Meltdown Countdown: Fishwrap on the Synod

The Synod on the Family will start in October.   Already the dissidents at the National Schismatic Reporter (aka Fishwrap) are whining.   They have twigged to the fact that they are not going to get what they want.

Today there is an editorial which shows that they are starting to panic.

Editorial: Obstacles riddle synod on the family’s path

Editor’s note: The 50-page instrumentum laboris, or working document, that was released June 26 and will guide the discussion during the October Synod of Bishops on the family was dry and impersonal, lifeless almost, and that confounded us at NCR.
From personal experience [You see… it’s all about “experience”.] and from listening to colleagues, readers and friends, we have experienced marriage and family life as life-giving and joyous. Marriage and family life is not without its challenges and struggles; [and, since I’m not married dare I guess, “experiences”?] it offers ample lessons in humility and forgiveness, but that, too, at the best of times can be nurturing. [Just what does that mean? Lessons are “nurturing”?] If the writers of the instrumentum laboris, which is now supposed to be being studied in dioceses throughout the world, had begun with the fundamental experience of people who have lived in marriages and raised families, we wondered, how different would it have been? [And just imagine the difference had the experience been intermediate or even advanced!]

[…]

Accordingly, the instrumentum laboris for the upcoming extraordinary session (a second, ordinary session dealing with the same subject will be held in October 2015) bears some remarkable observations and questions on such topics as natural law and divorced and remarried Catholics.  [When dissidents start mentioning “natural law”, you know that they are soon going to say that deviant sex is just fine, or maybe even a “nurturing experience”.]

It is imperative, however, to first understand [to first split an infinitive] the culture in which the synod mentality is rooted. [Do you pick up the scare word? If you said “mentality”, you got it right!] As diverse as the issues and personalities involved in meetings of bishops from around the world, a common thread binds all of these gatherings. They have been, without exception, organized by, participated in and interpreted for the world by a tiny representation of humanity, celibate and exclusively male, [as opposed to… partially male? hermaphroditic?] whose careers [Oooo! Pope Francis would like them!] have been largely dedicated to maintaining the status quo [Oooo!  BAAAD.  We want change!] in a very exclusive fraternity. [C’mon.  “Very”? It’s either exclusive or it ain’t.]

The disparity between those who will be doing the talking and deciding and those who will be talked about — the instrumentum is concerned primarily with married men and women, as well as homosexual persons [DING! You knew it was coming.] — is, in this instance, particularly glaring.

[…]

They are lowering expectations, I guess.   But wait!  There’s more:

Finally, [not really – There’s another “Finally,” several paragraphs later.] how effective might a synod be in its consideration of marriage and the family when, again, the celibate men of the institution insist on rules regarding contraception that much of the community has consistently rejected for more than 50 years?  [Decoded: The majority opinion (of the so-well-informed) should determine the Church’s doctrine.]

A section of the document abounds in the church’s soaring rhetoric about marriage, analogizing it to the Trinitarian love of God and Christ’s relationship with his church. Marriage is called “the great mystery” and a fundamental “community of love.”

But when discussing sex, the deepest human expression of enduring love between two people, humans are reduced to the level of baboons, their only legitimate purpose for engaging in sex the production of more little humans. Love and procreation are reduced to biological necessity. And if that is not the primary intent of every sexual act, then the marriage is fundamentally flawed in the church’s eyes. [You can sense what this is driving at, right?]

The working paper for the synod claims the reason the teaching is rejected is because of lousy catechesis. Lots of married people would tell the synod it’s because of even worse theology and anthropology. [So much for Catholic Doctrine!] The men making the rules really don’t understand the profound joy and endless implications of conjugal love in an enduring, committed relationship. They don’t understand, in any ongoing, experiential way, that fundamental “community of love.” [Get it?] It is about far more than producing offspring. Responsible parenthood involves so much more than making certain that each instance of sexual expression could result in another child. [See it?]

Nor does the paper address at all what marriage could mean for those unable to conceive, or those who marry beyond their childbearing years. And dare we mention the reality that keeps pressing on us with a logic that seems to be accepted more and more by segments of the community — homosexuals in a committed, loving relationship?  [DING!  There it is!  You knew it was coming, didn’t you.  Decoded: If a whole bunch of Catholics want to stick what they have anywhere they want then, hey!, the Church had better change its bad theology and lousy anthropology.]

