Allow me to be as politically incorrect as necessary here. Let’s clear one thing up front. I will be discussing homosexual acts NOT persons.

The raison d’être of a homosexual union is the antithesis of love. The sexual dimension of such a union is necessarily and inherently flawed because it turns the biological (and subsequently teleological) purpose of sex on its head.

In such a union sex becomes an end in itself rather than a means to an end. The main purpose of sex becomes the gratification, which is actually the reward that encourages organisms to repeat the behaviour to increase the chances of begetting offspring. No amount of (homo)sexual activity will result in pregnancy.

The basis of such a union is therefore flawed and “unevolutionary”. An objectively disordered act will become a scandal when it is promoted – worse still when children are allowed to be members in a household based on such a union. The greatest and most glaringly obvious effect on these children will be their outlook on sex. A person is an incident on my way to my sexual gratification.

Although I have no stats at hand, I am sure that their gender identification will not be too good either.

I know that many people will say that it’s better for a child to grow in a homosexual household that smothers it in “love” than in a heterosexual household where the parents are at each others’ throats night and day.

a)      Define “love” and its long term effect on the child’s physical and spiritual well-being.

b)      Present evidence that domestic violence of any sort is unheard of in homosexual households.

It’s not enough that we destroyed marriage, we had to go and make a mockery of it too.

Do these people even know what God they adore?

The basis of science is its testability and repeatability (which necessarily means consistency of the “natural laws”) across observable time and space. If I drop a glass today it will break, if you drop a glass cup tomorrow it will break and if someone drops a glass in a hundred years it will break too. (That is what I mean by testability, repeatability and consistency of the “natural laws”)

The question begs to be asked. “Who has written these laws?”

Even more relevant “Who keeps these laws constant?”

And finally “Why should these universally applicable laws be intelligible to insignificant organisms on an insignificant planet orbiting an unremarkable star in an unremarkable galaxy?”

God obviously did not just create everything and left it at that. On a physical level, He is that which maintains creation. Whatever happens, however random, can only happen because there are “laws” controlling the apparent randomness. Rates of reaction, behaviour of subatomic particles, population dynamics, energy – you name it – all follow strict possibly multilayered laws which have remained unchanged from the instant of creation. (How could we tell otherwise, that the universe is approx 15bn years old if today we can read and understand  physical processes that happened then?)

God is not something like us on an unimaginably huge scale. Had that been the case we will find Him lurking somewhere in the Universe. He is that which upholds this Universe and/or any other universes that exist and may or may not be yet discovered.

Incidentally, Russell’s quip about the teapot, the spaghetti monster etc show that the atheists themselves don’t know what sort of God they’re rejecting.

So please let’s stop with this “evolution = no God” nonsense. Its corollary too.

There. Got that off my chest too.

Toodle-oo

I know it’s a bit of a slippery slope argument and many will say that all the safety measures are in place, but I think it’s a dangerous path to tread. Safety measures for who? Brilliant timing – releasing the news, at Christmas, that children may be killed.

I think it’s an extension of the “abort if severley disabled” argument.

It’s a sad day for humanity.

Toodle-oo.

Don’t judge homosexual people, he said. You can still go to Heaven if you’re an atheist. He phoned an unmarried mother-to-be, offering to baptise her child when the time comes, and so on.

In a previous post I had remarked on how frequently Pope Francis referred (up till then, at least) to the Novissimi – i.e. Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. He calls the devil the Prince of the World. You don’t get much of this sort of thing reported in mainstream media.

The Pope appears to want to reach out to society’s outcasts even – much like Jesus did, after all. But we must bear in mind that when Jesus saved the adulteress from stoning, for example,  and forgave her her sins, he told her to not sin any more.

Although Pope Francis tells us to not judge homosexual people, I have never heard him tell them “Well done, please carry on, you’re doing the right thing.”

When he says that atheists can go to Heaven – obviously – he doesn’t mean that unconverted atheists can go to Heaven.  Especially when by “atheist” we mean a person who deliberately rejects God. Why would such a person want to go to heaven, anyway? There’s no such thing as Heaven for atheists, I thought.

He expressed his solidarity with that young woman not because she is going to have a child out of wedlock but because rather than picking the easy way and aborting the pregnancy, she chose to bring the child into the world  – which means giving it a fighting chance of going to Heaven – and presumably bring it up to the best of her abilities.

