DEMENTED: Grade-school Lolita: ‘So Sexy So Soon’ The sexualized childhood and how it affects kids younger than you think

The ironic thing is that MSNBC posts this photo that I had to edit with the young girls' cleavage... shameless. Using sex to sell a story about how kids are exposed too early to sex. Unbelievable. Click on the MSNBC link and see what I mean.

Read the whole thing here at MSNBC:
TODAY
updated 10:03 a.m. CT, Wed., Aug. 6, 2008

In their new book “So Sexy So Soon” authors Diane Levin and Jean Kilbourne write about the trend of children becoming sexualized at a young age due to media images and marketing campaigns that encourage youth to be “sexy,” and they offer advice on how parents can protect their kids. An excerpt.

Chapter one: Never too young to be sexy
It has never been easy being a parent. But today, it has gotten even more difficult. A 2002 survey by an organization called Public Agenda found that 76 percent of parents felt it was a lot harder to raise children today than when they were growing up, and 47 percent reported that their biggest challenge was trying to protect their children from negative societal influences, including disturbing and confusing images, violence, and age-inappropriate messages appearing in the media. How would you have answered this survey? Are you, too, having a hard time trying to protect your children from negative influences? Are you finding it difficult to set and enforce limits on the media that your children are exposed to — to determine how much, when, and what? As parents, you are often told that it’s your job to “just say no” to all of the inappropriate content out there, and that this will solve the problem. But just saying no won’t solve the problem, and anyway, you can’t say no to everything! Instead, we simply have to deal with the popular culture in our children’s lives, often at the most unexpected times, in unforeseen ways, and whether we want to or not. This book is designed to help you do just that. And in order to be able to do so, the first order of business is to examine and recognize when and how the new sexualized childhood is influencing children from a young age.

Several recent books and news and research reports have expressed concern about today’s sexual attitudes and behavior of many adolescents, and increasingly even tweens (eight- to twelve-year-olds). These accounts often make it seem as if the behavior in question suddenly appears out of a vacuum when children enter high school (or middle school). Rarely do we hear about what was happening in the early years that paved the way for what is happening with teens.

There is a lot going on in children’s lives around issues of sexuality and sexiness that is important for the caring adults in their lives to recognize. The following stories from parents and teachers make it very clear that if we are to understand and deal with the sexualization of childhood, we must begin our efforts with very young children.

Crying in the bathtub [this is so terrible]
Jennifer reported that one evening not long ago, her seven-year-old daughter Hannah began crying in the bathtub. Alarmed, Jennifer asked what was wrong. Hannah responded, “I’m fat! I’m fat! I want to be pretty like Isabelle — sexy like her! Then Judd would like me too!” [keep in mind this is a SEVEN YEAR OLD speaking... horrible]Jennifer knew Isabelle, a very thin, very popular girl in Hannah’s class who wore “stylish” clothes that Jennifer thought were inappropriate for a seven-year-old. Jennifer put her hand on Hannah’s shoulder and said she liked Hannah’s body — it was a wonderful body for a seven-year-old and she certainly didn’t need to lose weight. But Hannah continued to cry and to say that she wanted to go on a diet. Jennifer felt uncertain about what to say or do next. In her view, Hannah had a normal body for a seven-year-old girl. Jennifer [ya think, Mom... pull your head out of your a$$] thought it must be abnormal for such a young child to be thinking about diets, let alone wanting boys to like her for being “pretty” and “sexy.” But, normal or not, Jennifer saw that Hannah was truly concerned and distressed, and she wanted to do something to help.

Desecration of the Eucharist

Atheist professor desecrates stolen Host
By Anna Arco
1 August 2008

Priests at the London Oratory have called for prayers of reparation after a consecrated Host was allegedly stolen during High Mass and desecrated by an atheist professor in America.

Several priests have celebrated Masses of reparation this week responding to a video posted on the internet of a young man taking the Host and later placing it next to a condom, claiming he was holding it "hostage" inside the prophylactic until the Pope changed his policy on contraception in light of Africa’s Aids epidemic.

An evening of reparation with Mass and Adoration with prayers, litanies and silent meditation is planned for next Wednesday. Oratorians have also called on the faithful to make personal acts of reparation this week and next "for all the outrages against the Blessed Sacrament around the world".

"Close observation of the film and of the facts seems to suggest that this is not an elaborate hoax, but depicts something that really occurred," said the e-mail asking people to make acts of reparation. It also asked people to pray for "the conversion of the culprits, that they will answer God’s call to repentance and open their hearts to receive His forgiveness".

The incident took place during the Oratory’s High Mass on July 13 and was posted on the internet soon after. It said: "The Catholic Church forfeits all rights to respect for its ludicrous beliefs, including ‘transubstantiation’, while its anti-condom campaign in Africa results in tens of thousands of deaths."

It further said: "Just because you believe that the cracker has some special significance doesn’t mean that I have to respect that ridiculous belief. I think the moral cost of disrespecting a cracker is a lot less than the moral cost of disrespecting human life; a concept that should be more important to you people."

A follow-up link to the video claimed that the young man had sent the host to Paul Myers, an atheist professor at the University of Minnesota who is thought to have further desecrated the Host by piercing it with a rusty nail and throwing it in the bin. In a post on his blog, dated July 24, Prof Myers wrote: "I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffee grounds and a banana peel. My apologies to those who hoped for more, but the worst I can do is show my unconcerned contempt."

Prof Myers caused controversy earlier in July when he called a "Eucharist challenge" in which he incited people to steal consecrated Hosts from Catholic churches and send them to him so that he can desecrate them.

He wrote: "Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There’s no way I can personally get them – my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I’m sure – but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I’ll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won’t be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the Pope in the—-s, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart."

His words followed a theft of a Host in Florida earlier this year which had American Catholics up in arms.

As a result of July’s alleged theft and desecration of the Eucharist, priests at the London Oratory are urging worshipers to be vigilant at Mass and to receive Communion on the tongue. Communion plates have started being used at certain Masses again.

Father Z. has some good reflections:

First, it occurs to me that more and more incidents of disrespect are being shown by non-believers toward the Catholic Eucharist. Off the top of my head I can think of not only this awful business with the prof at the U of Minn, and also the theft from the Brompton Oratory, but also the theft of the Host in Florida, the reception of Communion by weirdly dressed people in San Francisco, during the Pope’s visit Catholic pro-abortion politicians receiving, and a non-believing journalist receiving at Tim Russert’s funeral Mass.

Who goes forward for Communion is often hard to control

But there is something simple we can control.

No more Communion in the hand.

Not a fool-proof (and never was that term better applied) safeguard, but one that greatly reduces risk of profanation.

A crazy but interesting analysis of Lambeth 2008...

The death of liberal Anglicanism
The Anglican church has sacrificed liberalism in order to achieve unity. Now it's just a slightly nicer version of Roman Catholicism [What???! Hilarious.]
By Theo Hobson

What has the Lambeth Conference accomplished? It has impressed Anglicanism more strongly with the spirit of its leader. Despite the boycott, it has given his vision new authority. A few years ago it looked like Archbishop Rowan Williams was an essentially solitary figure, doing an impossible tightrope dance. The weird thing is that he has persuaded mainstream Anglicanism to join him on the high wire. He has said: "My intensely awkward position is representative of the church at large" – and the church has agreed. Perhaps it has no other option, but dissolution.

