Tag Archives: morality

And Then There Were None

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This  is a piece  written by my friend Dick Roberts. I see it as a period piece because he expresses the moral indignation of half a nation, while the other half looks on, scratches their collective heads, put their children to bed as though America owes it to them to be there for them, forever,

I like that Dick remembers the existence and oversight of Divine Providence, for in the end  we’ll all  stand before Him without media backing, or corrupt judicial pay to play favoritism.

It is high time to declare our personal independence from any remnant of obligation to those who have spit upon the rule of law. We owe them nothing – not respect, not loyalty, not obedience.
Think about it. If you are out driving at 3 a.m., do you stop at a stop sign when there’s no one coming? Of course you do. You don’t need a cop to be there to make you stop. You do it voluntarily because this is America and America is a country where obeying the law is the right thing to do because the law was justly made and is justly applied. Or it used to be.
The law mattered. It applied equally to everyone. We demanded that it did, all of us – politicians, the media, and regular citizens. There were mistakes and miscarriages of justice but they weren’t common and they weren’t celebrated – they were universally reviled. And, more importantly, they weren’t part and parcel of the ideology of one particular party. There was once a time where you could imagine a Democrat scandal where the media actually called for the head of the Democrat instead of deploying to cover it up. No longer the case.
People assumed that the law mattered, that the same rules applied to everyone. That duly enacted laws would be enforced equally until repealed. That the Constitution set the foundation and that its guarantees would be honored even if we disliked the result in a particular case.
This idea of the rule of law today is a lie. There is no law. There is no justice. There are only lies.
Hillary Clinton is manifestly guilty of multiple felonies. The FBI will not recommend prosecution because she is above the law. Her fans deny it half-heartedly, but mostly out of habit – in the end, it’s fine with them if she’s a felon. They don’t care. It’s just some law. What’s the big deal? It doesn’t matter that anyone else would be in jail right now for doing a fraction of what she did. But the law is not important. Justice is not important.
The attorney general secretly canoodles with the husband of the subject of criminal investigation by her own department and the president, the enforcer of our laws, says there no intent to harm our national security and that none occurred. The media, the challenger of the powerful, smirks. They rub our noses in their contempt for the law. And by doing so, demonstrate their contempt for us.
Only power matters, and Hillary stands ready to accumulate more power on their behalf so their oaths, their alleged principles, their duty to the country – all of it goes out the window. But it’s much worse than just one scandal that seems not to scandalize anyone in the elite. Just read the Declaration of Independence – it’s almost like those dead white Christian male proto-NRA members foresaw and cataloged the myriad oppressions of liberalism’s current junior varsity tyranny.
There is one law for them, and another for us. Sanctuary cities? Obama’s immigration orders? If you conservatives can play by the rules and pass your laws, then we liberals will just not enforce them. You don’t get the benefit of the laws you like. We get the benefit of the ones we do, though. Not you. Too bad, rubes.

So if you are still obeying the law when you don’t absolutely have to, when there isn’t some government enforcer with a gun lurking right there to make you, aren’t you kind of a sucker?
Don’t you feel foolish, like you’re the only one who didn’t get the memo that it’s every man/woman/non-binary entity for his/her/its self?
Who is standing against this? Not the judges. The Constitution? Why should their personal agendas be constrained by some sort of foundational document? Judges find rights that don’t appear in the text and gut ones that do. Just ask a gay guy in Los Angeles who can’t carry a concealed weapons to protect himself from Islamist radicals.
The politicians won’t stand against this. The Democrats support allowing the government to jail people for criticizing politicians and clamor to take away citizens’ rights merely because some government flunky has put their name on a list. Their “minority report” on Benghazi is an attack on Trump, and to them the idea of congressional oversight of a Democrat official whose incompetence put four Americans in the ground is not merely illegitimate; it’s a joke.

Is the media standing against this, those sainted watchdogs protecting us from the powerful? Don’t make me rollover in laughter.
What do these moral abortions have in common? Short term political gain over principle. These people are so used to the good life that a society’s reflexive reliance on the principle of the rule of law brings that they think they can undermine it with impunity. Oh it’s no big deal if we do this, they reason. Everyone else will keep playing by the rules, right? Everything will be fine even as we score in the short term.
Those Romans had principles for a while. Then they got tempted to abandon principle for – wait for it – short term political gain. Then they got Caesar. Then the emperors. Then the barbarians. And then the Dark Ages. But hey, we’re much smarter and more sophisticated than the Romans, who were so stupid they didn’t even know that gender is a matter of choice. Our civilization is permanent and indestructible – it’s not like we are threatened by barbarians who want to come massacre us is it?

