And decay...
I was doing some stuff around the house last night and I had television on CBS. The comedies were so not funny, the writing horrible, and the storyline - if you can call it that - was filth. I do not have cable, but occasionally, I'll check cable listings in the newspaper just to see what I'm missing. Not much, that is for sure. The best stuff on TV used to be the commercials, but now even they are badly done and have become strictly hard sell - totally uncreative.
Today I was delighted to find these two comments on another thread - which, in a way, speaks to the moral depravity celebrated as art and entertainment:
... I know the beauty and joy of the Church's actual teachings, which are really the only sane way to look at it. Any overburdening of my conscience is my own fault.Later, another blogger supporting Mercury responded:
This guy (another commenter) has not only praised gay sex, but also masturbation, adultery, divorce, and all kinds of of things that have enriched our culture so much. And I will say again, the culture is dead, not vibrant. One need only look to Europe to see that, or to the arts - what art is there today? Lady Gaga? - Mercury
Yes, absolutely, Mercury. The consequences of our sins today are so smack in front of our faces, and we really are that blind that we don't see them! - Paul StillwellI believe it is important that we as Catholics not only accept Catholic teaching on sexual morality, but that we actually embrace it and publicly support and defend it whenever possible. Paul is absolutely correct when he speaks of the consequences of sin. First of all, sin does have consequences, and as Paul said, "The consequences of our sins today are so smack in front of our faces..."
"How much filth there is..."
"In Jesus' fall beneath the weight of the Cross, the meaning of his whole life is seen: his voluntary abasement, which lifts us up from the depths of our pride. The nature of our pride is also revealed: it is that arrogance which makes us want to be liberated from God and left alone to ourselves, the arrogance which makes us think that we do not need his eternal love, but can be the masters of our own lives. In this rebellion against truth, in this attempt to be our own god, creator and judge, we fall headlong and plunge into self-destruction." - Cardinal Ratzinger
It is sad people spend so much time and money on their exterior persona, and little or no time on their soul.
ReplyDeleteThey allow their passions to overcome them, and turn their faces towards Hell, instead of God.
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One only need to "look" to Europe to find the highest standards of living in the history of the world with widespread civil rights protections for all citizens and an open and honest rather than repressed, hypocritical, puritcanical culture THE HORROR! THE HORROR!
ReplyDeleteCatholics would like us to "look" to the Middle Ages, Reconquista Spain, and colonial Latin America instead I guess.
RealityCheck - have you lived in Europe? Can you please explain how a 1.3 birth rate ("demographic zero") is healthy in any way? How will they be able to support their generous welfare states, which all operate on the assumption that there will be more people coming in than going out? What actual culture, what actual substance is produced today? The US is no better, but we're not in such an advanced state of demographic meltdown.
ReplyDeleteIf sex is about nothing more than gratification, who will take on the sacrifice necessary to raise a family? Very few people, as Europe is proving.
Re: 1.3 birthrate
ReplyDeleteIt's certainly healthy for the planet and ones standard of living (and gives the mother especially more freedom to live her life to the fullest). The European states with the most generous welfare provisions(Germany, Sweden, Norway) are running budget surpluses. It doesn't matter if the population is going down so long as economic productivity per person is going up, and it is, thanks to modern technology.
Do you really think that this planet needs even more people on it when its struggling to support the number it already has? To give everyone on Earth a western standard of living right now would take five planets! We need lower birthrates, not higher ones.
Sex CAN only be gratification if you choose, or you can choose to raise a family too. It's about choice, and obviously, most people prefer to have 1 or 2 kids (including approx. 90% of Catholics who use contraception!)
I should say 90% of native-born American Catholics, Latino immigrants still take the contraception ban semi-seriously judging from the number of children they have.
ReplyDeleteWhere the hell did you get the idea that northern European countries are running surpluses?
ReplyDeleteI will say it again - the European welfare state was designed in the 1950s and depends wholly on the notion that those retiring from the system will be replaced by young workers coming in. As in, for every one person that goes into retirement, there'd be 4 or more supporting him.
However, what will soon be the case is that there will be one person supporting 4 in retirement. That is simply unsustainable.
"Oh, they'll just like, be more productive, cause of like, technology or something" Riiight. And your name is "RealityCheck"? what a joke. Have you seen the riots? Do you realize that it won't be long before many of the Eurozone nations default on their debts?
