A New Year's Message From the Religion of Peace

Worth watching all the way through. And listen closely to what they're saying:

How Atheism Is Being Sold to Your Children

David Kupelian, author of the best-selling The Marketing of Evil, offers a meaty analysis of how militant atheism is gaining ground — lots of ground — across the United States, particularly in our schools and universities. 

One technique employed by atheists to discredit religion is to constantly equate the ongoing violence of Muslims around the world with “religion.” The fallacy runs along these lines: Muslims believe in God and are religious fanatics who murder people in the name of God and religion. Catholics, Protestants, and others also believe in God and are therefore also religious fanatics who [would if they felt they needed to] murder people in the name of God and religion.” That's not a true categorical syllogism, but you get the idea.

Kupelian says:

“Remember, to atheists, Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all pretty much the same —dangerous monotheistic fairy tales that induce people to oppress and kill each other — the only difference being the particular myths, superstitions and rules they impose on followers based on each religion's traditions and supposed ‘holy books.’

“Thus, the pathological fanaticism and hair-trigger violence exhibited by brainwashed jihadists around the world today are easily associated by atheists with all religions, especially when they call to mind abuses committed in past centuries — say, the Inquisition or the Salem witch trials – in the name of Christianity.

“Another major, if more long-term, factor contributing to the popularity of atheist books, Prager notes, is the ‘secular indoctrination of a generation,’ thanks to our de facto atheistic public school system:

“‘Unless one receives a strong religious grounding in a religious school and/or religious home, the average young person in the Western world is immersed in a secular cocoon. From elementary school through graduate school, only one way of looking at the world – the secular — is presented.

“‘The typical individual in the Western world receives as secular an indoctrination as the typical European received a religious one in the Middle Ages. I have taught college students and have found that their ignorance not only of the Bible but of the most elementary religious arguments and concepts — such as the truism that if there is no God, morality is subjective — is total. So the generation that has been secularly brainwashed is now buying books that reconfirm that brainwash – especially now, given the evil coming from religious people.’

“Finally, observes Prager, Christianity and Judaism have, with some notable exceptions, failed to effectively counter the ever-rising tide of atheistic secularism in the Western world. Pointing out that ‘it is virtually impossible to distinguish between a liberal Christian or Jew and a liberal secularist,’ he notes that all three ‘regard the human fetus as morally worthless; regard the man-woman definition of marriage as a form of bigotry; and come close to holding pacifist beliefs, to cite but a few examples.’

 

“Thus, with religious evil increasing in the world – thanks to Islam — and fewer and fewer people willing and able to confront it, Prager concludes ‘the case for atheism will seem even more compelling.’”

(read article)

Lessons Learned in 2008

I wish I had thought to write about this, but Elizabeth Foss has already done it, and more gracefully, insightfully, and interestingly than I could have. She's coming at this from the perspective of a wife and mother, so her insights should be particularly relevant to you ladies, but I still found a lot there for my own personal reflection as a man. This is worth sharing with your network of friends and followers.

Lessons Learned

Funny, Yes, But Also (Sometimes) True

10 Municipal Bankruptcies in Coming Next Year?

From the “how bad will it get?” file, comes this recent story from Bloomberg.com about the likelihood of a slew of cities and counties, especially in my home state of California (we're expats living in Ohio now), going belly up. It's already happened (e.g., Vallejo & Orange County), and what I worry about is the potential domino effect that can bring a lot of other things crashing down when a cascade of bankruptcies picks up momentum.

“The accountant who predicted the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy says as many as 10 insolvencies will roil the $2.7 trillion U.S. market for state, county and city debt next year as public finances worsen amid calls for federal aid to state and local governments. . . . ” (read more)

The Pornification of Our Generation

My compliments  to Matthew Archbold at Creative Minority Report for articulately verbalizing something my wife and I have groused about for a long time:

“So I took the kids out to the mall to shop for Mom two days before Christmas. I want them to know that Christmas is not just about receiving but giving as well. 

“Now let me ask a weird hypothetical. If I showed up at the Mall wearing only briefs and say my wife showed up in a minuscule bra and panties we'd likely be dragged from the premises and arrested. And rightly so, especially if you've seen me in briefs. But no matter what, it's bad, right? So why is it OK for some of these stores to have huge window displays of essentially naked people. I mean, are these store owners out of their minds. Walking by Abercrombie or Victoria's Secret is essentially a walking tour of porn for children. Hey kids step on up and peer inside the sick twisted mind of adulthood where we view others as vessels of flesh waiting to be boarded and devoured.  . . .” (read more)

Yet Another Reason Why I Love Technology

“Lectures in Dominican History,” given in to Dominican seminarians the 1980s by Father John Hinnebusch, O.P., are now available in a complete collection at i-Tunes. Check it out! (Because, for some reason, there is no permalink embedded on the blog I'm sending you to, be sure to scroll down to the post titled “Dominican History Podcast” to access the stuff I'm talking about.

