Keeping the Faith

I DON’T KNOW WHY PEOPLE INSIST ON THIS ISSUE. And...

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:35:44 +0800

I DON’T KNOW WHY PEOPLE INSIST ON THIS ISSUE. And I’m sure whoever made this knows it’s not accurate and yet perpetuate this lie. :(

digitalpapist:

Let’s see:

The picture in the upper left hand corner is too old to be Ratzinger, since it is obvious that the picture was taken before the commencement of Allied bombing campaigns, hence before his involuntary enrollment in the Hitler Youth. The picture next to it, is him; enrollment in the Hitler Youth was compulsory.

The picture in the lower left…so Benedict transforms from a 14 year old to a 50 year old. Really, I don’t even half to disprove that, take a look. He went from a pale white kid of about 15, to a old tan guy of about 50 in a matter of a few years. He must be a Time Lord…

The picture to the right of that him is him celebrating Mass circa 1951, the year of his ordination. He’s actually extending both hands, but the picture cropped it out.

Nice try…actually, no. Very poor try.

Petitions and Confessions: Three simple bitches:

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:00:40 +0800

Petitions and Confessions: Three simple bitches::

Great answer! Your posts are so awesome! Hahahaha… :))

digitalpapist:

halfprincesshalfgoddess:

THOMAS AQUINAS: I am a man of one book.

IGNATIUS LOYOLA: We sacrifice the intellect to God.

MARTIN LUTHER: Reason is the Devil’s harlot.

1. Aquinas never said that. The full phrase is “I fear the man of one book who has read it well”.

2. Ignatius talked about the sacrifice of the intellect in the context of a religious institute, where a member obeys the superior as standing in the place of God. This statement has a very particular context that is only utilized in the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

3. I’m loathed to defend Martin Luther, but he says this (I believe) in The Bondage of the Will, where he is arguing against Erasmus’s idea of free will. Luther saw God’s grace as forcing a conversion, something that overpowers reason and leaves it fruitless. Erasmus took a more moderate view of the interplay between grace and nature.

Context is everything.

When My Aetheist Friend Says She An Expert on Catholicism Because She Went to Catholic School

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 13:23:51 +0800

whatshouldcatholicismcallme:

"May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be."

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 22:52:08 +0800

“May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.”

- St. Therese of Lisieux (via eternallyadoring)

You are not tempted because you are evil; you are tempted because you are human. — Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen †

Tue, 22 May 2012 16:28:25 +0800

Photo

Tue, 22 May 2012 15:28:30 +0800

"You cannot be half a saint. You must be a whole saint or no saint at all."

Tue, 22 May 2012 13:49:02 +0800

“You cannot be half a saint. You must be a whole saint or no saint at all.”

- St. Therese of Lisieux (via fathershane)

Why we never married (Gay Catholic speaks about Marriage)

Thu, 17 May 2012 05:45:37 +0800

Why we never married (Gay Catholic speaks about Marriage):

nikosnature:

As a Roman Catholic man, former gay activist, and veteran of over a decade in a same-sex relationship, I must admit to a certain degree of bewildered frustration when it comes to the question of so-called gay marriage. My feeling of disappointment with career homosexual activists on this issue stems not from their desire to celebrate significant emotional relationships, but from the insistence that such friendships, first, must include sex and, second, must be seen as marriages or the “equivalent” of marriage.

I have no problem with the fact that strong same-sex friendships and relationships exist. My partner and I have shared one for more than ten years. But though we could have chosen to have our friendship recognized as a “marriage” by any one of a halfdozen U.S. denominations, and still could, we did not, and here is why.

One of active homosexuality’s sharpest lessons came when I realized that more than boredom or one-night stands underlay my sexual life’s pervasive emptiness. Over the years I had enough “innovative” sex to fill a short novel and had traded in promiscuity for longterm commitment. Neither made a difference. Although slowing the sexual pace and choosing a single partner were physically and emotionally healthier choices, they couldn’t allow me to escape.

My sexual life felt empty because the acts themselves were empty. No matter how sexually pumped my partner and I were, no matter how loving, tender, demanding, considerate, gentle, powerful, or affectionate we might have been-and we hit peaks and valleys in all of these-in the end the acts came down to nothing. In bed we performed a great drama involving almost all of our physical and emotional selves, but afterwards, all that remained were two naked guys, a bed, and four walls.