Oh, wait. The last words of some of these people to their radical Muslim killers before they are beheaded will be, “Please remember me as not being Islamaphobic! And sorry about the Crusades Omar !”
There used to be a social contract requiring that our government treat us all equally within the scope of the Constitution and defend us, and in return we would recognize the legitimacy of its laws and defend it when in need. But that contract has been breached. We are not all equal before the law. Our constitutional rights are not being upheld. We are not being defended – hell, we normals get blamed for having guns every time some Seventh Century savage goes on a killing spree. Yet we’re still supposed to keep going along as if everything is cool, obeying the law, subsidizing the elite with our taxes, taking their abuse. We’ve been evicted by the landlord but he still wants us to pay him rent.
Now it seems we actually have a new social contract – do what we say and don’t resist, and in return we’ll abuse you, lie about you, take your money, and look down upon you in contempt. What a bargain!
It’s not a social contract anymore – American society today is a suicide pact we never agreed to and yet we’re expected to go first.
I say “No.” “Hell No!”
We owe them nothing – not respect, not loyalty, not obedience. Nothing.
We make it easy for them by going along. We make it simple by defaulting to the old rules. But there are no rules anymore, certainly none that morally bind us once we are outside the presence of some government worker with a gun to force our compliance. There is only will and power and we must rediscover our own. If there is no cop sitting right there, then there is nothing to make you stop at that stop sign tonight.
They don’t realize that by rejecting the rule of law, they have set us free. We are independent. We owe them nothing – not respect, not loyalty, not obedience. But with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we will still mutually pledge those who have earned our loyalty with their adherence to the rule of law, our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. Oh, and we might want to figure out who they are and support them to the hilt.

This Is The Real Goal Of the LGBT “Rights” Movement

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by Erik Rush

Source: This Is The Real Goal Of the LGBT “Rights” Movement

“The press coverage and rhetorical tempest over North Carolina’s HB2 (the new law which prevents individuals who identify as “transgender” from using public restrooms based on their chosen gender identity) and the widespread activism on the part of homosexuals in recent years has a lot of Americans wondering why there is such a high degree of concern on the part of the political left over the so-called rights of an assortment of mouthy sexual deviants in the first place. It’s even more baffling to those unfamiliar with the dynamic behind it all, given that this faction represents less than 4% of our population.The answer is simple: The so-called “struggle for LGBT rights” in America has never been anything more than a pretext for the complete disenfranchisement of Christians. Leftist leaders have always known that a socialist state must be the sole arbiter of morality, and that this cannot come about in a moral society – one in which citizens honor and obey God over the state, which is of course comprised of fundamentally flawed human beings.The scenario that has been framed by the left wherein Christian doctrine is manifestly oppressive to homosexuals, transvestites, and assorted sexual deviants is a ruse, and the said oppression of these people is nonexistent. To be fair, things might have played out differently in a Christian theocracy, but we do not live in a Christian theocracy.Ultimately, the constitutionally-guaranteed religious liberties once enjoyed by Christians will be negated via the courts. Christians will be severely stigmatized, and their position will become untenable. The Church will be all but driven underground, as in Britain and Canada. Once “God is dead,” as it were, the State will be free to impose its own secular doctrine – one that is more conducive to its control and manipulation of the populace in perpetuity.This methodology need not be relegated only to the eradication of religious groups or even a majority faith. The same tactic is in fact being used, for example, to dilute the political power and civil liberties of whites in America (another majority) by characterizing them as bigoted and oppressive toward other ethnic groups. In the secular realm, the political power and civil liberties of heterosexuals and, more importantly parents, are again being supplanted by the counterfeit “rights” of those who advocate aberrant concepts of family, sexual deviants being chief among these.The reason that such a vigorous campaign was marshaled to target Christians is because Christianity was the second greatest impediment to those advancing the socialist state, the first being the Constitution itself, specifically, the Bill of Rights.Anyone who has been exposed to concepts of Natural Law (to which American students no longer are exposed since the study of Civics was abandoned) knows that these were a fundamental basis for the Bill of Rights. Natural Law was revered by our nation’s founders as a basis for the set of liberties they recognized as being granted by God; without these acknowledged and/or codified into the law of the land, individuals remain ill at ease, and society founders. These are the liberties for which so many have fought against their governments through the ages, even if they were ignorant of these concepts as such. Recognition of Natural Law and its incorporation into law, as so many over the years once recognized, was the height of wisdom, and why the United States prospered so conspicuously for so long a time.These concepts of liberty as understood by America’s founders were distilled into what became the law of the land in America from a broad and studious view of history, the zeitgeist of the Enlightenment (which was ongoing at that time), religious texts and doctrines, British Common Law, and yes, even such things as Freemasonry (whose basis in philosophy rests largely in the foregoing).The secular humanist view to which socialists ascribe however, holds that it is our exalted and refined intellect itself that will ensure moral behavior; thus we need not worry that humanity will descend into chaos or tyranny. This of course ignores the fact that in a society which universally adopted this worldview, there would be as many codes of morality as there were people, with many of these being wildly divergent and in inevitable conflict.Inasmuch as that worldview is little more than a profoundly dishonest marketing ploy based upon human conceit and calculated to empower socialist leaders, it is no wonder that socialism has failed to do anything save for exalting socialist leaders, and why it led to the deaths of nearly half a billion human beings during the last century.”

