selective voices and audiences is the great novelty and advantage of blogging. It finally creates a worldwide forum enabling the freedom to be informative, informed and selective (i.e. studious [specializing in a specific area] as opposed to being scattered). It provides much greater freedom for discovering and sharing and refining truth!!! Universal sharing of truth is the greatest threat to and defence against those who would control others. It has been one of the keys to the worldwide Catholic Church, freedom in sharing and embracing the Truth in every land and every time. Granted, there is the danger of error being propagated by the blogs, but I should rather trust by discriminating search for the truth among the many voices (many of which are most excellent), guided by Catholic principles, than entrust that search to the hitherto news and information tyrants and their financiers.

We in the blogosphere are duty bound to be here to promote and defend the truth, and we strongly defend that same responsibility, and, therefore, that right to be here, against the objections of our detractors.

It should not be necessary to be the strongest voice in order to have a voice.

Non Dare Call It Conspiracy

Just a thought for all those who irrationally dismiss conspiracy as nonsense.

Friday Abstinence Canonical Exception

Often the question arises whether one needs a special mandate from the diocesan bishop to lift the Friday abstinence from meat when a solemnity (e.g. 19 March, Saint Joseph; 25 March, Annunciation) falls on a Lenten Friday. Canon 1251 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law appears to grant a permanent canonical exception whenever this happens, without any need for a diocesan mandate.

Can. 1251--Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Bishops' Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

Therefore, Friday, 19 March 2010, being the solemnity of Saint Joseph, is not a day of abstinence, by virtue of the law itself, without any need for a diocesan mandate!

Concupiscence

Unusquisque vero tentatur a concupiscentia sua abstractus et illectus; deinde concupiscentia, cum conceperit, parit peccatum, peccatum vero, cum consummatum fuerit, generat mortem. James 1:14-15

(But every man is tempted by his own concupiscence, being drawn away and allured. Then when concupiscence hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. But sin, when it is completed, begetteth death.)

Saint James tells here (the first reading of today's Mass [Tuesday of 6th week in ordinary time {year II}])of the ultimate interior source of temptation and therefore of sin, and that sin is the source of death. Adam sinned and thereby produced the heritage of original sin, concupiscence and death into the world. Our personal sins are caused by ourselves, therefore, by our internal inherited inclination toward sin. Our fallen nature tends toward what is forbidden. By the grace of God, through the sacraments and prayer and acts of self-denial (e.g. the bodily penances of the saints, even JPII, which are required for every Catholic, at least every Friday of the year) we can reduce that inherited concupiscence.

It is, therefore, false to say that God tempted you. You can say that the devil tempted you and that the world and other people tempted you. But, ultimately, every sin of which you are truly guilty is from you, from your own heart, your decision based on your disordered desire ("the flesh") which you have not purified. So, it is not strictly true to even say "the devil made me do it." We must correct our disordered orientations! Every man must, in order to be saved. Either we shall purify our hearts with a pious and upright life in Christ, by His grace, especially in the Sacraments, or we will destroy ourselves, individually and as a people.

For "when concupiscence hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. But sin, when it is completed, begetteth death." The purpose of disordered desires is sin and the purpose of sin is the death of man. Neither has any benefit or good effect.

Every man should pray to be delivered from himself, from this fallen state of concupiscence: "Heavenly Father...lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen."

Why Persevere James 1:1-11

In Spanish we say Lo que no mata engorda (what does not kill [you] will fatten [you up]). It means that most unpleasant things and even apparently harmful experiences are for the building of your character, just don't get discouraged; God is working on you!

Perhaps this folk wisdom comes from the Apostle of Spain's letter which is today's first reading: "Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." (v. 2-4)

Here he says something more than just "hang in there." He says love hanging in there. Love it. Cherish it. Realize what God is doing in your life and take joy in this hidden mystery that defies all appearances. Take joy in the substance: you are being built up by the Lord, pleasing to Him!

Joyfully let Him make you according to His good pleasure. Let Him use you. Love to let Him use you. Then you are perfect!

Abundance Key to Christianity

"Abundance is one of the key words of the New Testament."

