Daylight Saving Time ....

Set your clocks ahead and save the world.  

Oh, wait.

Dr. Joseph Nicolosi RIP

Joseph Nicolosi

+Prayers for the repose of his soul and prayers for the consolation of the Nicolosi family.+

Linda Nicolosi, Joe's lifelong collaborator and also his wife of 39 years, is grateful for everyone's prayers and words of appreciation and has shared these words: 

"Joe was certainly a larger-than-life, one-of-a-kind guy. Never worried about political correctness, he was happy to swim against the cultural tide when he was sure the culture was going in the wrong direction. That got him into trouble quite a few times. Gay-activist web sites, for example, are still fond of quoting the occasional risqué jokes he made during his life in the public eye, and of showing and re-showing him tossing a mic back at a rude TV interviewer. But Joe had ardent convictions about the truth of male and female design, and because of his conviction and courage, his awareness that he would face biased reporters didn't stop him from appearing on Oprah Winfrey, Larry King Live, Hannity and Colmes, O'Reilly Factor, 20/20, Dr. Phil, BBC News, etc. 

Dr. Nicolosi had always hoped for his legacy as the creator of Reparative Therapy to go on. His career was dedicated to helping people align their lives with their deeply held convictions. Anyone, he stressed, is free to live his life as gay; but we are inevitably gendered beings, and our fullest humanity calls us to live out our biological design." - Facebook

What a shock for his wife Linda and their son.  My deepest sympathy.

I was surprised by the mean spirited comments left on the Facebook page.

There were aspects of Nicolosi's thought I would have to disagree with, but generally his research into the nature and causes of male homosexuality has been helpful for many, including myself.  LGBT activists are vehemently against any type of Reparative Therapy, pretty much based upon horrible attempts to eradicate homosexual inclination in the past - and in the present, as evidenced by ABC Brian Ross's report on Conversion Therapy, part of which I caught on Night Line last night.  I also understand families do send unwilling individuals into such therapy, perhaps causing even more psychological damage.  

I may be wrong, but I was always under the impression that Nicolosi accepted the fact that many are neither interested in, nor willing to change, while some may not be able to do so, especially adults who have lived or identified with gay culture most of their lives.  Nevertheless, I believe his research has helped such individuals who were unhappy with their sexual orientation, to understand themselves better, and to help them recognize the psychological motivations of their individual homosexual experience.  Such self-knowledge helped many to integrate themselves into the Church, especially withing the context of a Catholic community (parish).  I believe his work has been helpful in pastoral care as well - with the understanding his work should not be taken as the sole authority when it comes to ministering to gay people.  The response to the news of his death should make that very clear.  

I will admit I know little about NARTH, but most everything I've read by Dr. Nicolosi is certainly worthy of consideration in how Catholics respond to the issues related to homosexuality - especially those who wish to live faithful, chaste lives in accord with Catholic teaching.  Catholic teaching does not insist that a person go into therapy, or seek Reparative Therapy to change what he perceives to be his sexual orientation, but rather to live a chaste and holy life according to his station in life.  It's the same for unmarried men and women.  I believe it is the wrong focus to attempt to 'pray away the gay' or throw all of one's energies into changing so-called sexual orientation.

I personally believe that unless an individual is highly motivated to change, any form of Reparative Therapy with an expectation to suddenly be straight or free of homosexual temptation, can drive gay people away from the Church, and more specifically the Sacraments, not to mention cause greater psychological and moral harm.  I am also opposed to recommending gay people require therapy, especially that type which they may not want, and/or may not be able to afford, much less have the insurance to cover the expenses of such treatment.  I believe a devout life and the Sacraments are enough for salvation. 

People driving you crazy?

Ecce Homo ... Homo homini lupus est

Embrace your homophobia.

It's the counter-cultural thing to do.

It seems I've gone for weeks without writing about homosexual stuff - LGBTQ topics are all over Catholic social media today - why?  Like I always say, I hate writing about this stuff - if you leave something behind you, why keep looking back?  Remember Lot's wife, and all of that.  Unlike the Israelites in the desert, I don't look back with longing, quite the contrary.  Internalized homophobia?  That's what 'they' call it - yet I call it repentance, contrition, and conversion.  If that's homophobia, I gladly embrace it.