[…]

I see that the Catholic League also picked up on this whine. Here is what they say:

What accounts for them acting out? They are alternating between rage and depression. They thought Pope Francis would usher in their dream—the Protestantization of the Catholic Church—but instead they have come to the conclusion that they will not get their way this fall. But only a baboon would have thought they were going to win in the first place.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
This entry was posted in Biased Media Coverage, Liberals, Our Catholic Identity, Puir Slow-Witted Gowk, The Drill and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

55 Comments

  1. LeeF says:

    Why don’t these people just walk on down the street to the nearest Protestant church compatible with their beliefs and put an end to the scandal of internal division? Is it:

    1) just too stubborn to leave
    2) they think they are doing us a favor in leading us to heresy
    3) they would no longer be the progressive and “prophetic” darlings of the liberal media, just more average everyday Protestants

    I think it’s a combination of all three.

    Perhaps the Pope could arrange a swap meet with the leaders of the major Protestant denominations every 5 years or so. We swap them our liberals, and they give us their conservatives. At least there might be internal peace in each group then.

  2. TheDude05 says:

    “But when discussing sex, the deepest human expression of enduring love between two people, humans are reduced to the level of baboons, their only legitimate purpose for engaging in sex the production of more little humans.”

    Funny I thought the Lord said “Greater love hath no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends.”

  3. Quirinus says:

    Subjective recounting of “experiences” is the measure of truth? Well I have been married long enough to tell that the Fishwrap is full of it. That’s my experience of marriage and of reading the Fishwrap. Do I get to vote at the Synod?

  4. SaintJude6 says:

    Thank you, Fr. Z. Your comments gave me the best laugh of my day. [My work here is done.] Every time I click on a link from Pewsitter that leads me to the Fishwrap, I am struck by how scary and out of touch with reality these people are.

  5. Gregg the Obscure says:

    TheDude05 – they already said they won’t listen to celibate males. May the Lord have mercy on their souls.

  6. maskaggs says:

    I’ll confess to being confused when the issue of infertility appears. Often those in support of admitting contraception as morally permissible argue that the Church’s argument from natural law implies that the infertile are somehow “less married” or “less open to life.” This has always baffled me. Perhaps NCR does not connect doctrine re: contraception with infertility, but that seems to be the case.

  7. Legisperitus says:

    The infertility bit is a total red herring. Focus on the nature of the act. An infertile married couple are not committing an act which, by its very nature, excludes the possibility of new life.

    The Church’s opponents want you to look anywhere except at the conduct, the act. Never lose sight of the conduct. This goes for both contraception and sodomy.

  8. Kensington says:

    Reading the comments over at Fishwrap is always a stunning experience for me. These are the folks sitting next to us at church!?!

  9. Legisperitus says:

    I should have added: Infertility is a medical condition. With infertile couples, it is this medical condition, not any act of theirs, which frustrates the transmission of life.

  10. majuscule says:

    SaintJude6 says:
    Every time I click on a link from Pewsitter that leads me to the Fishwrap

    Every time I click through to the Fishwrap from this blog I get the satisfaction that someone over there is checking the logs and seeing wdtprs.com as the referrer.

  11. thefeds says:

    Sounds like anything truly Catholic and orthodox confounds these poor souls.

  12. gracie says:

    I could never buy the argument that celibate religious don’t know anything about married life. Unless such religious are born under rocks, they’ve had an entire childhood and adolescence observing close-up married life. In their own families they may have seen financial struggles, abuse, adultery, as well as happiness, joy, faithfulness. They’ve sat through family gatherings where old grudges are carried forward; fights experienced, silences, as well as laughter, fun, games, wisdom, sound advice. Each “religious” person – like every other person – has seen this salt-and-pepper mixture of married life to different kinds and degrees. Like all the other arguments, this one is a red herring to distract one from Christ’s words spelling out quite clearly that divorcing and remarrying – while your first valid spouse is still alive – is adultery. Period.

    What gets me in all of this is the suspicion that people actually think that if they can get the Church to change its position on an issue then God will have to accept it because majority rules, right? Behind all of this is the hubris that we humans have the power to control God, to tie His hands behind His back, to force Him to bow to our will.

  13. Mike says:

    “Love and procreation are reduced to biological necessity. And if that is not the primary intent of every sexual act, then the marriage is fundamentally flawed in the church’s eyes.”

