“The Hunger Games”

She may have need for her arch.

Interesting film, this one, and most certainly not only for young adults.

I will not give any spoiler, but what I found striking was the following:

1) The theme (not new) of the omnipotent Central Government, the absolute ruler of its subjects. Rather an actual theme, I would say.

2) The absence of every Christian message, in a desolate world that has – leaving aside the theological implications of this – forgotten Christianity. This is not “The Descendants”, where there is no Christianity because in the mind of the writers and director everyone is too cool to believe in God. This is exactly the contrary, and you rapidly understand this world can only be cruel, because there is no Christianity.

3) The open criticism of the growing kitsch dominating our lives. The hair and general clothes of most of the “leaders” (not, crucially, of the two main and of the “positive” characters) is characterised by a grotesque absence of taste. Interesting, because the way most people dress, their haircut and , in some circles, their tattoos  would have been considered disgusting and worse than ridiculous just a couple of decades ago.

4) The dig at the “inclusive” culture. The movie – I have not read the book – sends some unspoken messages: the hair and clothes clearly mean this is a “liberal” dictatorship, where no one is “discriminated” or “made to feel excluded” for his personal taste and at least the ruling class can “express” itself as it pleases. Similarly, there is a clear message that in this fake “liberal” world, in reality extremely cruel and devoid of any ethics, homosexuality is considered normal. I see in this a criticism to the Nazism our liberals are trying to build around us: violently illiberal, but open to every perversion in sexual morals, or simple taste.

5) This is a clean movie. A movie completely centred on adolescents of both sexes, but without sex, actually without even sexual innuendos. Mind, this is not a movie for 12 years old, and I would not bring a 12 years old to see it. Say, 15 to 18 must be the main target, but even as an adult there are no limits to its fruition.

Nowadays, when teenagers are confronted with sexual messages in every aspect of the trash “culture” dished to them, to make an expensive movie of this kind is more than laudable. I couldn’t avoid thinking that if the movie had been co-produced by the BBC, some of the “good characters” would have been most certainly perverts: the BBC does it without exception, with “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” being only the last example.

The movie is more than a bit upsetting, because the viewer is plunged in a world of brutal fight for survival for a longish time. Again, I wouldn’t bring there a 12 years old.

Still, I think you wouldn’t waste your time and money, and many of you would agree with me in my interpretation of some of the aspects of this movie. Again, I haven’t read the book – nor do I plan to – so I cannot tell you whether these issues run through it.

Mundabor

BBC In Sex Abuse Cover-Up Scandal

Champagne kiddie-fiddlers

Fantastic post from His Hermeneuticalness.

Please go there, read and click around.

For those who don’t know it, Guido Fawkes is one of the most beautifully vitriolic blogs I have ever come across, and a true bastion of freedom in a country where freedom is more and more often confused with the will of the liberal and gay mafia.

Enjoy

Mundabor

BBC and Catholic Martyrs

From the blog of E F Pastor Emeritus

Twenty-six pastoral workers–including 18 priests, four sisters, and four laity–were killed in 2011, according to the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. Seven were killed in Colombia, five in Mexico, three in India, two in Burundi, and one each in Brazil, Paraguay, Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Tunisia, Kenya, the Philippines, and Spain.Twenty-six pastoral workers–including 18 priests, four sisters, and four laity–were killed in 2011, according to the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. Seven were killed in Colombia, five in Mexico, three in India, two in Burundi, and one each in Brazil, Paraguay, Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Tunisia, Kenya, the Philippines, and Spain.

Perhaps I was not paying attention, but I didn’t notice anything along these lines reported on the BBC.

But just let a real or – more probably – supposed case of “homophobia” come up, and you can hear them barking and bitching around like there’s no tomorrow…..

Mundabor

Divorce: How Niceness Took The Place of Common Sense

Moral values in todays' Britain: the "Vicar of Dibley".

