This is important, why? Chairman of Fordham Theology Dept. marries his same sex partner.

Patrick Anthony Bergquist and J. Patrick Hornbeck II 

were married Saturday in Manhattan.

Hornbeck is Chairman of Fordham Theology Dept.

The wedding announcement was in the NYT's wedding section - so chic.

So anyway, Deacon Kandra News posted the announcement - which is where I found it.  Public information is not gossip, right?

I would maybe overlook this news item, knowing there will probably be a lot of these marriages taking place, which is going to be problematic for Catholic institutions - or will it?  However, I think it's important to take note of.

Why this is important.

The man is Chairman of the Theology Dept. at Fordham, that's why.

Dr. Hornbeck, 33, is the chairman of the theology department and an associate professor of medieval and reformation history at Fordham University in the Bronx. He graduated from Georgetown and received a doctoral degree in theology from Oxford University. - NYT

So Catholics are appalled and surprised and shocked that SCOTUS judges legalized same sex marriage.  How is that?  How can you be surprised?  Catholic education has been quietly prepping for this for decades.

The kids are alright?  

The kids whose parents sent them to Catholic school turn out to be very pro-marriage-equality, and very accepting of homosexuality as normal.  How can that be?  The kids went to the best Catholic schools all their lives - including the very best Catholic universities.  How can it be?

The kids become priests, teachers, theologians, religious ed. directors, chancery workers, lawyers, politicians, judges, columnists, writers, activists, and so on.  The contagion spreads like that.

Now, some Catholic bloggers online want the SCOTUS judges to be excommunicated.  You know that's not going to happen.

I think people online are losing it - like a generalized nervous breakdown is occurring.

Watch out who you read and follow - in fact, don't follow anyone online.

Song for this post here.

Independence Day coincides with July 4th this year.

I always thought July 4th was it's own holiday.

What?

Someone totally jumped the couch this time ...

An interview with Ann Barnhardt ...

Seriously.  Patrick Archbold: A Week With Ann Barnhardt.

For those few who may not be familiar with Ann, she is a fire-breathing dragon of truth and one of my favorite writers on the internet. [...] Ann and I will be discussing the United States of America, our present and our future, from our Catholic perspective. - CMR

Really?

This is how Barnhardt describes Pope Francis: "the PERONIST FASCIST JESUIT WHO HATES THE MASS OF THE AGES AND DOES NOT GENUFLECT TO THE BLESSED SACRAMENT."

Huh?

Song for this post here.

The New Jackie Kennedy Onassis ...

What?

Song for this post here.

I've been really busy.

Yeah, so what.

The weather has been so perfect that I'm spending all of my time performing surgical trimming on my landscape.  I take breaks to pray - but for the most part, I'm too busy for anything else.  I've been using the Akathist Hymn for meditation while I take lunch break... I'm convinced most people no longer believe because they neglect devotion to Our Lady and have lost faith in the Incarnation.

That said, I haven't been too concerned about social issues or identity issues or priest-bishop issues or gay issues or blogagingedaging issues or methane helium issues.

If it rains or gets too hot, I may come indoors, turn on the laptop, and write a scalding review of the state of the blogosphere and crimes against humanity.  Other than that - who knows?

Oh!  Oh! And Jupiter aligned with Venus is so not the Star of Bethlehem.

Don't look back ...

If they had been thinking of the land from which they had come,

 they would have had opportunity to return. - Hebrews 11:15

Remember Lot's wife.

Recognizing the signs of the times.

• Apostasy, the loss of the faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church. -POPE PAUL VI, Address on the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Fatima Apparitions, October 13, 1977

• At this period, however, the partisans of evil seems to be combining together… No longer making any secret of their purposes, they are now boldly rising up against God Himself …that which is their ultimate purpose forces itself into view—namely, the utter overthrow of that whole religious and political order of the world which the Christian teaching has produced, and the substitution of a new state of things in accordance with their ideas, of which the foundations and laws shall be drawn from mere naturalism. - POPE LEO XIII, Humanum Genus, Encyclical on Freemasonry, n.10, Apri 20thl, 1884

• …before the Lord’s arrival there will be apostasy, and one well described as the “man of lawlessness”, “the son of perdition” must be revealed, who tradition would come to call the Antichrist. - POPE BENEDICT XVI, General Audience, “Whether at the end of time or during a tragic lack of peace: Come Lord Jesus!”, L’Osservatore Romano, Nov. 12th, 2008

• Who can fail to see that society is at the present time, more than in any past age, suffering from a terrible and deep-rooted malady which, developing every day and eating into its inmost being, is dragging it to destruction? You understand, Venerable Brethren, what this disease is—apostasy from God… When all this is considered there is good reason to fear lest this great perversity may be as it were a foretaste, and perhaps the beginning of those evils which are reserved for the last days; and that there may be already in the world the “Son of Perdition” of whom the Apostle speaks. - POPE ST. PIUS X, E Supremi, Encyclical, On the Restoration of All Things in Christ, n. 3, 5; October 4th, 1903

