Many years ago, my wife and I regularly babysat little Lesle Nhu Kieu, the daughter of our Vietnamese neighbors, on Saturdays, when both of her parents were working. I was the main caretaker, and, man, I loved that little punk. And like me she was a "lefty" -- the most left "lefty" I have ever seen -- and I think because I was a "lefty" also not only was she a "tomboy" who loved spending time with me, but she could almost read my mind.
If I wasn't helping little Lesle with her homework, she would always ask to go on some "adventure" or other. We did many really cool things -- we toured the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania Archaeology Museum, the Academy of Natural Sciences Museum; we would go on photography walks, taking pictures of interesting things along the route; I took her flying, once; we would also do back yard experiments, which she loved more than anything else.
One of our backyard experiments was the construction of a solar furnace.
I had told her the story of Archimedes and the Roman ships attacking his City of Syracuse, Sicily. He had the city of Syracuse prepare about 6,000 highly-polished copper shields, with a man assigned to each shield, and stationed them around the harbor of Syracuse. When the invading Romans sailed their barges full of troops into Syracuse harbor, all 6,000 shield bearers carefully reflected the sunlight to the same spot on each barge, multiplying the reflected sunlight by 6,000, sending a blinding reflection of sunlight, as hot as lava from a volcano, onto each barge, cooking the troops, and setting the barge afire.
When I told little Lesle that we could imitate what Archimedes did in an experiment, she looked forward to it with enormous enthusiasm. I began buying $1 mirrors from our local dollar store ...
... until I had accumulated 60 of them, and then, one cloudless Fall Saturday, Lesle and I, and a neighbor kid named Andrew who had a kind of crush on Lesle, went down to the local ballfield for the experiment with our mirrors.
We set up an overturned trash can on the south side of some bleachers, and placed a black plastic flowerpot on the trash can, and I said, "This is a wooden barge of the Romans sailing into Syracuse harbor"; and the 3 of us, Lesle, Andrew and myself, then carefully set up in an array all 60 mirrors on the bleachers, so that the sunlight reflecting off each mirror landed on the same spot on the black flower pot.
As the concentrated sunlight on the flower pot from the addition of the reflection of each succeeding mirror grew brighter and brighter, it became so brilliant in its intensity, even on black plastic, that it became hard to look at. The side of the plastic flower pot began to smoke and melt, and finally it caught fire.
Voila: With a few dollars of junk mirrors, little Lesle and Andrew had helped me prove that Archimedes could, indeed, have saved his beloved City of Syracuse against invading Romans with a kind of "ray gun" powered by sunlight!
Millions of Christians get all excited every year when they celebrate the birth of Christ, but do they really know why? Why is it important that Christ came to humanity, lived here, and was arrested, tortured and crucified? So what? Spartacus was arrested and crucified by the Romans? Why shouldn't I regard that as Spartacus having been crucified for me and my salvation? Why was what happened to Christ significant?
Though millions of Christians, Catholic and non-Catholic, proclaim that "Christ died for our sins," their brains stop there. And because their brains don't get past that point, they really don't understand their Faith -- at all, not one jot; not one tittle. And because they can't do so, I believe that very, very few Christians today would suffer or die for their faith, and in fact will abandon the Faith for more convenient exercises in The Great Falling Away, which I believe in happening as I type this.
So, what do we mean when we say that "Christ died for our sins?"
This ...
God is "extremely" everything that He is. Among other things, He has an extreme sense of justice. So, when the Old Testament portrays Him as a nasty God of Vengeance, it is accurately portraying God. When God sees us down here paying hypocritical lip service to his law, He becomes filled with blood-curdling -- blood-curdling -- rage. Bible students are astonished at some of the Scriptural portrayals of God's rage. E.g., "I, in my turn, will laugh at your doom. I will mock when terror overtakes you ..." Proverbs 1:26.
But, God is also extremely a God of Extreme Love. And the God of Extreme Love, even while He is mindful of His blood-curdling rage at us for our sin-proneness and sins, simple loves the holy heck out of each of us -- He loves us like crazy! And so He did something startling ...
The perfect God of Justice and Love, Whom we can neither prove nor disprove because of His ineffability, asked for a divine volunteer to pay the extraordinary price exacted by God's Own extreme Perfect Justice for our sins -- the suffering and death of the Lawmaker, God.