I came to understand, as a man, that God and nature had intended a different end for my sexuality and sexual expression. My sexual expression, as a man, is meant for marriage, in part because it is marriage that helps the act move from the merely selfish to the selfless. Sexual expression in marriage allows people to share in possibly doing something far larger than anything my partner and I could ever do-participate in the creation of another human being.

It doesn’t even matter whether each sexual act has that happy result. They may never. The sad witness of persistently infertile couples is that every child conceived and born embodies a miracle, and God is not always free with miracles. But as long as the man and woman give themselves fully to one another in the sexual act and trust God and one another with their full sexuality, which includes fertility, then their actions take on a meaning far greater than themselves and their own agendas.

Procreation is not the only end of married sexuality, but its possibility gives the other ends their special meaning. Unlike the emptiness my partner and I experienced after sex, the afterglow of married love extends far beyond the couple, the bed, and the walls. It includes the possibility of a new son or daughter, a new brother or sister for the children already here, a future aunt, uncle, and cousin, a future spouse for someone else. Marriage exists so that this new web of relationships survives, grows, and flourishes under the responsible eyes of two parents who will do their best to model for their children what it means to be man and woman.

This is why, in the end, no matter how deeply I might love my partner, what we share can never be enshrined as a “marriage.”

We both care deeply about our friendship-indeed even more so as it enters its fifth year of chaste expression. But we are not married and do not suffer unduly for remaining single. We own property together, which we cover with insurance. We mingle our retirement obligations, share our promissory notes. If, heaven forbid, either one of us winds up in the hospital, we have prepared papers that explicitly indicate to whom decision-making power is to be granted and to whom it is not.

Gay activists may counter that it seems unfair that we have to take these “special steps” to order our lives and cannot live in the sort of sloppy abandon that characterizes some families. But again, we are not married. We aren’t responsible for any of the precious future that represents, after all, the largest part of society’s interest in marriage in the first place and that justifies the special status our culture accords marriage.

I know many find the message of strong and healthy marriage difficult. Many marriages today fail to live up to the ideal of the one-flesh union, and I have encountered enough victims of contraception to know that homosexuals are not the only ones who have experienced empty sexual lives. But we know enough, I hope, not to water down-or even tear down-the ideal because it is not something in which we can all particpate.

Sometimes I long to be married; often I long to be a father. Yet God has granted me enough faith to believe that I am right now just where I am supposed to be, and that my partner and I share a friendship that burns none the less brightly for our not being married.

"A century or two hence Spiritualism may be a tradition and Socialism may be a tradition and..."

Mon, 14 May 2012 13:03:06 +0800

“A century or two hence Spiritualism may be a tradition and Socialism may be a tradition and Christian Science may be a tradition. But Catholicism will not be a tradition. It will still be a nuisance
and a new and dangerous thing.”

- G.K. Chesterton in The Catholic Church and Conversion, 1926 (via gkchestertonquote)

signum-crucis: Also see http://fisheaters.com/lists.html

Wed, 09 May 2012 15:19:28 +0800

signum-crucis:

Also see http://fisheaters.com/lists.html

THE FRUIT OF PRAYER

Wed, 09 May 2012 15:09:04 +0800

THE FRUIT OF PRAYER:

superrrgrace:

The chapel at the Papal Nuncio in Manila is always immaculately maintained by the nuns. But when Pope John Paul II stayed there during his visit, the nuns were in the quandary. They couldn’t clean while the Pope was out because all of them invariably went with him, and once they returned, the Pope was always praying before the Blessed Sacrament.
They decided to solve the problem by waking up early despite their lack of sleep. The next day, at 4:00 in the morning, they opened the doors of the chapel… and found the pope lying prostate before the altar, praying.
I remember the glimpse I had of the pope while he was in the pope mobile. He must have been tired from a whole day of activities but his face radiated with peace. More than that, I felt his peace settle in me, as if I had been touched by the hand of God.
We cannot give what we don’t have. To share the love of God, we have to bask in His love for us first.
Learn how to pray and receive His abundant love.

Cecil Lim (cez_lim@yc), Didache 2012

(Source: superrrgrace)

Brandon Ocampo I love you. Please message me.

Tue, 01 May 2012 11:37:33 +0800

I don’t know what happened, but I really hope you’re okay. Know that we are all here to help however we can. <3

"I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, He can work through anyone."

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 22:03:32 +0800

“I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, He can work through anyone.”

- St. Francis of Assisi (via dillondean)

"Be afraid neither of the world, nor of the future, nor of your weakness. The Lord has allowed you to..."

