Flailing Atheism

• “It amazes me to find an intelligent person who fights against something which he does not at all believe exists.” (Mohandas Gandhi)
  
  
• “Atheists express their rage against God although in their view He does not exist.” (C. S. Lewis)
  
  
• “Still, even the most admirable of atheists is nothing more than a moral parasite, living his life based on borrowed ethics. This is why, when pressed, the atheist will often attempt to hide his lack of conviction in his own beliefs behind some poorly formulated utilitarianism, or argue that he acts out of altruistic self-interest. But this is only post-facto rationalization, not reason or rational behavior.” (Vox Day)
  
  
• “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” (Martin Luther King)

Reagan Was A Real Man of Hope and Change

Change Is Possible for Gays

Change Is Possible for Gays, Says Psychologist
APA Admits Homosexuality Also Due to Environmental Factors
By Genevieve Pollock
Zenit.org – 15 June 2009 (ZE090615)
     A Catholic psychologist who specializes in reparative therapy with homosexuals says it’s possible for those with same-sex attractions to change, despite agenda-driven ideologies that state the opposite.
     Joseph Nicolosi, founder and director of the Thomas Aquinas Psychological Clinic in Encino, spoke with ZENIT about his experience as a clinical psychologist and the former president of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH).
     NARTH, a “scientific, non-religious and non-political” organization, recently put out an article about the little known revision of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) statement on homosexuality, which was highlighted last month in a WorldNetDaily article titled “Gay Gene Claim Suddenly Vanishes.”
     Nicolosi explained that NARTH has been actively working on a research project compiling scientific data to dispute the APA’s claim on homosexuality, targeting three unscientific assumptions that form the basis of their policy.
     He stated that these erroneous assumptions are: “Psychotherapy does not change homosexuality, trying to change the homosexual person will harm him, and there is no greater pathology in homosexual persons than in heterosexual persons.”
     The psychologist asserted that the “APA is not governed by scientists, but by political interests.”
     “There has been no new data to justify their policies,” he added, “but they tend to give in to social and political pressure,” and thus “NARTH has been putting pressure on them to scientifically back up their stance on the biological nature of homosexuality.”
     Now, Nicolosi reported, the APA has “diminished its position saying homosexuality is biologically determined.” They have dropped the specific reference to a hypothetical “gay gene,” he affirmed.
     In other words, he said, they are beginning to recognize that homosexuality is also due to environmental factors, not just biological elements.
     “In fact,” he stated, “I and many of my colleagues at NARTH believe it is more environmental than biological.”
     Nicolosi noted that “the most important scientific information” gives “much more evidence for environmental causes of homosexuality than for biological.”

Possible
     The most essential point however, the psychologist affirmed, “is that change is possible, that men and women can come out of homosexuality.”
     “This idea of ‘once gay, always gay’ is a political position, not a scientific position,” he added.
     The therapist affirmed that he has seen this in his own private practice, and that it is also substantiated in a body of scientific research.
     Nicolosi, also the author of “Healing Homosexuality: Case Stories of Reparative Therapy” and “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality,” asserted that many people have already adopted the erroneous assumptions put forth by the APA.
     There is a need to assist and minister to men and women “who are looking for help to come out of homosexuality,” he said, “because so many times they are just told ‘Well, you’re born this way,’ pointing to the APA and saying ‘because they said it.’”
     He expressed the hope that as the APA recognizes the efficacy of therapy with homosexual persons, more psychologists will be encouraged to be involved in this type of treatment.
     “Within our profession,” the psychologist explained, “we trump politics with science.” In other words, if we challenge the APA with scientific data, it “has to override any political or special interest forces.”
     The therapist emphasized the need for all people to share this message with homosexual persons that “you don’t have to be gay.”

Encouragement
     If you know a homosexual person, he said, “encourage that person, educate him, give that person information, take the opportunity to let him know that choice is possible.”
     “They need to believe it,” he added.
     Nicolosi explained: “It is a very hard therapy. First of all, it is hard in itself because you have to dig deep into emotional issues. Homosexuality is not about sexual issues, but emotional. There are the emotional underpinnings that have to be addressed.
     “Then not only are you having to deal with those emotional underpinnings that are challenging on an individual level, but you have the other battle of a culture that is saying to you, ‘You’re homophobic; you’re naïve; you’re not facing reality; you’re just a guilt-ridden Christian, get with it.
     “You’re fighting a culture that is not supporting you, plus you have your own individual battle. So it’s a two-front war.”
     “With the AIDS epidemic, this could be about life and death here,” he asserted. “We’re not talking about something insignificant.”
     The psychologist underlined the need to “inform and educate young people.”
     He explained: “So when a 15-year-old boy goes to a priest and says, ‘Father I have these feelings, I have these temptations,’ that priest should say, ‘you have a choice; if you don’t want to be gay there are things that you can do.’”
     “The boy should not to be told, ‘God made you this way,’” Nicolosi said.

