Spiritual attacks

I get the RSS feed from Reverend Wilkinson \\And today's sermon is about snakehanders: no, not the showoffs but a truth that I sometimes forget when I try to write about God:

"...Just as surely as Christians drink of the blood of Christ—the river of life, of his divine love and beauty—we unconsciously drink also of the poison of this world when we go out to preach the gospel.

We absorb so much of the spirit of this world, we take such deadly things into our spiritual lives, that unless we receive Holy Ghost protection I do not see how Christian workers can go where sinners are. You cannot help drinking in some of these unmentionable things into your spirit. But if you drink any deadly thing while you are going after serpents in the power of Christ, the poison will not hurt you.,,"

actually I know this from experience, but it is something I have to learn over and over again.

So pray for me.

Exulting the Lowly

I am bemused about the press and the "American church" Catholics ridiculing those of us who think that the University of Notre Dame should not be granting the honor of a degree at their graduation to President Obama.

Most articles in the newspapers support Father Jenkin's invitation to President Obama, saying after all,Obama is a president and should be honored just as President Reagan and Bush were honored.

These articles never mention that the Catholic bishops have asked Catholic colleges not to honor those promoting abortion or to give them forums to spread their ideas.

We Catholics face hostility from the press, the media, and hundreds of other sources promoting the proabortion and pro promiscuity agendas. If our universities don't counter the propaganda with the truth, who will inform these students that what is true is not the same as what is popular?

But instead, the media and modern "catholics" insist that Catholic Universities are supposed to allow all points of view, including the lie that inconvenient life is expendable.

Those who suggest that the duty of Catholic schools is to counter the propaganda of the world by teaching Catholicism (as taught by the Pope) are ridiculed. One writer jeered that teaching Catholic beliefs would result in turning the Catholic universities into Madrases, thereby insulting both Catholic Universities and Islamic scholarship in one sentence.

Another lie is that the opposition to honoring President Obama is purely political: you are a Republican, neoCons, or narrow minded bigot, and of course you don't represent the views of the majority of Catholics.

By dismissing 2000 years of Catholic teaching and deeply held religious faith as a superficial opinion, they can safely ignore the real argument against honoring the President.

The baby.

Father Jenkins of Notre Dame has never said: We oppose killing babies but we will honor a President who will use our taxes to pay for aborting them all over the world.

He will never say: We oppose killing babies but we will honor a president who will give tax payer money to organizations that can pressure Catholic countries to legalize abortion.

And Father Jenkins will never say: We oppose killing babies, but we will honor a president who will make it legal to fire someone who refuses to cooperate with abortions (and in two states, euthanasia).

The press always talks of "choice" but rarely mentions that most of the children who will be aborted because of lack of choice: because the boyfriend doesn't want to be burdened, because the grandparents don't want to be embarrassed at the country club, or because the mother is alone and unable to raise her child as a single mother.

One would expect a compassionate society to say: Things will work out okay, let me help you.

But instead, we have a society that says: just a simple procedure and all your trouble will go away.

The child, hidden in the womb, can be easily forgotten in all of this. But the ghost of the life that was destroyed still lingers in the hearts of those who saw the baby as a punishment or an obstacle to the good things of life: schooling, career, success...

When given the opportunity to praise one who promises "hope" and "change", why bring up the silent cry of those tiny ghosts who will never be born?

Yet the amount of venom spilled against those who believe that life should be protected from conception to natural death makes one wonder: Do they have a ghost in their lives? Is this why they hate those who remind them of it?

The University of Notre Dame will get publicity and praise from the secular media because it choses to have the President speak and receive an honorary doctorate. Thei rich and powerful will see this as a sign of their "independence" from a medieval mindset, and will use the incident to prove that a "catholic" can believe in the culture of death and still call him or herself a "devout catholic".

Yet the girl whose name they proudly (?) carry might remind them that there is a God who tears down the powerful and who exults the lowly.

The lowliest and most vulnerable cannot be ignore in this discussion, because there is God who cares about them.

The Pope in Africa

If you read the news, you would think that the Pope needs to be arrested for opposing condom use and contraception in Africa.

This is interesting, since he is giving these talks in areas where the marjority of African are non Catholic Christians, Muslims, or follow traditional belief systems. And if you notice, the local religious leaders don't seem to be as upset about his message as the elites in Europe or the press.

Well, let me tell you the other side of the story, using an example from the BBC.

A couple months ago, the BBC was blasting the Bush HIV initiative for not providing funds to push "safe sex" education in high schools.

To illustrate the problem, the BBC used the story of a young girl who was infertile from her "illegal abortion".

But if you read her story, instead it provided the best story to show why the "safe sex" approach is not the answer.

First, she had had sex in high school.

Unlike many girls, she was not coerced into sex by a relative, employer, or neighbor. Nor did she have sex because it was the only way to survive. This girl admits it was her "boyfriend".

Well, in African tribal societies, often courting couple have sex, often with approval, as a way to prove the girls' fertility, or to pressure her parents to agree to a marriage.

But in a lot of tribes, even if the couple doesn't marry, the man is responsible for the child's welfare, paying her family to help support it, or even taking it into his family to raise.

The girls "boyfriend", however, didn't follow the traditional rules. He followed the new "rules": He abandoned her.

Lesson one: the modern Western ideas of "safe sex" without responsibility is devestating for women in third world countries, where the "social umbrella" is a strong family.

Of course, the point of the BBC story was to point out that if the girl had access to condoms she would not have gotten pregnant.

Ah, but the girl in the BBC story admitted that she and her boyfriend used condoms. But she got pregnant anyway.

Lesson two: Condoms don't always work

Let's look at the real world.

Women using no form of family planning have a pregnancy rate of 80 percent per year.

Using a condom in a perfect world, her pregnancy rate would be 7%.