(Benedict XVI at the Roman Seminary 12 February 2010)

In His creative, sustaining and saving action God's largess is boundless. And so, the reasonable response is a similar generosity. In our gratitude to God for all He has done for us and does for us through Jesus Christ we dedicate ourselves to Him with all our heart. Even more, we beg Him to give us His heart so that we might worthily love Him as He deserves.

In the same context the Holy Father quoted Saint Thomas Aquinas' words saying "The new law is the grace of the Holy Spirit." (Summa Theo. I-II, q. 106, a.1) It is not just a matter of following the rules, though we need to do that, but the new law is Emmanuel, "God is with us!" He makes everything possible in us.

I find it instructive that the first definition that Saint Thomas gives for "Eucharist" is "the gifts of grace." The Eucharist is primarily the divine gift of Self for our transformation into Him. That is the first meaning of the word Eucharist: grace: all is Gift. "What do you have which you have not received? says Saint Paul." The "Thanksgiving" is not the primary meaning but the response to the gift. But the "Thanksgiving" aspect goes well with this key of abundance. Our hearts overflow with His gifts, by His work in us, which we also welcome and corroborate in our little way, which in His mercy, is also significant and enlarging.

Unauthorized "Ministers"

Every non-Catholic "minister" commits the sin of Jeroboam, viz. attempting ordination outside of the divinely appointed order.

(cf. 1 Kings 12:31, 13:33, from the first reading of today's Mass [Saturday of 6th week in ordinary time, year II]).

Since the apostolic mandate of Christ, who, sent by the Father, and, in turn, sent the Apostles with the authority to send (and to confer the sending authority upon) their successors, the only divinely appointed order of ordination is Holy Orders. Men are chosen and sent by the legitimate successors of the Apostles (the bishops of the Catholic Church) in the unbroken historical line, by the laying on of hands and the words of ordination.

Jeroboam sinned against priestly Apostolicity and so does every non-Catholic clergyman. For every true Christian believes in the "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church."

Some relevant Gospel texts:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me....

Receive the holy Spirit...

He who hears you hears me...

Go out to all the world...those who listen will be saved...

Afro-American Genocide

Given the disproportionate number of abortions among blacks in America (over 50% of the pregnancies of black women being aborted in some cities), an Atlanta based group has begun a campaign to get the word out and to stop this present day genocide.


It is discrimination to promote abortion (contraception and sterilization, and often with considerable coercion) among minorities and those in poverty. Minorities and the poor have just as much a right as anyone to conceive and bear their children. Go to the state of the art campaign web page below.

http://www.toomanyaborted.com/
The problem is not the pregnancies but the underlying social and moral disorder that needs to be addressed and corrected. Abortion is just another problem (extreme violence), never a solution to problems.
This issue and the Margaret Sanger genocide solution to increasing minorities and poverty in America is reminiscent of the Pharaoh in Egypt's attempt to control the Jewish population by decreeing the infanticide of all males that would be born. (Exodus 1:16)
Coercive Sterilizations
There is now another side to this issue, and that is the coercive sterilization of immigrant women. In my work with thousands of immigrants, I have found that sterilization (in America) is their most prevalent form of birth control, and many times the women are sterilized at the suggestion of a doctor, while in the child bearing process. Not infrequently, the doctors insinuate that they have enough or even too many children!!! So they get sterilized without even being informed that it is morally wrong, i.e. mutilation. Healthy organs should never be destroyed! They are deceived and operated in that deception.

True Enlightenment Comes to Lourdes

Less than a century after the French Revolution, when Reason was proclaimed the ultimate authority and deemed god; and liberty, equality and fraternity were to be the standards of morality, as opposed to the oppression of kings and the corruption of clergy, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to a girl in the French countryside to re-teach France and the world that all virtue comes from heaven, declaring "I am the Immaculate Conception." Mary is the enlightened one because she is the only human being that never had any stain of sin. She is perfectly united to God by this superlative purity of divine love in her. And that union with God is the only source of real fraternity.

God is the original society: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons with perfect equality, freedom and cooperation. This heavenly messenger of consolation, mercy and healing for the sick and the sinner is just what the enlightened world needs. There was never a sadder world than this world of ours which has declared it's radical autonomy from it's Father. The enlightenment rejection of Jesus Christ and His Church is an attack on the very values it claims to champion: liberty, equality and fraternity. For Christ is the eternal Son Who makes all men brothers, He is the source of equality, for He and the Father are One, and He is the only source of perfect liberty because "the truth will set you free."