Source: This Is The Real Goal Of the LGBT “Rights” Movement

Sins of Ignorance and Sins of the Flesh| Catholic Spiritual Direction

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Sins of Ignorance and Sins of the Flesh

by Fr. Mullady

Sins of Ignorance and Sins of the Flesh Editor’s note: It is our great pleasure to welcome Father Brian Mullady OP to our writing team. He is a professor, preacher and retreat master, who has authored three books, and is the Theological Consultant to the Institute on Religious Life. Please welcome him warmly and make him feel at home! It is a moral truth that… Read More

via Spiritualdirection.com | Catholic Spiritual Direction | Catholic Spiritual Direction – Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him Catholic Spiritual Direction.

The Peace that Passes Understanding

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“As Jesus drew near Jerusalem, he saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If this day you only knew what makes for peace– but now it is hidden from your eyes. For the days are coming upon you when your enemies will raise a palisade against you; they will encircle you and hem you in on all sides. They will smash you to the ground and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another within you because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”

“If this day you only knew what makes for peace. ” Is this not our problem today? So many tortured ways of seeking “peace”, and so many variant images of “peace”.

When “Mir”, “Peace”, is proclaimed by the Communists, it lacks a God Who can bring it. It means the imposition of might over the many who have been forced into submission and now can only dream of “peace”.

When the Buddha chants for peace, its coming dissolves the entities of its devotees into a universal soup of nothingness, doing nothing, loving nothing distinct or individual.

When the progress secular relativist of our day speaks of “peace”, it is an end brought about by the silencing of conscience and even science to impose the law of those that lack a way of recognizing integrity, morality, and Truth.

Maranatha! Come Lord, Jesus!

My Journey Through In Vitro Fertilization

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via My Journey Through In Vitro Fertilization | Catholic Lane.

frozenembryo

My Journey Through In Vitro Fertilization

by Jenny Vaughn on Oct 29, 2014 in Contraception & Abortion, Featured, MyChurchParish.com, Parenting, Reproductive Technology, Women –

It’s July 2008 and I’m strapped to a surgical table as a fertility doctor siphons three dozen eggs out of my ovaries through a long needle. Blood is coming from between my legs, as the needle repeatedly perforates my vaginal walls en route to my ovaries in search of viable eggs. In the next room, my husband is masturbating so fresh sperm can be used to fertilize the eggs.

Originally published at CatholicSistas.com.

When we’re done, my ovaries hyperstimulate and I pass out. My abdomen and chest begin to fill with fluid; the anesthesia doesn’t stop the severe pain that fills my body. I struggle to breathe. The doctor stabilizes me, but it still takes nearly a week to recover from the brutal procedure.

The doctor had retrieved 38 good eggs, of which 31 are fertilized. Over the next week, 16 of our embryonic children die and are discarded. Thirteen are cryogenically frozen, mostly two to a vial. Two fresh embryos are transferred to my uterus.

Yes, the cost is high for what we’re doing, both financially and physically. But it will be worth it, I tell myself. Because surely at least one of these embryos will give us our heart’s desire–a beautiful child of our own.

Justifying Our Choices

My journey into in vitro fertilization (IVF) actually began in the 1980s, when my mother used donor sperm and intrauterine insemination to conceive me and my twin sister. When we were 12, we discovered that the man we thought was our father was not. I was disturbed that we were created by my mother and a stranger, and have always felt as if only part of me was “real.”

Fast-forward to my own marriage in 2004. We wanted children right away, but a year of trying had resulted in no pregnancy. I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, an endocrine disorder that inhibits regular ovulation.