But population studies, in the real world, show the pregnancy rate is much higher: 30%.

But in Africa, where hot climate results in latex deteroration and breakage, and where poorly made/counterfeit condoms are common, the percentage is even higher.

But problems one and two don't faze those who are promoting modern sexual ideas in the third world. They have another "answer" : allow "legal" abortion on demand to solve the "problem" of all those "unwanted" children.


So let's go back to our BBC poster child.

Her middle class parents arranged for her to have an abortion-- at a local private hospital.

But the standard of care and hygiene was poor, so she ended up infected, and infertile.

Problem three: lack of good medical clinics in third world countries.

The girl ended up with complications because the good private hospital was not clean enough, or maybe because the one doing the abortion might have been incompetent.

But if this is so for a middle class girl, what of a poor girl at a public hospital?

Or a girl who can't afford even a public hospital? The result is illegal abortions using herbs or by semitrained health care workers.

This is, of course, going on anyway. But with the promotion of "safe sex", i.e. that promiscuity is normal, you end up with a lot more pregnancies, a lot more abandoned women, and a lot more women injured emotionally and physically because they felt they had no other choice than to abort their child.

You can't promote the promotion of "safe sex" or "use a condom" without promoting promiscuity and destroying the link between sex and marriage and children. Even with condoms cheap and easily available all over the place, the toll on individuals and society is devestating.

Don't believe me? Well look at the US: Last week an article noted that 40% of all pregnancies were outside of wedlock, and that is despite two million legal abortions a year.

Fifty years ago, it was 5%, and there were a lot fewer abortions.

Similarly, the attack on the Pope is trying to destroy him for his prolife stance against abortion.

Right now, your tax money is going to NGO's who are busy promoting "legalized" abortion in a lot of third world countries.

But of course legalizing abortion in public hospitals would force Christian and Muslim nurses and physicians to perform abortion in these public hospitals, even though abortion is against their religious reliefs.


And in many rural areas, the only "public" hospitals and clinics are run by churches.

So if the religion of population control is going to succeed, you have to first destroy the Catholic church.

That is why you will see one attack after another that tries to destroy Pope Benedict.

He is, after all, not stopping them from placing "pill ladies" in every neighborhood and village to push contraception, nor is he preventing rich NGO's from offering cheap condoms in kiosks in every open market.


He is not even preventing non Catholic hospitals from promoting the "safe sex/population control" agenda. He doesn't have the power to do that.

But when the Pope insists on the dignity of marriage, and the holiness of sex inside a marital relationship, he is openly saying that the Emperor has no clothes.

And the Pope, by his strong stand, is inspiring others to follow their conscience to oppose the false dogmas taught by rich NGO's and the elites. His firm moral stance is strengthening Protestant pastors and Anglican bishops, nurses and doctors, local Muslims, and even those following their traditional tribal religions to reject the western ideas of sexuality that they know in their hearts is wrong.

Obama perfect score

Gateway pundit says it best:

It's Friday... Time for President Obama to sign some more abortion legislation.
-----------------------

Yes, American taxpayers will now pay for scientists to kill embryos "destined to be destroyed" to make miracles.

Ah yes, but why are they "destined to be destroyed"?

That alone says a lot about the moral confusion.

Most people are unaware of the subtle the moral problems of In Vitro fertilization. Most stories about IVF are "feel good" stories of poor infertile moms who now have babies to hold.

Few people seeing a happy mom with a greatly beloved child want to bring up the disturbing problem of the leftover embryos languishing in the freezer...

But the main problem with news stories about stem cell research is a lack of clarity.

There is an open bias in favor of the embryo killing version of stem cells, so when adult stem cells are used, often that fact isn't mentioned until paragraph 6.

No wonder that the average American is quite confused on what is going on.

I bet if you asked the average American about embryonic stem cell research, they would not realize that nearly all of the stem cells that already cure people come from adult stem cells.

I bet few Americans are aware that new methods allow stem cells that act just like embryonic stem cells to be made from skin and other tissue. And these cells are better, because they don't have the problem of mismatched DNA.

And I bet if you ask the American public, they will justify the use of embryonic stem cells by saying that the embryos are sitting in the freezer waiting to be discarded, so why not use them...even though these frozen embryos are useless for research.

I bet if you ask the average American if they should buy eggs from poor women in the third world who might be harmed from their donations, they would say no.

Well, so far President Obama hasn't lifted the ban on using tax payer money to buy human eggs for research.

Yet it is being done with private money.

How many Americans are aware that there is already an "egg buying" industry, mainly for infertile women? Most American women prefer eggs from Eastern Europeans for their babies, but of course non caucasian eggs will work fine for research.

How common is the practice? Unknown. But recently South African bishops protested the exploitation of their poor women for such schemes, and feminists are aghast at the black market trade that threatens the health of poor women.


Another legal prohibition that still is intact is the law saying you can't use tax payer money to do research on embryos discarded because they tested positive for disease.

But how long will this prohibition last?

Already there are reports lamenting that we won't use taxpayer money for these embryos, claiming we need to "use" (i.e. kill) them so that we can study the diseases in the laboratory...never mind that the research could also be done on adult derived stem cells, or on primate (monkey) derived embryonic stem cells...

Finally, much of the reporting hints that any ethical limits on embryo killing stem cell research is anti science, and hints that this primitive religious superstition opposes saving lives.

How far can scientists push ethical limits?

Well, some things are even too much for China.

China, who is busy funding embryonic stem cell/cloning research and allowing unlicensed clinics to use the untested treatments on sick people, has nevertheless stopped scientists from using Rabbit/human clones-- unlike the more enlightened UK (England), which does allow "chimera" embryo research.

So you see, there are a lot more ethical barriers to be lifted in the name of "science" in the near future.