Motu Proprio to Suppress Ecclesia Dei Commision

Marco Tosatti, Stilum curiae (Plinthos amended Google translation)

The Motu Proprio which sets the end of Ecclesia Dei as an independent Commission, and its integration as an Office in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is ready, signed by the Pontiff, and should have been published last Thursday. We are unaware of the reasons that the document has not yet been published.

It is a rather short legal text, in which it is said that since the pastoral emergency linked to the celebration of the Vetus Ordo, and which led to the creation of the Ecclesia Dei Commission thirty years ago, has come to an end, consequently the Commission in its current form no longer has any reason to exist.

We recall that the Motu Proprio of John Paul II, dated 2 July 1988, was born in reaction to the consecration of four bishops by Msgr. Marcel Lefebvre. Some of its powers and functions were modified by Benedict XVI in 2009. The document of John Paul II gave the Commission the right to "grant to anyone who asks for it the use of the Roman Missal according to the typical edition in force in 1962, and this according to the rules already proposed by the commission of cardinals 'established for that purpose' during December 1986 after having informed the diocesan bishop ".

The Commission was the point of arrival of those who appealed to it to obtain a review of the denials of bishops opposed to the celebration of the Mass according to the Vetus Ordo.

Moreover, following the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of Pope Benedict XVI (2007), the commission supervises the application of the Motu Proprio, studies the possible updates which the liturgical texts of 1962 might need: for example the presence of new saints in the calendar. Moreover, the Commission was the last resort for the faithful who asked for the celebration of Mass according to the extraordinary form and did not have a positive answer either from their parish priest or from their bishop.

It is now necessary to see how many, and which of these powers, can continue to be carried out by what will be the new "Office" Ecclesia Dei within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; and whose last referent, evidently, will no longer be the responsible secretary, as before, but the prefect at the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The initial statement, according to which the pastoral emergency would have ended, gives rise to some more than legitimate doubts. At a time which in the Assembly of the Italian Episcopal Conference voices of bishops and specialists are raised to deny legal validity to the Motu Proprio "Summorum Pontificum" of Benedict XVI, and at a time which there are bishops who are directly or subtly hindering the celebration of Mass according to the Vetus Ordo, to say that there is no pastoral emergency appears perhaps a bit rash.
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Plinthos: It seems to me that the Holy Father is among the vast majority of the bishops of the world who have secretly decided to oppose the traditional Mass by at least not promoting it among the secular clergy or in their parishes or their cathedrals. Their policy is to destroy it by isolating it. The message to all of their subjects is clearly: "stay away from tradition" They relegate it to the peripheries. Their attitude is that only those who are exclusively dedicated to it should do it, the rest of us should stay away. That is the present atmosphere, contrary to Summorum Pontificum. The traditional form of the Mass and those (especially clergy and seminarians) attached to it are treated as something bad for the world, an evil that we must still tolerate. But, I ask, together with Pope Benedict XVI, why should ordinary Catholics, Pope's included, need to neglect or reject their Catholic tradition in order to be Catholic?

A Pact Between Pope Francis and the Society of Saint Pius X for the Isolation of Tradition?

Beata viscera --Palestrina Merry Christmas!

Beata viscera Mariae Virginis,

quae portaverunt aeterni Patris Filium; Alleluia.

Someone please inform Google Doodle that it is Christmas!

Bishop Barron on Ben Shapiro

Here is a nice treat for this Christmas.

Merry Christmas as we usher in The Year of the Lord MMXIX!

N.B. 46.00 minute on "The rejudaizing of Catholicism is the key to evangelism."

However, Bishop Barron's position on the hypothetical salvation of those who do not believe in Christ, contradicts the Gospel and the constant teaching of the Catholic Church. Without faith in Jesus Christ there is no salvation. Here is the dogma:

"Souls who depart this life in the state of original sin are excluded from the Beatific Vision of God. (De fide.)" Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Rockford: Tan, 1976, 112.

"The 2nd General Council of Lyons (1274) and the Council of Florence (1438-45) declared: illorum animas, qui in actuali mortali peccato vel solo originali decedunt, mox in infernum descendere, poenis tamen disparibus puniendas (the souls of those who die in original sin as well as those who die in actual mortal sin go immediately into hell, but their punishment is very different). D 464, 693." Ibid.

"Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized shall be saved, but he who does not believe shall be condemned." Mark 16:16.