    Wow. Lots of things gotten wrong here: I believe the Church teaches–at least traditionally–that offspring is the primary purpose or object of marriage, mutual friendship of spouses the second and complementary one. St. John Paul II, in “Love and Responsibility” (not a magisterial document, of course) makes the point that the couple can and do respect the ends of marriage if they at some point don’t necessary intend a child but do nothing to interfere with the gift if God so chooses to give them one.

    Fishwrap is so flat-footed on this it’s incredible…

  14. Mike says:

    I have long thought that ditching the “primary purpose of marriage”, ie, children, really means ditching the Church’s fundamental embrace of the primacy of being, its absolute fundamental goodness derived from God’s uncreated, infinite BEING…which is conveyed in Revelation, in harmony with sound metaphysics…when we ditch this, we ditch realist ethics, and Bill and Harry get to walk down the aisle…

  15. Elizabeth D says:

    If you want to understand well what this writer is doing, you need to read the writings of linguist George Lakoff. This is an exercise in progressive framing. Lakoff’s idea in a nutshell is that conservatives operate out of a “strict father” mental model that sees children as innately bad and needing to be corrected, and liberals operate out of a “nurturant parent” model that sees children as innately good and needing compassion. This dichotomy is itself, of course, a frame antithetical to the way Catholics would see the world (children need a father and mother, discipline and nurturance, and are innately good but wounded by original sin and concupiscence). But stressing the difference between these two models is important to progressive framing. They want people to adopt the nurturant parent model.

    The quote “it offers ample lessons in humility and forgiveness, but that, too, at the best of times can be nurturing.” makes sense mainly because the article is (to me) a fairly ham-handed exercise in progressive framing. The point is not if the sentence makes sense but that the reader is reenforced in the nurturant parent frame. Similarly, the point of saying that “They have been, without exception, organized by, participated in and interpreted for the world by a tiny representation of humanity, celibate and exclusively male” is to steer us away from and demonize the strict father frame.

    Thus: The synod is a strict-father-ite exercise in punishing children mercilessly on the misguided grounds that children are innately bad. The synod must be stopped–no, reframed! The synod SHOULD be a nurturant parent (note non-gender-specific) exercise in nurturing children to engage freely in sexual expression (“love”), particularly homosexual expression.

    Understanding the framing game-playing is important. The exercise in framing is a counter-narrative at odds with and undermining the way Catholics would see the matter.

    Fr. Z's Gold Star Award

  16. capchoirgirl says:

    The hatred for the Church that I see in those comments is incredibly. Why on earth are these people still Catholic?!

  17. capchoirgirl says:

    Ah, “incredible”, sorry!

  18. cdet1997 says:

    But when discussing sex, the deepest human expression of enduring love between two people…
    Wrong. Sacrifice of oneself for the sake of the other is the deepest human expression of human love.

    Is John 15:13 not in their Bible?

  19. Priam1184 says:

    Elizabeth D is so right about the ‘framing’ nature of the argument. The Left and the other enemies of civilization have been doing this for a long time now and they are quite good at using this technique to further their deceptions.

    They do it little by little, ridiculous article by ridiculous article, until at some point down the road what would have once been clearly seen to have been absurd becomes a plausible idea or potential social policy, and a few years later becomes the law of the land.

    After all, if you had asked anyone even twenty five years ago say in 1990 whether a man marrying a man or a woman marrying a woman was a good idea 99% of people would have told you that that idea was completely insane. But now the Supreme Court will one day soon likely find it as an inalienable constitutional right. And it has all been done little by little, article by article, movie by movie, song by song, class by class. The whole issue (along with the rest of our culture) was reframed to one of feelings and making sure that nobody’s feelings are ever hurt. And here we are.

  20. Geoffrey says:

    Someone send them a copy of St John Paul the Great’s “Theology of the Body”.

  21. Gail F says:

    And what are NCR readers but a tiny percentage of Catholics in the Church? ANY group is tiny compared to that!

    And check this out:
    http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/lgbt-foundation-aims-to-counter-vatican-family-synod-18006/

  22. Mike says:

    Elizabeth D: Nice! An insightful take, plus a gold-star!