It is highly ironical that basic tenets of Catholic thinking (besides the Church being……. the only Church, She is the country’s second largest Christian organisation after the largely atheists or indifferent Anglicans, and the largest if you consider the number of churchgoers) need the endorsement of a senior judge to make some headlines.

The judge in question is Sir Paul Coleridge talking to the BBC, which reports the conversation as follows:

On the day official figures showed that nearly half of all babies are now born to unmarried mothers, Sir Paul blamed family break-up on social changes including the shift in attitudes towards cohabitation and increasing numbers of children born outside marriage.

He said that 50 years ago ‘on the whole cohabitation was regarded as something you didn’t do, to have a child outside marriage, so that created a framework that stopped very much breakdown.

‘We’ve had a cultural revolution in sexual morality and sexual behaviour,’ the judge said. ‘We need to have a reasonable debate about it and decide what needs to be done – and I don’t mean Government,’ he said. ‘They didn’t cause the problem.’

He added that the change in social attitudes over the past five decades had given people ‘complete freedom of choice’.

This was ‘great’ when they behaved responsibly, he added, but some seemed to think it was a ‘free-for-all’. Sir Paul said the rate of family breakdown among unmarried couples was far higher than among married ones.

It was statistically proven parents were far more likely to stay together until their children’s 16th birthday if they were married, he said.

Official figures suggest that an average marriage lasts around 11 years, but a cohabitation is likely to break up in three if the partners do not marry.

One would give kudos to the judge – a good chap, probably – if what he says were not the most elementary, purest common sense. And in fact the very same fact that his words made headlines shows a typical trait of today’s Britain: the loss of basic common sense.

I personally see as the cause of this a typically English disease, that has been worsening and spreading like a metastasis as the religious sense disintegrated: niceness.

Niceness has slowly become the unique moral criterium, the be-all and end-all of all moral considerations, the golden calf of a new religion. Nice, good. Not nice, bad. The idea that there be values to which niceness might be sacrificed has – encouraged by the “church” of England – all but disappeared. When values disappear from the pulpits, don’t expect to find them much longer in the sitting rooms of the pewsitters. When the “church” of England eliminated Christianity from morality, niceness took its place.

Still, a society in which everyone wants to be nice to everyone is condemned to doom. As divorce became more and more frequent, no one dared to say a word about that as this just wasn’t “nice” towards those among our acquaintances that were in that situation, or knew someone who was. If “nice” is the moral criterium, you have lost your argument – and every hope of avoiding that the country goes down the drain – the very instant someone says he’s “hurt”. Welcome to Nice Britain.

It went on, as more and more couples started to live together in concubinage and no one said a word, least of all the oh so nice vicar (and, all too often, the still-too-nice priest). The country was all too happy with its “Vicars of Dibley”, and didn’t care about the consequences as long as it was convenient to do so.

This obviously led to more and more births of children born outside of wedlock, born from people who were either adolescents or were remained such, the illusory quest for a never-to-be-reached personal happiness more and more frequently put before their own children. Those who went around saying that marriage is only a piece of paper were those who were most prone to leave their partner and children; but to say that was, of course, not nice.

The stigma also went. Being divorced is something, if not almost expected, clearly within the realm of normality. The very idea that there should be a stigma associated with being divorced is considered something bad because, erm, not nice. Strangely, I grew up in a country which – covertly or overtly – used to send the message that if you are separated/divorced, you are a failure irrespective of whatever other achievement you may have, because you have failed in the most important endeavour of your life. How “rude”! How “judgmental”! But you see, in such an environment you think twice before you marry, and thrice before you divorce. Of course there is social pressure: it is because it is good!

The entire “niceness” madness is perfectly epitomised by our Prime Minster, “Call-me-Dave”-Cameron; the friend of everyone, the supporter of every idea and its contrary, the man called “chameleon” even before seriously starting to be a politician, the prostitute of every lobby, and the undoubtedly brownest nose of the Kingdom. Cameron is the kind of person able to say that he is in favour of marriage, and that “marriage” includes homosexual couples. This doesn’t scandalise much. You see, he is being nice.