Doctors put me on the same ovulation-stimulating medication my mother had used to conceive me–Clomid. Four unsuccessful cycles later, we moved on to artificial insemination, though we did at least use my husband’s sperm. Still no baby.

In desperation, we graduated to the expensive and complex process of IVF, where my eggs and my husband’s sperm would be taken out of our bodies, joined in a petri dish, and the resulting embryos would be inserted into my uterus.

Even before we started down the IVF road, there was a voice inside of us whispering that it was wrong. But that voice was drowned out by louder, more persistent voices, like the doctors’ who said we had little to no chance to conceive without it. Friends and family, too, supported anything that would end the suffering of our infertility.

Then there was my own desire for a child, shouting down the doubts and assuring me that God would want me to be happy and that, as a woman, I deserved a child. And really, how could science that helps create life be a bad thing?

So we signed the contract and started the IVF process. To prepare, I took hormone injections and pills to stimulate my ovaries for egg retrieval. Though most eggs were fertilized simply by exposing them to sperm, some needed sperm forcibly injected into them with a needle.

These newly formed, microscopic human beings were then graded for quality and we were encouraged to discard “low-grade” embryos that had little chance of survival. But because we couldn’t fully stifle our doubts about the wrongness of IVF, we insisted that all our viable embryos be preserved.

Suffering and Loss

After the first transfer in July 2008, we were thrilled to discover that we were pregnant with twins, due the following April. But at 21 weeks gestation, our twins–Madi and Isaiah–were born prematurely and only lived for one hour each. During those brief, heartbreaking few hours, we held them, bathed them, dressed them, and baptized them, holding onto their tiny, fragile bodies as long as we could.

For the next year, I floated numbly through life. I believed the twins’ death was God punishing me for my past sins. My husband remained silent. Through it all, my heart was torn about the route we’d taken, as well as the fact that we still had 13 frozen children whose lives were on hold.

Eventually we felt ready to try IVF again. In October 2009, our only singly vialed embryo, Jeremiah, was thawed and transferred to my womb. We did not get pregnant.

In February 2010, we did another transfer. The embryologist came into the room beforehand and said that “one expanded and one did not.” We knew then that our son, Luke, had survived thawing, but that our daughter, Lucilla, had died and been discarded. In the end, Luke died, too, and we did not get pregnant.

Three months later, we thawed another vial and both Elijah and Ezekiel survived. The situation was complicated, however, because the death of the twins at 21 weeks had shown I had an incompetent cervix. This made carrying even one baby risky. We decided to transfer only one of the boys, because I would likely lose both if they developed properly after being transferred to the womb. Elijah was transferred and we were ecstatic when he was born in 2011.

His brother, Ezekiel, didn’t make it. But he was so, so resilient; he was initially frozen, thawed, refrozen, and re-thawed, yet survived to be transferred in January 2012. We did not get pregnant. Three months later, Olivia didn’t survive the thaw, but we were able to transfer Isaac.

A Spiritual Awakening

While waiting to see if I was pregnant with Isaac, I went on my first spiritual retreat. I went skeptical and defensive; I wasn’t going to share what I was going through with anyone. But God gave me a “spiritual spanking.” The poignant lyrics to a song caused me to break down crying and I experienced an intense spiritual awakening. That night, I went to reconciliation for the first time in years.

I had yet to own my sinfulness, however, because in my mind, I was still denying the truth—that I had killed my children through the violent and undignified process of IVF. By the end of the retreat, however, grace had finally washed away my pride and I experienced a full and overwhelming gift of faith.

Overnight, my life went from being about what I wanted to being entirely about the love of God. Two days after I returned from the retreat, we discovered that Isaac had died, too, and I was not pregnant.

After seeing my transformation, my husband went on the same retreat in May. He had several profound spiritual experiences of his own, where he felt the Lord lift the guilt from his heart. God assured him that our deceased babies were safe and loved and would be waiting for us in heaven.

But faith didn’t solve the problem of what to do with our still-frozen children. We could leave them frozen, discard them, donate them to scientific research, or adopt them out. We felt all those options were disrespectful to the children and we feared they were offensive to God, too.

We’ve since learned that the Catholic Church hasn’t fully clarified what is the most morally prudent and loving route to take when dealing with frozen embryonic children and theologians are all over the map on the issue. Some say every child created deserves a chance at life and ought to be implanted, as we did; other theologians suggest embryonic babies should be baptized, thawed until they pass away, and then buried. Hopefully the Church will soon define the best course for frozen IVF children, but until then, couples in our situation can only seek counsel through their spiritual advisers and through the Holy Spirit, in prayer. See more