The beloved God the Son, filled with love, immediately threw up his hand and said, "I WILL! I'LL PAY THE PRICE!" or words to that effect.
And God the Father answered with something like, "MY BELOVED SON, I HEREBY ACCEPT YOUR LOVING OFFER, AND SO I DOOM YOU TO ENDURE HORRIBLE TORTURE AND DEATH FOR THE SINS OF ALL WHO ACCEPT YOUR SACRIFICE BY THEIR FAITH."
And so now, we have the grace conveying the benefit of Christ's sacrifice -- spiritual power and salvation -- if you accept it, in the current time of love, access to which will continue until what the Bible calls "The Day" -- the last day, which I believe is closing in on us with great rapidity.
Once The Day comes, however, things will change in a snap. Suddenly, as God closes down The World, those still living in a damned state will feel extremely hopeless and lost in their damned state -- perhaps well portrayed in the Sistine Channel painting of a damned soul being pulled down to Hell ...
The saved will nonetheless remain engraced, married as it were to the loving sacrifice of God the Son -- thus the importance of faith.
Because Spartacus and and other mere humans who were sacrificed were "creatures of Original Sin," their sacrifice was unimpressive to God as far as the salvation of Man is concerned.
Because Jesus is God Himself, and because His innocence, like everything else about God, is extreme and rooted in God's perfection, when Jesus offers to suffer and die as a sacrifice substituted in by God as the penalty for our sins, it is effective in persuading God to save us.
If ...
...if we "sign the check"; if we simply say, by our faith in the truth of God's promise, "Yes. I accept," to the offer of salvation by the merit of Christ's sacrifice.
Now, our sinful state is complete. Without grace, we can't even see the offer of salvation through Christ. The grace of the cross solves the problem, by raising each of us up to a level of equanimity, so that we can choose, "Yes!" in response to God's offer.
I first bumped into a Ouija Board when I was a 4 year old kid. Back then, in the late 1950s, Ouija Boards were regarded as a harmless toy, safe for kids and adults. One of my older siblings received a Ouija Board as a gift, and retreated to the basement of our home with another older sibling to experiment with it. I followed them down into the basement and watched their Ouija Board ritual with the keen, pure interest of an innocent 4 year old. All were greatly disappointed when nothing seemed to happen, and they quit their game.
Nothing seemed to happen, that is, until late that night ...
That night, I had the first "ghostly" experience of my life. I awakened in my bed in the darkened house, and listened and heard my brothers sleeping soundly in their beds behind mine in the boy's room, and my parents snoring peacefully in their bed through the doorway to their room next to my bed. I pulled my blankets up to my chin and waited for sleep to come. Suddenly, I felt a strong, distinct compulsion ...
"Peter, look into your parents' bedroom. Something is about to happen."
I looked, and saw a classic ghostly figure come floating into my parents' bedroom from the direction of the other door to their room. She floated around the end of their bed, enabling me to see that she was dressed in a flowing translucent gown, about an inch above the floor -- toward me in my bed!
Frightened, I pulled my blankets over my head, hoping "the ghost lady" -- I had a strong feeling that "it" was a "she" -- would just go away.
After a few minutes, I peeked out from beneath my blankets and into my parents' bedroom, and saw that the thing was gone. Greatly relieved, I turned over to my other side under the blankets -- and froze.
There the thing was, between my bed and my older brother's bed, bent over my older brother's sleeping figure, staring intently at him.
After a few moments, the thing turned her head around, and stared at me, as I continued laying there, frozen in astonishment. Then it straightened up, and floated out the other door to our bedroom into the hall.
It dawned on me, years later, that when the thing first floated into our parents' bedroom, it was coming from the direction of the bedroom of the other sibling who participated in the Ouija Board "seance" that day, and then came and stared at the brother who had been participant #2, while I was alerted to watch -- what I had done in the basement during my siblings' "ritual."
I.e., the Ouija Board worked.
The house remained haunted for years after that. The thing followed a pattern. (1) It came in the dark or subdued light; (2) when the experiencer was asleep, going to sleep or waking up; (3) and "put on a show" for the experiencer; (4) frequently evidencing a "female" presence.
The "show" was comprised of knocking on the walls, or a physical grabbing of the body, or a sudden raising of the shades in the room -- anything to get our attention.
Once, when I confided that "ghostly" experience, and others, to Phyllis, one of the ladies who lived next door, she suggested that I try to contact the thing back. Astonished and fearful, I immediately said, "NO WAY!"