What I'm not phobic about is murals in Cathedrals, or gay bishops suggesting the Church change her teachings, or crazy bloggers screaming "FAGGOTS" as some sort of doomsday threat against the papacy, and I'm not even scared by people like feminist Camille Paglia citing the collapse of Western Civilization because LGB's embraced the T's and G's as part of their social-reconstruction-equality program.  I'm so scared!  Not.

What I do hate is what Austin Ruse revealed today ... I haven't vetted it, but I trust Ruse and his professional reputation.  He knows what he talking about.  Sometimes I disagree with his tone or repeated criticism of those who criticize him - that's not important.  Today just one thing in his essay at Crisis struck me as revolting and on some level - criminal - as it applies to grooming youth to embrace homosexuality, or to be more exact, sodomy.  It is, in my opinion a sexual  behavior or practice to fear and hate - or more precisely, to be phobic about.

The quite remarkable thing that has happened is they are now willing to talk openly about their way of life. The execrable but nonetheless mainstream gay publication Advocate published a story—by a doctor no less—teaching youngsters how to train their bodies for sodomy. It makes for truly gruesome reading.

He writes, “I often tell patients that great bottoms have been doing it for quite some time, with many first experiencing it in their youth. Unfortunately, no one showed us the right way to bottom in our high school sexual education class. Still, it’s never too late to learn, and we all enjoy new and positive sexual experiences. Here’s my 101 guide to bottoming…”

The publication also ran a piece on how gay men should have regular pap smears for their backsides. Now, these pieces will not be seen outside the homosexual bubble, but even more out in the open are two shocking and revealing pieces just published in the more mainstream Huffington Post. - Crisis

There is nothing generative, nurturing, or loving about sodomy.  Call me homophobic - I'm fine with that.

Homintern ... Did gay culture inform the art of Maureen Mullarkey?

Cinalli

The Archbishop’s Mural & The Homintern

Homintern is used by Mullarkey in the same way other Vatican critics might use the term 'gay lobby'.  She more than likely believes the Church is controlled by homosexuals intent upon destroying traditional Catholic teaching and liturgical discipline.

Call it the Homintern. That word dates back to the 1930s and the belief that a clique of homosexuals had elite influence in the arts, theater—in all creative fields. It is a play on Comintern, short for the Communist International. It functioned in its day much like today’s term gay mafia but with one difference. It aligned homosexuals with Communists as wreckers of tradition and national boundaries, not only in the arts but in politics, institutions (including spydom), and manners as well. - Source

Mullarkey, whose art I have admired before I ever knew her name, has written a critique on the Paglia fresco.  Let me make it clear, I respect her opinion and welcome her point of view on the mural.  Perhaps especially more valid since her body of work for which she is noted, depicts drag queens and gay pride parade characters.  Her canvases are inhabited by gay harlequins, clowns, circus type characters.  Somewhat reminiscent - for me at least - in a kinda-sorta realistic Richard Lindner-esque way.  She has made her living documenting, exploring and exploiting aspects of what many once regarded as 'freak culture'.  Like I said - her work is good - yet in a strange way, she too had some degree of camaraderie with that so called "clique of homosexuals (who) had elite influence in the arts".

Researching some of her opinions, I came across a quote from her discussing her work on an old post about her stance on gay marriage, originally taken from her website:

Mullarkey says gay parades are a "marvelous spectacle" and "assertion of solidarity." 

"It is an erotic celebration loosed for a day to keep us all mindful that Dionysus is alive, powerful and under our own porch," said Mullarkey, a former art critic for the now-defunct New York Sun. - Source

Mullarkey

"An erotic celebration" - now that is interesting.  Her traditional Catholicism is interesting as well.  Her faith is admirable, though I would never support much of the extremely critical things she says about the Pope and the Church in our day.  She can be a bit of shrew there.  Having said that, her critique of the Cathedral fresco is much more intelligible than many of the commentators in the LifeSite com-box and a few other sites discussing the so-called homoerotic aspect of the composition.   Mullarkey clearly understand the erotic.  She also knows art and art history, which is demonstrated by how quickly she recognized Cinalli's central figure of Christ as derivative of the famous Piero della Francesca Resurrection image.  Mullarkey refers to the Cinalli work as "a leaden, unimaginative pastiche of its predecessors."