The Longest Unbroken Dynasty in the World Today!

I just learned from German Radio (Cologne) yesterday that there is a Japanese Emperor. I had no idea! According to legend, his dynasty goes back to the years of the birth of Christ, 6 BC (Christ was born in 4 BC, BC meaning Before Christ and AD meaning anno Domini [the Year of the Lord], for the Gregorian calendar which is today recognized as the official calendar of the entire world has Christ the King as the reference point). The historical record of the Japanese dynasty can only be traced to the 5th century AD.

Upon reflection, I have to say that common opinion and Wikipedia are wrong regarding the claim that the Japanese monarchy is the oldest continual dynasty in the world. That of Christ is older for two reasons. It is older because the historical records of Christ's reign are indisputable from the time of his reign on the earth. That reign begins upon his conception in the year 4 BC, reestablishing the kingdom of David his father from David's city of Bethlehem and of the tribe of Judah whence he was born into the world. The Davidic dynasty, which is that of Christ, is traced historically to Saul in 1030 BC and interrupted with the death of Zedekiah in 587. But the second reason is more important because Christ is the Person of the Son of God and His kingdom is from heaven, His reign is eternal, "My kingdom is not of this world;" (John 18:36) the King of the Jews is the King of heaven and earth, the longest standing monarch, from His eternal throne in heaven. His Church also begins with His Incarnation in 4 BC and that dynastic institution of His, with the Vicar of Christ, the Roman Pontiff as His official delegate, has been carrying on the Kingdom of Christ on earth for two thousand years, "...and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Matt. 16:18

Pope Francis Ignores Homosexualism Problem in Hierarchy

The Holy Father, in his end of the year address, addressing the "abuse" crisis of 2018, not once mentions homosexuality, homosexualism, homosexualism in the Church hierarchy (at the highest levels, implicating even the Pope Himself).

To focus on abuse of minors is simply a distraction and is to ignore the great scandal of 2018, the iconic and notorious McCarrick homosexualism and the homosexualism in the Church at every level: the consenting to and condoning and promoting of homosexuality in the Church and, by the Church, in the world itself.

Viganò is not divisive. He is speaking for all of the Catholic faithful who insist that our Pastors "...be outstanding in sound doctrine and uprightness of character." Canon 521. Any person in authority in the Church must vocally oppose homosexualism in all its forms and in no way consent to, condone or promote it.

The problem which came to light in 2018 is that the Church has pitched a tent in Sodom! Homophilia is alive and well in the Catholic Church, and all of "Uncle Teddy's" friends, including the Vicar of Christ Himself, are its chief promoters.

A homo-friendly church does not belong to Jesus Christ, but to the devil, and very often indeed "for thirty pieces of silver." It is the clergymen who sell their souls to political correctness in the fear of being labelled homophobe in Sodom that are the problem. Gaydom must be called out! The Holy Father's uncertain message regarding Sodom will not work. He promotes "LGBT" on the one hand, but then kinda sort of quietly regrets the fact of homosexual clergy, rarely even admitting that. You cannot serve two masters.

The great "scandal" of 2018 is the exposure of the real scandal in the episcopal college of loving the fleshpots of Egypt, episcopal gaydom, friends of Sodom, the McCarrick type and all who liked him as long as he was "legal.," including popes and other cardinals and many bishops and pastors. As I have said here repeatedly, watch out for what they don't say, the errors the enemies of the faith, within the Church leadership, are slow to correct. That is the prevalent heresy of our day, the hesitancy to condemn what needs to be condemned when and where and in whom it needs to be exposed and gotten out! Too much "tenerezza!" Cf. Luke 12:51.

The Appointment and Tolerance of Bad Pastors is Contrary to the Law of the Church

Expose and Depose the Homophiles Who are Running the Church, at Every Level! THE VIGANO PLAN

Rorate Cæli, Palestrina

Advent Polyphony

Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant justum.
Aperiatur terra, et germinet Salvatorem:
Ostende nobis Domine misericordiam tuam
Et salutare tuum da nobis:
Veni Domine et noli tardare.

Let the heavens drop dew from above,
and the clouds rain down justice.
May the earth open and generate a Savior:
Reveal to us, Lord, Your mercy,
and give Your salvation to us:
Come, Lord, and do not delay.

"I Need to Wake People Up!"

Inspirational short video on the vocation of the priest today.