This is where we are now: a country where marriage is defended with words, without saying that to defend marriage means to condemn alternative forms of convivence; a country where it is recognised that a child needs stability, but its destruction is never stigmatised; a country where there is a lot of talk about values, without ever saying what behaviours these values necessarily exclude.

The country drowns in niceness; starting from the vicar down the road, and the local politician.

It drowns to such an extent, that common sense makes headlines.

Mundabor

Barking Cats And Girls Journalist

He went down the aisle barking with joy and beaming like a bride, we are told.

I complain very often about the BBC, a nest of liberal vipers all too ready to forget any balance and abandon themselves to the most scandalous liberal/atheist/anti-Catholic bias.

I must say, though, that even on the BBC I have never heard anything remotely approaching the total lack of balance and basic religious literacy of the incompetent wannabe journalists living from the public purse at this sender.

You would think that the article has been written by some thirteen-years-old girl playing journalist, so cretinous the entire presentation of the matter is.

The author of this piece of misinformation truly seems to believe that it is possible to con the Church into creating what can’t be created. To even think of being able to write that “women were secretly ordained” as priests is on the same level of intelligence as believing that in 2002 seven women were secretly appointed Dobermann Of The Year, or Second Moon Of The Earth, or Secret Presidents of Middle Earth.

There cannot be women priest, because being a man is a constitutive element of being a priest. There can’t be women priests more than there can be barking cats. It’s as simple as that, and even a girl journalist – even if entirely stupid – should be able to get this.

Sadly, simple logical thinking doesn’t seem to be a requisite for journalism anymore. The newspaper ludicrously talks of “ordinations” as if a real ordination – instead of a pathetic masquerade – had really taken place. It talks of “domino effect” as if a mickey-mouse priestess would be able to validly confer holy orders to another mickey-mouse priestess. This is so stupid that every seven years old child, properly instructed, would find it completely unworthy of his time and an insult to his intelligence.

The bias truly knows no boundaries. The wannabe barking cats

“made their way down the aisle, beaming like brides”.

Good Lord! What is this, the screenplay of a third-rate comedy? The excited little scream of a Justin Bieber fan? This is below stupid.

But this is not all:

The two-and-a-half-hour ceremony ended with Holy Communion — the moment they’d been waiting for.

No it didn’t. They ate some bread after having dressed themselves and were blasphemous and sacrilegious in so doing. I’m glad that the idiots attending were punished with two and a half hours of this, though.

Each woman performed the rites for the first time as a priest, breaking bread and serving wine as tears of joy flowed down their faces.

Our little girl journalist is here fully losing control, or perhaps she thought that she was writing an email to some, no doubt, stupid girlfriend of her. Whatever this is, this isn’t journalism.

Following these pearls of wisdom and journalistic talent, the mind (if any) of these nutcases is explained or, better, unwittingly exposed:

Fellow ordinand Patti LaRosa had a similar experience growing up. She came from a close-knit Italian family and always felt comfortable in the Catholic Church.

So the lady felt “comfortable” in the Catholic Church. Hey, why leave it then? If I decide that I now am, say, a Mullah, why not to appoint myself “Catholic mullah”? I feeeel so comfortable with that!

And it so happens about this lady that:

Several times a week she would go to church during her lunch break, and one day she realized, “I’m supposed to be a priest.”

So she sits there and one days she thinks, “I’m supposed to be a priest”. She could have thought “I’m supposed to be an elephant”, and the logical content would have been exactly the same.

I suppose the lady doesn’t feel comfortable with elephants.

There should be less money for useless public radios, and more money for serious mental health care.