A few years ago it seemed that Williams was asking liberal Anglicanism to make an impossible sacrifice. He was saying, "Let us bite our liberal tongues, for the sake of unity. Let us suffer the accusations of appeasing the homophobes, for the sake of unity. Let us put our desire for an inclusive church on hold, for the sake of unity. Let us be patient." It seemed outrageous. Surely most British Anglicans were committed to gay rights, and would not agree to compromise? Surely the liberals would not allow the identity of Anglicanism to be determined by the evangelical hard line on homosexuality? Surely this would do intolerable violence to the traditional openness of this church? It seemed axiomatic that the evangelicals were a minority movement – a pushy and growing one, but still a minority movement.

Yet liberal Anglicanism failed to make a stand. There were obviously lots of angry noises, but they didn't add up to anything. Amazingly enough, Williams' call for patience was generally heeded. The nature of liberal Anglicanism quietly shifted. It became meek before the rise of evangelical orthodoxy.

Is it still possible to be a liberal Anglican? Not in the old way. Liberal Anglicans have to follow Williams onto the high wire, to some extent. By staying within an institution that has taken an anti-liberal turn, they collude in his act. In other words, liberal Anglicans have been Rowanised. They buy his long-range hope for reform that the church as a whole can accept.

Why has this happened? Why hasn't a tougher liberal Anglicanism emerged that says that the truth of liberalism must not be sacrificed to "unity"? If Christian unity is so important (it would say), then surely the break with Rome was a mistake – surely Anglicans should repent of it right now. Isn't this version of Christianity one that tries to incorporate liberal principles? Why is such liberal Christian rhetoric more or less absent among Anglican clergy?

The answer, as I see it, is that institutional religion is not very compatible with liberalism, at the end of the day. It is addicted to some degree of authoritarianism, legalism. The Church of England concealed this, for centuries – thanks to its cultural establishment it was a fairly liberal Christian institution. But that era's over. It now follows the logic of Roman Catholicism – liberalism is a threat to unity.

As Giles Fraser writes in the Church Times, Christianity is an anti-legalistic religion. It emerges from a rejection of rigid moral rules. The current neo-conservative shift in the church ignores this – it "is all about the creation of a set of rules that will systematically make gospel faith all-but-impossible for Anglicans in the 21st century".

Maybe liberal Anglicans are waking up to the fact that liberalism and institutional Christianity are not gently compatible, as they were told by lots of well-meaning Anglican thinkers. That tradition is admirable, but it is dead. Williams is a deeply admirable man, but he has no vision for Christianity's renewal in the context of liberal culture. He is offering a slightly nicer version of Roman Catholicism – an international communion whose unity trumps all other concerns.

So a fairly stark choice has emerged: stay within Anglicanism, and be part of its post-liberal realignment. Or seek a new sort of Christian culture, accepting of liberalism, free of the old power-itch. Leave the ruins of Christendom behind, and build afresh, on new foundations.

R.I.P. Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)

From Andrew Cusack

Russian traditionalist, Nobel laureate, feted in the West for criticism of Soviet Communism, then spurned for rejecting liberal materialism

Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, the most famous Russian writer and historian of our age, has died at eighty-nine years of age. Solzhenitsyn was the earliest to bring first-hand knowledge of the Gulag, the Soviet system of prison colonies and labour camps, to wider Western attention. For this noble task, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 and expelled from the Soviet Union four years later, returning in 1994. After the fall of the Soviet regime, he despised Boris Yeltsin’s incompetence, identifying 1998 as the low point of Russia’s recent history. “Yeltsin decreed I be honored the highest state order,” Solzhenitsyn explained. “I replied that I was unable to receive an award from a government that had led Russia into such dire straits.”

He gave cautious support to the presidency of Vladimir Putin, and was pleased that while, in his words, “Moscow is still communist”, there was a growing readiness under Putin to admit (and even broadcast on state television) the crimes and outrages of the Soviet regime.

“Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people. And he started to do what was possible — a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments.”

Influenced by his experience in exile in both Switzerland and New England, Solzhenitsyn insisted on the need for local self-government in Russia. “Today I continue to be extremely worried by the slow and inefficient development of local self-government. But it has finally started to take place. In Yeltsin’s time, local self-government was actually barred on the regulatory level, whereas the state’s ‘vertical of power’ (i.e. Putin’s centralized and top-down administration) is delegating more and more decisions to the local population. Unfortunately, this process is still not systematic in character.”

Solzhenitsyn expressed further disappointment with the new Western imperialism being waged against Russia, embodied in the 1999 War against Serbia which turned so many Russian minds against the Western powers they had previously been quite friendly to.

In a recent interview with Der Spiegel, Solzhenitsyn was asked whether he was afraid of death:

“No, I am not afraid of death any more. When I was young the early death of my father cast a shadow over me — he died at the age of 27 — and I was afraid to die before all my literary plans came true. But between 30 and 40 years of age my attitude to death became quite calm and balanced. I feel it is a natural, but no means the final, milestone of one’s existence.”

When the interviewer from Der Spiegel wished him many more years of “creative life”, Solzhenitsyn calmly responded “No, no. Don’t. It’s enough.”

Born in the Caucasian spa town of Kislovodsk in 1918 just a year-and-a-month after the Bolshevik revolution, Solzhenitsyn’s father was a wealthy self-made man who died in a hunting accident shortly before his birth. He was raised in humble circumstances in a Russia mired by civil war that did not end until the last tsarist general, his back to the Pacific Ocean, surrendered in 1923. All land was confiscated by the Soviet government and the Solzhenitsyns’ holdings were turned into a collective farm.

His well-educated mother had encouraged Alexander’s academic disposition and raised him in the Russian Orthodox Church. Solzhenitsyn studied mathematics at Rostov State University while simultaneously taking correspondence courses from the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History. He had not questioned the Soviet apparatus until his service in the Red Army during the Second World War, for which he was twice decorated. In February 1945, he wrote a letter home from Soviet-occupied East Prussia in which he included a passing comment that questioned Stalin’s handling of the war. The letter, like all letters sent home by soldiers, was opened and read by the security apparatus. Solzhenitsyn was arrested, beaten, interrogated, and four months later given the standard sentence of eight years in a labour camp followed by permanent internal exile.

It was during his imprisonment and internal exile, when he spent every night writing in secret, that Solzhenitsyn rejected Marxism and developed the religious philosophy for which he became known. In 1962, with the approval of Nikita Khrushchev, his book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich was published. It was the first book ever printed in the Soviet Union to deal openly with the system of forced labour in prison camps and caused a sensation both in the USSR and the West. In 1964, Khrushchev was ousted by the Soviet politburo, and Solzhenitsyn’s moment in the sun came to a swift conclusion as he was denied permission to publish and had some of his papers seized by the KGB.

Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, but refused to receive the award for fear that he would not be allowed to return to the Soviet Union and so be separated from his family. In 1974, the government of the USSR deported him to West Germany and stripped him of his Soviet citizenship. Feted in the West, he spent some time in Switzerland before accepting an invitation to reside at Stanford University in California. In 1976 he moved to the woodland town of Cavendish in the state of Vermont, which remained his home for the next eighteen years of his life. Two years later, Harvard University awarded him an honorary degree, and the incident took place which ended the West’s love affair with the exiled Soviet dissident.

Giving the 1978 Commencement Address at Harvard University, Alexander Solzhenitsyn delivered a sharp and stunning rebuke to the modern West, repudiating its liberalism, materialism, and supremacism.

“There is this belief,” Solzhenitsyn said, “that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life. Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which developed out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet’s development is quite different.”