How Choosing Evil is a Lack of Freedom

Archangel Gabriel, La Madeleine, Paris

Free will is perfect when it is ordered towards its proper end, which is the good. As long as the person with free will chooses the good he becomes more free. It is union with the good which makes him free. "If you abide in my word, you shall be my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:31-32). Freedom comes from knowledge of the truth and knowledge of the truth comes from living in the word of Jesus Christ, living in relationship, in a personal relationship, with the truth, living in discipleship with Him. The Truth is a Person. "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." (John 14:16). Communion of Persons is the source of freedom. Love is the source of freedom. Divine union, in the Person of Christ, is the source of freedom.

When man uses his freedom to do what is wrong he harms his own freedom. He makes himself less free with every sin which he commits. There are three ways that freedom is harmed by evil: by willing it, by being capable of it, and by actually doing it. (Cf. Boethius, de consolatione, IV, 4a, 15, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Loeb Classical Library Harvard University Press, 1978, 340). That is why God, Jesus Christ, the Immaculate Conception, and all the Angels and the Saints in heaven, incapable as they are of doing evil, enjoy the greatest freedom. (Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol. Ia, q. 62, a. 8, ad. 3). Their freedom is commensurate with the fullness of being of each in his perfect exercise of union with his proper end which is God, union in the Most Blessed Trinity. Each person lives and moves and has his being in perfect harmony with the love of his life, which is God, in union with God. And that is why those who are wicked are said to be dead.

All men, endowed as they are with free will, are ordered toward the good by nature. Therefore, the good man achieves his natural end and the wicked man does not, which means that the good man is powerful and the evil man is weak. The evil man, knowing what is good, is led by inordinate desire to do what is evil, being weak to will and to do the good. He is thus less a man than the good man. The more evil he wills, can do, and actually does, the less of a man he is, the less he truly lives and the less he shares in his own existence, because he thereby abandons his proper destiny, his proper nature, which is directed toward the good: "for those who leave aside the common end of all things that are, at the same time also leave off being." (de consolatione, IV, 2a, 100-101, Ibid., 325-326).

Cf. María Esther Gómez de Pedro, Libertad en Ratzinger: riesgo y tarea, Madrid: Encuentro, 2014, 101-102. Also James 1:14-15 on how concupiscence kills man.

P.S. "Amen, amen I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. But the slave does not abide in the house forever; the son abides there forever. If therefore the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed." John 8:34-36                                             

Truth, Moral Truth, Church Authority

"By holding on to the Creator, faith's praxis protects the creation against...a total manipulation of reality. ...Faith's praxis depends on faith's truth, in which man's truth is made visible and lifted up to a new level by God's truth. Hence, it is fundamentally opposed to a praxis that first wants to produce facts and so establish truth."
Joseph Ratzinger, "The Church's Teaching: Authority--Faith--Morals" (1974) in Principles of Christian Morality, San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986, 70.

"...[A] faulty concept of God leads to faulty moral behavior..." Ibid., 65.

"Contrary to appearances, the flight into pure orthopraxy, as well as the attempt to banish substantive morals from the realm of faith (with the teaching authority that is an integral part of the realm of faith), turn reason into a heresy... The first obligation of the teaching office is to continue the apostolic exhortation and to protect these fundamental decisions against reason's capitulation to the age, as well as against reason's capitulation in the face of almighty praxis. There must be a correspondence with basic insights of human reason, albeit these insights have been purified, deepened and broadened through contact with the way of faith...

"The whole Church:...the life and suffering of Christians, living out their faith in the midst of the times,...the reflections and questionings of the scholars,...[and] the watchful attention, listening and deciding undertaken by the teaching authority...is involved in the process of assimilating what is genuinely rational and rejecting what is only superficially reasonable." Ibid., 71-72.

Christian/Christmas Hallelujah

Here is a Christian rendition of the very popular but ambiguous "Hallelujah" song.