But, "fools rush ..."
On an evening not long after my conversation with Phyllis, everybody in our family had a place to go after dinner but me. It occurred to me that, isolated, I could attempt to contact the ghost, as Phyllis had suggested, with no one else in the family to distract or shame me.
When all had left and I was alone, I placed a paper and a crayon on the coffee table in the living room, turned on some soft music to help lull myself into a sleepy state, doused all of the lights in the house, sat on the living room sofa, and announced, "Okay, whoever you are, I would appreciate it if you tried to contact me."
Nothing happened except suddenly the radio broadcast some raucous rock music in place of the soft music.
I jumped up and changed stations, tuning the radio to MAGIC, WMGK FM 103, where I found some quiet soft shoe music. I returned to the sofa and repeated my request, "Okay, whoever you are, I would appreciate it if you tried to contact me." But I added, "If you do, I promise I won't tell anyone."
All of a sudden, an invisible cloud of cold materialized at my face, characterized by a sensation of wild touching, touching, touching. Then the touching sensation launched itself into my nose and mouth, and to my astonishment rushed down my lungs till, at heart level, it began to make my heart beat very violently.
"IT'S A DEMON TRYING TO POSSESS ME!" I thought to myself in a panic as I jumped up and kind of prayerfully "no'd" it out of me.
Poof. The sensation vanished and my heart went back to normal.
I never tried to contact the thing again. And I kept my promise to not tell anyone -- for a year or so.
But then, one night, when I walked into the house, I found my father telling the gathered family about his ghostly experiences when he was young. I thought to myself, "If he can do it without shame, I can do it," and I ran through the list of ghostly experiences beginning with the visitation which followed the use of the Ouija Board and ending with my "communication experiment" that had such a bad ending. As I told them about the communication experiment, I was conscious of the fact that I was breaking my promise to the thing. The members of the family who were present that night stared open-mouthed as I told them the story.
That night, or maybe one or two nights later, I had the worst "ghostly" experience of my life in the form of a wild, frightening nightmare. A group of 4 or 5 black-eyed "muchkins" in deep blue gas-station-style jumpsuits walked towards me, out of the screen of my dream, angrily sneering, "YOU SON-OF-A-B - - - H, YOU BROKE YOUR PROMISE TO US TO NOT TELL ANYONE. WE'RE GOING TO GET YOU FOR DOING THAT!!!" At that point I noticed that they were carrying a thick hose between them, like firemen holding a fire hose, and they suddenly rushed at me and rammed me in the belly with it. In the dream I went "oooooooooooooooofff" in response.
But then I awakened slowly in my bed. As I came to, I realized that I was screaming, screaming, screaming in my bedroom bunk. As I stopped screaming, I realized that not only was I covered head-to-foot with sweat, but I was lying in pools of sweat on the sheets. I also had a distinct sensation that I had been anally raped by the hose, not punched in the stomach by it. As I apprehended this, I saw a vision of the "muchkins" in the periphery of my vision laughing at me.
And then I realized that it was 10:00 a.m. on a sunny weekend morning, and that the rest of the house was quiet. I got down off my bunk, got a towel and dried off the sweat, and I dressed and went downstairs. There members of the family were gathered in the living room, staring at me angrily. One explained, "Around midnight you began yelling and screaming in your sleep. We tried to wake you, but couldn't. We've been down here for hours while you screamed in your sleep, talking about what to do with you."
"Sorry about that," I stammered without further explanation, hoping that they'd just drop the whole thing. I found it impossible, then, to tell them about the rape dream.
Years later, after I became a New Jersey trial lawyer and married and moved to New Jersey, I stopped at Blockbuster Video and rented the Whitley Streiber film Communion for entertainment one Friday night after court while I and my wife chomped on pizza. I had heard of Communion and of the Abduction Phenomenon, but that was it.
As we sat watching the film and eating pizza, the movie advanced to the point where the movie portrayed Streiber experiencing the blue-suited "munchins" assisting the almond-eyed abductors in the Abduction Phenomenon.
I had already told my wife about my rape dream years before. So, I blurted out, "THAT'S THEM! THOSE ARE THE BLUE-SUITED B - - - - - DS WHO ANALLY RAPED ME IN THAT RAPE DREAM YEARS AGO TO PUNISH ME FOR BREAKING MY PROMISE!"