Mundabor

Micheal Voris On “The State Of Catholicism”

Better than every Beeb journalist: Michael Coren

It is hard to believe, but countries like Canada have TV programs that can deal with Catholicism for three-quarters of an hour and being seen nationwide. If the BBC were to do something comparable, the program would obligatorily include a parade of sexual perverts explaining to us why the Church is evil; all interspersed with seemingly sympathetic comments from seemingly unbiased journalists aiming at pushing their secular agenda under the cloak of “tolerance” and “diversity”, which means approving pretty much everything under the sun.

Well, not so in Canada, where the Michael Coren show* deals with Catholicism for very long and in a serious fashion, inviting Michael Voris (well-known to the followers of this blog) to talk about it.

From this (longish) programme, several facts emerge:

1) Michael Voris has already been downloaded 5.5 million times in the last around two years. That’s some 7,500 downloads a day, give or take and with the trend going up (350,000 in January 2011; do your math). Very admirably, Voris says they don’t work “for” downloads, but can’t avoid noticing their growing number.

2) Criticism of Voris tends to come from people who think him “not charitable” (usual liberal excuse to attack those who are Catholics).

3) Voris makes clear that his role is to teach Catholicism. By a trend to 4+ million downloads a year, this gives all the scale of the failing of the Catholic clergy regarding their first duty: teaching the faith.

4) Voris makes an excellent job in explaining to the his viewers (composed of many non_Catholic, I can easily imagine) that to criticise what Church men do doesn’t mean that the Church is not infallible. The Church is doctrinally infallible, the people who compose her are prone to all sorts of errors. This is very important and must be explained again and again to your friends and colleagues when they are (naturally, seeing that they are not properly instructed) confused. This is also a huge source of prejudice against the Church, so it is very good that it was addressed.

5) Coren says it very clearly: Catholics schools teach people to be good citizen, but not to be good Catholics and in fact, even when they go out of school they can’t even define what their being Catholics is all about. I’d say these reflections can be shared by most people; they are the strongest indictment against the Catholic hierarchy in the West.

6) Voris is very clear: the problems started when Vatican II became a conduit for heterodox tendencies already contained in the conciliar documents. It is not the documents themselves that were heterodox, but they were so bad that they could be interpreted so and in the cultural climate of those years they predictably did.

Voris also cites the recent appeal of Bishop Schneider of a new “Syllabus of Error” regarding V II: this must be surprising and at the same time refreshing for non-Catholic viewers: seeing that the Church has not really ever changed, but has merely done her work badly for a handful of decades.

7) Coren is very perceptive: he notices that the liberal voices are the most intolerant ones and that “liberals” are only “tolerant” with those who “behave the way they want them to behave”. You’ll never hear that from the Beeb. Hat off to Mr. Coren.

8) “A lot of liberalism is about sex”, says Coren in another brilliant statement. He understands that liberalism is about doing what you please, and being Catholic is about trying to do as Jesus asks. The man is disarming in that he says things that in England would cause calls of hate speech as if he was saying the simplest facts on Earth. Refreshing.

9) Coren says it again in a very communicative way: he understands that “the teaching from Rome is perfect”, but that the problems lie in the provinces of the Empire. Voris has no problems in explaining the scale of the problems coming from the clergy. This must be, again, both shocking and refreshing for the viewers, who have the opportunity to see an organism sacred in her essence, but fallible in her workings.

10) Even Coren notices that younger priests and bishops tend to be much more orthodox than older one. He is 52, and a convert. I think he is spot on. Again, this is rather known among Catholics but it must be most interesting for non-Catholics viewers. An extremely instructive programme for them.

11) “Judas is the Saint of Social justice”. This Fulton Sheen line criticising the “militant social stance” of many priests is another statement you’ll never hear on the BBC.

12) The hard arguments come out around 27:00: the losing of the West’ soul, the hard truths about Catholic “unpleasant” messages, the necessity to hammer the hard messages to the people, the fact that your moral view will influence the entire society in which your children live. Coren reacts to Voris’ hard statements with grace and humour, his clear Catholicism never becoming obnoxious to those who don’t share his persuasion but clearly showing where his preferences lie. Again, I think that a non-Catholic can see this programme and be pleasantly instructed and entertained.