And the "solution" for many European governments is to import as many immigrants as possible, often from cultures extremely hostile to the modern West. You want homophobia? Go to Neukölln, go to Malmö, go to Antwerp, to Rotterdam ... visit a "zone urbaine sensible" in France.
All about choice? You probably support the "choice" to kill babies in the womb, as well, am I right? What about old folks "choosing" not to be a burden anymore?
It doesn't matter if 90% of Catholics do it. Truth is not democratic.
ReplyDeleteIf 90% of people supported slavery, that wouldn't make it right.
@Mercury the debts are actually in the countries with the stingiest welfare states, and has more to do with the inability to print their own currency due to Germans being super-fearful of inflation than any spending. Look at this chart:
ReplyDeletehttp://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/no-its-not-the-welfare-state/
Ohhh yes, the old bogeyman of Islam. That's a real golden oldie, especially for Catholics, going back to the Crusades. Distract the rubes by hysterically screaming about some skeeerreey "other". You've never been to Holland, have you? You're absolutely hilarious in your ignorance. Muslim immigrants are becoming just as secularized as Christians in Europe have. There might be some backwaters of reaction among minorities in their communities but they will be swept aside by the tide of modernity. If there's one religion that can't stand up to modernity, its Islam. It's laughably weak, hence all the controls Muslim states have to enact on their populace. It's weakness masquerading as strength.
If 90% of native-born American Catholics (again I'm excluding Latinos who in their cultural backwardness still somewhat follow the contraception ban) can't obey the rule, doesn't this suggest the rule is irrational?
Oh, and btw, I think you secretly envy Muslim societies. After all, gays are in the closet, pornography is banned, adultery is punishable by death, the patriarchy is intact, women are barefoot pregnant and in the kitchen, the clerical class rules with an iron fist...why do you hate them? Sounds like your kind of place!
ReplyDeleteGreece has a stingy welfare state? Really? Could have fooled me.
ReplyDeleteThe fear of Islams does not go back to the Crusades, it goes back to the conquest of the entire Middle East and southern Mediterranean, invasions of France and Italy, and slow and steady expansion through the Balkans until the 17th century.
Many Muslims are westernized, you are right. I was friends with some secular Turks in Germany. But if you think there are no problems, problems which are not getting any better, you're blind. Militant Islam is on the rise in Europe, and the Middle East itself was far more "modern" in the 1950s and 60s than it is today.
There is no "rule" against contraception, just as there is no "rule" against murder, or against abortion, or slander, or jealousy, or greed, for that matter. Those things are simply wrong.
A "rule" is "don't eat meat on Fridays." A rule can be suspended, superseded, introduced, or eliminated. Right or wrong cannot.
90% of Catholics don't love their enemies, 90% of Catholics are envious, 90% are greedy, 90% are lazy, bigoted, rash, judgmental, blasphemous, etc. It suggests that the Church is home to sinful people who recognize they need grace to become better.
You think pornography and adultery represent moral progress?
ReplyDeleteDo you think the government blocking "immoral" internet sites and capital punishment for adultery are worthwhile laws?
ReplyDeleteAnd the radicalization of Islam in the last 30 years is a last gasp sign of weakness more than a sign of impending strength. Movements often grow more radical and hardline right before dying out. Islam's distant and capricious God combined with its legalism and the questionable character of its founder just isn't very attractive to people, they have to be compelled into believing it and/or promised booty from conquests. Again, its not going to survive its conflict with modernity in its current and deep down the mullahs and imams know it. It will continue but ultimately the majority will end up following something that looks very much like Reform Judaism.
In any event in the US Muslims are a tiny, tiny percentage of the population and Muslim immigrants are upper class secular types with PhDs, it hardly matters here. I think in North America, at least, your biggest religious competition in the future will come from Salt Lake City, not Mecca.
ReplyDeleteOf course Mormonism shows what the ban on birth control is really about--using your women as breeding machines to increase your religion's numbers (and future financial contributions). It's a self-serving belief that has jack all to do with morality.
Why should internet sites be freely accessible to anyone who hops on the internet, including children?
ReplyDeleteAnd if pornography is not immoral, than what is? Is there anything, besides prostitution, that is more degrading, objectifying, and ruinous than pornography?
And who said anything about capital punishment for adultery? I'm just saying that the West's cavalier and dismissive attitude towards it is disgusting.