  23. Pnkn says:

    Hello Gregg the Obscure –

    If one oughtn’t listen to celibate men, then in the fairness of equality for all one oughtn’t listen to celibate women……

  24. lmo1968 says:

    All of those people insisting that these “celibate men” can’t possibly understand the “experience” of marital life conveniently forget that the laity rely on priests to counsel them with their marital problems and through many years of counseling and giving spiritual direction and advice to men and women priests do come to “experience” the married life.

  25. anna 6 says:

    What amazes me is how poorly the editorial is written. The logic is flawed, but so is the language.

  26. Pingback: Difference Between Modern & Dark Ages - BigPulpit.com

  27. iamlucky13 says:

    “Decoded: The majority opinion (of the so-well-informed) should determine the Church’s doctrine.”

    Easy there, Father. They are quite well informed by their feelings, which fortunately are not “dry and impersonal, lifeless almost” in the same way logic, reason, and Scriptures, the Gospels, and Sacred Tradition are. You need to stop reducing this to the level of baboons who analyze what God has taught and demonstrated to us, and instead decide based on feeling.

    It was the line about baboons that stood out most to me.

    “humans are reduced to the level of baboons, their only legitimate purpose for engaging in sex the production of more little humans.”

    The authors of this piece need to be called out for this. They may feel they are legitimate dissenters and claim democratic popularity to cement that legitimacy in their minds, but outright lying by claiming the Church does not celebrate the united dual role of human sexuality but instead teaches that the only purpose of sex is to make more baboons…oops, sorry, I just noticed they did write “humans” here, but in a derogatory context that isn’t even dignified enough for baboons…Outright lying about the Church’s teaching is indefensible. Truth is not their goal.

    Also, my compliments to Elizabeth D for recognizing and point out to us the strategy they’re trying to employ. This same tactic also fuels much of the rigid partisanship undermining the political process in our country.

    From anna 6’s comment:
    “What amazes me is how poorly the editorial is written. The logic is flawed, but so is the language.”

    Flawed logic is par for the course among people of this alignment. Did anybody happen read any of Justice Ginsberg’s dissent on the Hobby Lobby ruling?

    An actual Supreme Court Justice repeated the lie in an official court document that the ruling would deny (apparently not just Hobby Lobby employees, but even more numerous) “legions of women” access to contraception. She also argued that because individual women make the choice to use or not use contraception, the government was not actually compelling Hobby Lobby’s owners (not to mention every employee likewise forced to participate in the plan) to anything. Most interesting to me was her comparison of medically necessary procedures like blood transfusions intended to restore health to completely discretionary products like artificial hormone pills intended to disrupt the healthy functioning of the human body.

    I mentioned that last point to relative, only to have him inform me, “it’s wrong to try to define healthy.” I guess that shouldn’t surprise me since it’s also apparently wrong to try to define gender…

  28. Tradster says:

    “… they already said they won’t listen to celibate males.”

    Including, of course, Jesus, Who was a celibate male.

  29. jaykay says:

    Elizabeth D: absolutely spot-on!

    I loved this bit on particular: “The point is not if the sentence makes sense but that the reader is reenforced in the nurturant parent frame…” It instantly brought to mind the sort of nonsensical goo-goo talk parents use with very small kids. Which seems to me to be exactly what the Fishwrap and other publications of that ilk do with their readership. It doesn’t have to mean anything that cognitively functional adults would understand, but it just sounds good and – most importantly – makes them feeeeeellll good (and superior). “It’s English, Jim, but not as we know it”.

  30. jacobi says:

    This Synod was a bad idea from the start.

    It was a profoundly unsound decision, both managerially and theologically. It will bring further trouble on the Church, whatever the outcome.

    Just as Vatican II was used as a vehicle for a resurgence of the suppressed Modernist heresy in the Church, this Synod will be used by the liberal/Relativist elements to justify their predetermined position, regardless of the outcome.
    At best there will, in practise, be a further widespread rejection of Church teaching by many laity and priests, which the Church will not have the energy or the will to counter. This will result in further confusion desertion and collapse in Mass attendance, and indeed in Catholicism.

    At worst, it will produce a clear schismatic separation from the Church, as at the protestant Reformation.

    On reflection perhaps the latter would be the best outcome after all.
    The whole Vat II and post-Vat II, has been so badly, so incompetently, mishandled by successive popes and bishops, that maybe as Pope Benedict XVI suggested we might be better just accepting a smaller Church for some time, and start again.