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:09:33 +0800

“Be afraid neither of the world, nor of the future, nor of your weakness. The Lord has allowed you to live in this moment of history so that, by your faith, his name will continue to resound throughout the world.”

- Pope Benedict XVI

Always a good reminder, but I really needed this today…

(via invisibleforeigner)

Tips for Welcoming Returning Catholics

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:08:36 +0800

Tips for Welcoming Returning Catholics

Public school system should take notes from the Catholic Church

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:46:18 +0800

Public school system should take notes from the Catholic Church:

odysseyofenlightenment:

The public school system in the United States has a child abuse crisis.

An AP study from 2001 to 2005 found that there were over 2,500 cases of abuse by educators in which the abuser was punished in the public school system.

According to a Colorado journalist, public schools might do well to take note of how the Catholic Church has handled child abuse in the past decade.

And no, that doesn’t mean sweeping it all under the rug.

When Wayne Laugesen, a journalist for The Gazette of Colorado Springs, suggests that public school systems around the country should observe and imitate the Catholic Church, he is noting the fact that “in 2004 American bishops met in Dallas and voted to establish the largest bureaucracy for the protection of children the world has known.”

He is noting that last year the Catholic Churches in the US had “seven credible allegations of abuse by priests”

He is noting that in 2011, “45 percent of claims filed against the church in 2011 were so old that the defendants had died of old age.”

And lastly, he is noting that “statistically, this makes priests the safest professionals in the country to leave children with.”

Read the rest of his opinion piece here!

"Yes, I am Catholic. I go to church every Sunday. And I’m not very experienced, ok? I’ve had only 3..."

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 18:58:58 +0800

“Yes, I am Catholic. I go to church every Sunday. And I’m not very experienced, ok? I’ve had only 3 boyfriends in my life. I don’t care. They have to respect this is my choice. If they don’t respect it, that just means they don’t want me.”

- Adriana Lima on being sexually reserved, super Catholic, and strong.

Preach it, sistah.

(via christeeeeeeny)

Population Matters: Philippine Contraceptive Debate

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 18:44:12 +0800

Population Matters: Philippine Contraceptive Debate:

I think this article is much better reply than anything I could have written. It reflects my views on the matter.

Population matters

By BERNARDO M. VILLEGAS
July 25, 2010, 11:01am

There are two sides to the oft-used title of this column. The positive side: the size of the population is a tremendous asset, both as a source of manpower and as a base for a domestic market on which the economic growth of a country can be sustained, despite periodic ups and downs in the global market. Without a large population, many of whom have been sufficiently educated through the decades, the Philippines would not be attracting such high-growth sectors as electronic and semiconductor manufacturing and business process outsourcing. It would not have been able to send abroad millions of Filipinos to earn billions of dollars that they remit back to the Philippines. Without a large population, the Philippines would not have been able to avoid a recession in 2009, when most of our neighbors with smaller populations suffered negative growth rates in their GDP. The other two countries in Southeast Asia that avoided a recession are Indonesia and Vietnam, two populous countries with large domestic markets. Indeed, population matters.

The other side is negative, as can be inferred from a recent interview with one of the best demographers the Philippines has produced. A person I highly respect for her professional competence, U.P. demographer Mercedes Concepcion recently lamented the lack of a population management policy in the Philippines. She would like to see a much lower fertility rate than the 3.1 babies per fertile woman we presently have. She considers the current population growth rate (about 1.95 % annually) too high for the country’s resources. Like a top business executive to whom she referred, she is alarmed at seeing large families populating squatter areas in places like Pasay, Payatas, Taguig and other depressed areas in the Metro Manila area. She looks back with nostalgia at the Marcos era when she claims there was an effective population management program.

I respectfully beg to disagree with Dr. Concepcion. The squatter areas with large families in the Metro Manila area are only a consequence of at least three decades of an erroneous policy of utterly neglecting countryside and rural development. The National Capital Region is overpopulated (with 18,163 persons per square kilometer as compared to the national average of 313 persons) because for decades, we used up most of our resources in trying to create inward-looking, import-substitution industries that sooner or later collapsed when subjected to global competition towards the end of the last century. If we had instead devoted the same resources to building farm-to-market roads, irrigation systems (for all the major crops and not only for rice), post-harvest facilities and other rural infrastructures, today our per capita income would be higher than those of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, because we had a head start in the l950s as the most developed economy in the region with the exception of Japan.

