gay lobby and other nuances

Forget the sound bites: The full quotes are available on CNS news.

Heh the pope sounds catholic...

The pope continued by talking about how "many times in the church, outside this case, but also in this one, we go searching for the sins -- of one's youth, for example -- for publicity. I'm not talking about crimes here -- the abuse of a minor is a crime -- but of sins."
"But if a person, whether a layperson, priest or sister, goes to confession and converts, the Lord forgives. And when the Lord forgives, he forgets. This is important," he said, because those who want the Lord to forget their sins should forget those of others.
"St. Peter committed one of the biggest sins ever -- he denied Christ -- and he made him pope," Pope Francis said.
Addressing the issue of the gay lobby, Pope Francis said it was important to "distinguish between a person who is gay and someone who makes a gay lobby," he said. "A gay lobby isn't good."
"A gay person who is seeking God, who is of good will -- well, who am I to judge him?" the pope said. "The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says one must not marginalize these persons, they must be integrated into society. The problem isn't this (homosexual) orientation -- we must be like brothers and sisters. The problem is something else, the problem is lobbying either for this orientation or a political lobby or a Masonic lobby."

quotes of the day

Mrs Gay Caswell on politicians who support drug legalization:

There is a very simple cure for those who advocate legalised marijuana. Try teaching math at 9 AM to a bunch of students who have easy access and use of it? We have experienced cultureal camps with free alcohol and free dope. This summer we experienced a cultural camp alcohol and drug free  The difference is more than night and day, more like hell and heaven 

yeah. But of course she lives in the Canadian equivalent of a US Indian reservation, where drug use is a problem.  But of course, there is a similar problem in the US inner cities, and now in the rural USA poor.

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The Curt Jester has the full quote of Pope Francis on gays:

“A gay person who is seeking God, who is of good will – well, who am I to judge him?” the pope said. “The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this very well. It says one must not marginalize these persons, they must be integrated into society. The problem isn’t this (homosexual) orientation – we must be like brothers and sisters. The problem is something else, the problem is lobbying either for this orientation or a political lobby or a Masonic lobby.”...
This is the Google Translate version of a Spanish article on the interview:

Q. You have not spoken yet about abortion or about marriage between same sex. Brazil has passed a law extending abortion rights and another that includes marriages between persons of the same sex. Why has not talked about that?
A. The Church has already expressed perfectly on that, it was necessary to go over that, nor talked about cheating, lying or other things about which the Church has a clear doctrine. No need to talk about it, but the positive things their way to the boys. Moreover, young people know exactly what the position of the Church.
Q. But where you stand on these issues?
A. of the Church, I am a son of the Church.

Funny how “I am a son of the Church” did not make it into headlines or when the Pope reaffirmed the teaching regarding ordination to the priesthood or concerning Communion for civilly divorced Catholics who remarried without a declaration of nullity. We will not be seeing a headline saying “Pope affirms Catholic teaching” anytime soon.

thougts on percy jackson and the return of gaia

Percy Jackson is a nerdish kid with ADHD who turns out to be the son of Poisidon in a sci fi/fantasy series for kids.

My granddaughter got me into it.

Riordan, the author, gets the gods right: good but not too good, a bit callus about their kids and earth.

a lot of the subplots are about killing the monsters who hunt their kids, who then have to flee to Camp HalfBlood in order to learn how to defend themselves. A lot of kids get killed before they arrive, but this is glossed over...

In the last book, of the first series, Percy is offered immortality, but turns it down for love of Annabel...but makes the gods swear to let their kids know who their fathers are, and to help protect their lives.

Part of the subplot is percy's willingness to defend his friends, and even homeless dweeb such as Tyson (who turns out to be a cyclops, hence Percy's brother).
 
In other words, Percy is not simply a greek hero: He is the Judeo/christian version of a greek demigod hero, who has a strong moral influence.

I told my granddaughter that in the middle ages, the gods were seen as angels, or similar to the elves and Maia of Tolkien: Not infallible but higher than humans, but not God either.

Indeed, one longs for someone to pull out a crucifix and say: You have no power over me. Except, of course, when evil spirits/monsters/'gods' attack in material form, they have free will in the matter, so you could be toast.

But the amorality of the gods reminds one of why a lot of pagans converted to "the good news".

It evolves into a second series with the Romanized version of the gods.

These  gods are now roman aspect, and more war like, although they promote community and law and order. Unlike Camp halfblood, which is full of teens only, they have lots of families of grown up demigods and their kids living there for safety.

The subplots quickly evolve to Chronus trying to take over the earth and destroy the gods in the first series, but in the Roman series, it is Gaia who is trying to take over (and destroy not just gods and demigods but mankind).