Scientific data
     He continued: “This is not about going after an oppressed minority. It’s not about pointing out pathology for the sake of pointing out pathology.
     “This is telling young people, look, if you go down this road, you are likely to have a higher level of depression, anxiety, failed relationships, sexual promiscuity, drug and alcohol abuse than people who live their lives heterosexually. You will get involved in more, to be polite, esoteric exotic sexual practices. It goes on and on and on.
     “And that’s just science, simply a comparison of two groups.”
     The therapist added, “This notion that you are going to fall in love with a man and live happily ever after is Hollywood. The reality is that it’s a hard lifestyle.”
     Nicolosi, also a national speaker on the topic, urged the development of more Catholic programs, noting that other faiths have already been putting forth a “vital ministry helping people coming out of homosexuality.”
     “Our doctrine is clear,” he said, “and even if we have a weaker ministry, our doctrine on homosexuality is more brilliant than anything the Protestant denominations can come up with.”
     The psychologist specifically referenced a 1986 document signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger before he became Pope, addressed to the Catholic bishops “On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.”
     In the letter, the cardinal, at that time prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, outlined the moral underpinnings and practical considerations of the pastoral care of “those whose suffering can only be intensified by error and lightened by truth.”
     In this light, Nicolosi underlined the importance of helping homosexual persons who want to change, because “if you are Christian, you have to believe that you are intended for the opposite sex” and that “sexual complementarity is part of the natural law.”
     This is something that “should be evident to everyone,” as “our Christian anthropology,” he stated, and yet “it is amazing” how many people are confused about this.
     “They actually believe, or want to believe, either for personal reasons or political reasons, that God created two kinds of people: homosexuals and heterosexuals,” Nicolosi noted.
     “It is seeping into the consciousness without critical evaluation,” he cautioned, the resignation that “God just made them that way.”

Courage
     The psychologist appealed to priests to not be intimidated to teach about homosexuality from the pulpit, noting that he has met many Catholics who are “discouraged that there is no resource for them.”
     “We have Courage as the only orthodox Catholic ministry, and it’s underfunded, underrepresented and essentially pushed to the side,” he stated.
     He reported that “Courage is only represented in 10% of the parishes in this country” and thus many “men and women who want to come out of homosexuality” are left without resources on a local level, making it “very tough for them.”
     Nicolosi suggested that if a priest is working with a homosexual person and is uncertain about how to help, to refer him to a reparative therapist, “who really knows about this particular kind of treatment.”
     “Not to just any generic psychotherapist,” he added, “but to a therapist who has training in sexual re-orientation change.”
     Referencing Cardinal Ratzinger’s letter, he warned against a “studied ambiguity” in the face of the real need homosexual persons have for outreach from the Church.

Obama's Planned Economy

From the 1934 Chicago Tribune:

