HOLY STATE OF MATRIMONY UNDER ATTACK? STERCUS TAURORUM

The holy state of matrimony is also now under vicious attack by secularism and evil forces both within and without our Church.  How is the holy state of matrimony being attacked?  These are not attacks.  They are denigration, insults, blasphemes and perhaps a few other things, but attacks? No.  My marriage is not being attacked.  The marriages of my children are not being attacked.  The one who is married is not being attacked.;  The one who is not yet married is certainly not being attacked.  So what is all this "attack" business.  Is marriage going to disappear?  Of course not.  Is marriage going to go crumbling into total desuetude because someone is going to insult it so badly that we are all going to quit?  No.  It is total intellectual short-circuiting to think that marriage is going to be destroyed because the state of marriage is being insulted.  It is the apex of idiocy to think that an institution as closely related to the nature of humans is ever going to fall under the weight of the insults and disparagement and completely crumble.  

Do I agree with homosexual marriage?  No.

Do I think that it attacks the state of my marriage?  No.

Do I think that divorce attacks the state of my marriage?  No

Do I think that institutionalized co-habitation without marriage attacks the state of my marriage?  No.

Do I think that the state has the power and the authority to legalize homosexual marriage?  Yes.

Do I think that the state has the power and the authority to coerce religious groups to perform and legalize homosexual marriages?  No.

People have to open up their ears and listen to what they are saying when they talk about these things.  People have to realize that marriage is a covenant between two people which is ratified by the state.  If the state doesn't want to ratify marriage as a valid object of legislation at certain, or all levels, then the union between two people depends on the consent of the two people involved.   It is not the state (nor the Church) that creates marriage and then is able to dissolve it.

Never!  It is the two human beings involved with each other and with the consent that they proffer to one other for their mutual welfare who create a marriage...no matter of what sex they are.  It is up to the state to accept the covenant as valid according to the state's outline of who qualifies and who doesn't.  That's it.  Marriage is what it is and no church or government can change its essence.  All they can do is to validate the union or not validate the union.  Churches and governments are nothing but ratifiers of a personal covenant that creates a stable union between two human beings who freely and mutually consent to the union.  Period.

JUSTIN BIEBER AND SANTA CLAUS

Justin Bieber: My Mom Never Let Me Believe in Santa Claus!

By Billy Johnson, Jr. | Stop The Presses! – 14 hours ago

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    Article taken from:http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/stop-the-presses/justin-bieber-mom-never-let-believe-santa-claus-004850534.html

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Justin Bieber

"Bah humbug!

"With Christmas just one week away, Justin Bieber isn't planning to head to bed early Dec. 24 to await the arrival of Santa Claus. In fact, the teen pop phenom says he's never believed in the man in the big red suit!

"My mom always told me there wasn't a Santa,' Bieber says in a new interview with AOL Music. 'This was her logic: She thought if I grew up knowing about Santa then finding out he wasn't real, that it would be like she was lying to me. And then when she told me about God, I maybe wouldn't believe her'."

Oh gosh!  What a miserable mother!  

As I write this there are 4,111 comments on this article.  This is the vilest desecration of Christmas that has come under my gaze for quite some time.  The idiocy of the world is totally unfathomable.  The Philippine Trench has been plumbed.  The invincible ignorance of the denizens that populate the planet defies all human methods of metering.  We have gone from Christmas to "holidays", from Thanksgiving to "turkey day" and it defies the imagination where we are headed with Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day what with the disappearance of SEX in favor of "gender" I'm sure that the concept of Mother and Father will degenerate down to "lessor" and "lessee."

I was about 8 years old when I discovered that Santa Claus is a fraud.  I told my parents and they swore me to "caution" although not to secrecy in relation to my younger siblings [4].  You are not shaking your head and saying, "Yeah, he's crazy because he didn't believe in Santa.  Now look at him, writing on the Internet in anonymity, hiding his mental perversity from the world all the while foisting his acrimony on it."  Let me tell you, there's more.  I have two children and I forbade them to fall for the "Santa claptrap."  In my warped concept of the world, I was not going to allow my boys to give credit to a phantasmagorical, omniscient en-slaver of elves, leprechauns, ansisit, etc when I was someone's else's "elf" constructing their lives.  No sireee, not meee.