A Lesson in Joy: The Death of a Young Catholic Wife and Mother

Although I never met Emilie Lemmons, a writer for The Catholic Spirit newspaper (Archdiocese of St. Paul and Mineapolis), I saw her work regularly, and I was shocked and saddened to learn of her death on Christmas Eve from lung cancer. She was just 40.

One of her final columns was a wrenchingly honest account of her struggle to find true joy in the midst of her painful trek toward her own Calvary. . . .

“On a recent Sunday morning at Mass, I was glancing at the program and saw an invitation to participate in the Advent liturgy with “a joyous heart, mind and spirit.”

Immediately, I became angry. How on earth can a person with stage 4 cancer that is progressively getting worse feel joyous, I thought. My resentment seethed, and I sat like a hard stone all through Mass.

When the intentions mentioned those who are ill, I identified myself immediately and felt like such an outsider — just like the homeless people and other people on the fringes with whom I was lumped in the same intention. I felt miles away from normal, and it was hard to accept.

I’ve been like this for a few weeks now, ever since I was hospitalized for a week in November for a pulmonary embolism and fluid build-up in my lungs, ever since a CT scan found even more tumors growing there.

It’s hard to cope when I’m so angry, depressed and hopeless — yet somehow it feels fitting in this dark season of Advent.

In these weeks, we watch and wait, lighting candles that progressively light the way to Christmas Day. In my own life, when I feel so plunged in darkness, I watch and wait as I contemplate what those candles might illuminate. . . .

Sometimes I see myself in the description of people who fight toward a specific outcome and are “haunted by the specter of failure and disappointment.” It’s the mother in me. I rage against the possibility that I might die and leave my children motherless, my husband a widower. Even though the medical odds are against me, and my rational mind knows I could die, it is hard for me to accept death as an outcome.

What if I just let go of that? What if I trust that even if I die tomorrow or next month or next year, things will somehow work out? What if I allow myself to put the outcome in God’s hands and just live intensely in the present, absorbing and em bracing life as it happens? It’s not indifference or admitting defeat; it’s seeing the bigger picture. . . . (read more)

Emilie's blog was “Lemmondrops,” where she wrote “sweet and sour stories of life, love, and little ones.”

As a father, I can only imagine her sadness and sorrow at knowing she would soon have to let go of her little ones, say goodbye to her beloved husband, and pass alone through the portal of death into the life beyond. Surely, her emotional sufferings were purgative, and her writings toward the end reveal how much she desired to trust in God and draw as close to Him as possible. Let's all remember her husband and children in our prayers. May the Lord bring them joy in the midst of their suffering. And may perpetual light shine upon Emilie, and may God grant her eternal rest and peace and joy in heaven.

Here's What the Pope Really Said About Rainforests

The California Catholic webiste carries this interesting article, another example of how some media seem to intentionally distort papal statements with the apparent goal of stirring up even more opposition.  

“A gay-bashing tirade?”

Both mainstream and homosexual media around the world launched into a full-court and often vicious attack on Pope Benedict XVI following his Dec. 22 Christmas address to the Roman Curia. The furor began after the Holy Father said that protecting humankind from self-destruction was as important to Catholics as protecting the tropical rainforests. Although the pope nowhere used the word “homosexuality” in his discourse, homosexuals and others seized on a portion of his description of the Catholic understanding of the created natural order in which he described the “sacrament of creation” as “matrimony - which is the lifelong bond between a man and a woman.”

Various media called Benedict XVI’s address to the Curia a “gay-bashing tirade,” a “homophobic attack,” an “anti-gay message,” and a “toxic Christmas message.” In the interest of clarity and justice, California Catholic Daily has excerpted the portion of the Holy Father’s speech that prompted the widespread outrage (it was only a brief part of an address that covered many other topics). We leave it to our readers to decide whether there was any legitimate justification for the attacks on Pope Benedict XVI.

Relevant excerpt from Pope Benedict XVI’s Dec. 22 address to the Roman Curia:

“First of all, there is the affirmation that comes to us from the start of the story of Creation, which tells of the Creator Spirit that moved over the waters, created the world and continuously renews it.

Faith in the Creator Spirit is an essential element of the Christian Creed. The fact that matter has a mathematical structure, is full of spirit (energy), is the foundation of the modern science of nature.

Only because matter is structured intelligently, our mind is able to interpret it and actively remodel it. The fact that this intelligent structure comes from the same Creator Spirit that also gave us our spirit, implies a task and a responsibility.