He went on to describe the mentality which led the Western elites to adopt multiculturalism and pluralism, while they simultaneously lacked the courage to defend their Western culture or to challenge Communist governments which did not have the support of the peoples they governed. Solzhenitsyn described this lack of courage as “the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days”.

“The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists. Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?”

Solzhenitsyn went on to condemn the materialism of Western culture, fostered by the welfare state. He argued that the extreme safety and prosperity of the Western world caused Western people to be unwilling and reluctant to defend the most essential and important values that their culture and tradition were based upon, for fear of relinquishing the “physical splendour” they enjoy “to an extent their fathers and grandfathers could not even dream about”.

“Even biology knows that habitual extreme safety and well-being are not advantageous for a living organism. Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious mask.”

The wide freedom allowed by the rule of law in the West is admirable, Solzhenitsyn argued, but in these circumstances it led to a system in which morality and legality were confused, whereby what is legal is automatically also considered acceptable:

“One almost never sees voluntary self-restraint. Everybody operates at the extreme limit of those legal frames. An oil company is legally blameless when it purchases an invention of a new type of energy in order to prevent its use. A food product manufacturer is legally blameless when he poisons his produce to make it last longer: after all, people are free not to buy it. I have spent all my life under a communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.”

The hyperindividualism of the West, Solzhenitsyn argued, hampered the necessary civil good from being enacted:

“A statesman who wants to achieve something important and highly constructive for his country has to move cautiously and even timidly; there are thousands of hasty and irresponsible critics around him, parliament and the press keep rebuffing him. As he moves ahead, he has to prove that every single step of his is well-founded and absolutely flawless. Actually an outstanding and particularly gifted person who has unusual and unexpected initiatives in mind hardly gets a chance to assert himself; from the very beginning, dozens of traps will be set out for him. Thus mediocrity triumphs with the excuse of restrictions imposed by democracy.”

“Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.”

“And what shall we say about the dark realm of criminality as such? Legal frames (especially in the United States) are broad enough to encourage not only individual freedom but also certain individual crimes. The culprit can go unpunished or obtain undeserved leniency with the support of thousands of public defenders. When a government starts an earnest fight against terrorism, public opinion immediately accuses it of violating the terrorists’ civil rights. There are many such cases.”

“Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature; the world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems which must be corrected. Strangely enough, though the best social conditions have been achieved in the West, there still is criminality and there even is considerably more of it than in the pauper and lawless Soviet society.”

“The press too, of course, enjoys the widest freedom. (I shall be using the word press to include all media). But what sort of use does it make of this freedom? Here again, the main concern is not to infringe the letter of the law. There is no moral responsibility for deformation or disproportion. What sort of responsibility does a journalist have to his readers, or to history? If they have misled public opinion or the government by inaccurate information or wrong conclusions, do we know of any cases of public recognition and rectification of such mistakes by the same journalist or the same newspaper? No, it does not happen, because it would damage sales. A nation may be the victim of such a mistake, but the journalist always gets away with it. One may safely assume that he will start writing the opposite with renewed self-assurance.”

Again referring to the legalism of Western society, Solzhenitsyn criticized the attitude which purported to refuse morality a place in political decisionmaking:

“Very well known representatives of your society say: we cannot apply moral criteria to politics. Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute Evil in the world. On the contrary, only moral criteria can help the West against communism’s well planned world strategy. There are no other criteria.”

“… no weapons, no matter how powerful, can help the West until it overcomes its loss of willpower. In a state of psychological weakness, weapons become a burden for the capitulating side. To defend oneself, one must also be ready to die; there is little such readiness in a society raised in the cult of material well-being.”

But what, Solzhenitsyn asks, is the cause of these unfortunate circumstances in which the West finds itself? “How has this unfavorable relation of forces come about?”

“How did the West decline from its triumphal march to its present sickness? Have there been fatal turns and losses of direction in its development? It does not seem so. The West kept advancing socially in accordance with its proclaimed intentions, with the help of brilliant technological progress. And all of a sudden it found itself in its present state of weakness.”

“This means that the mistake must be at the root, at the very basis of human thinking in the past centuries. I refer to the prevailing Western view of the world which was first born during the Renaissance and found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment. It became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him. It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.”

“This new way of thinking, which had imposed on us its guidance, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man nor did it see any higher task than the attainment of happiness on earth. It based modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend to worship man and his material needs. Everything beyond physical well-being and accumulation of material goods, all other human requirements and characteristics of a subtler and higher nature, were left outside the area of attention of state and social systems, as if human life did not have any superior sense. That provided access for evil, of which in our days there is a free and constant flow. Merely freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones.”

“However, in early democracies, as in American democracy at the time of its birth, all individual human rights were granted because man is God’s creature. That is, freedom was given to the individual conditionally, in the assumption of his constant religious responsibility. Such was the heritage of the preceding thousand years. Two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. The West ended up by truly enforcing human rights, sometimes even excessively, but man’s sense of responsibility to God and society grew dimmer and dimmer. In the past decades, the legalistically selfish aspect of Western approach and thinking has reached its final dimension and the world wound up in a harsh spiritual crisis and a political impasse. All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the Twentieth century’s moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the Nineteenth Century.”

“As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness.”

“We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the [Communist] East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections.”

“It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. … Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?”

“If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.”

“This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but — upward.”

Read the rest here.

Stupid celebrities

I had to post this because it shows how stupid and disconnected celebrities really are. The irony of this situation is just... I don't know... STUPID!!!!!!

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Lindsay Lohan said Friday that police have no business getting involved in her personal life, a day after the police chief explained that the paparazzi were no longer an issue - in part because the 22-year-old actress had evidently "gone gay."

"Police chiefs shouldn't get involved in everyone else's business when it comes to their personal life. It's inappropriate," Lohan said in a video shot by paparazzi [!!!!!!!! She used the paparazzi to tell everyone to keep out of her personal life!!!!!!!!!! Too stupid!] Friday and posted on TMZ.com. In the footage, Lohan and gal pal Samantha Ronson are trekking through the Los Angeles Airport on their way to catch a flight to Chicago.

Zenit interview on chastity and abstinence

Beyond Condoms in the AIDS Debate
Interview With Caritas Expert on HIV

By Karna Swanson

MEXICO CITY, JULY 31, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Teaching abstinence outside marriage and fidelity within has been proved to be much more effective in decreasing the spread of HIV than simply distributing condoms, according to the special advisor on HIV for Caritas Internationalis.

Monsignor Robert Vitillo, who will participate in the XVII International AIDS Conference, to be held Aug. 3-8 in Mexico City, adds that unfortunately, abstinence and infidelity are not given the attention they deserve among experts and researchers.

Some 25,000 experts, physicians, activists and decision-makers from around the world are expected to attend the conference organized by the International AIDS Society, which has at its theme "Universal Action Now."

Caritas Internationalis sponsored a pre-conference seminar Wednesday for Caritas participants from Latin America, and on Aug. 5, together with the Jesuits of Mexico and the Catholic HIV and AIDS Network, it will host delegates from Catholic organizations in an evening of prayer and discussion.

In this interview with ZENIT, Monsignor Vitillo shares what he sees as the Church's role in fighting the spread of the AIDS virus, and the role of faith-based organizations at the conference.

Q: You say a major challenge the Church faces with regards to AIDS is ignorance of what the Church is doing to fight it. What is the Church doing? What is unique about the Church's approach?