Will the world give us back our SEX? Our Thanksgiving?  Our Christmas?  It's up to us.

There are a couple of things that I have written about this subject in a more polite tone.  If you click here and then click here you be able to enjoy them...maybe.

Now that they know how I feel about this Santa business, the way I treated my children and all that anyone will write about me?  

We know the answer to that one.  

On top of it all, I know that there will not be 4,111 comments to this screed.

Happy Jesus' birthday to you all, and to all a big smile...and don't forget that my favorite cookies are Oatmeal / Raisin.  

Also, I'm a neat freak, so clean the chimney flume, you've get less than a week.  And don't forget the fresh mistletoe and a nice new nightgown for the Missus.  Oh, BTW, lock the upstairs bedroom for crying out loud.  The low-hanging limbs over your roof are a hazard for Rudolph.  Do I have to call OSHA on you, for Pete's sake?  You'd think that you would have more respect for an old guy who has to circumnavigate the planet in all directions in one night.  If you can sell this crock of cockamamie hash, why aren't you a millionaire?  Then you could give me a pass.

Santa Claus! Sheeesh!  Why do parents perpetuate this LIE?

Yes, that means YOU.

SO CALLED HUMILITY = ARROGANCE >> LOOK IT UP

so-called (sōˈkôldˈ)

adjective

1. Commonly called: “new buildings … in so-called modern style” (Graham Greene).
2. Incorrectly or falsely termed: My so-called friends were gossiping about me again.

Usage Note: Quotation marks are not used to set off descriptions that follow expressions such as so-called and self-styled, which themselves relieve the writer of responsibility for the attribution: his so-called foolproof method (not “foolproof method”).

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition Copyright © 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

So, you think you've heard it all?  Try again.  There's always more.  This morning I went to inform a certain cleric that his indiscriminate use of the phrasal adjective "so-called" qualifying a doctrinal reality is an unacceptable oxymoron.  It is a speech pattern that he has developed over the years, thinking that by qualifying impressive truths with the adjective so-called he made them more beautiful and more poetic.  I told him that it is just the opposite.  In English usage when a reality is qualified by the adjective so-called it is diminished, not enhanced.  His response was that he meant to enhance the reality and not diminish it and that if people would only talk to him about it he would explain his intention.  After all, he persisted, English isn't his mother tongue and so he speaks it the way he feels is within his capability.  He doesn't mean to mislead anybody, it's just not his first language.  He really got cranked up when I told him that language means what it means and there comes a time when you have to make yourself a slave to it.  BOOM!  "I don't make myself a slave to anything."  
Oh well, he wasn't listening to me anyway, so now that I've really lost him, this session is over.
I suggested that he didn't have to trust me alone, that he should ask around and satisfy himself that what I was saying is, in fact, correct.  I told him that he should look into changing his speech pattern.  It won't be easy, but the result will be gratifying.  He just insisted that it is very hard.
Besides the invincible ignorance of his position, what really got to me was that he denied remembering that I had made this very point to him in front of his superior two years ago.  Just goes to show that this guy is tuned out from reality.  The arrogance of it all is that he imposes his view of reality on the world without expecting that the world is going to push back.  This part of the world pushes back.  
I grew up bi-lingual.  I am accustomed to being told, "That's not how you say this in English [or in ... xxx].  Some 51+ years ago I was put into a situation where I began to live in a country away from my two major languages.  So, I often heard, "That's not how we say it."  Along the way I have picked up four more languages besides that first extra one and I NEVER had the reaction, "If they want to ask me what I mean, let them ask me." HUH?  
It is time for this "missionary" to go back to where he can speak a language that he knows.  He has overstayed his welcome.  If he doesn't want to speak the language of this country, then he doesn't deserve to participate in the offering plate that is fed by the very people who have to ask him to clarify his intentions when he arrogantly persists in using anti-idiomatic expressions.
BTW, I sent him a copy of the definition that appears at the beginning of this article.