And since that time, I have been firmly committed to the notion that the beings in the Abduction Phenomenon are demonic, and that the "ghosts" engendered by Ouija Boards are the same.
Take it from me -- Ouija Boards are thoroughly dangerous. Keep the kids away from them.
Our family was friendly with a couple, years ago, where the husband seemed to suffer from two different facial tics. He was a very, very nice guy, except that he was prone to rage in disputes with his wife. When I would pay a visit to their home and accidentally walk into the middle of a fight, I would hear him robotically repeating, "F - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle," again and again, hundreds of times. On such occasions, I would convince him to take an hour-long walk through town with me, during which he would continue repeating, "F - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle."
On one such occasion, the encounter was especially bizarre. It was evening. Their child was curled-up in a corner of the living room, shaking, when I entered the house. The husband was holding the crying wife prisoner in a chair in front of a mirror by her hair, repeating as usual, "F - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle." He didn't seem to realize I was there. I called home to my wife and told her that the mother and child would have to sleep in our spare bedroom. When my wife came over to assist, I gently persuaded the husband to let the wife leave that chair, and my wife quickly ushered the wife and child out the front door to our house. As I turned around to face the husband again, he walked past me without seeing me, still repeating his evil curse words, "F - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle." I took him for his hour-long walk to give him the chance to calm down. He returned home and slept.
I probably should have called police, but the wife stubbornly refused to cooperate with that effort.
As I pondered the problem, I thought, "Where else have I seen this behavior in my law practice?" And then it dawned on me: In my few cases involving Tourette's Syndrome.
Tourette's cases are typically evidenced by multiple varieties of facial tics, and, again, the husband in this case had two of them -- a regularly-occurring sniff and a regularly-occurring grimace. Also, robotic behavior emerges, and I had clearly witnessed that. Also, there is sometimes a pronounced proclivity to obscene cursing -- my neighbor's outstanding persistent symptom. He had Tourette's. I was sure of it. When I told the husband and wife about my analysis and compared the husband's behavior to the list of symptoms on a brochure on Tourette's, they both burst out laughing. I pleaded, "At least see a doctor on this. Medication may solve the problem."
They laughed some more, and politely declined to abide by my suggestion.
But the fights continued. The husband's bad behavior continued. The situation finally exploded in divorce, which I was glad to see, if only for their traumatized child's sake.
I kind of "tell all" in this blog, right? Well, wait till you read this!
Every time the powers-that-be do something, it benefits "them" at the expense of some group -- or everyone.
For example, Governor Christie is wildly in support of blowing a billion-and-a-half State dollars on North Jersey casinos, now, which will buy him North Jersey votes ...
http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/01/christie_nj_leaders_reach_deal_on_north_jersey_cas.html
... WHILE he nastily condemns making quarterly payments to the State's public employees pension system, in effect demanding that the pension rush even faster toward bankruptcy by breaking the contract with State employees, threatening the safety of hundreds of thousands of New Jersey senior citizens! ...
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/christie-highlights-bipartisanship-dives-pension-fight-36250737
Note well that those two positions together amount to a withdrawal FROM the pension fund INTO worthless casinos that only make the rich as fat as ... well, you know.
IN EFFECT, Governor Christie is stealing from senior citizens and state employees to buy North Jersey votes.
Well, could it be that the powers-that-be now have us drinking raw sewage?
Apparently, yes!
My wife Rise` trained me to be a water drinker. It makes everything better in your physiology.
Many months ago, I noticed that the water from our cold water tap in Magnolia began to smell. Like life. Like water from a fish tank after fish begin crapping in it. I thought, "Huh!"
So, I started drinking hot water, only, because it didn't have the smell.
Then, at a place and time which I can not reveal, because it might get someone fired, I sat down with an employee of New Jersey American Water, the water provider to millions of people in our region, including Magnolia. He/she told me that the smell in the water came from the untreated Delaware River water that had been added to our water supply by New Jersey American Water, and that part of New Jersey American Water's executives' understanding of the consequences of doing that is that THE OPERATIONAL LIFE OF MILLIONS OF HOT WATER HEATERS WOULD BE VISIBLY SHORTENED BY THE ADDITION OF UNTREATED DELAWARE RIVER WATER TO OUR LOCAL WATER SUPPLY. Why? Because the hot water heaters functionally kill and then distill the bodies of trillions of microorganisms in the Delaware River water out of the water headed for our taps, filling our hot water heaters with debris which shortens tank life.