On this day in 1958 the Mother of Christ came to a little girl to teach us that God is still with us and cares for us and that He has given us a Mother so that we might all feel our common sonship and in gratitude show our fraternity, our openness and generosity to those around us. We owe mercy to our neighbor because God, the one true God, Jesus Christ our Lord, has loved us and given His life for us, and He is alive and cares for each one even now, from heaven and through the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints and through the ministry of His holy priests on the earth, until the end of time.

May our heavenly Mother make all men true and holy brothers of Christ our Lord.

Happy Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes!

De Donde Viene la Tristeza (The Origin of Sadness)

"En el mundo hay una sola tristeza: la de no ser santos, es decir, la de no estar cerca de Dios."

(De Benedicto XVI sobre la vida y la alegria de San Francisco de Asis, la audiencia general del miercoles, 27 enero 2010)

"There is only one sadness in the world: that of not being saints, that is, of not being close to God."

(From Wednesday Audience on the Joy of Saint Francis of Asissi, 27 January 2010)

The Wisdom of Solomon in the Temple of God

Today's first reading of the Mass (1Kings 10:1-10) is about the world renown of Solomon's wisdom. The queen of Sheba comes to him with the greatest abundance of gifts because of his superior refinement. One of the areas of his great magnanimity was building the great and magnificent Temple of Jerusalem: "The House of God." It would be the principle place for the praise and honor of God until the coming of God in the flesh: Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the true temple of God, not made by human hands but eternally begotten of the Father and born of the Virgin Mary. So that the house of God is God Himself (cf. Rev. 21:22). God's house is not a place, therefore, but a Person. The circumstance for the encounter with God is not a matter of going to some special here or there but to the living Person of the Only Son who is eternally face to face with the heavenly Father.

We may, furthermore, speak of the house of God as being the one who conceived and bore Him and gave Him birth and created with Him and Saint Joseph the holy and chaste home of Nazareth. The true house of God is Mary, His Mother. Her Blessed womb is the Golden House of the great Messiah. Therefore, Saint Francis of Assisi wrote a prayer to Mary, the Mother of God as the House of God.

Greeting to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary

Hail, Lady, holy Queen, holy Mother of God, Mary, who are the Virgin made Church and chosen by the most high heavenly Father, who has consecrated you together with His most holy beloved Son and with the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete; you in whom was and is every fullness of grace and every good. Hail His palace, hail His tabernacle, hail His house, hail His vestment, hail His slave, hail His Mother.

Doritos Super Bowl Commercial 2010

The Doritos commercial from Sunday's Super Bowl with the boy telling the boyfriend to keep his hands of his mother was helpful in my seventh grade class as I was summarizing each of the ten commandments.

One child asked, "What is 'lust'?", which was the word I used to summarize the ninth commandment (Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife).

"Lust is what happened at the beginning of that video when the mother's boyfriend stared at her tail end as she pranced out, and perhaps she caused it by her strut. The boy noticing the lust gets angry and drops the game controls. Then he slaps the man, in part, for the lust, and says 'keep your hands off my momma!...'"

Everyone who has reached the age of reason (football fans included) should know that it is wrong to look at people in a dirty way and it is wrong to provoke impure looks by one's immodest attire and or manner. However, it is difficult to convey this truth to the adolescents needlessly making them curious or getting them excited. That commercial was a useful and sufficient tool to that end! Thank you Doritos!

Here is the link for the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bptmb0Ygmus

Justifying "Bump"

I should like to respond to some pro-lifer negative responses to the reality series "Bump" (6 February post below).

http://plinthos.blogspot.com/2010/02/bump-share-your-story-join-conversation.html)

I love the series because it emphasizes the gravity of abortion and the reality of the child in the womb and the fact that abortion is evil, because all of the women would prefer not to be considering it.

The show highligts the fact that abortion (gravely and categorically sinful and always wrong for whatever reason) is a symptom of other grave problems (such as adultery, fornication, violence). Those underlying problems need to be addressed in the great war against abortion. And the greatest problem underlying them all is the ignoring of God and His incarnate love and mercy through our Savior Jesus Christ.