  31. jacobi says:

    This Synod was a bad idea from the start.

    It was a profoundly unsound decision, both managerially and theologically. It will bring further trouble on the Church, whatever the outcome.

    Just as Vatican II was used as a vehicle for a resurgence of the suppressed Modernist heresy in the Church, this Synod will be used by the liberal/Relativist elements to justify their predetermined position, regardless of the outcome.

    At best there will, in practise, be a further widespread rejection of Church teaching by many laity and priests, which the Church will not have the energy or the will to counter. This will result in further confusion desertion and collapse in Mass attendance, and indeed in Catholicism.
    At worst, it will produce a clear schismatic separation from the Church, as at the protestant Reformation.

    On reflection perhaps the latter would be the best outcome after all.
    The whole Vat II and post-Vat II, has been so badly, so incompetently, mishandled by successive popes and bishops, that maybe as Pope Benedict XVI suggested we might be better just accepting a smaller Church for some time, and start again.

  32. JonPatrick says:

    I will be glad when this Synod is over. The best that can happen is that the bishops reaffirm Church teaching resulting in wailing and gnashing of teeth by the Fishwrap and their ilk. The worst that can happen … I don’t want to think about that. While we have a working document that seems orthodox in its approach, we have been through this before as at Vatican II where the working documents were laid aside and a minority of progressives were able to impose their radical ideas. Fifty years on, we are only just starting to get back on track and there is still much to be done to repair the damage that was done. I just pray that the Holy Spirit protects the Church from going off the rails in October.

  33. robtbrown says:

    cdet1997 says:

    But when discussing sex, the deepest human expression of enduring love between two people…

    Wrong. Sacrifice of oneself for the sake of the other is the deepest human expression of human love.

    Self-giving is the basis of JPII’s understanding of the procreative act.

  34. Sonshine135 says:

    Lee F.
    These people do not go to the nearest Protestant Church, because they want to show God who is boss. It isn’t about religion, it is about pride and deconstructing an institution they find to be oppressive. This is why I am careful when having Catholic conversations with other Catholics, because they are often not Catholic.

  35. Johnno says:

    There is not a doubt in my mind that Francis and the Synod will not give the fishwrap what they want.

    What scares me is that the Synod will give the fishwrap the next best thing:

    —Vague Pastoral Sounding Non-Solutions that can be read any which way.—

    The liberals and discreditable mainstream press will be thrilled to let the world know loudly and clearly how they demand it should be interpreted.

    The Conservatives will be there feebly reminding everyone that the Synod should be seen through the lens of a hermeneutic of continuity, but nobody is going to listen. It’s emotions and one’s conscience time now!

    The real Catholics who know and understand tradition and what has been going on these past decades will be shutting our doors and going to the bomb shelter where we shall do penance awaiting the just vengeance of our Lord’s chastisement when Our Dear Mother can no longer hold back the angel’s fiery sword. Clearly God’s wrath is the only solution out of this. Let it be so. Have mercy on us Lord, for we are imbeciles. Stupid stupid imbeciles.

  36. Kathleen10 says:

    ElizabethD, you’ve done it again. I hope you are a teacher of some kind, because people would benefit from your insightful and informed writings. You have a real gift for making elusive topics accessible and for sorting things out in an interesting way. I gave you my own mental gold star then saw you got one for real.
    Girlfriend, you need to teach!

  37. JesusFreak84 says:

    Am I the only one who’s become so cynical at this point that I almost welcome a schism? Let it be obvious who stands with or against Christ and His Bride. I’m sick to death of parasites like the NSR feeding on the Church and misleading ignorant would-be Catholics. Let them go peddle their heresies elsewhere; the Church will rebuild, as she did after losing people after the schism with the Orthodox and later on in the Protestant revolutions.

  38. Sam Schmitt says:

    Wow – how many cliches can dance on the head of a pin? It’s especially hard to believe they trot out the tired old hobby horse that (according to Church teaching) “Love and procreation are reduced to biological necessity.” John Paul II addressed – and refuted – this ridiculous fallacy a long time ago in Veritatis Splendor.

  39. tcreek says:

    The best thing that should come out of the Synod is a reaffirmation of Church teaching that divorced and remarried Catholics may not, under pain of sin receive Communion, plus ditto for Catholics who use contraceptives. Then direct bishops to advise their pastors to preach this from the pulpit (more than once).