Celebrating and Rewarding Deviancy

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release June 1, 2009

LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER PRIDE MONTH, 2009

By The President of the United States Of America
A PROCLAMATION

     Forty years ago, patrons and supporters of the Stonewall Inn in New York City resisted police harassment that had become all too common for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Out of this resistance, the LGBT rights movement in America was born. During LGBT Pride Month, we commemorate the events of June 1969 and commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans.
     LGBT Americans have made, and continue to make, great and lasting contributions that continue to strengthen the fabric of American society. [?!?!?!] There are many well-respected LGBT leaders in all professional fields, including the arts and business communities. LGBT Americans also mobilized the Nation to respond to the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic and have played a vital role in broadening this country’s response to the HIV pandemic.
     Due in no small part to the determination and dedication of the LGBT rights movement, more LGBT Americans are living their lives openly today than ever before. I am proud to be the first President to appoint openly LGBT candidates to Senate-confirmed positions in the first 100 days of an Administration. These individuals embody the best qualities we seek in public servants, and across my Administration—in both the White House and the Federal agencies—openly LGBT employees are doing their jobs with distinction and professionalism.
     The LGBT rights movement has achieved great progress, but there is more work to be done. LGBT youth should feel safe to learn without the fear of harassment, and LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live their lives with dignity and respect.
     My Administration has partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives. At the international level, I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. Here at home, I continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans. These measures include enhancing hate crimes laws, supporting civil unions and Federal rights for LGBT couples, outlawing discrimination in the workplace, ensuring adoption rights, and ending the existing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security. We must also commit ourselves to fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic by both reducing the number of HIV infections and providing care and support services to people living with HIV/AIDS across the United States.
     These issues affect not only the LGBT community, but also our entire Nation. As long as the promise of equality for all remains unfulfilled, all Americans are affected. If we can work together to advance the principles upon which our Nation was founded, every American will benefit. During LGBT Pride Month, I call upon the LGBT community, the Congress, and the American people to work together to promote equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
     NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2009 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride [?!?!?!] Month. I call upon the people of the United States to turn back discrimination and prejudice everywhere it exists.
     IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of June, in the year of our Lord [?!?!?!] two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.
     BARACK OBAMA


Pro-Homosexual Researchers Conceal Findings:
Children Raised by Openly Homosexual Parents More Likely to Engage in Homosexuality
By Trayce Hansen, Ph.D.
http://www.drtraycehansen.com/Pages/writings_prohomo.html
     Research by social scientists, although not definitive, suggests that children reared by openly homosexual parents are far more likely to engage in homosexual behavior than children raised by others. Studies thus far find between 8% and 21% of homosexually parented children ultimately identify as non-heterosexual. For comparison purposes, approximately 2% of the general population are non-heterosexual. Therefore, if these percentages continue to hold true, children of homosexuals have a 4 to 10 times greater likelihood of developing a non-heterosexual preference than other children.
     Some researchers who uncovered sexual preference differences between homosexually and heterosexually parented children, nonetheless declared in their research summaries that no differences were found. Many believe they concealed their findings so as not to harm their own pro-homosexual, sociopolitical agendas.
     All social scientists who conduct research in this emotionally-charged area have personal biases. That’s a given. But if the authors of these studies want to be regarded as scientists, and not activists, they must set aside their biases and straightforwardly present their findings.
     Regardless, no one should be surprised that homosexual parents are more likely to raise homosexual children. As one of the few forthright pro-homosexual advocates proclaimed, “Of course our children are going to be different.”
     In fact, many believe the percentages of non-heterosexual children in these studies would be even greater if more of the children had been raised from birth by openly homosexual parents. But most weren’t. A majority of these children actually were born into and raised by mother-father couples before one of their parents “came-out” and the parents divorced.
     Findings from the best and most recent twin studies have found that homosexuality, unlike eye color, is not genetically-caused. But there are a number of non-genetic mechanisms through which homosexuality could be transmitted from one generation to the next. Those mechanisms include role-modeling, social learning and differential reinforcement, as well as outright encouragement of non-heterosexuality by parents or others.
     No one knows for sure by what complex mechanisms homosexual parents disproportionately rear homosexual children. But regardless of how, it appears they do. The public needs to be made aware of the findings of these studies so that when courts adjudicate and citizens vote on issues related to homosexuality, they’re fully informed as to the possible consequences of those decisions on children.
     *****************************
     For a review of the research studies alluded to above, as well as additional analysis and references, see article entitled, “A Review and Analysis of Studies Which Assessed Sexual Preference of Children Raised by Homosexuals.”

