September 12, 2005

Torres Family

Baby girl born to brain-dead woman dies - Women's Health - MSNBC.com

A while ago I posted on a woman who was being kept alive on Life Support so that her child could be born. This new reports says that the baby died recently because of some complicatioins. Keep this family in your prayers.

Posted by cr3do1 at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)

August 04, 2005

Retreat

Sorry, I was on retreat for the past few days... I will update later tonight...

Posted by cr3do1 at 02:34 PM | Comments (0)

July 29, 2005

Stem Cell Research II

After checking with EWTN, Adult Stem Cell Research, Umbilical Cord, Animal, etc are all legit forms of Stem Cell Research, because in these cases a human being is not dieing to save another. The dignity of the human person is being respected, and thus this is an OK form of research to help with the treatment of diseases.

I thought I would just let you know my theology wasn't off...

Well, off to Holy Mass.

Pax et Bonum.

Posted by cr3do1 at 08:08 AM | Comments (0)

July 28, 2005

Stem Cell Research

Over at the Drudge Report, it is being reported that Bill Frist will support Stem Cell Research. I have always found some discrepancies in the way the Church's view was presented on this matter, so I will present it the way I see it. If I am wrong, someone please correct me.

It is often said on FoxNews, CNN, etc that the Church opposes Stem Cell Research. This is an utter lie. The Church opposes Embryonic Stem Cell Research, because destroying one human being for the benefit of another is not moral and a grave evil. Just like you can't take a heart from a living person to save another, so you can't destroy a little baby just to take its stem cells and give to someone else.

The Church, as far as I know, has no issue with Adult Stem Research, Animal Research, Umbilical Cord, or the like because no grave moral evil is being done. A human life is not being destroyed, in these cases, to save another. These cases have all proved to work, only one case which I have mentioned has yielded no fruit, and that is Embryonic Stem Cell Research. Not one success has yet to be reported.

Of course, Bush will be blamed for this, because he did not allow proper federal funding. However, with the funding provided, with other countries running tests, with private companies running tests, should not at least one success story have been found? There is no future with Embryonic Stem Cell Research. Not only is it immoral, but it has no fruits.

What is moral, has proven to work. So why not focus in on this? Why be set on the immoral?

Now, I don't know what Bush allows for in his funding, and the like. I don't know this whole topic that well. If everyone's issue is that Bush doesn't fund Stem Cell Research in adults or animals, then maybe they do have an issue. If their issue is he won't fund Stem Cell Research on Babies, then they have no issue. Just like the President can not fund the taking of a heart from one live patient to another, he can not fund this.

Off the Morality and into Politics, I think another question which deserves asked is, does the Federal Government have any business even funding this in the first place? Moral or not? Stem Cell Research is certainly no where to be found in the Constitution. We all know that what the Constitution does not mention is a matter left to the States. For example, the Education of Children is not mentioned ONCE in the Constitution. Education is thus a reserve red power to the States, so why is there a Department of Education in the Federal Government? The Constitution set out very clearly what the role of the Federal Government is, and what powers it has. Everything else is reserved to the States. This principle has been ignored since at least Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Federal Government is always seeking power in places it simply doesn't have any. So, my question is, does the Federal Government have the right or the power to spend Tax Money on any form of Stem Cell Research? Maybe is does, maybe it doesn't, but without all the ethical and moral considerations, I would say no. In fact, I would have to say that our Federal Government itself is unconstitutional. Everyone says they do not trust the Government, especially Democrats (well Republicans equally too), so why on earth would anyone want the Federal Government to be involved in every part of their life? These are issues which will not be answered in my lifetime, but there is a Constitutional Crisis in this country, and it results from the fact that people fear the government but can't seem to get enough of it, all at the same time...

Just my two cents on the issue. In conclusion, not only is Embryonic Stem Cell Research Immoral, I don't believe the Federal Government has the authority to fund such research. This is not supposed to be a Socialistic Society where the Government has its hand in everything. We were not founded to be such, but we are slowly be transformed into one by the likes of Kennedy, Clinton, the Air Line Industries, etc. If this is what we want, then the Constitution needs to be amended or discarded.

I am open to criticism on this, I have mixed feelings at times about some of the things I said about the Constitution, but this is what I feel tonight so this is what I said LOL. Regardless, Embryonic Stem Cell Research is immoral and should not be funded by the Federal Government, by any Government, and should not be done. It is also going no where, and is useless murdering of little babies just because the Pro-Abortion lobby wants to see it done to help legitimize abortion.