We are sick, individually and as a society, insofar as we reject Jesus Christ and His way. We have laws against physical violence. We used to have laws against sexual immorality, but because we have banned God from the public forum we have accepted every form of sexual perversion, and the consequence is death.

It is good for the world to see the underlying causes of abortion: immorality and abuse of all types. As is written repeatedly in the book of Proverbs, sexual immorality kills! And irreligion confuses the connection. It is no accident that the fifth and sixth commandments come one after the other. Life and love must always go together as they are in God.

And I do agree, furthermore, that if any of the girls decides to abort, that the abortion should be shown, including the baby in the trash, to show the horror of the abominable crime and that no circumstances can justify it. (The criminal act of) abortion is a symptom (of other underlying sins) and not a solution.

What this show emphasises is that abortion is a false solution because it ignores and circumvents the experience and the crisis of the woman. That is a great personalistic argument (avoiding moralism) against abortion. In other words, every woman needs to be listened to and helped and know that the baby is never the problem, and that, therefore, the abortion solves nothing! It just adds one very grave problem to all the other problems: it makes the mother (and father and doctor, etc.) a murderer!!!

Protestant Principles

Here are two basic protestant principles of faith and what is wrong with them.

1. Sola Scriptura.

2. Private interpretation of Sacred Scripture.

Both principles are heretical because the first is opposed to the Christian principle of Sacred Tradition and the second is opposed to the Christian principle of The Magisterium.

The Catholic and true principles of faith (the essential and interconnected sources of the transmission of Divine Revelation) are 1) the Magisterium, 2) the Sacred Tradition and 3) Sacred Scripture.

The fundamental error of all of the principles of protestantism (sola fide, sola scriptura, sola gratia, soli Deo gloria and solus Christus) may be summarized in the rejection of faith in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. So that the true protestant is left at the mercy of his own opinions. Protestantism entails an exaggerated subjective emphasis. As G.K. Chesterton once said, the problem with protestants is not that they reject the pope but that for them every man is pope!

In his renouned and prize winning "Regensburg Address" Pope Benedict argues that modern relativism and materialism have their origin in the Protestant Reformation rejection of Greek thought (since it was considered a corruption of true Christianity), and consequently of traditional logic and common sense. If there is no check, no external objective truth on which to judge private interpretation and internal faith (namely Sacred Tradition and the Church Magisterium), then anything goes, as long as you believe it! Then faith would be fiction, because many believe error. Then even the terrorists would be right!!! The relevant passage is where he explains the three stages of dehellenization about halfway into the talk. That, the error of dehellenization and its harmful consequences was the central theme of that notorious and landmark talk. Find it at the link below.

http://plinthos.blogspot.com/2008/03/regensburg-address-lecture-of-his.html

The world needs the pope, the Church always has a pope with the keys to the kingdom of heaven (to make Christ Himself accesible to men in every time and place against every political current), against whose teaching authority, given, inspired and defended by Christ Himself, "the gates of Hell shall not prevail!"

Wisdom is Shared

The smart man learns from his own experience: trial and error.

The wise man learns from the experience of others, he need not fall himself!

And the fool refuses to learn at all!

May the good God, Jesus Christ, grant that you and I be at least smart and even wise, to avoid falling ourselves and to serve as a guide to the wise and the smart. May we be guided by the infallible wisdom of the ages, the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

(cf. 1Kings 3:9 "Give your servant, therefore, an understanding heart to judge your people and to distinguish right from wrong." Solomon's divinely pleasing prayer for wisdom from yesterday's daily Mass reading [Saturday of the fourth week of ordinary time, year II].)

--Buona Domenica!

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Check out this exciting new reality series of women considering abortion and why. Finally we can hear from the women themselves and their situations and bypassing all of the propaganda.

Most passionate! Excellent! Excellent for anyone with a heart. And challenging anyone with a mind. Please check it out below!

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Might Does Not Make Right

Prugel sind keine Beweise.

Cudgels are no argument (prove nothing)!

Remunerate this fine German proverb which contradicts the Machiavellian law of the jungle "might is right."

In other words, physical fighting and bickering are a cheap substitute for intelligent resolutions, painstaking and charitable correction and amends.

Brains and a heart are infinitely stronger and more effective than fists!

There is no limit to the power of love! cf. 1Cor. 13