Catholics, Be Confident!

Now is not the time to be embarrassed about the faith. From Aleteia:

The Western world has changed the definition of marriage for the first time in history to have no intrinsic connection to the bearing and rearing of children. We decided that sexual morality that says “No” to anyone’s sexual desires is a form of repression and that insisting on the age-old definition of marriage is bigotry.

It is a very powerful temptation for Catholics to see the evolution of marriage as the consequence of a new enlightenment about sex. But consider the cultural changes that preceded our decision to redefine marriage:

- First came the sexual revolution that fulfilled none of its promises and left many lives a wreck.

- Second came a nationwide STD epidemic in which Americans every year contract 20 million new cases of just eight sexually transmitted viruses and bacteria and even the AIDS/HIV epidemic is making a comeback. (Read more.)

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The "Hail Mary" Over the Centuries

From English Historical Fiction Authors:

From Christianity’s earliest days, the Virgin Mary was an advocate for the faithful, an intercessor who would plead their case to God. Devotional images of her go back to the second century, and more Christians started to name their daughters Mary toward the end of the fourth century.

A novelist studying early medieval times can easily see her importance. Charlemagne dedicated a newly built basilica at Aachen to her. On a smaller scale, a scribe wrote, “The book was given to God and His Mother by Dido [of Laon]. Anyone who harms it will incur God’s wrath and offend His Mother.”

No surprise, then, that Christians wanted a prayer just for her. When I first wrote The Cross and the Dragon, I assumed the Ave Maria always had its current form. I just needed the Latin translation for my characters.

Imagine my surprise when my editor informed me that Ave Maria was a lot shorter in the eighth century. “Hail, Mary, full of grace,” or words to that effect go back to the sixth century, so I could have my characters praying “Ave Maria, gratia plena.”

But it apparently took a few more centuries for the prayer to get longer. Two Anglo-Saxon manuscripts from around 1030 include “benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui” (“blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb”). In the 12th century, churchmen accept the greeting to Mary as a form of devotion, as familiar as the Apostle’s Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.

And so the salutation persisted, accompanied by a gesture of homage such as genuflecting, kneeling, or bowing the head. Some saints said the Ave Maria 50 to 150 times a day. (Read more.)

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Irish Jacobite Uprisings

From Never Felt Better:

The Jacobite uprisings of the 18^th century directly concerned Ireland and many Irishmen and women living on the continent, even if very little of their process actually took place in Ireland. And while no large Irish regiments of the Brigades took part in the early adventures, their make-up and outcome is still of great relevance to the cause of the Wild Geese.

James Francis Edward Stuart was the son of James II, the man whose birth in 1688 had precipitated the entire crisis that saw his father ousted from power and forced into exile, an exile that the son now continued. The figurehead of the Jacobite cause, considered to be James III of England and VIII of Scotland by the followers of that cause, he is better known, perhaps, by the nickname that Jacobites came to call him: the “Old Pretender”.

James had spent only six months of his infancy in England, being brought to France just before the start of the War of the Two Kings in Ireland. And there he had remained for the most part, taking up his father’s position in 1701 at the age of only 13, recognised initially by the likes of France, Spain and the Papal States. In the course of his life he would attempt several times to land in Britain under arms, to try and militarily win the throne he believed was his by right. And, Irishmen would be with him when he tried.

The first real attempt was in 1708, during the War of the Spanish Succession, when James was able to garner the requisite support from Louis XIV to gather a fleet and try a crossing of the English Channel. As with so many such attempts, the plan was to land with only a small (ish) force, and then gather more soldiers in England or Scotland, those of a Jacobite persuasion, with which to topple the Williamite monarchy. On this occasion, no landing was actually made: the plan was delayed by a bout of measles suffered by James, poor weather hampered movement and the Royal Navy intercepted and warded off the French ships that aimed to unload their troops near Inverness. Unable to force the issue, the French commanders sailed back home, much to James’ chagrin. (Read more.)

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Scandal and Marie-Antoinette

Listen to my new episode "Scandal and the Queen" at #BlogTalkRadio.

Image from Vive la Reine. Share

Evangelizing Catholic Men

We have become a woman-oriented Church. Let's reach out to men. From Church Militant:

The New Emangelization Project has documented that a key driver of the collapse of Catholicism in the United States is a serious and growing Catholic "man-crisis." One third of baptized Catholic men have left the Faith, and the majority of those who remain "Catholic" neither know nor practice the Faith and are not committed to pass the Faith along to their children. Recent research shows that large numbers of young Catholic men are leaving the Faith to become "Nones," men who have no religious affiliation. The growing losses of young Catholic men will have a devastating impact on the U.S. Catholic Church in the coming decades, as older Catholic men pass away and young men fail to remain and marry in the Church, accelerating the devastating losses that have already occurred.

While there are massive cultural forces outside of the Church (e.g., secularism, pluralism, anti-Christian bias, radical feminism, pornography, media saturation, etc.) and missteps within the Church (e.g., failure to make men a priority, sex abuse scandals, homosexuality in the priesthood, etc.) that have contributed to the Catholic "man-crisis," the New Emangelization Project has conducted dozens of interviews with top Catholic men's evangelists that suggest that a core reason for the "man-crisis" is that bishops and priests have not yet made the evangelization and catechesis of men a clear priority. Men are being ignored by the Church. (Read more.)