Countries with much less land and even less natural resources like South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong have population densities far higher than ours. Singapore has 7,223 persons per sq.km., Hong Kong 6,501, Taiwan 625 and South Korea 483. Ours is about 313 persons per sq.m.
Except for overcrowded Metro Manila, the most densely populated regions are Region VI (Central Luzon) at 473 persons; Region VII (Central Visayas) at 472 persons; and Region 1 (Ilocos) at 402 persons All their population densities are less than that of South Korea, that has a per capita income close to $20,000 (as compared to our less than $3,000). If we had made use of our resources in a more intelligent way, even if our population continued to increase as it did, we would have had the wherewithals to eradicate poverty in the countryside, which today is where 70% of the poor in the Philippines reside.

Those who advocate bringing down the growth rate of the population by birth control are barking at the wrong tree. They should focus all their efforts on correcting the biases against agricultural development, labor-intensive industries and small and medium-scale enterprises that decades of the wrong economic policies created. The poor in the rural areas need many children because the only resources they have are these human resources. It would be the height of insensitivity to ask a small farmer with a few hectares of land to stop at two children. Abandoned by society, with poor roads, no irrigation, no post-harvest facilities, he needs as many hands as possible just to eke out a living. With better infrastructures and education, this need will disappear and there will be natural forces that would lead to a more rapid decline in fertility. There would be no need for a state-sponsored population management program. Development—especially of the rural areas—is indeed the best contraceptive, as the late President Ronald Reagan of the U.S. insisted.

My perception of the population control program aggressively pushed by the Marcos regime in the late 1970s and early 1980s is different from that of Dr. Concepcion. During the deliberations of the Constitutional Commission convoked by the late President Cory Aquino, I chaired the Committee on the National Economy. In some of our committee meetings, there was a lively debate about whether or not to remove the provision in the so-called Marcos Constitution mandating the State to adopt a population management policy. The late Blas Ople, who was Minister of Labor during the Marcos era, reported that the population management program under the Marcos Administration was ineffective and wasteful of resources. I remember him describing how disorganized the program was so that condoms being distributed in the countryside were not being used for preventing birth but in covering hanging fruits to protect them from insects. After hearing this and similar reports, the whole Constitutional Commission voted in a plenary to remove any reference to population management from what became the 1987 Constitution.

I also highly suspect survey findings which state that Filipina mothers have one child more than they actually desire. These surveys are funded by agencies that have a birth control bias. Although there may be exceptional cases, the poor are more intelligent than population control advocates describe them to be. If they have four or more children, it is because, as in the case of the farmer’s household, they need workers in their farms to make up for the lack of infrastructures. Those who have large families in urban areas are thinking of the long-term insurance that many children can give to them.

Because of their being left to their own devices by society, they find safety in numbers. To make a sweeping generalization that married couples who are poor but have many children have been irresponsible is a typical condescending view of the well-to-do. Wittingly or unwittingly, the educated elite who talk about the poor producing children like rats are implying that only the rich should have many children. I know that this is not the intention of all birth control advocates. But their constantly harping on the need for the poor to limit the number of children smacks of the selective breeding for which Hitler was infamous.

The motives of professionals like Dr. Concepcion are noble. They are truly concerned about the sufferings of the poor. They are, however, proposing the wrong solution. Limiting population can backfire. It is much better to spend our resources on the direct solutions to mass poverty, such as countryside development, technical skills training of the unemployed youth, microcredit for the poor, social housing, the nurturing of small and medium-scale entrepreneurs and many others. Countries like Singapore and Thailand that implemented aggressive population control programs are now regretting the dire consequences of family planning, such as the rapid aging of the population and the scarcity of manpower. There is no need for us to inflict these problems on future generations. For comments, my email address is bvillegas@uap.edu.ph.

subversivethoughts:

techieyuckyboy:

Address this, Catholic Church. The “morality-based”, family planning method you teach has never worked.

I hope this serves a lesson for all of us…

I never had this problem.My vocation? TO BECOME A MOTHER.ERGO,...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 17:55:02 +0800

I never had this problem.

My vocation? TO BECOME A MOTHER.
ERGO, to find a good man to marry and have a baby with.

MARRIAGE, COME HITHER! <3

soldierofthelord:

INTRODUCING: THE TROLLY SPIRIT.

"Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of..."

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 17:29:42 +0800

“Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the worst is what these people call the Inner Light. Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within… Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.”

- G. K. Chesterton (via nonjeneregrette)