Monsignor Vitillo: As I have been privileged to witness the response of the Catholic Church to the HIV pandemic on literally every continent, I have noted that the Church's response is very consistent with its overall mission:

-- To teach people both about the facts related to this pandemic, and about the permanent values that should be the foundation of our response. This includes both how to prevent the further spread of HIV -- by observing sexual abstinence outside marriage and life-long, mutual fidelity within marriage -- and how we should respond to those already living with or affected by the virus -- with acceptance, love, and solidarity, and without discrimination, rejection, or stigmatization.

-- To serve people. Here the Caritas organizations at the regional, national, diocesan and parish levels have played -- and continue to do so -- an important role in organizing and replicating health care, social services, emotional support, income-generation activities, orphan care, advocacy and self-help programs for and with persons living with or affected by HIV.

In addition to Caritas, there are many other Catholic organizations working to help those affected by HIV.

-- To provide pastoral care to persons living with or affected by HIV.

Many people who know firsthand the impact of the virus are searching to deepen their relationship with God, especially as they face the challenge which HIV has posed to them and/or to their loved ones.

They also desperately want to understand that this virus has not been sent as a "punishment from God" -- a number of bishops' conferences, as well as Pope John Paul II, addressed this issue very clearly by explaining that, according to Catholic doctrine, God does not "punish" people by sending them illnesses.

The Black Madonna of Mount Irazú

In 1635 a young black girl found a small black stone statue of Our Lady and the Holy Child in the woods near Cartago. She took it home with her but it returned by itself to where she had found it. After several futile attempts to keep it, she took the statue to the village priest, who tried hiding it, but to no avail. It was always found back in the woods.

The black families nearby built a little chapel to house their treasured Mother and Child on the spot that she herself had chosen to stay. In time it became a famous place of pilgrimage for all of Costa Rica. The image of the black Madonna, gaily dressed with Jesus, was solemnly crowned in 1927.

Damian Thompson on Lambeth 2008

Split at birth?

The Anglican Communion's 10 year meeting is getting more crazy and interesting by the minute.

Thompson reports that Rt Rev David Rossdale, Bishop of Grimsby, wrote the following about the C of E recently:

"We have been a Church which has been held together by belief, as contained in the historic creeds, and not by agreeing to particular statements about that faith."

Excellent.

In other Lambeth Conference news...

A senior Vatican Cardinal visiting the Lambeth Conference has delivered an incredible rebuff to its 650 Anglican bishops, telling them they are heading towards "spiritual Alzheimer's" and "ecclesial Parkinson's".

The comments by Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for Evangelisation, must count as one of the rudest things a Vatican prelate has said to Anglicans since the dawn of the ecumenical era.

It can mean only one thing: Rome - and therefore the Pope - has given up on the Anglican Communion. Here is the quote, from Cardinal Dias's address to the conference yesterday evening:

"Much is spoken today of diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. By analogy, their symptoms can, at times, be found even in our own Christian communities. For example, when we live myopically in the fleeting present, oblivious of our past heritage and apostolic traditions, we could well be suffering from spiritual Alzheimer's. And when we behave in a disorderly manner, going whimsically our own way without any co-ordination with the head or the other members of our community, it could be ecclesial Parkinson's."

Diaz is one of those Cardinals who favours welcoming traditionalist Anglicans into the Catholic Church. I reckon that liberals will be deeply insulted by his barbs - not least on grounds of political correctness - but that traditionalists will be nodding their heads in agreement.

One thing I'd love to know: did Cardinal Dias clear his speech with Cardinals Kasper and Murphy-O'Connor before he delivered it? Don't bet on it.

Some good news out of Iraq

This is good to see; whether you were against the war in the beginning or not, it's clear that we have to stay and pick up the pieces. I have noticed very little about Iraq, and a whole lot of Barak in the press... hmmmmm, maybe we're doing pretty well over there?

US monthly toll in Iraq at lowest since invasion
Jul 31 08:43 AM US/Eastern

Eleven US soldiers were killed in Iraq in July, the lowest monthly toll since the 2003 invasion, according Pentagon figures, highlighting what US commanders say is a marked drop in overall violence.

The number compares with the deadliest month of November 2004 when 137 American troops were slain, an independent toll by icasualties.org showed. The previous low was in May this year when 19 soldiers were killed.

Since the US-led invasion of March 2003 that toppled now executed dictator Saddam Hussein, a total of 4,125 US troops have been killed in Iraq, according to independent website icasualties.org.

The downward trend began in the middle of last year after a US troop "surge", although there were two spikes in bloodshed in March and April when fierce fighting erupted between Shiite militiamen and US-led forces.

Icasualties.org said the number of Iraqi civilian dead fell to 302 in July, the lowest since April 2005, from 373 in June while the toll among Iraqi security forces rose in July to 91 from 77.

The commander of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, said in an interview published two days ago that overall violence was falling to almost "normal" levels.

Whole story here.

Hilarious & crazy: the wymyn priest ordinations...

Check out the whole thing from Fr. Z.
Commentary by Fr. Z.

Jessamine woman to be ordained a priest
By Jim Niemi
Herald-Leader Religion Writer

As a young girl growing up in Milwaukee, Janice Sevre-Duszynska often fantasized [That places it in the right category.] about becoming a priest while helping clean the sanctuary of the church her family attended.

“I’d sit in the priest’s chair, go to the pulpit, make believe I was preaching and giving communion,” she said. “I thought, ‘Why couldn’t I be up here?’” [Make believe is still fun!]

Now, 50 years later, she will get her wish, but it could come with a price — excommunication from the Roman Catholic church. [NB the small "c".] On Aug. 9, in defiance of the church’s 2,000-year ban on women in the priesthood, she will be ordained [No she won’t be.] by Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an activist group that has protested the ban since 2002. [Okay… what language is being used here? So far, its a "ban". Can’t only things that are actually possible be banned? Right there is a ban on importing Cuban cigars in the USA. But it is still possible to smoke them here.]

Sevre-Duszynska, 58, a Jessamine County resident and grandmother of three, has protested the church’s stance [now its a "stance".] for the last decade.

In 1998, she disrupted the ordination of a Lexington priest [classy!] at the Cathedral of Christ the King by pleading with then-Bishop J. Kendrick Williams to ordain her as well. In 2000, she impersonated a reporter [a liar too!] to attend an annual meeting of Catholic bishops in Washington, D.C., where she grabbed the microphone and again called for the ordination of women. And in 2002, she was arrested as part of a group protesting ordination of deacons by the Catholic Diocese of Atlanta. [and stingy! "If I can’t be ordained, no one can!"]

Choice Obama quotes...

A Washington Post article: "Obama continues hectic victory tour."

Inside, according to a witness, he told the House members, "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

Some say the supremely confident Obama -- nearly 100 days from the election, he pronounces that "the odds of us winning are very good" -- has become a president-in-waiting. But in truth, he doesn't need to wait: He has already amassed the trappings of the office, without those pesky decisions.

Later, Obama's aides issued an official-sounding statement, borrowing the language of White House communiques: "I had a productive and wide-ranging discussion. . . . I look forward to working with the democratically elected government of Pakistan."

Obama was even feeling confident enough to give British Prime Minister Gordon Brown some management advice over the weekend. "If what you're trying to do is micromanage and solve everything, then you end up being a dilettante," he advised the prime minister, portraying his relative inexperience...

Ecclesiology doesn't get more messed up than this...

The African bishops- laying down the smack on heresy in the Anglican Communion!

"For the Sake of Unity" by Austin Ivereigh

From the ultra-liberal (click for whole article) America Catholic magazine...
Being a member of the clergy in the C of E sounds like working in Washinton D.C.; lots of personalities, but no substance and little accomplished.