TAXES AND THE TEA PARTY, 2010 EDITION

You, dear hearts are WRONG.  These people from Massachusetts were rebelling against "taxation without representation."  Besides, the taxation was coming from a government from which they had escaped because of its religious intolerance.  Where do you Bozos fall on this graph?  You have taxation WITH representation and you have taxation that respects your religious convictions.  You also have taxation that gives you benefits at the time of retirement and irreversible malady.  Are you forgetting that without taxation the country of your dreams will fail and fall into decrepitude and finally, be colonialized by another power who will tax you again, without representation?  China is right there, stage left.  Ready.
So, Tea Party, Norquist Disciples, Obama Democrats, Reaganites, Bushites, lovers of Bill Clinton, et al, make up your mind.  Do you want to remain sovereign or do you want to be forced to pay Communist Chinese taxes?
To remain sovereign here is what you must do, in my opinion.
Starting with the debt ceiling, just to be current in our thinking.
1. The debt ceiling must, by law, never exceed 30% of revenue.
2. Institute in the next 15 years a Value Added Tax system
    12% to the Feds on all goods and services except for houses (1st one) and the 1st vehicle and        monthly utilities
    8% to the state on all goods and services with the same exceptions as above
3. No tax exemptions to anyone, for any reason
4. 7% income tax to individuals for Social Security
5. 4% income tax to individuals for Medicare
6. 7% matching funds tax on employers for employee social security
7. 4% matching funds tax on employers for employee medicare
8. 12% Fed.Capital gains tax annually for corporations and privately held and closely held companies
9. 8% State Capital gains tax yearly for corporations and private and closely held companies
10. Income derived from Federal and State bonds is exempt from capital gains tax
11. 12% Federal Inheritance tax
12. 8% State Inheritance tax
13. 12% Federal Income tax on "windfall", bonus income.  Lottery winnings included. Giver not taxed
14. 8% State Income tax on "windfall", bonus income.  Includes Lottery winnings.  Giver not taxed
15. No Federal or State subsidies for established industries, eg Oil, Pharm, Comm, Finance, Insure, Trans, Electric, Agri, Auto
16. Abolish pre-emptive warfare.  Stop non productive actual and contemporary wars
17. Diminish IRS personnel to accommodate above changes
18. Abolish all government employee unions, federal and state
19. Limit executive corporate salary to 50 times wages of lowest paid employee
20. Limit elected government seat holder salary & benes to 35 times fed min wage (Now NTE 550K)
21. Raise reduced benefit social security age to 66
22. Raise full social security retirement benefit age to 70
23. Include all government employees (Federal and State) on social security/medicare system
24. Zero tolerance on pork barrel insertions

For the present.  Accept the sunset of the "Bush" tax rates while you work at changing the tax environment of the United States.  Wake up and be realistic.  We here in the hinterland don't give a damn about you all and your beyond the Milky Way ideologies.  We elected you to govern.  Not to accept bribes from special interests, sign meaningless, non binding ideological "pledges" and certainly not to drive the country into the ground.  Step by step, talk to one another to solve the problem within a realistic period of time.  You had all better wake up or start to learn Chinese.  Take your pick.

NO, I'M NOT MAKING THIS UP

This has got be the highlight of my week.  I, and you, get a lot of stuff over the Internet that makes us shake our heads and wonder whether or not is is true.  Somehow we just know that some creative genius sat down and made it up.  Just in the past couple or three days I got a list of church announcement boo-boos.  This very morning when I picked up the church bulletin.  You've seen those things, so I won't bore you.  Instead, This is what I saw--
I will say this, I am not a habitual reader of the bulletin.  It never really contains anything that I want to see, unless it is the announcement for an event that I personally have been working on for a year.  You get my point.  Anyway, I picked up the bulletin and began to read it in pure Hebrew style, from right to left, back to front for you who are inveterate left to right readers.  
Yup, right there in the Catholic Church was this blaring ad for a wedding chapel that offers 24 hour service for the eloping couple to seal the deed while escaping to Canada or Mexico or thereabouts while the parents are hypnotized by the Sunday afternoon football foolishness.  Ya gotta admit, this is a great one!
After the Mass when I caught up to the Priest Moderator of Temporalities and Service Commissions and showed it to him, he acted amused as he took it in and made the remark that this is the result of a regional effort to solicit advertising and that this ad must have been submitted to the publishing company (Paluch) directly by the salesperson without checking out (or caring about) the copy.  I told him as he was fixing to walk away that he had better call Paluch and get it taken down.
Well, I guess that now I am committed to picking up the bulletin next Sunday too.  Maybe I ought to renew my State of California "marrying Sam" license.  I could then take out an ad in the parish bulletins of Southern California's churches.  Might be a chance for some added income.