In other words, Gaia is a monstrous god, a lot worse than the Greek or Roman ones.
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Related item: The conspiracy sites are full of theories, but when one sees famous names associated with groups who are involved in governments and the UN also being associated with groups that include massive societal changes, including religious ideas, one wonders if Gaia is again rising. From a christian conspiracy webpage that is more intelligent than a lot of them: The Green Agenda has a lot of quotes, including this one:

“If Gaia is to become conscious, we are her means of consciousness. If the earth is to become conscious through us, we must be identified with all the earth, not just the human race. We must not be dissociated from the biosphere. This means expanding our sense of individual identity even beyond humanity to encompass the natural world. We need to move beyond global identification to earth identification, beyond global consciousness to earth consciousness. I am suggesting that humanity as a whole may now be approaching this turning point in our evolution, that Gaia may soon wake up. Just as human beings had to evolve a brain and then a neocortex in order to develop self-reflexive consciousness, Gaia must do the same. The earth has developed its neocortex in the human race and our technologies, and now humanity must develop the global social structures and institutions to play the role of coordinating system in the global brain.” - link

WTF?

Hello: Gaia is a ball of molten iron with a couple inches of top soil and water. She isn't a person and she doesn't think.

I refer you to the excellent series of lectures from Berkeley: Science, Magic and Religion.

This is magical thinking, a problem that keeps popping up in world history.

 I tend to be scientific and religious, but I despise magic, be it relics, faith healing, or evolving to a higher power like the Pricilla nuns are doing.

If you go to the old "World shift council" which promoted conscious evolution 2012 about evolving to a higher consciousness (and you too can join if you buy our tapes for 150 dollars and attend our seminars) you will get the latest example of such magical thinking. For all their talk of science and quantum mechanics, it is fantasy and magical thinking, not science.

And the Pricilla nuns and others were involved in something called the World shift council, about the shift of consciousness. Hmm...it's now 2013, and not much happened. so the link, worldshiftcouncil.org, now has scrubbed off the internet and your webcrawler is diverted to reveal a cultish guy named Ervin Lazlo.

Well, maybe the original site is scrubbed for ordinary folks, but the waybackmachine link is HERE.
one example HERE. Yes, and note all the usual suspects on the side bar.
Their talk reminds me of this.

Yes, it is genuine new age gibberish, but the egotism that they celebrate themselves as  the leaders doesn't make me any happier about all of this.

as for details, who needs them? Again I am reminded of comedian Will Roger's plan to get rid of the UBoat attacks during world war I: All you have to do is raise the temperature of the oceans to 120 degrees, and it will be too hot for the UBoats to handle. When asked how he would do that, he quipped he only gave the solutions, he didn't supply the details.

In this, I am a materialist: Johan's blog has the sceptic take on Ervin Lazlo, who started the Club of Budapest (which is an offshot of the Club of rome, and deals with "spiritual" stuff). barbara Marx Hubbard was involved in the club of budapest in the days when Budapest was communist, but never mind: she managed to give a talk to the Democratic convention in spite of this. WTF?
And guess who the pricilla nuns were dancing in front of at the last PCnuns leaderships conference? again WTF...

A quote from Johan's blog:

How did someone with such bizarre ideas (and lack of credentials) get to be adviser of the UNESCO Director General or a member of the International Academy of Science? Or did he landed those jobs before he saw the light (quantum or Akashic)?... .... How can you be against a man who wants love, peace, and understanding for all?
But at what cost? Must we give up the freedom from Enlightenment and return to the dark ages of superstition, replacing God, the Bible and the Catholic Church for the quantum consciousness and the Akashic field, whatever those may be.

yes, magical thinking. A return to the good old days of the pre socratic mysticism, and get rid of logic (the greek/roman gods) and God (the good part of the Judeo/Christian/Islamic religion) to return to Gaia.

FYI: The adoring biography of this guy is found here.
A philosopher without training, who "in 1960 unilaterally made a decision to alter his "life path" -- although he proudly notes, it "wasn't a rational" decision as he chose to follow his intuition so that he could discover more about his role in the greater cosmos..."

sounds like a narcissist, or maybe a bipolar person in the manic phase of his illness (presumably he is a narcissist, and not in the manic phase of neurosyphillis, like Nietzsche, whose followers still ignore that any psychiatrist reading his writing would diagnose mania)
and yes, there is a wikipedia page, but wikipedia notes it sounds more like an advertisement and asks for more data.

So what kind of guy who is supposed to be hanging out with big shots doesn't even get a decent Wikipedia entry (because the sceptics don't notice him? )

The rejection of science disturbs me, because logic, science and progress, for all it's bad points have made the world a lot more easy for ordinary folks. (having spent years in the third world, I am a bit less enthusiastic about the wonderfulness of primitive life than National Geographic.)