The ultimate basis of our responsibility towards the earth is our faith in creation. The earth is not simply a property that we can exploit according to our interests and desires. It is a gift of the Creator who designed its intrinsic order, and through this, has given us the orientative indications to follow as administrators of his Creation.

The fact that the earth, the cosmos, mirror the Creator Spirit also means that their rational structure -- which beyond their mathematical structure, become almost palpable through experimentation - carries in itself an ethical orientation.

The Spirit that shaped them is more than mathematics -- it is Goodness itself, which, through the language of creation, shows us the road to correct living.

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful only the message of salvation. She has a responsibility for Creation, and it should validate this responsibility in public.

In so doing, it should defend not just the earth, water and air as gifts of Creation that belong to everyone. She should also protect man from destroying himself.

It is necessary to have something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense. It is not outdated metaphysics when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this natural order be respected.

This has to do with faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, which, if disregarded, would be man's self-destruction and therefore a destruction of God's work itself.

That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term 'gender' effectively results in man's self-emancipation from Creation (nature) and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator.

The tropical rain forests deserve our protection, yes, but man does not deserve it less as a Creature of the Spirit himself, in whom is inscribed a message that does not mean a contradiction of human freedom but its condition. . . . (read more)

A Tweet For All Catholics

There's a Catholic group on Twitter. I joined. Go check it out and sign up, and you can tweet at me thusly.

The 5 Stages of Twitter

Honestly, I haven't been a member of this dang, crazy, wonderful thing called Twitter for more than a month, but I think I am now somewhere between stages 4 and 5, and I definitely recognize all the preceding stages. 

So . . . if you want to “follow” me on Twitter, my name there is patrickmadrid. 

F-O-L-L-O-W-M-E.

Oh, and check out my earlier post on the Twitter Phenomenon.

Catholic Radio Comes On Strong in Columbus, Ohio

As a member of the board of directors, I'm delighted and grateful to God to be able to bring you the following announcement:

St. Gabriel Catholic Radio Now Reaches all of Central Ohio! Tune into 1580 AM starting right now! And listen online at http://www.stgabrielradio.com

St. Gabriel Catholic Radio is now also on 1580 AM. Merry Christmas! What a blessing to be able to provide a clear signal that will now reach all of Central Ohio. Rejoice!   Of course this exciting news would not be possible without you, our faithful supporters, generous benefactors and volunteers. Thank you. By sharing your gifts, we are now able to provide good, solid Catholic programming to nearly 2 million people.    Although this is joyful news, now is not the time to just hope that people will listen.  We need you to help us get the word out to our family and friends.    Use the link below to forward this email to those who might be interested  Personally invite others to tune in Listen to the station when driving with others Stop by and pick up a magnetic bumper sticker to put on your car.  It might be just the invitation that someone needs. (Stickers will be available after January 1st). Consider advertising your business on St. Gabriel Radio.  Call 614-442-1270. By doing our part, we can help more souls on their journey to know, love, and serve God.       Peace in Christ, The St. Gabriel Team   P.S.  Like all AM stations, the daylight signal is much stronger than the night-time signal.  During daylight hours the new signal reaches Newark, Lancaster, Mount Vernon, Marion, Marysville, and Circleville and, after dusk, the signal reaches those inside the I-270 outer belt.

Time Is Running Out

No, this isn't an apocalyptic post. I admit that I find myself growing more concerned about all the upheaval in the world these days, not to mention the upheavals that may well be on the way, but I'm not alluding to any of that.

I just want to say how strangely accelerated time seems to have become lately, racing by faster and faster. The days and weeks flash by in a way that I find disconcerting. I know we each have an allotted number of days and we have to put them to the best use, out of love for God. And it would be natural to feel some concern over whether one is living out those allotted days according to God's will. But this is different.

Time just seems to be going . . . faster. I can't explain it. I wonder if any of you feel it, too. 

"How Much Do You Have to Hate Someone to Not Proselytize?"

This is an amazing little video commentary from comedian Penn Jillette (from the act Penn & Teller), a profane, outspoken atheist who has been vicious at times in his public attacks on religion. Even so, this video clip is worth watching. He speaks candidly about a post-show encounter he had recently with a Christian audience member who gave him a Bible. He asks rhetorically a very important question that makes perfect logical sense, coming from an atheist. I just wish more Christians were in a position to answer it.

It may well be that, down the road, according to God's merciful providence, Penn Jillette will come to believe in God. You never know. 

(With thanks to Jeff Miller for his earlier blog post about this.)

Here's Today's Catholic Answers Live Radio Show

http://www.catholic.com/radio/event.php?calendar=1&category=&event=5462&date=2008-12-16