Cloverton Lyrics

"A Hallelujah Christmas"
(originally by Leonard Cohen)

I've heard about this baby boy
Who's come to earth to bring us joy
And I just want to sing this song to you
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
With every breath I'm singing Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

A couple came to Bethlehem
Expecting child, they searched the inn
To find a place for You were coming soon
There was no room for them to stay
So in a manger filled with hay
God's only Son was born, oh Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

The shepherds left their flocks by night
To see this baby wrapped in light
A host of angels led them all to You
It was just as the angels said
You'll find Him in a manger bed
Immanuel and Savior, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

A star shown bright up in the east
To Bethlehem, the wisemen three
Came many miles and journeyed long for You
And to the place at which You were
Their frankincense and gold and myrrh
They gave to You and cried out Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I know You came to rescue me
This baby boy would grow to be
A man and one day die for me and you
My sins would drive the nails in You
That rugged cross was my cross, too
Still every breath You drew was Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Truth, Maturity, and Holiness: Response in Crisis

"Many capsizings in the faith and in consecrated life
are due to a crisis in philosophy." --John Paul II

"Our age...seems to be an age of great spiritual crisis: crisis of ideas, crisis of religious faith and, consequently, crisis of moral life."

It is an age which requires, 1) before all else, deep philosophical and theological convictions, 2) mature and well-balanced characters, and 3) a serious commitment to personal sanctification.

¿Cuál es la característica general del tiempo en que nos ha llamado a vivir la Providencia? Parece que se puede responder que es una gran crisis espiritual: de ideas, de la fe religiosa y, en consecuencia, de la vida moral.

Nosotros estamos llamados a vivir en esta época nuestra y a amarla para salvarla. ¿Cuáles son, pues, las exigencias que nos presenta?

1. Nuestro tiempo exige ante todo profundas convicciones filosóficas y teológicas.

Muchos naufragios en la fe y en la vida consagrada, pasados y recientes, y muchas situaciones actuales de angustia y perplejidad, tienen en su origen una crisis de naturaleza filosófica. Es necesario cuidar con extrema seriedad la propia formación cultural. El Concilio Vaticano II ha insistido en la necesidad de tener siempre a Santo Tomás de Aquino como maestro y doctor, porque sólo a la luz y sobre la base de la "filosofía perenne", se puede construir el edificio tan lógico y exigente de la doctrina cristiana, León XIII, de venerada memoria, en su célebre y siempre actual Encíclica Aeterni Patris, cuyo centenario celebramos este año, reafirmó e ilustró maravillosamente la validez del fundamento racional para la fe cristiana.

Por esto, nuestra primera preocupación hoy debe ser la de la verdad, tanto por necesidad interior nuestra, como para nuestro ministerio. ¡No podemos sembrar el error o dejar en la sombra de la duda! La fe cristiana de tipo hereditario y sociológico, se hace cada vez más personal, interior, exigente, y esto ciertamente es un bien, ¡pero nosotros debemos tener para poder dar! ¡Recordemos lo que San Pablo escribía a su discípulo Timoteo: "Guarda el depósito a ti confiado, evitando las vanidades impías y las contradicciones de la falsa ciencia que algunos profesan, extraviándose de la fe"! (1 Tim 6, 20).

Es una exhortación especialmente válida para nuestra época tan sedienta de certeza y claridad y tan íntimamente acechada y atormentada.

2. Nuestro tiempo exige personalidades maduras y equilibradas.

La confusión ideológica da origen a personalidades sicológicamente inmaduras y pobres; la misma pedagogía resulta incierta y a veces desviada. Precisamente por este motivo el mundo moderno anda en busca afanosa de modelos, y la mayoría de las veces queda desilusionado, confundido, humillado. Por esto, nosotros debemos ser personalidades maduras, que saben controlar la propia sensibilidad, que asumen las propias tareas de responsabilidad y guía, que tratan de realizarse en el lugar y en el trabajo donde se encuentran.

Nuestro tiempo exige serenidad y valentía para aceptar la realidad como es, sin críticas depresivas y sin utopías, para amarla y salvarla.

Esforzaos todos, por lo tanto, para alcanzar estos ideales de "madurez", mediante el amor al propio deber, la meditación, la lectura espiritual, el examen de conciencia, la recepción metódica del sacramento de la penitencia, la dirección espiritual. La Iglesia y la sociedad moderna necesitan personalidades maduras: ¡Debemos serlo con la ayuda de Dios!

3. Finalmente, nuestro tiempo exige un compromiso serio en la propia santificación.

¡Las necesidades espirituales del mundo actual son inmensas! Si miramos las selvas sin límites de los bloques de casas en las modernas metrópolis, invadidas por multitudes sin número, es para asustarse. ¿Cómo podremos llegar a todas estas personas y llevarles a Cristo?