Yet, in the Christian (monotheism) universe, the search for such powers is not just magical thinking, which can be treated with negative feedback and a bit of thorazine for the hard core cases, but an alliance with spirits who reject God: the temptation in the myth of Eden was not sex, but the idea "that you can be like god"...The New age preaches you will be like god, or the "secret" of Oprah, or the prosperity gospel, where what you think is what you get (and you poor people and sick folks, it's your own fault).

In this I stand with PapaFrancis, telling the big shots to get off their tushies and get their hands dirty with ordinary folks instead of hanging around with each other in the rectories pretending to pray or evolve to a higher power  (or convents: The "nuns on the bus" and the "leadership conference" antics are about kissing the ass of the Democrats and mooning the bishops, not about serving God or man).


 If you know about the occult influence in the Nazi party, you would wonder where all this is going: the occult trend resembles a cult, and it is scary that it might be trying to take over, whether it be magical thinking or demonic, either way it is dangerous.

Alas, it is truly "occult": Hidden in plain sight. So you can only find out what is going on in conspiracy sites, and those often exaggerate or go into delusions themselves.

Sigh.

yes, I know: irrational and disjointed. But this is my musing blog.

UK Mail has photos of the Copacabana beach crowds waiting for the pope...latest estimates are 3 million, but hey who's counting

and no, I haven't been watching it: Time differences mean it's on in the middle of the night, although they are covering it on EWTN, but today there have been too many brownouts.

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;For later reading, via TeaAtTrianon:

MonksAndMermaidsblog has an article on Countess Elizabeth, the sister of the last Czar's wife, who became a nun after her husband was killed.

A very interesting character, loved by all (even her gay husband who disliked women and everyone hated ended up liking her). The bad news is that Alexandra stopped talking to her because she kept pointing out that Rasputin was evil...

I have several books with me on Nicolas and Alexandra, and her character is mentioned on and off, usually with a breath of fresh air. Alexandra, when she kept having girls, resorted to occult miracle workers to get a boy, then turned to Rasputin when her boy had hemophilia...understandable, but in religion, you ask the deity for favors, you don't tell him what to do and manipulate him. (As the Narnia saying goes "Aslan is not a tame lion")... that is not religion, that is magic.

Well, anyway, Elizabeth is a saint in the Orthodox church, as Elizabeth the new martyr.

Papa Francis prays

LINK
Lord you left your Mother in our midst that she might accompany us.
May she take care of us and protect us on our journey, in our hearts, in our faith.
May she make us disciples like herself, missionaries like herself.
May she teach us to go out onto the streets.
May she teach us to step outside ourselves.
We bless this image, Lord, which will travel round the country.
May she, by her meekness, by her peace, show us the way.

stories below the fold

The religious left has won the culture?

No, they won those who run the culture of lies, promiscuity and "Me-ism".

the Protestant sects are winning the unchurched in the slums of Brazil because the liberal catholic "liberation theology" types don't actually get their hands dirty.link2

A pious Muslim writes an opinion book on Jesus, according to Muslim beliefs, but the press treats the book as unbiased history.

Fewer atheists in the world, but never mind. That goes against the meme, and besides, Asians don't count:

“Projections to 2020 indicate a sustained decrease of the global share of the non-religious,” reads the study. “This is due primarily to the resurgence of Buddhism, Christianity, and other religions in China, and Christianity in Eastern Europe.”

When pro aborts take the easy way out

Viagra: it's not just for men anymore.

they are using it to open the arteries to the uterus/placenta in pre eclampsia.

the article mentions that it also works in pulmonary artery hypertension.

If you remember awhile back, a lady with this was aborted in a Catholic hospital because there was no other treatment (the ethics committee said).  According to Wikipedia, the doctors said her chance of dying was 100 percent.

The nun has since repented, but the hospital is no longer Catholic.

I argued at the time that the abortion was not warranted, since she should have been transferred to a university hospital where experimental treatments were available, and if not, that the non catholic university could have done the "theraputic abortion".

Guess what: Reports of using Viagra to successfully treat such patients were first published in 2007... and confirmed in 2010 study.

But never mind. The woman involved was Hispanic, and not allowed to get the best medical advice available and the docs didn't think she might be eligible to get into a clinical study to save her and her baby...and the pro aborts wouldn't bother to ask specialists familiar with clinical trials if the original doctor's assessment was necessarily true.

CSLewis bio

McGrath has a new bio about CS Lewis.

Pretty good so far.

He discusses it here:

China's house churches

Article in the Fresno paper

She said she’d come to know God while she was attending a university in China where several of her teachers were Christians. During that time, her older brother died of cancer, and three months later her grandfather committed suicide.