I don’t like this deliberate (?) misrepresentation of what Pope Francis says and does. It may even be a concerted attempt to make him appear spineless, for all I know.

Please read this (longish) interview to get a glimpse of the man and the pope. And please allow me, by way of corroboration to my remarks above, to ruin the introduction for you. When Fr Spadaro SJ (yay!) asked the pope who he is as a person, the pope replied “A sinner.”

I was relieved to learn that our Church is led by a man who still thinks that sin is objective and real. Thank heavens for little mercies …

Toodle-oo.

Julian’s face sagged. Tears welled in his eyes.

“Naughty!” (That was my first word)

How he bawled. 

I couldn’t continue. He was obviously heartbroken. He knew he’d done something he shouldn’t. I just had to call him for a quick hug and a milk shake – or was it a yoghurt? (You can’t give whiskey to five year-olds, you know)

Point of this story is that when you see someone who’s wronged you feel genuinely sorry for what he (or she) has done, you can’t be angry at them. It brought to mind the logic of God’s apparently contradictory intolerance to sin and infinite mercy. I was mightily annoyed at Julian for smashing my Guinness spoon to smithereens, but having seen how sincere his tears were I couldn’t not forgive him. I guess we’re all Julians in God’s eyes; nothing can’t be fixed with a genuine “Sorry” (I know, I know, the double negatives are atrocious. Sorry )

There’s another bit to this story. After the milkshake/yoghurt he caught sight of the mug and made a beeline for it. I nipped a potential cataclysm in the bud and held it for him while he examined it. To lift a phrase from Oscar Wilde, “To lose a teaspoon is a tragedy, but to lose both [a teaspoon and a mug] is sheer carelessness”

Toodle-oo

Anyway …

I was talking about these books to this guy. He looks up (he was sitting down, you know) and goes “Listen, I don’t mind you reading this sort of book as long as you don’t go all happy clappy on me and join a prayer group.”

Now the thing that attracts me to Catholicism (on an intellectual level) is the unassailable logic employed to extrapolate and infer from Scripture and Tradition. One cannot help the jaw dropping even upon a half-hearted skim through the Catechism, for instance. I explained as much to him. The hand shot up again.

“You’ll be telling me how much you enjoy your prayer groups next.”

I gave up. Again. It’s not so the invulnerability *ahem* of the remark that makes me pack it in. I see the futility of the endeavour. A man with a purportedly scientific outlook to life could do better than dismiss another means of gleaning knowledge just because said knowledge is not hard science. Admittedly I am no Cicero, but still …

Such episodes make me wonder why people just build an impenetrable bastion around themselves when they hear the words “Catholic Church”

Toodle-oo

The saga has taken more twists and turns than a breakdancing snake, with everybody throwing in his weight on either side of the *ahem* struggle.

I don’t think there’s much to say other than remind anyone who’s interested of Matthew 25:40, viz: […] Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

Think about that.

Toodle-oo.

Duh!

The Catholic Church can’t wait for the Second Coming. It is the duty of every Catholic to repent of his or her sins. Jesus himself told us he was coming again to judge the living and the dead. But he didn’t say when. There’s one sign (which in my opinion is difficult to miss) between now and the Second Coming that still hasn’t materialised viz the “corporate” conversion of the Jews to Catholicism  (Romans 11:25). And I don’t think that this means that the Jews will convert on a Saturday and the Second Coming will be the following Sunday.

I really don’t care for the “Discovery Channelization” of faith. Educate yes, but don’t sensationalise.

Christ is coming again. Definitely. But our house still needs a thorough cleaning before we can let Him in.

Toodle-oo.

As they said on that show … “A plan so cunning you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel.”

I greatly admire the Bishop of Gozo, Mgr Mario Grech. In this day and age he is the perfect antidote to the sly and underhanded deceit of the Devil.

He is a regular candidate for media ridicule. To my knowledge, his career as a media target blossomed in the run up to the divorce referendum, when he quoted Christ, when he said Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.(Mt7:15)

The rest is history as they say. Whatever he says attracts flak from all (or nearly all) the local media.

I have another quote for him (And for all those who strive to do the right thing.)

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.(Mt 5:10)

Toodle-oo