Take Up Your Cross

New Life in Christ: What it Looks Like, What it Demands
By Charles J. Chaput
First Things – On the Square
Monday 11 May 2009
     The Catholic faith is not simply a collection of doctrines and ideas, or a body of knowledge, or even a system of beliefs, although all those things are important. At its root, Christianity is an experience: a life-changing, personal experience of the risen Jesus Christ. Everything else in the writings of St. Paul, and everything else in our life as Catholics, flows from that personal encounter with Jesus Christ. If we truly seek him, then we will always find him. But when we find him, we need to be ready for the consequences, because nothing about our lives can be the same.
     Let me share a story with you to explain what I mean. It’s about a young man named Franz who lived about sixty years ago in a small village in Austria. Franz was the illegitimate son of a farmer who later died in World War I. He was a wild teenager. Local people recall that he was the first one in his village to drive a motorcycle. And it’s not because he drove safely or kept to the posted speed limits.
     Franz was the leader of a gang that used to fight rival gangs in neighboring towns with knives and chains. He was something of a cad, too, and a womanizer. He got a girl pregnant and was forced to leave town. People said he went to work for awhile in an iron mine.
     For reasons nobody knows, Franz came back a changed man. He had always gone to church, even during his wildest days. But when he returned, he was a serious Catholic, not just a Sunday Catholic. He started making payments to support the child he had fathered out of wedlock. He married a good Catholic woman and settled down to become a good farmer, husband and father, raising three children and serving as a lay leader in his local parish.
     I want to quote something Franz wrote in a letter to his godson. He wrote: “I can say from my own experience how painful life often is when one lives as a halfway Christian. It is more like vegetating than living.” Believers today are relentlessly tempted to accept a halfway Christianity, to lead a “double life”—to be one person when we’re in church or at prayer and somebody different when we’re with our friends or family, or at work, or when we talk about politics.
     Part of this temptation comes from normal social pressure. We don’t want to stand out. We don’t want to seem different, so we keep our religious beliefs to ourselves. It’s as if we’ve internalized the old adage: “Never talk about religion or politics in polite company.” I’ve never accepted that kind of thinking, myself. Religion, politics, social justice—these are precisely the things we should be talking about. Nothing else really matters. Few things could be more important than religious faith, which deals with the ultimate meaning of life, and politics, which deals with how we should organize our lives together for justice and the common good.
     These are the things we need to talk about if we really want a new life, a whole and undivided life, in Jesus Christ. I think it’s important, though, that we start with a kind of “diagnosis” of the culture we’re living in, and the challenges it forces us to face. The reason is simple. We’re living in the first age in human history where entire societies are organized around this principle of “a double life.”
     The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls our period the “secular age.” How we got to this moment is far too big a subject for this article. The point is that in just a few centuries we’ve gone from living in a world where it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to living in a world where belief in God doesn’t seem to be necessary or to make any difference.
     Most men and women today can live their whole lives as if God didn’t exist. Of course in all the developed, Western-style democracies, we’re allowed to believe in God, and even to pray and worship together. But we’re constantly lectured by the mass media to never impose our religious viewpoints on our neighbors. This curious idea is always framed as a reasonable and enlightened way to live. You’re free to believe what you want to believe, I’m free to believe what I want to believe, and the government agrees not to tell either of us what to believe or not to believe.
     But things really aren’t as reasonable and enlightened as they seem. Here’s a recent example: Pope Benedict visited Africa in March. On the plane a reporter asked him about the AIDS epidemic and the Church’s disapproval of condom uses. Now, there aren’t many nations or organizations in the world today that have poured as much money and human effort into the fight against AIDS in Africa as the Catholic Church. That’s just a statistical fact. So when the Pope answers a question like this he’s speaking, not just from theological opinion, but with real knowledge about conditions on the ground.
     And Benedict said that promoting condom use doesn’t help. In fact it does just the opposite. Nobody listened to his answer beyond that point. It was all over the media for the next several days how this conservative pope was sacrificing millions of Africans with AIDS on the altar of the Church’s rigid moral dogma. By one count, more than 4,000 articles were filed on the subject. And what’s astounding is the uniformity of the criticism—that the Pope and the Church are backward and medieval, and that Catholic beliefs are a threat to the public health.
     What happened? The pope challenged one of the cultish little orthodoxies of our time, the cult of the condom, and the underlying ideology that sexual intercourse is a fundamental human “need” that can never be questioned—not even in situations where pursuing that need could cost you your life.
     So public discussion gets shut down. Nobody stops to consider that what the Pope said wasn’t just sectarian religious belief, but that it actually makes good practical sense. Giving people condoms offers them a false sense of security and encourages the very behaviors that lead to the transmission of AIDS. What’s even more frustrating is to know that leading AIDS-prevention research scientists in Africa actually agree with the Pope.
     We’re taught to think that we live in an open society that respects freedom of religion and the free exchange of different ideas. But we don’t.
     And we shouldn’t kid ourselves. We may not be too far from the day when it will be legally discouraged to hold certain moral views and illegal to refuse to do certain things we find to be evil. The question then becomes: How are we going to live in this new world? How can we lead a “new life in Christ” in an unbelieving age?
     We can’t really answer that question until we get some things straight about what it means to be a Christian. And that means first getting some things straight about Jesus Christ. This is another one of the by-products of our secular times: We don’t really quite know what to think about Jesus anymore. Why?
     Because our culture has given Jesus a make-over. We’ve remade him in the image and likeness of generic compassion. Today he’s not the Lord, the Son of God, but more like an enlightened humanist nice guy.
     The problem is this: If Jesus isn’t Lord, if he isn’t the Son of God, then he can’t do anything for us. Then the Gospel is just one more or less interesting philosophy of life. And that’s my first point about how we need to live in a secular age: We need to trust the gospels, and we need to trust the Church that gives us the gospels. We need to truly believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the son of Mary; true God and true man; the One who holds the words of eternal life. If we aren’t committed to that truth, then nothing else I say in this article can make any sense.