Here are some choice quotes from the article (I saved the best for last...)

During a recent debate at the Church of England’s General Synod, N. T. Wright, the Scripture scholar and bishop of Durham, summed up the crisis facing the Anglican Communion rather graphically. “We are living through, on many levels, a massive outworking of the law of unintended consequences,” he said. “Or, in plain English, a slow-moving train wreck.”

[snip]

As the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Primates, which is held every 10 years, meets in Canterbury (July 16-Aug. 3) against a backdrop of what journalists are calling the “summer of schism,” it is worth noting that the cause of the current Anglican crisis is not disagreement over homosexuality. Most Catholics as well as nonbelievers I know have strongly diverse views about same-sex blessings, civil partnerships and gay adoptions; homosexuality is one of the great divisive issues of our age.

But disagreements do not necessarily lead to divisions or crises. The real question is why the Anglican Church has not been able to contain the disagreements, and why they are causing the church to tear itself apart.

The current crisis is not, in other words, doctrinal; it is ecclesiological. As the center of Anglicanism has moved away from the Church of England to the global communion, the glue that has held the Church of England together has been exposed as inadequate for binding the Anglican Churches worldwide.

[snip]

He [describing Rowan Williams] exemplified this when—although personally he is convinced that the church will come to accept homosexual partnerships—he vetoed in 2004 the appointment of a gay friend, Jeffrey John, as Bishop of Reading, because he knew it would inflame disunity. The “pro-gay” lobby accused him of surrendering to evangelical pressure, but they misread the decision. Archbishop Williams was demonstrating that a move too soon—however principled—can destroy unity. [what 'principle' is being referred to here????]He has more than once quoted to both the Episcopal Church and the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans St. Paul’s words to the Corinthians (1 Cor 11:33) to “wait for one another.” [what the hell does that even mean? If you know eventually that the C of E will slide into further relativism, why does it matter to wait? What cowardice. If it's the truth that gays should be bishops, then Williams has no principles to stand up for it, and if it's wrong (obviously) then he has shown a lack of character with those words. By the way, what kind of ecclesiology is this? And who ever accused the Catholic Church of clericalism? This is amazing!]

So far they have not. A willingness to “suffer for the sake of the unity of the church” [you'll never hear of the Catholic Church speaking an untruth for the sake of unity, but the C of E prides itself on it] is something many Anglicans assume only Catholics have to do. The openly gay bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, is in England, popping up on television and radio to declare that Jesus loves him and that history is on his side, while the Global Anglican Future Conference evangelicals are growling from abroad, convinced the Bible is on their side. Kenosis for the sake of unity is not on the minds of any of them.

But that does not stop two-thirds of the world’s Anglican bishops who are gathering in Canterbury. If at the Lambeth Conference they can listen to each other—and to God—long enough, there may be a chance for Archbishop Williams still to build the structures on which future global Anglican coexistence so obviously depends. Global Anglicanism after the Lambeth Conference may still look like a “slow-moving train wreck,” but there is a good chance, under Archbishop Williams, that it will still be on the rails [are we supossed to root for this train wreck to NOT happen? sounds pretty pathetic. The writer clearly doesn't get something.].

BEST QUOTE OF THE ARTICLE (an unintended consequence?)

The gravitational center of Anglicanism has drifted southward, to countries where the church is not part of a liberal political project, and where excessive compromise and nuance mute its proclamation of the Gospel.

Some disturbing quotes from our 'speaker lady'

Smiles for the dictator of Syria's regime.

She hit the national television circuit Monday with her new book, “Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters.” Next month, she’ll chair the convention in Denver that will nominate Barack Obama — “the next president of the United States. I feel very certain of that,” Pelosi says.

“I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,” she says impatiently when questioned. “I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.”

“I respect the office that I hold,” she says. “And when you win the election, you win the majority, and what is the power of the speaker? To set the agenda, the power of recognition, and I am not giving the gavel away to anyone.”

Let’s face it, Washington: This speaker is different. She’s the first woman ever to hold the post and a very tough one at that, with a penchant for the mystical.

Notice the obsession with gender and power, and the arrogance to think she can save the planet. Absurd.

Humanae Vitae - 40 years later... a comparison of 2 editorials

"I'm sorry, Mr. Kennedy, but your behavior is totally unacceptable."

What an interesting comparison...
thanks to Fr. Z. for his commentary.

Op-Ed Contributor
The Pope vs. the Pill

By JOHN L. ALLEN Jr.
Published: July 27, 2008

FORTY years ago last week, Pope Paul VI provoked the greatest uproar against a papal edict in the long history of the Roman Catholic Church when he reiterated the church’s ban on artificial birth control by issuing the encyclical “Humanae Vitae.” At the time, commentators predicted that not only would the teaching collapse under its own weight, but it might well bring the “monarchical papacy” down with it.

Those forecasts badly underestimated the capacity of the Catholic Church to resist change and to stand its ground.

Down the centuries, Catholics have frequently groused [excellent word, and it sets a tone…. keep reading] about papal rulings. Usually they channeled that dissent into blithe disobedience, [still setting the tone…] though occasionally a Roman mob would run the Successor of Peter out of town on a rail just to make a point. In 1848, Pope Pius IX was driven into exile by Romans incensed at his refusal to embrace Italy’s unification.

Never before July 25, 1968, however, had opposition been so immediate, so public and so widespread. World-famous theologians called press conferences to rebut the pope’s reasoning. Conferences of Catholic bishops issued statements that all but licensed churchgoers to ignore the encyclical. Pastors openly criticized “Humanae Vitae” from the pulpit. [painting a picture as a backdrop to what is coming up…]

In a nutshell, “Humanae Vitae” held that the twin functions of marriage — to foster love between the partners and to be open to children — are so closely related as to be inseparable. In practice, that meant a resounding no to the pill. [Excellent. Allen actually gives a fair view of the reasoning in Humanae vitae. NB: This wasn’t published in the journal he usually writes for, the NCRep – which had its own dissenting editorial. For the NCRep Humanae vitae was about holding on to power and, digest this, against "real" love.]

The encyclical quickly became seen, both in the secular world and in liberal Catholic circles, as the papacy’s Waterloo. It was so out of sync with the hopes and desires of the Catholic rank and file [too be fair, we have to include the many of the hierarchy] that it simply could not stand.

And in some ways, it didn’t. Today polls show that Catholics, at least in the West, dissent [I am glad he calls it what it is.] from the teaching on birth control, often by majorities exceeding 80 percent.

But at the official level, Catholicism’s commitment to “Humanae Vitae” is more solid than ever. [This use of "official" is not charged with the negativity that it has in the NCRep editorial.]

During his almost 27-year papacy, John Paul II provided a deeper theoretical basis for traditional Catholic sexual morality through his “theology of the body.” In brief, the late pope’s argument was that human sexuality is an image of the creative love among the three persons of the Trinity, as well as God’s love for humanity. Birth control “changes the language” of sexuality, because it prevents life-giving love.

That’s a claim many Catholics might dispute, but the reading groups and seminars devoted to contemplating John Paul’s “theology of the body” mean that Catholics disposed to defend the church’s teaching now have a more formidable set of resources than they did when Paul VI wrote “Humanae Vitae.” [Good point!]