Posted by cr3do1 at 11:23 PM | Comments (0)

July 23, 2005

The Atomic Bomb

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=3&u=/ap/20050724/ap_on_re_us/world_war_ii_poll

This article is about the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on the Japanese. A question in the article asks whether it was justified, with most Americans saying that it was justified and neccessary. However. This single event has dictated the way the world has been shapped in the 60 years since the event.

First of all, the dropping was not neccessary. Not at all. The mass destruction of a large area of land, the mass destruction of innocent human civilan life is never ever ever justifiable. Ever. Not for any reason what so ever.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms this point in paragraph 2314.

2314 "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."110 A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons - to commit such crimes.

Granted, the Catechism was not written when the Atomic Bomb was dropped, however this should be a guiding prinicple for us today. Weapons of this nature can not be used offensively, defensively, anyway. They should not even exist. John XXIII called for the destruction of all Nuclear Weapons in 1963. Paul VI called the dropping of the Atomic Bombs butchery.

The Cheif of Staff to President Truman has this to say about the bombings:

"The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan… In being the first to use it, we…adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

Had the United States not dropped the bomb on Japan (I can't say with certainty), I doubt the arms race would have become what it did. I doubt we would have this problem with Iran and North Korea today. The US did something which it did not need to do, and as a result we will end up paying the ultimate price for it. We started this problem, people would not have been so hungry for it if they did not even know it existed.

I am probably a bleeding heart liberal on this point, but there are always other options than the mass destruction of people and land. Not to mention the US did it twice, not once. The Japanese could not have lasted forever. As a result, we now have the Nuclear Age. If only people would listen to what the Church has to say, she has good reasons for it all. May not make sense at the time, but 30, 40, 50 years down the road, it makes perfect sense. In time, people will say the same thing about Gay Marriage. People are begining to already admit it about Abortion, with America becoming more and more Pro-Life.

Getting rid of Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological weapons is hardly even possible now. Our President wants to build his star wars shield, and no country is going to trust the other enough to get rid of theirs (a Thomas Hobbes approach, where one is afraid to give over his rights in fear that someone else will become more powerful then he is). How things grow...

This doesn't really make any sense, but do your best...

Posted by cr3do1 at 09:47 PM | Comments (0)

July 20, 2005

Can't Francis Kissling just lead a quiet humble life?

Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, said it is making no assumptions on Roberts' personal adherence to interpretations of the "morality" of issues such as abortion, contraception, reproductive rights, the death penalty and gay rights. Roberts is Roman Catholic.

"We fully understand that regardless of those views, an educated Catholic knows that they have a personal right to dissent from church positions and an even stronger responsibility to protect the right of all Americans to follow or disregard the teachings of their denominations on these issues," Kissling said. "Modern Catholic social thought accepts and supports a legitimate distinction between church and state." - http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,163160,00.html

Since when does a CCD education give someone the intellectual or theological training necessary to understand half of what the Church teaches and why? Most Priests do not understand this, I don't understand this. And yet, we have Francis Kissling, the unofficial spokeswoman of modern 'Catholicism', running around here and declaring why 2000 years of Catholic teaching is wrong. Her best theological reasoning is because people disagree with it, so in order to accommodate those who disagree, the Church has to change. I would first like to know where she gets her statistics, and secondly why things must change when people disagree.

There have been many slaughtering in the world, from Hitler to Stalin, that many in their nations agreed with, does that justify these murders? Just because people agreed with them. Saint Augustine said: "Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it, and right is right even if no one is doing it". God gave us the Church for situations like this, when so many disagree with the Church. The Church has to be that beacon of truth which guides people back to her. Truth does not change. If one day people think it is ok to kill someone just because, is that going to be OK?

This is precisely what Pope Benedict XVI warned the Cardinals about just before the beginning of the Conclave which elected him. He said:

How many winds of doctrine we have known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking… The small boat of thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves – thrown from one extreme to the other: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism, and so forth. Every day new sects are created and what Saint Paul says about human trickery comes true, with cunning which tries to draw those into error (cf Eph 4, 14). Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching”, looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires. - Cardinal Ratzinger, April 18, 2005

We are moving towards a way of thinking which decides things based solely on how many people agree with it. A society where truth changes from time to time. A society where one's desires supersedes all. A society not based on Jesus Christ, but a society based on man, and ultimately on the devil himself. This is where we are heading.

Cardinal Ratzinger continued, however.