My friend's words explained why hot tap water was so much less unpleasant than cold tap water in Magnolia and elsewhere in South Jersey, now.
My wife Rise` also purchased a filtered pitcher for drinking water for our family. It seems to work. The water from the cold water tap now has no smell.
But something occurred to me the other day ...
Months ago, I noticed that one of our sons allowed his dog to "kiss" him on the lips.
Aware that dogs habitually lick their anal apertures, I thought, "YEEEEEECH!" He argued that dogs have super-powerful enzymes in their saliva that killed everything.
I researched that concept of super-powerful dog saliva enzymes on-line, found it to be a "Wives' Tale," and ran a blog item featuring pictures of some of the shocking microorganisms in dog spit after they lick everything horrible which all dogs habitually lick.
It dawned on me the other day, as I continued to obsessively think about our fish-tank-smelling tap water, that the exact same microorganisms in dog spit might now be in our drinking water because of the addition of Delaware River water.
The most repulsive microorganisms portrayed in the dog-kissing blog piece were "cryptosporidia" -- intestinal microorganisms whose offspring come out in human and animal crap which take up residence in and become a part of our intestines. They are incredibly disgusting. If you want to know what organisms are "of the essence of" drinking sewage, it is "cryptosporidia."
So, when I checked the New Jersey American website, and looked at the analysis of the Delaware water now added to our drinking water, GUESS WHO THE "STAR OF THE SHOW" WAS.
Yup!
As the number of Catholics in the pews at Mass in Catholic churches dwindles Sunday after Sunday, church finances grow ever more desperate -- despite the sale of one Catholic parish after another.
Our parish, St. Gregory's Parish in Magnolia, Camden County, New Jersey, no longer exists. At the busy intersection of White Horse Pike and Evesham Road, it had a big, big parking lot. Its finances were solid, in large part because of the parking lot -- although there were fewer large families and fewer young adults married or unmarried in the nave every Sunday, Mass attendance, generally, remained strong.
Nonetheless, as a parishioner and as a member of church council, I could read the writing on the wall -- the Catholic Church was clearly in trouble, as the Diocese "consolidated" Catholic parish after Catholic parish, and confronted the declining number of pastors with the need to sell Catholic Church properties in their parishes for lack of manpower or users.
On one Sunday at Mass at St. Gregory's, I noticed something odd about the Church: A crack ran though a beam comprising a rafter in the ceiling, into the adjacent ceiling, down the wall, and into the basement. I went and got Monsignor Korda, and pointed the anomaly out to him. Monsignor called a private inspection service, who agreed that the ceiling and adjacent wall and floor were in danger of collapse due to an insufficient foundation.
He said to me, "Peter, I have to spend a quarter of a million dollars to fix this defect you discovered." I said, "Father, why do that? The Diocese is shortly going to close this parish anyway."
"Ah, Peter," he responded, "The Diocese would never close this parish. We're one of the few parishes 'in the black.' Our location and parking lot are a big draw for Mass."
I answered, "Monsignor, that is why they'll close down St. Gregory's. If they sell it, it will generate cash proceeds. It will sell for a good price because it's an excellent commercial location, with no mortgage to pay off. The Diocese needs the money because of declining overall finances generated by Catholics alienated by Humanae Vitae, the priest sex cases, and growing Catholic materialism due mostly to modern communications. Haven't you noticed the pattern in the sale of Church properties? They're selling the good stuff, and keeping the heavily mortgaged properties with bad parking lots."
Lo and behold, after Msgr. Korda's retirement and replacement, St. Gregory's Parish was ridiculously merged into Mary Mother of the Church Parish in Bellmawr, over 4 miles distant. Alarmed parishioners asked me to try to verify that St. Gregory's would not be closed and sold. I secured from the Bishop's Office a letter personally signed by the bishop promising that there were "no plans to sell St. Gregory's." Today, St. Gregory's is demolished and is being replaced by a commercial gas-station-and-convenience-store combination. So, "No plans" functionally meant, "No plans today, but, hey, tomorrow, who knows? ..." A lie in writing by a bishop?
No matter what, the prevailing role of dissonance in the Catholic Church over sexual issues in its slow decline is so important to analyze, to understand all of this.
