Comments for Bad influences from abroad at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 14 out of 14 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sat, 18 May 2013 02:30:25 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15103 In a Catholic Radio interview Cardinal Wuerl said that there isn't a conspiracy against the Church but there is a mentality in the culture. He never sat in an American law school classroom as I did for three years.As with so much else,the education system creates a so-called "groundswell" for these rights. How do you beat such an institutionally pervasive idea that is so well funded? By being more Catholic is the only way I see. Not as easy as it sounds given institutional push back within Church institutions themselves. - Graham Combs Sun, 30 Dec 2012 11:45:15 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15091 @Dave: What about this? "Dare we hope that all men be saved?" Von Balthasar. "The anonymous Christian" While we have to believe that Hell exists, we do not have to believe that anyone is there. Rahner. Both of these men were favorites of the Council. Your citation is correct, but if no one is preaching it from the pulpit, how will the "average Catholic" know this? It becomes just another opinion. See para. 2357 in the CCC and read the last sentence re: homosexual activities: "Under no circumstances can they be approved." Do you find any agreement in the Church on this issue.? My original point still stands: There is no mention of Hell by name in the sixteen documents of Vat. II. - Manfred Fri, 28 Dec 2012 15:30:49 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15090 @ Manfred: what about this? 1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, "eternal fire." The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs. This is from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the one published by Bl. John Paul II after the Council. - Dave Fri, 28 Dec 2012 10:46:21 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15089 Let me offer a word of hope. It seems to me that these sins of the flesh, be they sexual perversion or destroying the fruit of procreation, all ultimately sins against the Incarnation. To counter such sins we can: 1. Practice proper sexuality ourselves, 2. Pray for mercy to the Sacred Heart for those who don't, 3. Perform acts of worship specifically directed to Jesus in His Incarnation. Here I suggest Eucharistic adoration and mass. Our times do look grim, but we must always hope and trust in The Lord. Let's do what we can and trust in God for the rest. - Athanasius Fri, 28 Dec 2012 10:01:38 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15088 @manfred Don't let Dr. Francis Beckwith know you think that anything that happens is "the price we pay for Original Sin and our own Sins." He doesn't agree ... - Ib Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:44:40 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15087 Post Script: While John Adams did not use the term, he did not think that a democratic republic was "transferable" to other countries or cultures; as for it to work the citizens had to be religious and moral. Now that we have slid down the slippery slope into secularism and the religious and moral aspects have largely disappeared, we have to deal with an elite leadership which is pragmatic, amoral and calloused toward any religious sense. The Church opened a real Pandora's Box which may never close when it abandoned the de Fide teaching on Hell ( an editor of TCT stated in another venue that Hell is not mentioned by name in any of the sixteen documents of Vat. II). The horrible result of this is not only are the elite no longer fearful of life after death (if it exists at all), but the person who shoots up a mall, office, courtroom or school no longer fears Hell as he/she usually commits suicide to prove it when the authorities arrive. The majority wanted anthropocentric-man focused instead of God focused? Well we have it. - Manfred Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:35:09 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15086 It is interesting to me that there is another body of foreign law, promulgated by a well-known international authority and developed over the centuries, that holds the intentional procurement of an abortion to be an intrinsically evil act. According to that body of foreign law, the penalty for such an act, which is in fact worse than death, is automatic excommunication. No doubt, the selective Supremes won't just consider any foreign law... - Jim M. Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:15:24 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15085 How about legislation that specifically disallows any US court from using any foreign legislation/findings, etc in adjudicating? Perhaps a constitutional amendment? - Louise Fri, 28 Dec 2012 07:16:13 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15084 It is important for us to remember that God knows all that is occurring and He is allowing it to happen. We have only to read the Gospels of Christ's early life: Joseph, Jesus' stepfather, being warned by an Angel to flee with Mary and the Child to Egypt as the Child's life is in danger, their stay in Egypt and the Angel returning again to announce to Joseph that he should return home with his family as: Those who desired the death of the Child are now dead themselves. God put His Son, Mary Immaculate and her spouse Joseph through this. As Newman wrote: He has His reasons, He does nothing in vain. God also allowed the slaughter of the Innocents in Christ's time. He has also allowed all the horrors since the beginning of time as the price we pay for Original Sin and our own Sins. "Amen, Amen. I say to you that this world will not pass away until every jot and tittle has been satisfied." - Manfred Fri, 28 Dec 2012 06:25:48 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15083 We should call this what it is: flat tyranny. I would call it "cultural tyranny," with the important reservation, that what it actually does is destroy culture, replacing culture with a drab anti-cultural homogeneity dictated from above. It is the ghastly parody of the real union in the Church, which embraces and elevates all cultures. - Tony Esolen Fri, 28 Dec 2012 05:19:18 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15082 This is a hard article that is very fitting for today's feast, of the Holy Innocents. In telling us that a majority of the Court supports the usage of international legal "norms" and "decisions" that prevail against innocent life, it leaves us little hope, on the natural plane, of course. Is there any doubt that we are at something akin to the very first days of the Church, when the faithful would rescue from exposure children left to die and would offer succor to single pregnant women. With the public powers aligned against the Church -- as, perhaps, never before -- it becomes increasingly vital that in addition to Mr. Ruse's good work in the arena of public opinion, exposing the works of darkness, more and more committed Christians have to be more and more engaged in personal apostolate and the works of mercy -- spiritual and corporal. The Faith spread in the first days because, Tacitus tells us, of the way "they love each other." It will spread in our days when this is said of us again. A very wise priest recently twittered that it is time for us to get out of the comfort zone of our cultural Christianity, whatever cultural Christianity we live. I think Mr. Ruse's article points us in that direction. Msgr. Pope blogged earlier this week on the Bloody Octave of Christmas: it is wise for us to remember that Christ comes to us to offer salvation and hope -- and that his offer contains a command to decide, to leave the comfort zone and follow Him come what may, or to die in our sins. There is no faith without works. God make us equal to the tasks before us. - Dave Fri, 28 Dec 2012 04:13:44 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15081 This is inevitble, as long as well-meaning people embrace the fallacy of law as embodying universal norms. As Pascal pointed out, “He who obeys them [the laws] because they are just, obeys a justice which is imaginary and not the essence of law; it is quite self-contained [elle est toute ramassée en soi], it is law and nothing more.” - Michael Paterson-Seymour Thu, 27 Dec 2012 22:23:47 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15080 Typo alert: my earlier post should read "Arian kings" rather than "Aryan kings". Homonyms sometimes prevail when typing quickly .... - Ib Thu, 27 Dec 2012 20:18:13 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2012/bad-influences-from-abroad.html#comment-15079 This is one of the reasons that many people believe we are already in an Age of Barbarity. The very language of the Founders has been usurped to increase governmental power, the rule of non-elected elites has been imposed through a charade of democracy, Christian faith has been designated as both ipso facto irrational and an impediment to human flourishing, and mass murder has been declared to be a social good. This is an Age of Barbarity in which the ancient notion of a life of virtue (I.e., a holy life) is considered reprehensible. Alasdair MacIntyre, writing 30 years ago, already saw the signs of it in European governments: What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another -- doubtless very different -- St. Benedict." (p. 263, pub. 1981) The barbarians are governing us -- and have been for quite some time. Most of the governmental elites, like the Aryan kings of old, regard Roman Catholicism and other ancient Christian traditions with contempt. It becomes less and less likely that anything but barbarous laws and regulations will emerge from them. The earlier "Dark Age" lasted three hundred years. May we hope that this new Age of Barbarity will be any shorter? - Ib Thu, 27 Dec 2012 20:08:57 +0100