     Here’s a second point: Jesus didn’t come down from heaven to tell us to go to church on Sunday. He didn’t die on the cross and rise from the dead so that we’d pray more at home and be a little kinder to our next-door neighbors. The one thing even non-believers can see is that the Gospels aren’t compromise documents. Jesus wants all of us. And not just on Sundays. He wants us to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our strength, and all our mind. He wants us to love our neighbor as ourselves. In other words, with a love that’s total.
     We need to take Christ at his word. We need to love him like our lives depend on it. Right now. And without excuses. Remember the man in Scripture who told Jesus: I’m ready to be your disciple, but first I need to plan my father’s funeral? The way Jesus responds is very blunt and rather disturbing: “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. Follow me and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Of course, he’s not commanding us to show disrespect for our parents. What Jesus is saying is that there can be no more urgent priority in our lives than following him and proclaiming his kingdom.

     My third point flows from the first two: Being a follower of Jesus Christ is not just one among many different aspects of your daily life. Being a Christian is who you are. Period. And being a Christian means your life has a mission. It means striving every day to be a better follower, to become more like Jesus in your thoughts and actions.
     Blessed Charles de Foucauld once said that, “God calls all the souls he has created to love him with their whole being. . . . But he does not ask all souls to show their love by the same works, to climb to heaven by the same ladder, to achieve goodness in the same way. What sort of work, then must I do? Which is my road to heaven?”
     God expects big things from each of us. That’s why he made us. To love him and to serve one another, and to play our personal part in bringing about the kingdom of love. So you have to ask yourselves the same questions that Blessed Charles asked himself. What does God want you to be doing? How does he want you to follow Christ?
     Now, how do you go about finding the answers to these questions? By talking to God, humbly and honestly, in prayer. By getting to know Christ better through daily reading and praying over the gospels. By opening yourself up to the graces he gives us in the sacraments. “Ask and it will be given you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you.” It’s not about you choosing what you want to do with your life. It’s about discovering how God wants to use your life to spread the good news of his love and his kingdom.
     Blessed Charles, by the way, is one of the great stories of the twentieth century. He was a Frenchman who lived most of his life like the prodigal son, squandering his inheritance on alcohol, women, and dead-end pleasures. But when he came to know Jesus Christ, his life changed forever. He felt called to follow Christ literally, setting off on foot to Nazareth to devote himself to a humble life of manual labor, prayer, and charity. Some years later, his imitation of Christ led him to the Sahara Desert, where he lived as a hermit and eventually died a martyr’s death.
     Most of you will find your own road to heaven starting a little closer to home. That’s appropriate. In fact, it’s exactly what God intends. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus meets and reveals himself to two disciples on the road to Emmaus. They’re not heading for Jerusalem or Moscow or Ottawa or Beijing or Washington, D.C. They’re on their way home. Likewise in the Gospel of Mark, the angel tells the women at the empty tomb that Jesus “is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him as he told you.” Galilee was an obscure and unimportant place. But it was the apostles’ home.
     In other words, Christ reveals himself to his followers in their ordinary lives. Jesus meets us on the way of life, and we find him again and again in the “breaking of the bread,” and as we pray over the Law of Moses, the prophets, the psalms, and all of Scripture. Our encounter with him in our personal circumstances opens our minds to the meaning of all these things. Jesus wants us to grow where we’re planted. Your task is to preach the gospel with your lives no matter where you are or whatever you find yourself doing—going to school, working, raising children, making a home.