BIRTH CONTROL. About 20 years ago, a federally financed study verified that about 72.4% of church-going Catholics made regular use of artificial birth control in their sexual relationships; among all Catholics, the numbers approximated 95%. The one son who will discuss the issue with me says, "Dad, in my generation, the number is 100%." He's wrong, but his attitude is telling. It's close to 100%.
Now, think about that. Between 72% and 100% of those regularly attending Mass when the Church passes the hat at Sunday Mass regularly disobey infallible Humanae Vitae in and outside marriage.
The priests saying Mass know this. Have you ever seen a priest decline to give communion to a parishioner he knows to be a regular and persistent violator of Humanae Vitae? I tripped into this question in this form ...
Years ago, in the early 1980s, I went to Saturday confessions at St. Gregory's for the first time. Father Robert Cairone -- a gentle, forgiving soul -- was the priest in the north side confessional. The pastor, Monsignor Edward Korda, was the priest in the south side confessional. Fr. Cairone's confessional had no line. Msgr. Korda's confessional had about 10 penitents in waiting. I said to a neighbor at the end of Msgr. Korda's line, "What gives? Why does everyone seem to be avoiding Fr. Cairone for confession?"
My neighbor smiled. "This is the birth control line. In Msgr. Korda's line, we can come in week after week and confess to use of birth control in our marriages. If Fr. Cairone catches us doing that, he finds that there is no true repentance and declares the sin 'retained.'"
I thought about that, and said, "Everyone who does that on this side is making an invalid confession. Fr. Cairone is correct. Msgr. Korda is probably abusing the sacrament." I switched sides and went to Fr. Cairone for confession.
I bumped into the issue a second time, with Msgr. Korda. I once commented to him that in my Bible study program, we had discussed one of the New Testament verses on oral contraceptives.
"Peter," said Msgr. Korda, "There's no such Bible verses!"
"Humanae Vitae doesn't cite them, Msgr., but there are actually four of them." I ran through the list, and showed him the corroborating proof -- an Early Church catechism called the Didache, and an early Epistle, respected but not included in the Scriptural canon -- the following day.
I bumped into the issue a third time as follows. One Saturday, Mgsr. Korda called me and asked me to discuss something with him at the rectory. I went over immediately and he had me read an express written order from the bishop to all priests in the Diocese to dedicate the following Sunday's homily to the moral importance of obeying Humanae Vitae vis-a-vis use of artificial birth control -- the great Contraception Sunday experiment in Camden Diocese.
"The faithful are going to hang you from the rafters," I commented.
"That was my reaction," he answered.
Nonetheless, all three priests in our parish obeyed the order. In the Diocese's dozens of other parishes, about one-third of the priests simply disobeyed the order (according to an insider I shall not identify). Masses where the order was obeyed generated hundreds of walk-outs and thousands of letters of protest to the bishop (according to the same source).
The experiment was never repeated.
And our priests regularly give communion to contributing church-going Catholics even if it is clear that they are disobeying Humanae Vitae -- where are the kids beside them in the pews? -- while the number of church-going parents with multiple kids next to them in the pews at Mass on Sunday is embarrassingly rare.
Functionally, most of the Faithful are knowingly living in a state of rebellion against the Church, week-in and week-out.
SEX ABUSE OF KIDS AND YOUNG ADULTS BY OUR PRIESTS. Even my comments here will generate controversy in an uncontroversial moral realm...
It's a gay problem.
An unimpeachable source one asked me, "Pete, how many of our priests are gay, do you think?"
"A third," I opined.
"That's my guess," he responded. "How do you feel about gays as priests?"
"My answer's complex," I said. "I believe the articles claiming that gays have trouble keeping their pants on. One was an article by a psych explaining that males are grazers and women are nesters, and that gay men retain their grazer characteristic, and lesbians remain nesters, and that male gay relationships involving two grazers are almost never genuinely committed, marriage or no; and that the reason why police hate lesbian domestics, involving two nesters, is that the couples drive each other crazy with mutual emotional smothering generating explosive battles with no insight. Another article was by a Catholic priest who said, 'I sought celibate relationships with fellow gays in the priesthood. All the other guys ever wanted was sex. It was hopeless.' If the Church discovers that a priest is gay but keeping his pants on, God bless him. I would like that gay man as my pastor. If a priest clearly isn't keeping his pants on, he's gotta go, period. If the Church wants to bar gays from the priesthood as a matter of policy because gay men are innately promiscuous, then God bless the Church.