13) Moving details are revealed: Voris’ mother asking for a cross so that their children may come back to the faith, and dying of cancer in a prayerful way. Looks a bit like “Brideshead revisited”, but in real life. Voris avoids the emotional outburst, but one clearly understands that the event touched him profoundly.

14) Coren deals with the main criticism liberals move to orthodox people: being not charitable. Voris has the chance to explain what true charity is, and what false charity leads to.
No interruptions whilst he explains. Simply good journalism.

15) “It is not the role of the Church to blend in with society”. Another strikingly relevant statement from Voris. No English bishop I know would have ever the guts to say it so strikingly.

16) Some bishops apparently said to Voris something on the lines of “keep on saying what you say, because I can’t”. Sorry, but these are bad bishops. It can’t be that Voris may have the guts, and the bishop can’t afford to. Voris is there because they just don’t do their job. See point 15).

There are some other interesting points, but I’d like not to go beyond 1000 words. This is an excellent example of good, informative journalism, though clearly coming from a Catholic journalist. Coren respectfully listens to his guest allowing his viewers to get 45 minutes of solid formation in Catholicism. I can easily imagine that whilst Coren is clearly Catholic himself, his journalistic style may appeal to many non-Catholics and help them to get nearer to the Catholic truth. The chap has the warmth, the graceful ways and the smoothness of tone of an Italian in a good mood.

I so wish the BBC could learn a bit from him instead of being the miserable hotbed of secular anti-Catholic propaganda it is.

Mundabor

* as always, you may have to register. Free of charge and certainly worth your while.

Oliver And Hardy, The English Way.

Sssshhhhh!!!!!

I have never written about a beautiful Catholic publication and Internet presence, Christian Order, so it is a particular pleasure to do it today.

Apart from the extremely orthodox views reflected in the editorials (which you can all read online), what I find particularly enjoyable is the very clear, wonderfully politically incorrect, no-holds-barred way of presenting the argument. If you think that this blog is too harsh, you may want to pay a visit.

Christian Order’s January 2011 editorial is one of those pearls. It is very long and deals with several issues, but if your time is counted I’d ask you to focus your attention on the second part, “Tragedy”, because there is really no other way to describe the present situation in Arundel and Brighton’s, and in Westminster’s diocese.

Tragedy, Part One:  Bishop (alas!) Conry declares, before the Papal visit, that Pope Benedict

May well be relieved to be coming to a place where, unlike some of his other recent trips, there are no big problems for him to sort out.

One is speechless at the disingenuousness (that my grandmother, God bless her soul, would have called “dishonesty” and “bad faith”) of such affirmations. A country where abortions hover around 200,000 a year; divorce and cohabitation are widespread; perverts “marry” perverts with the blessing of the government; drug use is on the rise; wiccans get recognised as members of a “religion”; loss of orientation is everywhere and shallow TV programmes seem to be the new unifying faith is to bishop Conry a country with “no big problems to sort out”.

Either for bishop Conry 200,000 abortions a year are not a big problem and the fact that perverts can “marry” is a fully normal and democratic occurrence, or the man has obviously lost his marbles. Unfortunately for us and for his soul, the first hypothesis is by far the more probable.

The scandal of such an ideological blindness was too much for a good man answering to the name of Edmund Adamus, aid to Archbishop Nichols. Adamus gave a well-publicised interview in which he described the United Kingdom as “a selfish, hedonistic wasteland” and “the geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death”, which actually pretty much hits the bull’s-eye. Punctually, Archbishop Vincent “Quisling” Nichols felt the need to let us know that Adamus’ opinion “did not reflect his own”. I have blogged about Adamus’ courageous interview here.

This was probably too much of an invitation for BBC lefties, and here the tragedy’s second part took its course. Asked by a BBC journalist about how he sees Adamus’ comments and whether he sees the UK society as “extremely secular”, Nichols answers:

“Well it’s not how I would describe our society at all actually. I think our society is characterised as much by generosity and by genuine concern one for another, and I think religious faith is taken quite seriously by probably a majority of people in this country.”