I saw only the pedestrian quality of Paglia’s mural—a leaden, unimaginative pastiche of its predecessors. It is a Fire Island resurrection scene that confuses several time-honored motifs and compositional conventions. Those many historic descents into limbo and falls of the damned render a clutch of naked sinners—some luminous, some drained by suffering—huddled together in dramatic coils, waiting out their purgatory or cascading into hell. Pre-modern pictorial narratives of salvation and damnation came from hands as lovely to contemporary secular eyes as to faithful ones. Even scenes of hell were endowed with a terrible, cautionary beauty. - Source

It's an interesting critique by someone more educated, refined, talented and skilled than myself.  To be sure, my amateur-outsider work is often derivative and reliant on pastiche - sometimes I think of it as 'painted collage' - but I'm just a painter, largely self-taught.  I'm just not sure I agree that the Cinalli work can be so easily dismissed. I continue to admire it very much.

I would still like to hear Archbishop Paglia's interpretation.

Signorelli

Transgender issues are not new - the Church has simply ignored the complexities of the phenomena for decades.

Whenever I paint the Holy Face ...

Holy Face 

T. Nelson

I mix a tiny bit of my blood in the paint ...

I always tend to cut myself when I do art and craft projects, and when I do, I drip a bit of blood on images of the passion of Christ.  Just a little.  It dries brown.  One painting even has some hairs from my beard embedded. Once, doing a wood cut and printing it on linen and silk, I cut myself really bad and most of the pigment is my blood.    I still have the block and perhaps on a very hot day, I can use my sweat to do a print - just to see if aging in the sun would cause it to discolor and leave an imprint?

So anyway.  Must get busy painting the icon I'm working on. 

LifeSiteNews offers a correction ...

For the fake news report:

March 6, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – On March 3, LifeSite published an article originally titled: “'Pope Francis has urged us to have fewer children,' claims Vatican academy member.” That article misquoted botanist and environmentalist Peter Raven, who was reported to have said at a Vatican press conference that, “Pope Francis has urged us to have fewer children to make the world more sustainable.” After reviewing audio recordings of the press conference, LifeSite has amended the story to accurately reflect Raven’s words.

What he actually said was, "We need at some point to have a limited number of people which is why Pope Francis and his three most recent predecessors have always argued that you should not have more children than you can bring up properly."

LifeSite sincerely regrets the error and has taken steps to ensure that similar errors do not occur in future. LifeSite places a very high priority on accuracy in reporting and this error violated that constant standard.

Now, will everyone else offer their corrections and make amends?  Canon 212?  Pewsitters?  Rorate?  One Peter Five?  Vox Cantoris?  LarryD? Kellyanne Conway? President Trump?

CIA uses techniques to make cyber attacks

look like they originated from enemy state.

Lent with style ...

Stylite style...

St. Alypius, Stylite

St. David and Simeon

Stylite tower in Jordan.

The reason this type of extreme asceticism died out is that monks didn't want be put on a pedestal.

ba-da-bing!

Ricardo Cinalli's Cathedral Fresco.

-source-

The 'Heavenly Jerusalem' detail just may be a bigger problem than the nudity and homoerotic subtext.

Someone on Facebook pointed out to me the inclusion of minarets in the scene.  Not that Muslims can't go to heaven ...  but the ecclesiology seems to be a bit off here.  At least something about it is hetero - albeit heterodox.  What?

I wish someone like Elizabeth Lev would critique the mural.  I'm not satisfied with the artist's narrative.  It would be nice if Archbishop Paglia would offer some catechesis on the composition as well.

As a work of art - I like it.

Looks okay to me.

Devout Catholics want to get rid of the Pope? Really?

Some say.

Some say some Cardinals do...

The report is considered valid, having been first reported by prominent Catholic journalist and Vatican expert Antonio Socci for the Italian newspaper Liberio. His report was quoted as saying that about a dozen of the cardinals who voted for Pope Francis are convincing him to retire. - Source

Some say, "It is time to stop pretending that everything is alright and to choose which side you are on."

Works for me.

I'm Catholic and Francis is my pope.

Mass Chat: First Sunday in Lent