HERE IT IS IN ALL IT'S UNEXPURGATED, RIPPED-FROM-ITS-ROOTS GLORY

CALIPHATE -- WE HAVE ONE OF THOSE & WE'RE PROUD OF IT

I gotta tell ya, life is really strange.  I look around and I try to see what other human beings know after all the time we have been in existence.  I have to say that I am not impressed.  The President of Egypt has me thinking these days about this stuff.  Then there's a guy on television who is spouting venom and laying out a conspiracy that he dreamed when he found out that the "world powers" had decided not to bomb Babylon.  Where is that, these days?  Is it Tehran or is it Baghdad?  And what does it matter than one people has a caliphate and another doesn't?  I mean, there are different sizes of caliphate, right?  I can think of one or two situations that could resemble caliphates and no one seems to be jumping up and down about them.  And who is the pretender to the throne of this imaginary caliphate?  Isn't Osama on dialysis or something?  So there is a decision not to bomb Babylon.  Big deal.  There was a decision not to bomb Rome too.  There was a decision to spare Paris and perhaps other points of interest that I can;t remember off the top of my head.  Those decisions really ruined our world, didn't they?
The other thing is this Mubarak in Cairo.  Now there's a pinhead if ever one existed.  Imagine the president of a country that has been civilized for about 10,000 years, and he can't figure out that he should just take the money and run?  Haven't there been enough uprisings in Egypt over the time of its civilization when the Pharaohs and others of their ilk got the message and left?  How invincible can one man's ignorance get?  I confess, I just don't get it.  Power has got to be the greatest intoxicant in existence.  How many "news cycles" is it going to take to convince this potentate that his Cialis has run out?  There's not an intravenous dose that could save anything at this time.  10,000 years of civilization; one silly, intoxicated dictator and he hangs on to his jewels to prove his testosterone level is still in charge?
Then, finally I get emails all the time from Catholics who predict the end of the world as we know it at the hands of the Jihadist Moslems.  It seems that every word that is printed by the Moslems is sent around the world in the effort to instill fear or perhaps even jingoism in Christians so that a new Crusade can be born.
Anyone who reads the Bible should know that the Hebrews (Jews) have been blessed by YWH for tens of centuries; Christians have been blessed by the same God for twenty centuries and there are Divine Covenants to back it up.  Why don't I get emails telling me that?  Why should I fear this Mohammed?  Why should I slink into my corner and worry about his Allah?  I refuse and I will continue to refuse.  I will side with the remnant.  I will remember that the "gates of hell will not prevail", not matter how insidious they become.  Remember, the Moslems have not been around as long as we have.  Why did it take them until six hundred years after God's Mission here on earth to assert themselves?  I think it is because they are not truly from the Divine God but from the warped mind of Mohammed.
So, Christians, where are you going to derive your strength?  To the Well of the Divine Covenants or to the Well of Fear instilled by the sword?  I have chosen.  Now it is your turn.

IMPROPER POLITICAL DISCOURSE, YES, THAT MEANS EVERYONE

The shooting spree that took place this week in Arizona has awakened in me a deep conviction that I have had since my teen years when I was in a Roman Catholic seminary in formation for the priesthood.  It was there that I heard for the first time the proposition that the behavior of the priest must be above reproach to the degree  that even the “weakest” among the members of the faithful would not be induced into immoral or even, unbecoming behavior.    This rule of clerical behavior was given to us based on the admonition of St. Paul to the Corinthians, in his first letter to them, chapter 8.