"I also read an article by a gay guy arguing, 'Let's face it -- gay guys like prime beef, the younger the better.' Thus, the priest sex abuse cases involve young male victims in five-sixths of the cases, without question. The priest sex cases are really a gay problem. It exists because so many priests are gay. Why do we have so many gay priests? I believe that it is because 'having a vocation' comprises a good way to 'stay in the closet.'"
Most church-going Catholics are not Catholics because of their love of Catholic doctrine. Most are Catholics because of inculcated habit.
But the habit shrivels and dies easily when non-Catholic neighbors comment to them, "Oh, isn't that the Church of Perverted Priests? Why do you attend it?"
HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE. In essence, God makes homosexuals, to the extent that He imposes the consequences of Original Sin on humanity. I happen to ascribe to psychologist Joseph Nicolosi's "super male" analysis of male gays -- a gay male is born straight, but direly needful of an affectionate father figure to "tool around after" in his infant years. If there is such a male in his life, he "imprints "male" at or around the age of 4. Lacking a father figure, because father is rarely at home or sadly unavailable to his young son, emotionally, the son, in or around his fourth year, substitutes-in the next best source of information on the subject of gender characteristics, mom. In a study that supposedly met with great success, Nicolosi identified "super male infants," and instructed cooperating parents to make sure that dad was physically and emotionally a strong presence in the boy's life, with the consequence that homosexuality did not emerge among the maturing infant test population.
Now, if Nicolosi is correct, the mainspring of the problem is the rather-well-hidden emergence of the super-male component among our infant males created by God. And if Nicolosi isn't correct, and gays will simply be gays, the dysfunction is really God's fault in that case also. Those who argue that gays are misbehaving straights are all wet.
That doesn't morally justify gay behavior. But then my proclivity to engage in straight sex doesn't justify non-marital fornication or adultery.
But if the homosexual dysfunction is such that gay men are innately promiscuous, then I can see how God conceivably can be more forgiving of gay fornicating, in or out of the sham of gay marriage, than He is of heterosexual fornication. I.e., the moral rules are there for both, but God is less forgiving of heterosexuals because their relationships lack that innate promiscuity!
Legally, the homosexual marriage Supreme Court case is improper. The Court relied on the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment substantive due process rule and the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause to support gay marriage in the Obergefell decision. But -- think -- how possible is it that such was within the intent of the Amendments' framers? Wouldn't the Framers have declined to pass the 5th Amendment, or declined to pass the 14th Amendment and to rejoin the Union, had they been told, "You know, because of these amendments, our federal courts can order troops into your states to force judges to marry men to men and women to women"?
Nonetheless, suppose a modern amendment to the Constitution is ratified to require gay marriage where desired. How should Catholics respond?
To be non-hypocritical, Catholics must respond, "Heterosexual and homosexual masturbation, birth control, fornication, and adultery, including fornication between gays under cover of marriage, are all sinful, and must be punished criminally to an equal extent."
In other words, are "heteroes" entitled to a "free ride," sexually at the same time God punishes gays? No. If you are hetero and expect a free ride every time you slip on a rubber, then if gays want to "play marriage," or if society wants to experiment with the marriage concept, then God bless!
Because adults having sex with kids is not morally justifiable under any analysis, then gays "doing it" with the young must always be severely punished.
Most will be thoroughly dissatisfied with how I handle Catholic sexual ethics in this article:
(a) Humanae Vitae is right -- Scripture says so 4 times!; (b) Catholic priests hiding their homosexuality under the disguise of having a vocation, caught "doing it" to young male victims, should be very severely punished! The Church must cooperate with the prosecution. Catholic bishops caught abetting the gay offenders should be very severely punished! The Church must cooperate with the prosecution; (c) the Supreme Court decision in favor of gay marriage is illegal;
(d) however, Catholics enjoying freedom from criminal prosecution of their sex sins owe a hearty "welcome" to their gay neighbors engaging in sex under cover of gay marriage, sham or not. Christ hates hypocrites most of all.
None of this will staunch the chronic bleeding of contributing parishioners so badly needed to support the Church in our current age. However, I believe that we have entered the time of the 2 Thessalonians 2 "apostasy" -- the so-called Great Falling Away. So, don't fret as things fall apart. Just be faithful.