In addition, three decades of bishops’ appointments by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, [A very important factor. I have written about this more than once: this is one of the most important things to consider during the long pontificate of John Paul II.] both unambiguously committed to “Humanae Vitae,” mean that senior leaders in Catholicism these days are far less inclined than they were in 1968 to distance themselves from the ban on birth control, or to soft-pedal it. A striking number of Catholic bishops have recently brought out documents of their own defending “Humanae Vitae.” [I know he is relating facts, here, but I wonder if Allen isn’t quietly arguing that dissent from Humanae vitae is out of step with the present direction of the Church? Namely, if it isn’t a washed up cliche of the "sixties"?]

Advocates of the encyclical draw assurance from the declining fertility rates across the developed world, especially in Europe. No country in Europe has a fertility rate above 2.1, the number of children each woman needs to have by the end of her child-bearing years to keep a population stable. [Perhaps I am unclear about terminology, but do we mean "fertility" rate or "birth" rate? There might also be fertility problems on the rise because of the damage (usually unknown) done by some sexually transmitted diseases, but surely contraception and aboritifcients and abortions are keeping the number of live births very low.]

Even with increasing immigration, Europe is projected to suffer a population loss in the 21st century that will rival the impact of the Black Death, leading some to talk about the continent’s “demographic suicide.” [Well said! An artifically created "Black death" as the consequences of, really it must be said, "dissent" from Humanae vitae’s conclusions in many ways.]

Not coincidentally, Europe is also the most secular region of the world, where the use of artificial contraception is utterly unproblematic. Among those committed to Catholic teaching, the obvious question becomes: What more clear proof of the folly of separating sex and child-bearing could one want? [Hits the nail squarely on the head.]

So the future of “Humanae Vitae” as the teaching of the Catholic Church seems secure, [Because the Church is committed consistently to teach the truth.] even if it will also continue to be the most widely flouted injunction of the church at the level of practice.

The encyclical’s surprising resilience is a reminder that forecasting the Catholic future in moments of crisis is always a dangerous enterprise — a point with relevance to a more recent Catholic predicament. Many critics believe that the church has not yet responded adequately to the recent sex-abuse scandals, leading to predictions that the church will “have to” become more accountable, more participatory and more democratic.

While those steps may appear inevitable today, it seemed unthinkable to many observers 40 years ago that “Humanae Vitae” would still be in vigor well into the 21st century.

Catholicism can and does change, but trying to guess how and when is almost always a fool’s errand. [And some things really can’t be changed.]

John L. Allen Jr. is the senior correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter and the author of “The Rise of Benedict XVI.”

=================================================

Humanae Vitae at 40 years

By NCR Staff
Publication date:
July 25, 2008
Section:
C. Editorials

As we roll through 2008, the press is filled with 40-year anniversary stories. 1968 was a tumultuous year; some say it was a year that helped define America for years to come. [It still divides much of Catholic America, for sure.]

The baby boomers recall vividly the Vietnam War Tet offensive in January; the April assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; the Paris Peace talks and riots in May; the June assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy; and the August protest riots in Chicago at the Democratic convention among nation-shaping events that year.

Catholics might recall another 1968 defining moment, the July 29 encyclical called Humanae Vitae, literally “Of Human Life.” The encyclical was a sensitively written expression about the sanctity of marital love and the need to nurture life in marriage. But whatever else it stated, it has been remembered for only one thing: the upholding of the Catholic church’s ban on birth control.

The encyclical upheld Pope Pius XII’s support of the rhythm method (now called natural family planning) [I think there are significant differences between the old "rhythm method" and modern NFP. However, I think this was put in for a reason. The "rhythm method" was widely derided. So, I am guessing that the intention is to paint NFP with the same brush, so to discredit it. This helps to set up the point down the line.] and in doing so, revealed its particular understanding of natural law. [Did the "rhythm method" have a "particular understanding of natural law"?] Its reasoning, theologians say, rested on the physiological structure of the act of intercourse while largely discounting the larger context of human love and family life.

Less than a decade after the encyclical’s promulgation, polls showed it was overwhelmingly rejected by Catholics. Eight out of 10 adult U.S. Catholics simply disregarded it. While bishops were largely upholding the document, many priests in pastoral settings, including confessionals, were saying it was a matter for individual conscience.

By any measure, a gulf between official church teachings and Catholic practice [Again, watch the word choice. I think "official" is code for "something we don’t really have to pay attention to" because, after all, people who are moved by "the spirit/Spirit" are above that sort of backward view of the Church. All those rules stiffle real Church.] had begun to grow and was to continue to grow and to permeate a host of other Catholic teachings on sexuality and morality from homosexuality to the use of condoms in the fight against the HIV virus. The right of women to have special say in reproduction, then an almost exclusively male terrain, was soon added to the list. [Note the shift to a feminist perspective that pits women again men.]

In the four decades since the encyclical was promulgated, the church hierarchy, fully recognizing Catholic lay resistance to the strongly stated ban on the use of birth control, dug in. Pope John Paul II affirmed Humanae Vitae as a pillar of Catholic morality—as well as a pillar of papal authority. [the NCR just made this into a power issue.]

Meanwhile, Catholic lay confidence in the institution was eroding by the year. [What "institution", the Church? That is the "institutional" dimension of the Church? Otherwise, perhaps the "institution" they are talking about is "papal authority"? The antecedent isn’t entirely clear. However, the intent is clear. NCR is pitting an "official" or "institution" or "rule-bound" hierarchical Church against the lay people who are making up their own minds about things and the priests who advise them.]

Torn between following the advice of a partially lay pontifical commission, created to assess the birth control issue, a commission that eventually supported changes in church teaching, and his desire to remain consistent with earlier papal declarations, Pope Paul VI chose the later course. [Hang on. What about Paul VI’s desire to do the right thing? It wasn’t a simple choice between the past and the future. It was about the truth.] The need to assert church authority persuaded him. [Again, the NCR makes this into a power issue. The purpose is to help the reader over to the position that because the decision had such a (low) motivation, those who are enlivened the "the spirit/Spirit" can discount the teaching of Humanae vitae and other rule-bound official Church teachings about morals because they are, after all, only rooted in the desire to maintain power.]

After all, he reasoned, how could the Holy Spirit have allowed the church to be wrong for so many years on an issue of such importance? [THAT is how they describe Paul VI’s reasoning? How stupid do they think we are?] His decision, in the end, was more indicative of church hierarchical dysfunction—the institution’s inability to look at matters, particularly sexuality, in light of new understandings and insights—than it was seemingly of any movement of the Holy Spirit. [And there it is folks! The "spirit/Spirit" is guiding the enlightened!]

Research conducted by sociologist Fr. Andrew M. Greeley found that the encyclical so shook Catholics that by itself, it would have reduced religious practice by almost one-half. That decline never fully occurred, and the reason it did not, Greeley found, was the favorable impact the Second Vatican Council was having on the lives of most Catholics. [Right. But we are not talking about the actual documents of the Council, but rather the "spirit", again, but this time the "spirit of Vatican II", the breaking of "institutions", the deconstruction of whatever was rule-bound or official.]

Repeated U.S. surveys find that Catholics regard church teachings on sexual morality increasingly out of sync with their lived experience and their understanding of love and intimacy. [You are to conclude from this that whatever conflicts with the majority opinion (the rule-bound institutional Church still trying to keep its grip on power by controling how people have sex) is therefore against love and intimacy.] They knew and still know [Notice the authority they give to this "knowledge". It supercedes "official" Church teaching and any insight or motivation the "hierarchy" might have.] that sex between husband and wife is capable of creating far more than new humans. [Dog bites man.] They also know their gay sons and daughters are not disordered. [Another shot at the Church’s "official teaching" about the nature of homosexual orientation.] The surveys have confirmed Rome’s worst fears, [Remember, for the NCR the " Rome" (a bad thing) is only about men struggling to maintain power.] causing at times even more thunderous condemnations [HUH?] that have failed to win many converts. So the cycle of dysfunction and disbelief continues.