Viene en nuestra ayuda la certeza de ser sólo instrumentos de la gracia: quien actúa en cada una de las almas es Dios mismo. con su amor y su misericordia.

Nuestro compromiso verdadero y constante debe ser el de la santificación personal, para convertirnos en instrumentos aptos y eficaces de la gracia. El deseo más verdadero y más sincero que puedo expresares es sólo éste: ¡Haceos santos y pronto santos!, mientras os repito las palabras de San Pablo a los Tesalonicenses: "El Dios de la paz os santifique cumplidamente, y que se conserve entero vuestro espíritu, vuestra alma y vuestro cuerpo sin mancha para la venid, de nuestro Señor Jesucristo" (1 Tes 5, 23).

Visita a la Parroquia Romana de San Pio V, Alocucion del Santo Padre Juan Pablo II a los Sacerdotes, Religiosos y Religiosas, Domingo 28 de octubre de 1979

"Homosexuality seems to have become a fashion, and that mentality enters also into the Church." --Pope Francis

Mons. Aguer: En la Iglesia el celibato sacerdotal se mantiene como una “perla preciosa”

Papa Francisco: Un homosexual no puede ser sacerdote ni consagrado

English: Argentine archbishop: in some dioceses there is a gay priests’ lobby

"McCarrick cronies either get promoted or remain protected."

"The Stench From CupichChurch"

The American Spectator

Sunday Report
GEORGE NEUMAYR
November 25, 2018

The winds of scandal whipping around the Church’s gay pederasty problem are not dissipating but picking up speed. This is foiling the devious plans of Pope Francis, who deliberately scheduled his “abuse summit” six months out in the hopes that few would care about it by then. News of that quickie gathering of bishops scheduled for next February commanded little respect from the laity before this week, but even less now that its primary American organizer has been announced — Blase Cupich, who owes his elevation in large part, according to Archbishop Carlo Viganò, to the very molester, Theodore McCarrick, whose scandal the summit will supposedly address.

It was McCarrick who whispered in the pope’s ear about appointing the relatively obscure Cupich to the immensely important archdiocese of Chicago. Overnight this appointment turned the nebbishy Cupich into the most powerful cardinal in America. In Baltimore at the fall bishops’ conference, Cupich was reveling in this status, playing with his cufflinks as he held court before awed staffers.

Cupich is of course the least credible American figure to address the abuse crisis. His resolve to purge the mini-McCarricks who populate the priesthood and hierarchy from the Church is nil. To the critical question — Should the Church continue to ordain homosexuals? — Cupich’s answer is a resounding yes. This, along with his left-wing politics, has turned him into a media darling. Notice that all of the media’s recent take-downs of derelict leadership steer clear of Chicago.

Cupich has famously vowed not to follow Viganò down his “rabbit hole” and says he will focus instead on the promotion of the pope’s enviro-socialist political program. At the Baltimore conference, Cupich was running interference for double-living prelates, urging his colleagues to see such misconduct as “consensual” and thus not worthy of strict regulation.

Cardinal Oswald Garcia of Mumbai, by the way, is also on the abuse summit’s organizing committee. He is the Cupich of India, so brainwashed by the pope’s moral relativism that he has taken to telling socially conservative Indians that they need to lighten up about LGBT rights. Garcia has also been known to censor out of his priests’ homilies any “offensive” references to the sinfulness of homosexual behavior.

Not a single McCarrick crony has been demoted under Pope Francis. Some of them, such as Paterson (New Jersey) Bishop Arthur Serratelli, preside over openly corrupt dioceses. A wispy protégé of McCarrick’s, Serratelli is known for, among other acts of astonishing corruption, making Fr. Hernan Arias, a credibly accused gay predator, his vocations director. Arias no longer holds that post, but he remains pastor of St. Margaret of Scotland despite the fact that he is under Vatican investigation for an allegation of sexual assault against a college student who was thinking about becoming a priest. Serratelli knew about this charge before he made Arias vocations director, according to a source close to the Paterson chancery.

Arias is so close to Serratelli that people in the know in the diocese refer to him as “Mrs. Serratelli” or the “First Lady,” said this source. “Serratelli, Arias, and Edgar Rivera (the current vocations director) go on vacation every year together to the Dominican Republic,” added this source.