However, we have a different goal: the Son of God, true man. He is the measure of true humanism. Being an “Adult” means having a faith which does not follow the waves of today’s fashions or the latest novelties. A faith which is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ is adult and mature. It is this friendship which opens us up to all that is good and gives us the knowledge to judge true from false, and deceit from truth. We must become mature in this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith – only faith – which creates unity and takes form in love. On this theme, Saint Paul offers us some beautiful words - in contrast to the continual ups and downs of those were are like infants, tossed about by the waves: (he says) make truth in love, as the basic formula of Christian existence. In Christ, truth and love coincide. To the extent that we draw near to Christ, in our own life, truth and love merge. Love without truth would be blind; truth without love would be like “a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal” (1 Cor 13,1).

He is stating that, no, the Church will not give up in its fight against Relativism. The Church will not quit in seeking the salvation of souls. The Church will not quit in preaching the message of Jesus Christ on earth. The Church will not succumb to pressure to "modernize". The Church is the steward of the truth it has received from Jesus Christ, we do not have power nor the authority to change that. Why would we want to change that anyway? It is that truth which leads us on the narrow road to heaven.

So to you Francis Kissling, and to all others, we will not quit, we will not change, we will not be relativists. We will continue to preach the message of Jesus Christ to the world, whether the world wants to hear it or not. The Church has seen worse, the Church has fought worse, and the thing which always seems to come out unharmed is the Church. You will be gone, I will be gone, but the Church and all her teaching will still be here. The faith of the Church is not based on polls or surveys; it is based on Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Jon-Paul now steps off of his soap box...

Posted by cr3do1 at 09:39 PM | Comments (2)

July 14, 2005

Sacred Scriptures

Part II

The other thing which caught my attention was the use of Sacred Scriptures on this '30 days' show.

People throughout the centuries have used the Bible for many different things. For good, or for evil. From doing good for the poor, to killing other people. You can get pretty much anything you want from the Bible, if you interpret it your own way.

Christ was very much aware of this possibility, which is why he gave the world the Magisterium, and more specifically the Papacy. If there was one sole authority in interpreting and telling the world what he truly meant, then this would stop a lot of problems when it comes to people debating as to what the true meaning behind Sacred Scripture is. For example, the Bible tells us to cut off our right arm if it causes us to sin. This can be argued as being literal, if Christ did not give us an authority in this matter, then who would be able to tell us not to cut off our right arm? This is why Christ gave us the Pope, well one of many reasons.

On the show, this guy would go to Gay Christian Services. Obviously the two held differences of opinions. Both interpreted the Bible differently. Who is the authority to say which is right? In the Protestant world there is no such authority, the sole authority is the Bible. This is not an attack on Protestants, just the simple facts.

When questions between what is literal and figurative came up, he was unable to answer. For example, the minister at this Church asked why it is OK for Military Men to murder other human beings to defend the nation when the Bible says no to killing, but yet it isn't ok for her to have sex with her partner because the Bible says it is an abomination. First of all, the military does not murder anyone. Out of self defense of themselves, their fellow soldiers, and their nation they take the life of another human being. Self defense has never been a deliberate murder in cold blood of another human being. The Bible never said that you can not draw blood, but that you can not murder someone. Such as is the case between Cain and Able (although before the Commandments).

In the case of homosexuality, there is nothing in the Bible to even suggest that it was being figurative, but rather, verse after very, and chapter after chapter is very clear that it is not acceptable. Some things are clearly figurative, such as cutting off your arm. Some things are not. It is sometimes easy to figure out what is and is not figurative. Having the Pope helps in this area.

After this, the talk of the Bible sort of stops on the show. I guess I can now reveal what happened for those who do not know. He ended up falling into the trap that everyone deserves the same rights as everyone else because it is not fair. Like Cardinal Ouellet said in his letter, everyone deserves respect and dignity because they are human, not because they gay. Being human does not guarantee the right to marriage, or have children, or drive a care, or own a home. Being human guarantees you the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It guarantees you the right to free speech, and the freedom to worship God as you please. These are the rights you receive for being human. Everyone deserves to be treated equally as human beings, everyone deserves the right to pursue life, to be free, and to live as happy as one can. Being treated equally does not mean social acceptance of your lifestyle. Being treated equally means that you were treated like a human person with human dignity.

The problem seems to be a misunderstanding of equality, and even deeper what does it mean to be human. These countries are rushing into dangerous territory without even thinking about it.