• …when the culture itself is corrupt and objective truth and universally valid principles are no longer upheld, then laws can only be seen as arbitrary impositions or obstacles to be avoided. - POPE FRANCIS, Laudato si’, n. 123;www.vatican.va

• …worldliness is the root of evil and it can lead us to abandon our traditions and negotiate our loyalty to God who is always faithful. This… is called apostasy, which… is a form of “adultery” which takes place when we negotiate the essence of our being: loyalty to the Lord. - POPE FRANCIS from a homily, Vatican Radio, November 18th, 2013

• It is not the beautiful globalization of unity of all Nations, each one with their own customs, instead it is the globalization of hegemonic uniformity, it is the single thought. And this sole thought is the fruit of worldliness.* - POPE FRANCIS, Homily, November 18th, 2013; Zenit

+ + +

+Mater Ecclesiae+

Hail, thou who tramples upon the wandering of error;

hail , thou who refutes the lies of idols.

Hail, Sea which drowned Pharoh and his schemes;

hail, Rock which refreshed those athirst for Life.

Hail, fiery Pillar, leading those in darkness;

hail, Shelter of the world, broader than a cloud.
-Akathist Hymn

Stay faithful.  Remember what the Catechism teaches:

816 "The sole Church of Christ [is that] which our Savior, after his Resurrection, entrusted to Peter's pastoral care, commissioning him and the other apostles to extend and rule it. . . . This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in (subsistit in) the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him."267

The Second Vatican Council's Decree on Ecumenism explains: "For it is through Christ's Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained. It was to the apostolic college alone, of which Peter is the head, that we believe that our Lord entrusted all the blessings of the New Covenant, in order to establish on earth the one Body of Christ into which all those should be fully incorporated who belong in any way to the People of God."268 - CCC

*All papal quotes taken from Mark Mallett, The Hour of Lawlessness.

David Brooks sounding a bit like Pope Francis now.

David Brooks.

I have always liked David Brooks.  In his recent op-ed at the NYT he discusses The Next Culture War - it's about tactics:

Christianity is in decline in the United States.

• Members of the millennial generation are detaching themselves from religious institutions in droves.

Quoting Rod Dreher: “We have to accept that we really are living in a culturally post-Christian nation. The fundamental norms Christians have long been able to depend on no longer exist.” 

These conservatives are enmeshed in a decades-long culture war that has been fought over issues arising from the sexual revolution. Most of the conservative commentators I’ve read over the past few days are resolved to keep fighting that war.

[...] 

I am to the left of the people I have been describing on almost all of these social issues. But I hope they regard me as a friend and admirer. And from that vantage point, I would just ask them to consider a change in course.

Our Mr. Brooks has a very Franciscan idea:

• Consider putting aside, in the current climate, the culture war oriented around the sexual revolution.

Put aside a culture war that has alienated large parts of three generations from any consideration of religion or belief. Put aside an effort that has been a communications disaster, reducing a rich, complex and beautiful faith into a public obsession with sex. Put aside a culture war that, at least over the near term, you are destined to lose.

• Consider a different culture war, one just as central to your faith and far more powerful in its persuasive witness.

[...] 

This culture war is more Albert Schweitzer and Dorothy Day than Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham; more Salvation Army than Moral Majority. It’s doing purposefully in public what social conservatives already do in private.

I don’t expect social conservatives to change their positions on sex, and of course fights about the definition of marriage are meant as efforts to reweave society. But the sexual revolution will not be undone anytime soon. The more practical struggle is to repair a society rendered atomized, unforgiving and inhospitable. Social conservatives are well equipped to repair this fabric, and to serve as messengers of love, dignity, commitment, communion and grace. - Read the entire piece here.

Works for me.


H/T PP

Growing Up Trans - the Frontline Documentary

-source-

Watched it.

Very sad and confusing.

One kid said he'd like to go off hormones for awhile to see what it's like.  He kept saying he didn't want to say he regretted anything - but it seemed to me he did.  He regretted his lost puberty.

All the kids appear to be from upper middle class families.  Rich by comparison to average families.  Families with one kid, and one or two from a single parent household.  The kids seemed rather precocious - perhaps spoiled, or at least accustomed to get their own way.  Making life-identity decisions for themselves before puberty ...

You know this is the next issue, right?

Get ready to be manipulated.

I told you before - stop calling me Hilda!  I want to be called Fred!

Song for this post here.

Mr and Mrs Drysdale

For as it was in the days of Noah ...

In [those] days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day that Noah entered the ark. - Matthew 24