The whereabouts of Arias are not known, even though on paper he remains St. Margaret’s pastor. Another corrupt Paterson priest on the run is Fr. Patrick Ryan, who (I’m told by well-placed Paterson sources) is under state investigation for embezzling money from St. James of the Marches parish to finance his gay lifestyle. “He has been ripping off the second collection for years, and with some of that money bought a house for his gay lover,” according to a chancery-connected source.

When I saw Serratelli in Baltimore, I asked him about the status of Ryan. Is he under investigation for embezzlement? Serratelli refused to answer. When I asked him about Ryan’s checkered background — sexual misconduct charges dogged him during a previous posting in Albany — Serratelli visibly winced and started babbling about how “lawyers had checked everything out.”

Why did Ryan leave Albany for Paterson? Speculation abounds. “He used to cruise parks up there,” says one priest. Another source suspects that Ryan got to Paterson on a “prisoner exchange” — a trade of deviant priests undertaken by former bishops of Paterson and Albany designed to keep inquiring cops at bay.

Staffers at Ryan’s parish decline to answer any questions about him. Parishioners have been told that he is on leave for “health reasons.” It is the same template Serratelli used to explain Arias’s disappearance from his post: “Due to the stress he has been experiencing, Father Arias has requested and received time away from his parish, St. Margaret of Scotland in Morristown, for health reasons.”

“Health reasons” is becoming as hackneyed a departing explanation for the Church’s nabbed deviants as “the need to spend more time with family” is for vanishing pols. Cupich claims that the upcoming abuse summit will put such a culture of evasion behind the Church. It is far more likely to cement official lies in place. High among those lies is that the abuse scandal revolves around “children,” Cupich’s carefully chosen word, even as case after almost every case involves male teenagers. The scandal is one of homosexual abuse, precisely the McCarrick problem that the beneficiaries of his sinister influence and dirty money have no interest in solving.

"Our tainted nature's solitary boast"

The Virgin, William Wordsworth

Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied.
Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature's solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast;
Thy image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mixed and reconciled in thee
Of mother's love with maiden purity,
Of high with low, celestial with terrene!

Survivors of the Contraception/Abortion Open War on Babies

There is a Abortion Survivor's Network which features the story of a few of the millions of abortions which survived. But everyone who was born after Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and after Roe v. Wade (1973) was born during the open attack on babies. We are all contraception/abortion survivors!

TEN DIFFERENT TYPES OF "ABORTION SURVIVORS"

Editor's introduction.

For perfectly understandable, if regrettable, reasons, the depiction of the participants in the abortion debate in the popular press rarely moves beyond a set drama whose featured players are freedom-loving defenders of choice versus those Neanderthal right to lifers. How can it be otherwise when they don't know us, understand us, or empathize with us (or the unborn)?

But that doesn't excuse the rest of us from probing beyond the platitudes, from investigating abortion's incredible complexity. One area that can never be looked at carefully enough is what's called the "abortion survivor."

Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life produces any number of wonderful resources, including a very useful web page and a thoughtful newsletter. In a recent edition, the Priests for Life newsletter dealt with the issue of abortion survivors to an extent and in a depth that I had not seen for a long, long time. In my judgment, this is must reading.

If you take the time to read the following lengthy excerpt, you will be richly rewarded. Following that, I will add just a few words in conclusion:

***************************

Priestly ministry in our day, especially to those born since Roe v. Wade, cannot ignore the phenomenon of "abortion survivors." What does growing up in a society that tells you, by law and by dominant cultural thinking, that your life was disposable and your birth was subject to the "choice" of someone else, do to one's psychological landscape?

How do the young view themselves and their peers in the light of the fact that "the word person... does not include the unborn"? (Roe v. Wade, at 158). Moreover, how does being an abortion survivor affect the way today's children and young adults hear the Gospel message of God's unconditional love?

Drs. Philip Ney and Marie Peeters Ney have done groundbreaking research in this area and have written specifically about the challenges of evangelizing abortion survivors.

They have identified 10 different types of abortion survivors:

1. Statistical survivors. These are people who survived in countries or cities where there is a statistically high probability that they would have been aborted. They come to know that the odds were definitely stacked against them. In some parts of Eastern Europe, the chances of being aborted are as high as 80%.

2. Wanted survivors. These are people whose parents carefully deliberated about whether or not to abort them. They may have calculated, consulted, and discussed the possibility.