National Catholic Reporter July 25, 2008

1.4-kids-per-household-Germans surprised that Moslems are taking over...

The future German skyline?

First, let's check Germany's birth rates...
Population growth rate: -0.12% (2007 est.)
Birth rate: 8.3 births/1,000 population (2007 est.)

hmmm... whose fault is this?

Not in My Backyard, Say an Increasing Number of Germans

By Jochen Bölsche

The planned construction of over 180 mosques [woah, mama!] in Germany is mobilizing right-wing xenophobes but also an increasing number of leftist critics [right, label them... because Moslems will only kill right wing xenophobes...]. They fear the Muslim places of worship will facilitate the establishment of a completely parallel society.

The issue at hand wasn't the construction of a missile base or a new nuclear power plant. Yet the media reported "turmoil" and an "enraged" audience in a school auditorium in Ehrenfeld, a district of the German city of Cologne. The mood was almost comparable to that of the protest gatherings once held against nuclear missiles or reactors.

Instead the outrage was directed at a huge mosque planned for the area. Still, the words used by the project's opponents called to mind the protests of earlier times. "The minarets even look like missiles," railed one woman [interesting observation...]. A man said the mosque's dome reminded him "of a nuclear plant."

Ill will over mosques like the one being built in Cologne is spreading rapidly throughout Germany, often to the surprise of local politicians. For a long time the establishment of Muslim prayer rooms provoked little protest, housed as they were mostly in residential buildings, shops and back courtyards. Recently, though, there has been an increasing number of acts of protest, some violent. Molotov cocktails were thrown through mosque windows in the Bavarian town of Lauingen; Christians set protest crosses inscribed with "Terra christiana est," or this is Christian land [uh, not any more, fella; you actually have to practice it...], on the grounds of a mosque in Hanover; and construction trailers went up in flames in the Berlin district of Pankow.

The anti-Islam protest movement has also begun to spill over into city politics. In Cologne, for example, the extreme right anti-mosque initiative Pro Cologne captured five local government seats in recent elections. Now the group is aspiring to enter the national scene as Pro Germany, together with other like-minded organizations, some from the far-right fringe [again...]. Their approach follows the example of populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, whose anti-immigration party garnered a surprising degree of support before he was murdered in 2002.

In Germany there is also a market for these "single-issue parties," suggests trend researcher Adjiedj Bakas, who himself emigrated from Surinam to the Netherlands. In the populous Ruhr Valley region of western Germany the Voter Initiative Recklinghausen (whose acronym "WIR" is the German word for "we") has found resonance with its message. The group claims it is fighting against "creeping Islamization," and is allied in the local government with the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), one of Germany's major political parties. WIR members say they aren't alone in their opposition to Islam and their concern "that in 20 years in Recklinghausen, as in all large German cities, the majority of the residents under the age of 40 will be Muslims." "Discomfort is already spreading in some parts of the city," says Georg Schliehe, a WIR representative on the local city council, "but policy, public authorities and scholars downplay the problem." [you gotta love how secular liberals hate Christianity so much that they will even legislate themselves into the harsh submission of Islam rather than give up their 'freedoms' from conservative morals... ironically, Islam is more oppressive. Strange.]

Read the whole thing here.

Intersting: A Spiritual Answer to Coping With Infertility

Interview With Professor Marie Meaney

By Karna Swanson

WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 25, 2008 (Zenit.org).- The suffering of infertility can be intense for couples, but looking at the condition with the eyes of faith can turn the experience into a "spiritual journey," says professor Marie Meaney.

"Only God can prevent extreme suffering from turning into anger, resentment and bitterness," says Meaney, an Arthur J. Ennis Teaching Fellow at the University of Villanova in Philadelphia.

Meaney, who has been active in the pro-life movement for many years, is also the author of "Embracing the Cross of Infertility," a talk offered online and on CD through the Human Life International Web site.

In this interview with ZENIT, Meaney comments on the challenges facing couples struggling with infertility, and the possible spiritual consolations and rewards of embracing the condition with faith.

Q: You say accepting your infertility is much like accepting the death of a child, and that it is particularly difficult for the woman. What is at the core of this suffering?

Meaney: For those who are not suffering from infertility it may be difficult to imagine how painful it is. Before it happened to me, I had no idea how awful it was. Most couples probably go into marriage thinking that children are a given, that they will simply come along; when they don't, this opens up in a new way how central the gift of life is to marriage and in particular to the woman.

Obviously, the marriage is no less valid if the couple is infertile; but when no child is conceived, the spouses are denied the visible fruit of their love. The spouses desire to see their love embodied in the gift of life; they want to start the adventure of raising children together, seeing in them parts of themselves, and yet also completely unique persons with their own vocations and personalities.

Infertility affects both men and women, but the woman's suffering tends to be particularly pronounced. Already Rachel cried to her husband Jacob in the book of Genesis: "Give me children, or I shall die!" -- Genesis 30:1, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2374.

The woman is the one to experience pregnancy, feeling the child grow in her womb, as Pope John Paul II said so beautifully in "Mulieris Dignitatem," and thus she will also feel more deeply the lack thereof. Since her vocation is motherhood of some kind, she suffers particularly from its absence.

Infertility is terrible for her even if she already has children, but is unable to have more. Except if she knows that the sterility is final, she will go through hope and disappointment every month; and this disappointment comes at a time when it is emotionally and hormonally the most difficult.

Some women feel that their life is on-hold during this time: They are simply waiting for children and in the mean time not much else makes sense. No profession, no successful career can fill the emptiness caused by infertility.

Q: What tips would you give to parents, friends and pastors of an infertile couple? What should they say and not say?

Meaney: As with all suffering, at the core of the response should be the willingness to suffer with the couple, to stand under the cross with them, to be there for them. After all, compassion comes from the Latin word "com-pati," "suffering with." Anything that falls short of that is less than helpful.

Let me give some examples: The spouses may go through a long period of anguish about their childlessness, which to others may seem excessively long. The worst kind of comment is to mention other people whose suffering was supposedly worse, yet who got over it more quickly and grew from it; the implication is that the couple is not meeting that standard and is at fault.

Or, previously infertile people tell the couple that once they had "let go" and had stopped being stressed about their infertility, then they had suddenly conceived. The implication to the infertile spouses is, however, that they are not abandoned to God's will, otherwise they too would be able to conceive; it is therefore their fault in some sense that they are not conceiving.

This is what Job's friends did: They held Job responsible for his suffering. At times we all become like Job's friends: We tend to make those suffering responsible for their pain when it has lasted for a long time; for otherwise we would have to stand under the cross with them.

Seeing other children, being present at baptisms or baby showers can bring out suffering in the infertile couple in a new way. Sometimes people accuse the spouses of being envious while in reality their suffering is simply surfacing in those circumstances.

Generally I'd say, don't be the one to broach the subject. Perhaps the spouses don't want to talk about it or perhaps they are not in pain about it just now. Show an openness to listen compassionately and this will be a deed of mercy.

Q: Is there a point at which a couple should stop trying to conceive? Is adoption for every infertile couple?

Meaney: Every couple must discern for itself how pro-active it wants to be about trying to overcome its infertility. Some simply don't have the financial means to explore new -- albeit ethically licit -- options. Others can't face the emotional strain of continuing to attempt new procedures, the hope and disappointment that comes with it each time. Some need closure and decide to move on, though they would be delighted by the surprise of an unexpected pregnancy.