Your assertion about "Reform Islam" is based on nothing but wishful thinking. Look at what kind of parties make up the new governments in Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Such parties would have never fared well in the 1960s.
And you know what's funny?
You started trying to defend gay marriage as "two people who love each other" getting into a monogamous relationship of love and support. But so far you have defended every single form of sexual depravity there is: promiscuity, adultery, masturbation, pornography, etc.
What about age of consent? Should "gay teens" be able to decide to have sex with older men at age 13 or so? You do realize that homosex throughout history has taken on the structure of pederasty for the most part, don't you?
There is no "ban" on birth control.
ReplyDeleteWho said anything about Muslims in the US?
So your whole worldview is based on the sacred right to get off whatever way anyone chooses, and to behave in any way one chooses as long as one feels good about it?
ReplyDeleteWow, so many societies have been so productive and successful based on that model!
Children and teenagers do not have the ability to consent, and there's also a power differential between a 40 year old and a 13 year old that is unfair and predatory. I'll ignore your homophobic comment about pederasty. Should heterosexual women be slandered because of all those teachers that had sex with their middle school students?'
ReplyDeleteI support the right of people to enter into a loving monogamous relationship if that's what they want. If not, they don't have to, but they should have the option regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
You'd prefer a culture of discrimination and sexual repression instead, where gays are stuffed in the closet and told they are "intrinsically disordered" which leads to the kind of acting out that is found in pederasty. It's sexual repression coming out sideways. Your Church knows this very well, does it not?
Getting a straight answer out of you is like pulling teeth but I'll try again: would you like the government to filter "immoral" websites a la Saudi Arabia and Iran? Would you agree with such a law? Do you think birth control should be illegal along with condoms? Do you think divorce should be illegal as well? What's your ideal society? Give an example in history. I'll wait.
Re: Radical Islam
ReplyDeleteThere's always a big counterrevolution from the religious right before they're swept away. Look at the US. Evangelical Protestants held a lot of political power from 1980 or so until 2007 and were extremely noisy about it. But in the end they've achieved none of their goals and are now in decline, with the culture further away from their views than ever before in history.
Question: with secularism on the rise even in Rome itself, does this mean "the gates of hell" are prevailing against the RCC? Wasn't that never supposed to happen?
ReplyDeleteI would agree with a law like the one Britain is introducing now which allows people to "opt in" if they want to be able to access smut, but otherwise filters such crap. That's a start.
ReplyDeleteYou still need to tell me why you think access to rampant pornography is beneficial or somehow protected by our constitutional rights. The effect of porn on society is wholly negative. It's also predatory.
I would place much more restrictions on divorce than are in place now (read: none). Catholics may divorce or separate in certain circumstances - it's remarriage that is the issue. And yes, most divorces and remarriages has jack to do with abuse or adultery, but more to do with people no longer liking the situation they are in.
As far as artificial birth control, it WAS illegal in many places in the US until the 1960s, when the Supreme Court made up "penumbras" in the Constitution, paving the way for legalized child murder up until the 9th month.
At this time, however, the cat's been let out of the bag, and banning birth control would be counterproductive. But abortion and euthanasia are murder, plain and simple, and I'd ban them as soon as possible, and gay marriage is a contradiction in terms, a fiction, so I wouldn't "ban" it, I just wouldn't invent it.
As a Christian, do not believe that any society that has ever existed is "ideal", nor can any society on earth be fully ideal. We live now. I'd rather live now than in the Middle Ages.
You have no idea what the whole "gates of Hell" thing is about, do you? It doesn't mean that the Church would not experience waxing and waning influence in the world, become persecuted, reviled, spit on, etc. It means that no matter what happens, there will always be a Church, and that's where salvation will be found. It means that the Church will never change her teachings to suit the Zeitgeist.
ReplyDeleteAgain, where are the secularists in the Middle East? Where do you see hope of Islamism diminishing there? You have an irrational faith in the power of secularism. They have rejected it.
Filth?
ReplyDeleteHere's real filth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8CGeC2M_U&feature=player_embedded
This is real filth. A woman setting her kid up to do this is sick.
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Terry, could you tell us who painted that delightful image of Jesus spanking an orb?
ReplyDeleteThanks.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL @E
ReplyDeleteE, now that I look at it ... what is going on there?
ReplyDeleteFra Angelico - Christ as Just Judge.
ReplyDeleteSo He is quite literally spanking the globe, it seems, right?
ReplyDelete