3. Sibling survivors. These are people born into families where one or more of their siblings were aborted.

4. Threatened survivors. These are children whose parents have used abortion as a threat, even if they never considered it during the pregnancy: "You wretched, ungrateful child...I should have aborted you!"

5. Disabled survivors. These are people who, because of developmental defects or other circumstances, would usually be aborted. In fact, they often wonder whether their parents would have aborted them had they known about the defects.

6. Chance survivors. These are children who would have been aborted if the mother had been able to obtain the abortion. The abortion was prevented by a lack of money, time, permission, availability, etc.

7. Ambivalent survivors. These are children of parents who could not make up their minds about the abortion and delayed until it was too late. They are often caught up in their parents' continuing ambivalence, and can wonder whether they can still be terminated.

8. Twin survivors. These are people whose twin was aborted. Twins communicate, touch, and even caress each other in the womb. The loss of the twin by abortion is deeply felt and often causes the survivor to be suicidal.

9. Attempted murder survivors. These are people who survived an actual abortion attempt. Besides the physical harm that is often done, they suffer intense psychological struggles, nightmares, confused identities, and a fear of doctors.

10. Murdered survivors. These are children who survived an abortion for just a short period of time, and were subsequently killed by the abortion staff or left to die.

Abortion survivors, to put it simply, live on shaky ground. "If my mother could have aborted me, what is my life worth?" These individuals live with a sense of worthlessness and a feeling of impending doom. They suffer existential anxiety and survivor guilt.

They are "wanted" rather than "welcomed." When one is "wanted," he or she meets the needs or demands of another. When one is welcomed, on the other hand, his or her value is acknowledged despite others' reactions or attitudes. One abortion survivor wrote, "My parents always said they had wanted me. I often wonder what would have happened if they had not wanted me? I feel I must stay wanted. Being wanted means existing."

Another wrote, "I had no right to exist. I am still a child trying to find a place in this world...wandering around, carrying the weight of something on my shoulders. I had so many unanswered questions which I could not ask because nobody would answer and besides which I could not even formulate them. All my life I have been running, running away from death, no, from something worse than death."

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"Something worse than death." Now those are sobering, soul-chilling words. Of all the forests felled and vats of ink emptied to chronicle the battle over abortion, only a few saplings and a couple of pints worth of ink have been expended to help us understand the reach of abortion. This omission is a tragedy of untold proportions: Abortion is not, and never has been, exclusively about a woman and her unborn child.

There are husbands and grandparents and siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles. Whether she likes it or not, a pregnant woman is enmeshed in a web of relationships, and there is a tremor felt throughout it when the life of a grandchild, brother or sister, cousin, niece or nephew is taken.

I did a Today's News & Views ( www.nrlc.org ) last month about some marvelously intricate surgery performed on an unborn child. The baby would otherwise have been born with an anomaly so severe that his chances of living long were very slim. But even as I--a pro-life veteran--wrote the story I was astonished how much more real, more personal, more human that child was to me just because I continually used the name the parents gave him even before he (and his mother) underwent the surgery: "Jack."

Likewise, when we put the child's fate in the larger context--especially its gigantic effect on surviving siblings--we see the loss of that baby through new eyes. It's impossible to ever again think about abortion in the same way. Thank you, Drs. Ney, and thank you, Fr. Pavone for this marvelous article.

Nature includes Metaphysical Nature, Moral Compass

Nature includes both biological reality and the reality of essence, what the thing is of its own weight and how it should behave according to its own way of being: its nature. The nature of a thing identifies the type of being it is, its specific way of being, with its given and necessary qualities which make it what it is.

The concept of physis as metaphysically understood is "...applied concretely in Romans 1:26, which speaks about φυσικὴ χρῇσις and παρά φύσιν χρῇσις, about 'natural' and 'unnatural' sexual relations, meaning here the normal sexual intercourse between a man and a woman as opposed to homosexual behavior. It is clear that here the 'nature' of man and the behavior prescribed by it is understood as genuine guidance for man. ...[T]his concept is found in a much weaker and very generalized form in I Corinthians 11:14 also, where again a "natural" matter--the difference between a man's head of hair and woman's--is taken as guidance concerning right ('natural') behavior.

"It is striking that in these two specific instances, Romans 1:26 and I Corinthians 11:14, the biological relevance to the metaphysical concept is very strong: a concrete biological fact offers guidance. In this regard there is clearly semantic unity with the first usage of the word [the biological referring to race of Romans 2:27 and Romans 11:21].