A roar of laughter would be here the most appropriate answer, if the person making such an ass of himself were not the most prestigious Catholic of the Realm. I know that an Archbishop of Westminster must live a rather sheltered life, but only an extraordinary amount of self-inflicted blindness (which my grandmother, God bless her soul, would have called “dishonesty” and “bad faith”) can move one to even think of making such extraordinary utterances.

John Smeaton, the intrepid blogger and head of the society for the protection of the unborn children, said it very aptly:

I can’t think of anyone, Catholic or non-Catholic, religious or non-believer, who believes that “religious faith is taken quite seriously by probably a majority of people in this country.”And with 570 babies killed daily in Britain and with well over two million embryos discarded, or frozen, or selectively aborted, or miscarried or used in destructive experiments since the birth of the first IVF child was born over thirty years ago, how can the Archbishop blithely dismiss the culture of death without having his head kept, deliberately, buried in the sand?

Deliberately is the operative word here. Meaning with cynical disregard for Catholicism, for countless murdered babies, for the way the country is morally going down the drain. Provided that stupid, sugary songs continue to be sung in front of a greying audience slowly not even remembering what rebellion to the Pre-Vatican church was like but liking the idea anyway, Nichols and Conry think that the world is in good order. They’ll just have to ignore the irrelevant details of the 200,000 abortions a year, of the institutionalised sexual perversion and of the galloping de-christianisation of the country at all levels (are they aware of a drive to legalise euthanasia in this country? No? Shouldn’t they be informed?) and occupy themselves with the next statement that says nothing, sounds good and lets one appear oh so good.

Mala tempora currunt.

Mundabor

 

Archbishop Longley Misses An Occasion To Do His Job

If you go here at around 2:10:00 (make haste, because it might disappear in the next days) you’ll have a good example of what doesn’t work with the Church in England.

The BBC journalist insists in posing irritating, but actually very fitting questions to Archbishop Longley. Thankfully, the journalist has got it that the Pope was, during Condomgate, “not saying anything terribly new” and he therefore asks – understandably, from his ungodly perspective – whether the Church is going to “change” Her opinion about condoms and, more fittingly, whether the average English Catholics accepts “lock, stock and barrel” the Catholic doctrine.

This would be an ideal occasion to launch oneself on a passionate defence of Truth, on BBC’s “Today” programme, on Christmas Eve. Which is, I was told, what an Archbishop is supposed to do anyway.

Instead, Archbishop Langley’s answers oscillate between the inane, the cowardly and the pathetic. He goes on and on remembering the success of the Papal visit; talks about how much the church is looking for “dialogue”; insists on Cardinal Newman in a way clearly meant to avoid the show of “tough love” required of him; tries not to answer the journalist’s questions and even says that he thinks that Catholics in England accept “lock, stock and barrel” the Catholic teaching, “otherwise they wouldn’t be Catholic”. Good Lord; do we live on the same planet….

The buzz words, though, are all there. Dialogue is obviously there and change is also felt as appropriate. “The Church is constantly changing”, says he when he talks of the ways the Church talks to the people. This is meant to sound positive, I suppose, but the guts to say loud and clear that the Truth doesn’t change and everyone must come to terms with that is clearly more than he can muster. So we have on the one side the hurt feeling of perverts – explicitly and emphatically championed by the Beeb man – and on the other hand we have a man insisting with you that the Church “changes” because now the Pope talks to you on the radio. Brilliant.

Archbishop Longley (not one of the worst, for sure; for the English standard, I mean) has given a wonderful example of why the Church struggles in this country: because it is afraid to say it straight and prefers to hide behind successful visits, blessed Cardinals and easy slogans of “dialogue” and “change” instead.