Personally, I think it is a good idea to think out of the box, try alternative medical options and never to give up. You just never know what might work for you. In any case, it is important to find out the reasons for the infertility in order to find solutions; sometimes the pain is so great that it is hard to face medical tests, and this is where husband and wife should encourage each other.

Adoption, I believe, is a vocation and not every couple feels called to it. Some infertile spouses think they can be fruitful in other ways, and serve the Church in a manner that couples with children can't.

Q: What is the role of a childless couple in promoting a culture of life?

Meaney: On the one hand, the childless couple is in the unfortunate situation that to outsiders it seems to have embraced the contraceptive mentality and the culture of death.

On the other hand, the couple can be a great witness to the world, if it speaks out when appropriate. The spouses can talk about the pain of infertility, about the great gift that children are; if their infertility is due to previous abortions or contraception, this might make others think twice. Or by speaking out against in vitro fertilization (IVF), which might be their only option to have a child, they are a witness to the fact that children are a gift and that no one has a right to them.

Finally, by embracing this cross, the spouses will de facto be promoting the culture of life; by uniting themselves to Christ they are "serving, like Christ, the salvation of [their][…] brothers and sisters," as John Paul II states in "Salvifici Doloris" (No. 27). Only in the next life will they know the extent of their spiritual fruitfulness.

Q: Your essay underlines the spiritual elements of infertility, discussed in terms of a cross to bear. What suggestions would you make as to deal with infertility in a spiritually fruitful way?

Meaney: Looking at infertility through the eyes of faith prevents it from being merely a human disaster and turns it into a spiritual journey. Only God can prevent extreme suffering from turning into anger, resentment and bitterness. However, God does not perform magic; he does not simply take the pain away, nor does he give us the answer to our anguished question, "Why is this happening to me?"

But if we embrace this cross, then ultimately we will find inner peace. A temptation is to meet the challenge stoically, thinking one can "deal with it" without realizing that one is avoiding the cross, and thus denying oneself the necessary mourning period.

Often we think that if we are suffering much, we must be doing something wrong. We have the false conception that being abandoned to God's will means that we will sail through all difficulties and master them in Herculean fashion. But being nailed to the cross means experiencing great anguish, as Christ did; but it will ultimately become our path to salvation if we accept it.

"Do not be afraid," John Paul II exclaimed at the beginning of his pontificate. We are afraid of crosses, of the deaths we experience through them. But God will bless us a hundredfold through them and we will bear fruit for the Church and the world in ways we probably don't even know. In eternity this wound will be part of our glory, shining forth, reflecting God in a particular way. Though we may never have biological children, we will have spiritual children many of whom we will only get to know in heaven.

The future of the Anglican Communion?

Do the Anglicans really think this is going to bolster the faithful????

"Hey, baby, vote for me" [followed by "ga-ga-go-go"]

"Excuse me, sir, um baby. We are wondering if you could wake up and comment on who you voted for today. I'm sorry, but you just spit-up on your sleeve... don't you see it?"

Just when you thought the western world couldn't begin to fall further into insanity... then you read the following:

Dozens of German politicians have tabled a new law to extend voting rights to babies, toddlers, children and teenagers.

The bill, which has won the cross-party backing of some heavyweight German politicians, would wipe away decades of "exclusion" and "discrimination" against minors.

Currently the voting threshold in Germany is 18, with an exception in some states, where 16 year olds able momentarily to put aside the cares of adolescence are allowed to cast a ballot.

But that does not go far enough for the new law's backers, who want to ensure voting rights from cradle to grave. If the bill gets adopted, babies will be equally empowered to voice, or gurgle, their opinion on government handling of macro-economic performance in a global downturn as their parents.

Toddlers able to divert their attention from the nursery brute stealing their crayons will be able to take a stand ­ if they can stand - on issue such as whether German armed forces should be deployed abroad.

According to the head of the liberal Free Democratic Party ­ traditional coalition partner of Chancellor Merkel's CDU party ­ the constitutional change would enfranchise 14 million people.

"Unfortunately in Germany, 17 per cent of the population, namely the children and adolescent, are excluded from political decision making," said FDP chief Dirk Niebel. The Telegraph UK

Here's the link.

"So much for the 'via media' approach, Dr. Williams."

More on the horrid leadership of Dr. Rowan Williams and the crumbling C of E.

This is from Damian Thompson:

Andrew Carey, son of Archbishop Carey, has produced a pretty devastating analysis of Monday night's "train wreck" on the American Anglican website Stand Firm:

"While Dr Williams has often given traditionalists hope that he would back a structural solution to their problems of conscience, he seems to have completely ruled out strong leadership on theological and ecclesial issues. Wearing permanently now, it seems, the persona of the mediator, Dr Williams was seen by Synod trying to have it both ways. 'I am deeply unhappy with any scheme... which ends up structurally humiliating women.' But he was equally unhappy about marginalising traditionalists. [uhhhhh... I want to have my cake and eat it too.] He therefore came 'not very comfortably to the conclusion', we needed a 'more rather than less robust form of structural provision'.

A SAD DAY: Church of England - now officially protestant forever

"We want female bishops not tradition. We want to ape the relativistic mores of the secular 'whatever feels good and is popular now' culture." That's what the C of E bishops voted today.

So much for reconciliation and real ecumenism. The C of E has officially decided to ape the secular culture's superficial ideas of feminism (all about power), and reject its roots with the Catholic/Orthodox churches and Scripture itself. Instead of seeking wisdom from the sources, the C of E will now fade away into time.
I cannot imagine a church shepherded by old women with a large and dynamic sheepfold.
We'll see how quickly the C of E declines... Sad.
The Anglo-Catholics have now been totally alienated, and as Thompson notes below, it would be foolish for them to stay.

Read it and weep.

A couple of hours ago, the Church of England decisively severed itself from its Catholic roots. By voting to ordain women bishops without significant safeguards for traditionalists, it reasserted its identity as a Protestant Church. Whether it will be a liberal or conservative Protestant denomination remains to be seen. But any hope of unity with Rome and the Orthodox has gone forever.

I'm not sorry. From the moment the C of E voted to ordain women priests in 1992, it cut itself off from the Catholic mainstream. But unexpectedly generous safeguards allowed traditionalists to cordon themselves off from the rest of the Church, persuading themselves that they, rather than the main body, preserved its true Catholic identity.

This was always a delusion, and now it is truly unsustainable. The General Synod tonight made a commonsense decision. If you have women priests, you must have women bishops - indeed, I remember Dr David Hope, then Bishop of London, telling me that the Church should in theory have started with women bishops and then moved on to priests. [Good point.]

What the Anglo-Catholics have lost tonight is their standing in the Church of England. They are no longer honoured traditionalists who have been allowed to preserve an (almost) watertight communion of their own, nurtured by powerful bishops who sustain their sacramental purity.

From now on, they will be the C of E's granny in the attic, whose eccentricities are tolerated only at family get-togethers. If, that is, they are silly enough to stay.

What a painful debate this was. This time round, in contrast to 1992, the Synod knew it was demolishing a wing of the building, and there was preciously little triumphalism. Dr Rowan Williams seemed especially crushed: he had argued - reluctantly - for tight safeguards for traditionalists, but the assembly ignored his advice. That doesn't bode well for Lambeth.

Here's what Rowan Williams said before the vote
... pathetic.

Well, I guess we'll see when and how and if traditional/orthodox C of E bishops will break with Canterbury.