"...The text of Romans 2:14 reads: οταν γαρ εθνη τα μη νομον εχοντα φυσει τα του νομου ποιωσιν. [= "When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires"]. Physis suggests the law to the Gentiles. Those who according to their biological 'physis' are non-Jews and hence do not have the law by that title, are nevertheless inspired by physis, metaphysically understood, to follow the law. Nature is for them a law."

Joseph Ratzinger, "Gratia Praesupponit Naturam" (1962 essay) in Dogma and Preaching (1973), San Francisco: Ignatius, 2011, 156.

The Creator and his creation must be defended against "the theological denial of nature[;]...eschatological Marxism, which knows no 'nature' but only facts that must be changed in order to bring a disastrous world to salvation[;] ...[and] Sartre's existentialist nihilism [teaching that] man has no essence, only existence [and that] each individual creates his essence anew for himself[:] [w]hat he is, is decided only by what he makes... [They must also be defended against] naturalism that regards the distinction between nature and grace as the building up of a totally meaningless supernatural world that must be dismantled as an 'ideology' in favor of what alone is real... Under the pretext of dispensing with ideologies, man is left uncritically to himself and to the powers that be, which can suggest to him that they are reality and life. In the end, the naturalism that melts grace down into nature leads to the same result as the supranaturalism that disputes the existence of nature and, be denying creation, makes grace meaningless as well. The fanaticism of those homilists who mock nature, presumably for the sake of grace, is always frighteningly close to the cynicism of the atheists who mock God for the sake of his creation." Ibid., 144.

Ratzinger also points out that with the coming of Christianity "...the biological concept of nature becomes a theological concept in a new sense: nature is understood, not in terms of biology or rational metaphysics, but rather in terms of the concrete history that has taken and is taking place between God and man." Ibid. 156-157. All men have inherited the fallen nature of sin and death and need to be saved by the gift of God's grace in Christ and by faith. "'Christian humanism is a converted humanism.' ...It is essential to the spirit not to be self-satisfied, to bear within itself the arrow pointing beyond itself. ...[T]he Cross is not the 'crucifixion of man' at all, as Nietzsche thought, but rather his true healing, which saves him from the deceptive self-sufficiency in which he can only lose himself and miss out on the endless promise that lies within him for the sake of the bourgeois mush of his supposed naturalness. ...The humanity of God--this is indeed the true humanity of man, the grace that fulfills nature." Ibid., 160-161

Arabic Christmas Songs

Christ Called Himself the Truth, not the Custom

Ravenna, Archepiscopal Chapel

Dominus noster Christus veritatem se, non consuetudinem cognominavit.

Tertullian in Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (1970), 97 n16.

"Sensitivity Training" = Homosexualist Brainwashing

"Sensitivity Training is designed to make individuals aware of their behavior toward others, who are different in race, color, gender, religion, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation and other categories protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act." Traliant

Plinthos

To include "sexual orientation" as a protected category of discrimination is unjust because public proclamation of sexual immorality is not a right but a wrong. The public exposure of one's deviant sexual preferences is itself obscene and vulgar, an offense against basic decency. Intolerable! To coerce bosses and employees to tolerate it amounts to tyranny. It would be like telling people it is wrong to object to public nudity.

It can never be a civil right to offend basic decency, because some things are shameful even to discuss. "Sensitivity training" of this type violates the civil right of every citizen to basic decency.

As a society we still censure public pornography. "Sexual orientation" disclosures should be treated the same as any other form of indecency. Hide your shameful immorality and perverse tendencies, and change your life! Convert and believe the Gospel.

You say you have a right to proclaim your homosexuality. Well, I have a duty to shut you up, because I have a right not to be affronted by your perversion and a duty to protect those under my care against such offensive propaganda and indecency.

In other words, what began as a moral claim (the decriminalization of every manner of fornication) has now become coercive force in all of the schools and all of the work places, everyone is forced to approve of every manner of fornication, except, of course, in the Catholic Church.

"Sensitivity training" is insensitive to basic modesty and chastity and the protection and defense of innocence, virginity.

On the contrary, God, Jesus Christ, and the Catholic faith, requires us to censure every form of sexual immorality in defense of purity. We cannot, we will not be silent in Sodom. Silence in Sodom makes you a Sodomite.

Homosexual Bishops and Sex Education in Parochial Schools
"Bullying"