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1972 Experiments Exposed

From Life Site:

In 1972, Pediatric Research journal published a paper submitted by researchers from the Department of Pediatric Research at New York State and Mount Sinai School of Medicine of the City University of New York in collaboration with a researcher from the Departments of Medical Chemistry and Obstetrics and Gynecology of the University of Helsinki in Finland. The paper was titled, “Development of Mammalian Sulfur Metabolism: Absence of Cystathionase in Human Fetal Tissues.” The fact that they used fetuses is stated right in the title. The researchers “examined the development of the transsulfuration pathway in 58 human fetuses obtained at therapeutic abortion during approximately the 2^nd-6^th month of gestation” as well as in premature and full term infants who died shortly after birth. They were trying to determine whether cysteine is an essential amino acid in “immature humans,” so they needed to analyze kidneys and brains at different developmental stages.

The fetuses presented a special test case. Since the fetuses were still alive at the beginning of the experiment in their mothers’ wombs, “in vivo” experiments were possible. This phrase “in vivo” is Latin and means “within the living.” With already deceased specimens, they could only measure the presence of amino acids after death. This type of analysis is an “in vitro” (in the glass, think in vitro fertilization) procedure. With the still-living fetuses, they could actually inject a known amount of amino acids, S-L-methionine and S-L-cysteine, “in vivo” into a living fetus and test how much of these substances were incorporated into fetal organs via the biological machinery of life over a set amount of time. The researchers therefore conducted the “in vivo” experiments by surgically cutting open the uterus of the mother, lifting out the living fetus with the umbilical cord still attached, and injecting the amino acids into the umbilical vein.

Then they waited 10 minutes with the heart still beating and the fetus still moving to allow the body to distribute and metabolize the amino acids. After 10 minutes, they cut the umbilical cord, dissected the brain and liver from the body of the fetus, and dropped the organs into liquid nitrogen to await analysis. (Read more.)

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Boscobel

A fine old Maryland house, down the road from where we lived. For my friend Virginia, it was her family home. To quote:

All my life I’ve heard stories of Boscobel, the beloved Italianate home of my great-grandparents.  The beauty of every room, the stories of balls held there, my grandparents’ romance, and my mother’s charmed childhood.

The property is now part of the National Park Service, with the structures where my mother grew up serving as offices for the Monocacy Battlefield park.  But my interest in the place has nothing to do with Civil War history, and everything to do with my own.

So today, Katherine and I went to Boscobel .

 Approaching the house from the stone mill house at the base of the driveway.  The mill house is where my grandparents lived, and where my mother was born. (Read more.)

Boscobel aka Edgewood is currently part of the Monocacy Battlefield Park on Urbana Pike outside of Frederick, MD.

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Is Russia Being Converted?

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Two decades after the collapse of the USSR, history's most atheistic state, the vast majority of Russians attest to a belief in God – more than in any other European country – according to a new opinion poll.

The survey, carried out in April by the independent Public Opinion Fund (FOM), found that 82 percent of Russians say they are religious believers, while just 13 percent say they do not believe in any deity.

But the powerful Russian Orthodox Church will find nothing to celebrate in the survey's details.

 

The church claims 70 percent of Russians as its adherents and on the basis of that has successfully pressured the Kremlin to return most church property seized by the Bolsheviks almost a century ago, including vast tracts of land, churches, monasteries, and thousands of religious artifacts formerly held by state museums. (Read more.)

"In the end My Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and it will be converted and a certain period of peace will be granted to the world."~ Our Lady of Fatima, July 13, 1917 Share

How Abortion Kills the Future

From The Gospel Coalition:

“For the last 30 years, I’ve supported abortion rights,” says Ruben Navarrette Jr., a columnist for The Daily Beast. “This year may be different.”

What is different this year? The release of five videos by the Center for Medical Progress showing representatives of Planned Parenthood and their associates engaging in discussions and activities related to the sale of fetal body parts. Navarrette mentions he’s expressed concern, outrage, disgust, and horror over the videos. But he’s not yet changed him mind completely about abortion:

For those of us who are pro-choice, the Planned Parenthood videos are a game changer. As to whether that means I’ll change my view, I’m not sure. I’m on the bubble. Ask me in a few weeks, after the release of more videos.

Since the first video came out nearly a month ago, many pro-lifers have assumed they were indeed a “game changer.” Yet we are constantly surprised to find that while our friends and family are troubled by the videos they are, like Navarrette, not quite ready to give up their support for abortion.

The videos have certainly stirred the moral intuitions of many pro-choice advocates. They realize that the fetal parts in the videos are from beings that were human and once alive. Yet there remains a disconnect between what they are seeing and an explanation for why it is immoral to kill humans at the fetal stage of development.

Philosopher Donald Marquis provides an intriguing argument that attempts to answer that question. Marquis circumvents the discussion of fetal personhood and examines the question of what makes killing wrong. According to Marquis, this is the question that needs to be addressed from the start:

After all, if we merely believe, but do not understand, why killing adult human beings such as ourselves is wrong, how could we conceivably show that abortion is either immoral or permissible.

Marquis concludes that what makes killing inherently wrong is that it deprives a victim of all the “experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted one’s future.” It is not the change in the biological state that makes killing wrong, says Marquis, but the loss of all experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments that would otherwise have constituted one’s future (hereafter we will refer to these as EAPE).

These EAPE are either valuable for their own sake or lead to something else that is valuable for its own sake. When a victim is killed, they are deprived not only of all that they value but all that they will value in the future. Therefore, what makes the prima facie killing of any adult human being wrong is this loss of future EAPE.

This has obvious implications for abortion. Marquis concludes that:

The future of a standard fetus includes a set of experiences, projects, activities, and such which are identical with the futures of adult human beings and are identical with the futures of young children. Since the reason that is sufficient to explain why it is wrong to kill human beings after the time of birth is a reason that also applies to fetuses, it follows that abortion is prima facie morally wrong.

(Read more.)

In the meantime, the sixth video had been released. Share