In more general terms and as a definition of what I mean by “scandal of the weak”  I put before you you the following definition:                                  

SCANDAL OF THE WEAK:

Disedifying morally weak persons by permissible conduct. Circumstances determine the duty in charity to avoid giving scandal to the weak. The existence of such a duty is clear from the teaching of St. Paul, who would not eat meat that had been offered to idols lest he scandalize the weaker brethren. He warned the early Christians not to rationalize their conduct but to follow his example, lest "by sinning in this way against our brothers and injuring their weak consciences, it would be Christ against whom you sinned" (I Corinthians 8:12). This obligation in charity is such that one may licitly refrain from fulfilling even a grave positive precept that is not necessary for salvation in order to prevent serious scandal to the weak. Behind the obligation is the mandate of selfless love that seeks not only to help another in obvious need but also by self-restraint to protect another from spiritual harm.

(All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.  Taken from Catholic Culture.org)

For those of you who do not believe in the Bible as a whole; those who don’t believe in the Christian part of the Bible, I offer this generally accepted, verifiable analogy of fact.

In an epidemic, or a pandemic, it is the weak (the very young and the old) who suffer most and who generally die first.  Those who are more likely to withstand the ravages of the illness do all they can to protect those who are most susceptible to be damaged.  In fact, in such cases behavior that is perfectly legal will in many cases not be exhibited in order to maintain peace and tranquility in the afflicted community.  I once lived in a community that was being ravaged by El Tor (a kind of cholera).  Everyone was warned to boil all water, even water that was not destined for drinking or for the kitchen.  Some of the people had access to bottled water from the Coca Cola trucks, but they would boil that water too so that even (especially, I might say) the less initiated into the ways of the world would not be shocked and perhaps induced to not boil all the water that they had to use.

I submit to you then that the same type of behavior should be practiced by us all when we speak in the public arena.  It is clear to me that some will not agree.  I have already heard some say that they are sure that this event in Arizona will be “demagogued” (sic) by some.  The perpetrator of this act is a lunatic who has taken to understanding political speech in his own way.  This understanding that he gave to what he heard and read was away from the metaphorical meaning that was in the mind of the speakers and/or writers.  The people who uttered or wrote these words are therefore not culpable for the actions of the attacker.  

I am sure that we are going to hear this line of reasoning aplenty as the days go by.  

This is the thinking of people who equate their moral life with the exercise of their civil law rights.  The freedom of speech is really a wonderful thing.  But any defined freedom, even this one, is not infinite in its reach.  It is never permitted to use a freedom to do evil or to induce others into doing evil.  The level of violent political speech, both on the literal side and the metaphorical side has escalated in the past twenty-four months.  There can be no denial of that fact.  The examples abound.  It is time that we recognize that we have to tone it down because it is not morally correct.  It is an abuse of the freedom of speech.

I say this because it does indeed induce the “weak” into acting immorally.  The purveyors of such speech cannot hide behind the fact that they have the freedom to say what they want.  In fact, they do not have that freedom when it becomes clear that the mode of speech that they employ  is dangerous for the common welfare.  No one is free to inundate the weak with speech that can influence them and cause them to act in a nefarious way. Those who persist in using speech with violent pictures cannot exculpate themselves from the effects of what they have put out into the community atmosphere under the guise of freedom of speech.  

It is not morally correct to hide behind the notion that the vast majority of the population understands what is being said, in metaphor and in literal meaning.   It is not always permissible to use the words that are deemed to be the most powerful for the moment.  Morality is not a democratic concept.  If what is done or said is dangerous for one person, even if not for the many, it must be withheld from those who would be adversely impacted by it for the welfare of the community.  

I have said my piece.  I am convinced that I am right, even though there will be those who will disagree.  It matters not.  I will bring this conviction of mine all the way to the grave. Whether I go today or tomorrow or next year.  Stop your foolishness, already!