     One final point: Love the Church; love her as your mother and teacher. Help to build her up, to purify her life and work. We all get angry when we see human weakness and sin in the Church. But we need to remember always that the Church is much, much more than the sum of her human parts.
     The Church is the Bride of Christ. The Spirit that worked in Jesus Christ and in his apostles is still at work in the Church. Jesus promised his apostles that when they teach, it will be he who is teaching. That when they forgive sins, it will be he who forgives. That when they say his words, “This is my body,” the bread and wine will become his body and blood. Jesus doesn’t forget his promises. Where the Church is, Jesus Christ is—until the end of the age. And we always want to be where Christ is, because there is no way home to God except through him.
     So love the Church. And this is crucial: Know and revere what the Church teaches. What the Church teaches is what Christ wants you and everyone else to know—for our own good and for our salvation. Know what the Church teaches so you can live those teachings and share those teachings with others.
     The leaders of today’s secularized societies like to fancy themselves as true humanists and humanitarians. But these same societies justify killing millions of babies in the womb and dismembering embryos in the laboratory. We dispatch the handicapped and the elderly and call it “death with dignity.” Our very language has become subverted. The family is no longer the covenant communion of a man and woman that leads to new life and hence the future of society. In fact, there are so few babies being born now in developed, Western-style countries that we have to wonder whether our civilization has lost its will to survive.
     Only the Church stands up against these inhuman trends in our societies. It’s your mission, as lay men and lay women, to ensure that Christ’s teaching is preached and explained and defended at every level of our society—in politics, in the workplace, in the culture. This takes real courage. There are all sorts of pressures, subtle and not so subtle, to sell out Jesus. To water down or diminish his gospel. To pick and choose among his teachings. But we can’t do that. Make a promise to Jesus Christ never to contradict the Church’s teachings by your words or actions.
     Only the truth can set people free. That truth is Jesus Christ. So if we truly love our neighbors we will want them to know the truth. The whole truth. Not just the parts of it that make them feel good and don’t challenge them to change.
     It’s not possible for real Christians to lead a double life; our whole way of thinking and acting needs to be transformed by our faith, or we make ourselves into hypocrites. Like our friend Franz once said, being a halfway Christian is like being a vegetable. It’s not really a life. It’s barely an existence. And that reminds me that it’s time for me to tell you the rest of the story about Franz.
     Germany invaded Austria in 1938. Unlike most of his neighbors, Franz refused to cooperate in any way with the new National Socialist regime because he considered Hitler to be an enemy of Christ and the Church. For five years he waged a personal campaign of moral resistance. But finally, he was arrested for refusing an order to enlist in the German army.
     While awaiting his sentence, many people, including his family and his local priest, urged him to pay lip-service to the regime and thereby spare his life. Franz wouldn’t do it.
     So sixty-six summers ago, on August 9, 1943, Franz died on a Nazi guillotine. Today we remember him as Blessed Franz Jägerstätter—a martyr for the truth that a Catholic can never lead a double life; that there can be no such thing as a halfway Christian.
     Blessed Franz wrote beautiful letters to his wife from prison. In one of them he talked about the great martyrs of the Church. He wrote: “If we hope to reach our goal some day, then we, too, must become heroes of the faith. For as long as we fear men more than God, we will never make the grade.” Another time he wrote: “The important thing is that we do not let a single day go by in vain without putting it to good use for eternity.”
     That’s the heart of the matter for anyone who wants to be a real Christian. That’s the path to a new life in Christ: Put every day to good use for eternity. And the time to begin that is now.

     Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., is archbishop of Denver and author of Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life. This article is based on a speech given in Edmonton, Alberta on 30 April 2009.

Penguin Wisdom

Penguins are pro-life and pro-family...

... which means they are more intelligent than the anti-family, pro-abortion, and pro-homosexual forces.

Happy Mother's Day!

Chances That An Atheist Will Believe in God As A Function Of...

Permitting the Slaying of the Most Innocent of Innocents

[Mr.] Obama, in his press conference last week, cut through the noise to the essence of the issue. Torture, he said, “corrodes the character of a country”… (The New Yorker)

… Yeah, right. This from the man who does everything possible to support, protect and encourage legislation that permits the killing of the most defenseless—the most innocent of innocents: the unborn. Through his support of the dehumanization and killing of the unborn, Obama is doing more to corrode the character of the nation and to reduce politics to a crude power game of the strong over the weak than pro-abortionists ever thought possible.

Prayer’s Goal: Holiness in Doing God’s Will… Not in Understanding God

Ask yourself “Have I prayed well today?”
Do not try to find out how deep your emotions were,
or how much deeper you understand things Divine.
Ask yourself “Am I doing God’s will better than before?”
If you are: prayer has brought its fruits.
If you are not: it has not,
     no matter the amount of understanding
     or feeling you may have derived from
     the time spent in the presence of God.

Theophane the Recluse