Mundabor

BBC & Co. Silent As CDF Puts Things Right

You can read on Rorate Coeli (you’ll have to scroll down to the 21st December) the Note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “on trivialization of sexuality” (American spelling, apparently. Fair enough…).

This is nothing less than an official statement about Condomgate. If you take the few minutes to read it, you’ll notice that the arguments it makes are not in the least different from the comment made on this and other orthodox blogs at the time of the controversy.

What one notices is that at least here in the UK the media have chosen to completely ignore this statement in the same way as they had – once it became clear that they had once again pissed outside of the pan – conveniently decided to move to other topics.

As a result the truth didn’t get one hundredth of the media attention given to the lie and untold non-churchgoer Catholics must be somewhat under the impression that after all the Church can change Her teaching and therefore, well, must change it in order to become, ehem, more similar to them.

This is further prove that the media landscape of this country – largely dominated by champagne liberals, liberals who can’t afford the champagne and socialists who think they’re liberals – is not interested in information, but in manipulation of the (license-paying) public.

Mundabor

The Compassionate Condom Crowd And False Compassion

The Charge of the Fake Compassionate

As we all know, heterodoxy lurks from all corners. We find it among bishops (look at the United Kingdom, and seek no further); among priests (the last “strange” homily was from that Jesuit from Wimbledon saying on the lines of “hell is a way of saying that we shouldn’t shortchange ourselves with second class choices”); we find it among politicians a’ la Nancy Pelosi and – obviously – we find it among journalists a’ la BBC.

Now how would a progressive, heterodox journalist describe the notorious excerpt? “A change in Church teaching” would be a way; a “softening” would be another; a third one might be a show of “compassion”. Let us see why this is wrong.

1) Church Teaching doesn’t change. Circumstances are always changing, but moral categories never change. We live and die in a world confronting us with exactly the same moral choices of St. Thomas Aquinas’ time. If this wasn’t the case, we’d need a new Gospel and a new Christ. We need no new Gospel and no new Christ; the Truth has been transmitted to us and it is valid for all times and for all (ever changing) circumstances.

Right is right even if no one is right and wrong is wrong even if everyone is wrong. There is no way on the planet the use of a condom should be considered any differently in 2010 than in Humanae Vitae’s time (sodomy had already been invented; sexually transmitted diseases too) or, come to that, in Romans’ times. We are dealing with moral categories here, not with technological advancements.

2) The one with the “softening” is also funny. It implies that the Church’s teaching about the use of condom is, well, wrong somehow. That it should be “improved”. Poor little sodomites, to whom the Church, which tells them not to commit sodomy in the first place, also makes it impossible to enjoy sodomy in the proper way…..how cruel is that! Don’t ya feel for them, mate? Such a thinking can earn one some kudos in a homo bar or in a BBC studio, but is certainly not Christian. The Church says hard words when she is confronted with harsh situations, with hardened sinners, with abominations, with serious danger to one’s soul. Not only is this the charitable thing to do, but it is the most practical advice. Condoms will never eliminate the risk of infection, chastity will. Condoms will never be conducive to eternal salvation, chastity will. There’ s nothing hard in telling the truth, and nothing to be softened. Truth will make you free and will, possibly, lead you to a long and healthy life instead of a painful agony of spiritual and physical self-destruction.

3) Third one is the one with the compassion. To allow a sodomite to commit such an abomination would be “compassionate”; to suggest the best way to multiply the number of his unspeakably lurid (in all senses) acts would be “compassionate”; to satisfy the desire of the sinner to sin with as few conscience pangs as possible would be “compassionate”.

What has become of us. When the moral instance gives way to the consideration for the comfort of the sinner, we have a clear case of false compassion. When not the sinner as human being is being helped, but the sinner is helped on his way to sin, we have false compassion. When “compassion” is not seen as eliminating the sin from the sinner, but the danger from the sin, we have false compassion. When the physical health of the sinner (through the use of condoms) is considered more important than his spiritual health (through chastity), we have false compassion.

Really. What has become of us.

Mundabor