One day the issue might be that we aren't all equal because we all don't make the same wage. Oh yeah, that is an issue already. It is called Socialism. That we are not all the same gender, that we all don't have the talents, that we all don't look a like. None of these are matters of human dignity. If most rational people would just sit down and think about what it means to be equal, then so many issues would disappear. Instead of everyone working to overcome every boundary of so called inequality (this is called Communism BTW), maybe we should rejoice in the fact that we are different (well rejoice in some things). What a boring world this would be if we were all the same, 'equal' in every sense.

Anyway, back to the Bible, I for one am glad I can rely on the Pope to clarify all these things. Otherwise, it would be consistent debating and schisms. Two topics to think about here, but not many people these days seem to do a lot of thinking, just acting. Pax et Bonum (loosely peace and goodness).

God Bless.

Posted by cr3do1 at 10:58 PM | Comments (0)

July 13, 2005

The yuck factor

Last week I was watching this series on FX called "30 Days". I guess the point of the show is for people with opposite values or living styles to live together for 30 days and grow to understand each other. I bet you can already figure out where I am going with this.

So, the episode I was watching dealt with a conservative Christian (Protestant) going to live with a homosexual man in San Francisco. For the entire show, he seemed to be holding on to his values, but there was something interesting in his thinking.

A lot of his comments were either "That’s disgusting" or "Well the Bible says this..." The first part brought me back to my Catholic Morality Class last semester. In it we learned about something called the 'Yuck Factor'. The yuck factor is when you base your morality on whether you view something as disgusting, nasty, etc. This fails to work, however. Once upon a time abortion was viewed as disgusting and horrible, as well as contraception. Even the way people dress today was once considered evil. What is even more troubling is in Germany, where many cases of cannibalism are showing up. If people continue to base their morality based on the 'yuck factor', who knows, maybe one day we will be able to go to the Grocery Store and buy a pound of good ground round meat from humans. Rather scary morality when you think about it.

This is why morality must be based on objective moral truths found in the natural law. This is why the morality of most Christian denominations are so... lax. At one time, each condemned abortion and contraception. Then contraception was OK, but abortion was most certainly not OK. Then they couldn't be sure about specific cases on abortion, and before you knew it, abortion was a matter of personal choice for a woman. The same thing is now happening with homosexaulity in protestant denominations. The Catholic Church, however, never based its morality on this 'yuck factor', but on objective moral truths. (Objective meaning that no matter what anyone thinks, it is true.)

The Catholic Church's condemnation of abortion, contraception, homosexuality (keep in mind that in each case the Church does not condemn the sinner, but the sin), and countless other immoral things have been based on something deeper then whether or not people think something is nasty. Regardless of whether or not any of these are nasty or not, the objective truth is that they are wrong. This is why the moral teachings of the Church do not change, even if everyone around it disagrees with it.

The gift of human sexuality is one of the most beautiful things which God has given to mankind. To distort this gift is telling God that we know better then he knows. The male-female relationship, in all respects, is absolutely complementary. Anything else is not. Nature itself shows this complementary role. This is why homosexuality is not in accord with the natural moral law.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

2357: Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,140 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."141 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. - Catechism of the Catholic Church

In the middle of writing this, I decided to read the Primate of Canada Cardinal Marc Ouellet's, the Arcbishop of Quebec, letter to the Canadaian Parliment. It is of course on the issue of homosexual marriage. It is a very good letter, and genius. Consider, of course, that it doesn't take much to impress me. This really did impress me though, because he explained why homosexual marriage is wrong, not based on theology but based solely on reason. For anyone with questions on why this is wrong, without getting into the whole theology problem of the issue, read this letter. Here is a quote from it:

"Furthermore, the argument of those promoting homosexual "marriage" in favor of equal rights is also based on a false notion of respect for human dignity. The equality and dignity of persons do not depend on race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or marital status. Their dignity and equality are based on the simple fact that they are members of the human race. To respect their dignity, neither the State nor society is obliged to legally accept their "lifestyle" that has no reason to be publicly recognized as a social value." - Cardinal Marc Ouellet

Click here for the entire letter...

This why the Church teaches what it does. The Church has not changed her teachings on this for two thousand years for a reason. It is not because she is unenlightened, but because she is enlightened. That is just the begining of the problems which this guy faced. There is the whole issue of the Bible and Church authority.

As for the show, if you don't know the ending, you will have to wait for my next post which will deal with Sacred Scriptures to find out if he stayed faithful or not... Pax et Bonum.

God Bless!

Posted by cr3do1 at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)