  40. TheDude05 says:

    The problem as I see it is of perspective. They like the rest of the secular world, through the works of the enemy have elevated sex to the end all beat all of existence. That perspective leads to a belief that all forms of sex should be allowed ie homosexual, adultery, plain weird, etc. The act of sex is thus demeaned by this by taking it out of it’s natural order as God intended it. The real end all beat all of life is to love God and get to Heaven, that should always be our focus, and anything God has given us should be a means to that end, whether it is the sacraments, our intellects, and even sex. By allowing us to share in the procreative process with Him we can receive abundant graces, if we follow the order he laid down in nature, in divine revelation, and in sacred Tradition. We need to be praying to St. Michael because the enemy is beating on the doors, and while the Church will not fall how many poor souls will be lost due to the lies of the devil.

  41. LarryW2LJ says:

    Sonshine 135:

    “This is why I am careful when having Catholic conversations with other Catholics, because they are often not Catholic.”

    Ain’t that the truth!?! I find myself wanting to face palm, more and more frequently, in conversations with my fellow Catholic brothers and sisters.

  42. benedetta says:

    With respect to women, strange how the Fishwrap won’t acknowledge what everyone in the secular world, academia, media, politics well knows: the data overwhelmingly shows that, even while social stigma regarding divorce or having children out of wedlock is gone due to cultural depictions which portray health wealth and prosperity…and popularity…and good looks…, women (and of course children with a whole separate avalanche of secular data) suffer tremendously in every regard in the wake of divorce (and, the data suggests, after an abortion). For how long does the Fishwrap and its supporters plan to continue to actively deceive people under the false banner of “reporting”?

  43. vandalia says:

    Yet, I will make an educated guess that they unquestionably accept every word offered by the tiny, almost exclusively male, community of climate scientists?

  44. Kerry says:

    If the Church, by the logic of the Fish Rappers, is disqualified from teaching about marriage, in that she does not share the Fish Rappers view, then they are similarly disqualified from commenting on marriage or the Synod, who Catholic understanding of marriage they reject.

  45. Reconverted Idiot says:

    If only my ex-wife and I had been Catholics before that painful and destructive divorce. Our ‘experience’ – and that of our two wonderful children – might have been so much better. Fishwrap authors deny the obvious that is currently slapping the entire secular Godless world upside the head with the fruits of its own ‘adolescent progressivism’ (thanks Pope Francis for that wonderful expression).

    And while I’m at it, oh for the counsel of a celibate male during that period. Someone who might never have ‘experienced’ the fullness of sexual relations, with all its problems and anxieties along with the good stuff. That is, someone who lived an example of self-control that every person, married or otherwise, can learn from.

    Finally (and this really is), chastity might not be easy, temptations may well abound, but grace is free and infinite. Oh thank God for grace, and for Our Blessed Mother who mediates for us divorcees as we try to live chaste lives.

  46. HyacinthClare says:

    Elizabeth D: Just WOW. I had never heard that before. THANK YOU. You have made it so much more comprehensible.

  47. Kerry says:

    I want to ad this thought. I think the Fishwrap is asking “How does it feel?”, while the Church is asking “What is the truth?”

  48. The Cobbler says:

    Actually, Church teachings says baboons — and anything else lacking intellect and free will — can do whatever they want…

    But I guess someone who’s either unable or unwilling to recognise that the Church is talking about ontology rather than biology, or that the Church doesn’t hold there to be dichotomies between things like love and procreation, or that experience is only as good as the objectivity of the one with the experience, would also have trouble checking the facts of Church teaching on baboons.

    (Full disclosure: I’m married and my experience says the Fishwrap’s writing is so uninformative Fr. Z is actually doing the world harm by providing them with attention.)

  49. The Cobbler says:

    Oh, I missed one thing: ‘I mentioned that last point to relative, only to have him inform me, “it’s wrong to try to define healthy.”’
    Yeah, because I totally don’t want my doctor to be able to tell me if I’m sick or if my behavior is any danger to myself!