“The death was a big struggle in my family,” Jing said. Her mother “became a Christian, and she liked the preaching and thought it was useful to communicate with the preacher. She suggested I become one.”

Jing now leads a large church and hopes that through preaching, others may know the same God she does. She hopes and prays that people give the Three-Self church a chance.


“The most important thing about the church is Jesus is our Christ, not emphasizing the Three-Self principles,” she said.

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/07/01/3369264/chinas-underground-christian-churches.html#storylink=cpy

we're all haters now

Reading the comments on any article about the Supreme court throwing out rules by the Legislative branch of the federal government AND by direct plebecite should be raising alarm buttons.

But political correctness triumphs all.

The Weekly Standard has Scalia's take:

[In its holding, the Court] accuses the Congress that enacted this law and the President who signed it of something much worse than, for example, having acted in excess of enumerated federal powers—or even having drawn distinctions that prove to be irrational. Those legal errors may be made in good faith, errors though they are. But the majority says that the supporters of this Act acted with malice—with the “purpose” “to disparage and to injure” same-sex couples. It says that the motivation for DOMA was to “demean,” to “impose inequality,” to “impose .  .  . a stigma,” to deny people “equal dignity,” to brand gay people as “unworthy,” and to “humiliat[e]” their children....

But to defend traditional marriage is not to condemn, demean, or humiliate those who would prefer other arrangements, any more than to defend the Constitution of the United States is to condemn, demean, or humiliate other constitutions. To hurl such accusations so casually demeans this institution. In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to “disparage,” “injure,” “degrade,” “demean,” and “humiliate” our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homosexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence—indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race. .  .  .

By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition. Henceforth those challengers will lead with this Court’s declaration that there is “no legitimate purpose” served by such a law, and will claim that the traditional definition has “the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure” the “personhood and dignity” of same-sex couples. The majority’s limiting assurance will be meaningless in the face of language like that, as the majority well knows. That is why the language is there. The result will be a judicial distortion of our society’s debate over marriage—a debate that can seem in need of our clumsy “help” only to a member of this institution.

As to that debate: Few public controversies touch an institution so central to the lives of so many, and few inspire such attendant passion by good people on all sides. Few public controversies will ever demonstrate so vividly the beauty of what our Framers gave us, a gift the Court pawns today to buy its stolen moment in the spotlight: a system of government that permits us to rule ourselves. Since DOMA’s passage, citizens on all sides of the question have seen victories and they have seen defeats. There have been plebiscites, legislation, persuasion, and loud voices—in other words, democracy.

The bad news is that opposition is seen as "pushing your narrow minded religion on me"...at least in the comments section.

Yet American law is based on Protestant ethics, Anglo Saxon common law, and Roman law, all of which see family and marriages as something different than merely a way for two people "who love each other" to get a tax break.

Ah, but "love" and "my wants" trump law. Kennedy's decision is based on the Casey abortion decision, which said anyone could decide for themselves, i.e. that there was nor could be no higher law. Several Popes have warned us that this is the "tyranny of relativism". And one wag noted: The sexual revolution is over, and the bad boys won.

In other words, by making those who follow the old fashioned rules the enemy, you are letting the Andrew Sullivans decide how you should live (a chronic pot smoker, admitting that he is not faithful to his partner and saying gay marriage would encourage heterosexuals to also be unfaithful, and a man who was obsessed with Palin's womb (as if raising one's handicapped grandchild is wrong), and against simple circumcision because it decreases a man's pleasure, (never mind that this custom that could save hundreds of thousands of lives in both Africa and Asia" I suspect "tuli" is the reason that Pinoys have so little HIV, but no one has bothered to discuss the matter).

In the US, this will be used as one more step to persecute churches that don't go along with the progressive agenda, and Catholics will be at the forefront.

Yet no one seems to notice that the gay agenda is not being rejected in Asia and Africa because of Christianity, but because of the bad fruits of male homosexual behavior.

Obama is pressuring the Philippines and now Africa about "homophobia" and ignoring what anyone who lives in the slums of Africa or Asia knows: That the street kids are often raped by men, that male employers often prey on  their employees, both male and female, and that in colonial times, those with certain behavior problems were encouraged to emigrate, so often the white bwana abused his (male and female) help...

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If this were the only thing going on in the US I wouldn't worry.

But this is in a country where the political opponants of the president are being harassed by the IRS (Will churches lose their tax exemptions next?), where employees who break the Church law openly win lawsuits after being fired, where the church is being asked to pay for abortion causing pills and contraception (not because the law was passed by Congress, but because an unelected "panel" in the HHS decided it should be done).

It's hard to figure out how far this is actually going on, since I live in the Philippines.