  50. otter says:

    I find your use of the photo of a dead fish wrapped in the NCR curious. I get what your opinion is of the paper… I, too, was similarly tempted: I was about to use our diocesan paper (Madison) to line my bird cage, but decided that was simply sacrilegious. The names of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Mary, et al are all over the pages, after all. Yes, it’s only paper, but still. I just cancelled my subscription, instead. Anyway, you being so… correct (!) and quick to find the speck of dust in others’ eyes– well, it sort of amuses me. That plank. [Okay, another vote for dissent. Got it. BTW… you are invited to participate in Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form in Madison. Bring loved ones.]

  51. benedetta says:

    When they say that their issue is with celibate males, what they are really saying is that they only trust someone who is having a lot of libertinist sexual experiences and lifestyles, so much the better, and so much in fact that pretty much everything, even sacrificing children, should be rendered up to it in homage.

    My issue is more with the notion that people who detest children so much that they countenance a country’s expansion of it even into further barbarism and genocide and suffering on the part of children and families and women would purport to speak on behalf of what may be best for families, wherein the children are the very littlest and most vulnerable.

    The Christian way is to advocate for the welfare of the children created by sexual union, whether libertine or casual or not, and to provide for what their needs are, in security and nurturing, even if this calls for sacrifice, as Elizabeth and Kathleen above point out.

    I really can’t trust a crew of voices who say from one side of their mouths that it is fine to torture and slaughter children who are conceived through casual hook ups in order to bow down idol like to sexual libertinism and yet that they somehow know better than anyone what is best for the raising of those children who manage to survive that threat. Sorry, zero credibility.

  52. Luvadoxi says:

    I found that my diocesan paper fits perfectly in my bird cage. As does the New York Times….

  53. benedetta says:

    The rallying from this camp is very much consistent with the quip of Gilbert K Chesterton along the lines of “Not that it’s been tried and found wanting but hasn’t been tried.” This generation had it their way, and, there was little to no doctrine taught, sacraments gutted, confessionals pulled out and never known past First Communion days, no attempt at the universal call to holiness on the terms of a sacramental life using all the wonderful and diverse encouragements at the disposal for spiritual growth of the vast tradition. There was wholesale rejection of the sacramental life as a means for salvation and holiness, and, in turn, generations were not permitted to be taught it or to attempt it, in a near black-out. In fact it is possible to live this way, many younger Catholics are discovering, and, searching for, of their own free will, on their own terms, out of their own need, and their realization of that need, and, without any baggage, and certainly not due to any outward manifestation of the need to conform to some cultural custom lest one endure a stigma. As a matter of fact, the stigma and suffering on such a one attempting that works heavily the other way, giving credibility and authenticity, and wiping away the much feared notion of hypocrisy that those who rebelled way too far of a further age were obsessed with. The other thing is that this is a generation whose eyes are totally wide open to the sick and sad aftermath of the all out secular binge on lust without love with even sacrifice of children seen as a decent means to the pursuit of the all important end. They’ve seen the alternative to the fullness of life with all the sacramental grace the Church affords, in all its “glory”, and, they’ve rejected it by and large. Again, this does not mean that there are walking wounded who need serious pastoral care. But for those who try to live marriage, or any universal call to holiness, with and through the grace of a life in the fullness of the sacraments of Holy Mother Church, there is freedom.

  54. Heorot says:

    The NCR says one thing that I’m surprised you did not comment on, Fr. Z. :

    “[…] sex, the deepest human expression of enduring love between two people […]”

    The deepest expression of enduring love between two people is sex?! As a Catholic struggling to remain faithful & celibate despite deep-seated same-sex attractions, I declare that this is absolute nonsense. What an insult to human dignity!

    The deepest expression of enduring love between two persons is a relationship of prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, self-sacrifice, Christian charity, and the glorification of God in FRIENDSHIP – spousal or platonic! Sex is merely an adjunct, in comparison to this – and a very distant adjunct, at that. Had my male friends – out of pity – allowed me to indulge in my feelings of lust and desire for them, we would have debased our friendship, not elevated it.

    What a deplorable mindset NCR has. Let us pray that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ – from whom all Fatherhood on Earth comes – will dispel the errors that threaten to attack this Synod and the holy Church. Béni soit le Seigneur.

  55. benedetta says:

    The Fishwrap and friends, in their quest to concretize the secular 60s and satisfy themselves lack compassion on innocents in such a profound and comprehensive way.

    It’s going to be way weird and pathetically a farce to observe the Meltdown. Sort of like an epic generational tantrum.

Comments are closed.