Destruction of the Family in the US

[edwest2]

The difference between God given equality of all humans He creates and the way the Government uses the term is instructive. The Government is much more inclined to only look at the “contractual law” view of the issue. There is no moral truth automatically built into the assessement of quality.

Here again is another example of when the separation of Church and State concept is taken to the maximum. Gives pause for thought…when Church and State are closely linked, then normally it is the religion practiced by the majority of the population that rules all the citizens. When the religion is Christianity, and especially CC version, then our truths prevail.

When the “religion” of the masses is the Secular version, then our truths are at risk.

One might ask why then the CC is attempting to selectively engage the US Government on key topics of interest, when it stands the real risk of being forced to accept other decisions as part of that engagement.

Technically, the government is everybody. The Catholic Church is ready to accept any risk. During World War II, certain forces could have moved against the Vatican itself. A photograph from the time period shows a German soldier, rifle raised in salute, at the steps of the Vatican.

Regarding adoptions by LGBT persons, the Church simply closed the doors to adoption agencies where it worked. The Church is unafraid.

Ed

 

[edwest2]

Good observation. Yet, one can be realatively certain that once Caesar is engaged in any way that could be considered contractual or supportive of a piece of legislation, we are open to that slippery slope of compromise.

Don’t know if we have a choice…but since the Magisterium is to speak of Truth, it must be very careful of finding itself in a “it’s the best we could do” position.

Of most concern to me is the turning of the Magisterium ever more to the secular governments, mostly because the CC population will not devote enough time, talent and treasure to keeping their ministries funded and staffed. That returns us to the topic of only 36% of Catholics participating at Mass regularly, and only 20% of that group engaged in the various service ministries. Theoretically at least, we should have the resources to stand alone on many issues.

The Magisterium, and all Catholic leaders, have been fighting against abortion since 1973. The proper way to look at that is the Church’s unending struggle for doing good while doing evil exists. Others in government have made bad laws while faced by firm Church opposition, so it’s not a simple matter of money and power/influence being the cure for all issues.

content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2132761,00.html

Money and time are important but our most important resource is God, and prayer. The secular world thinks only in terms of getting enough money, using highly skilled promotional and motivational persons and assets, and “getting their numbers up.”

“Stay on message.”

Catholics believe God is with us in all our struggles. I heard a priest several years back talk about the Church today: it will be smaller, it will have faithful people and it will continue to make a difference - today and in the future.

Ed

 

[DCNBILL]

The Magisterium, and all Catholic leaders, have been fighting against abortion since 1973. The proper way to look at that is the Church’s unending struggle for doing good while doing evil exists. Others in government have made bad laws while faced by firm Church opposition, so it’s not a simple matter of money and power/influence being the cure for all issues.

content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2132761,00.html

Money and time are important but our most important resource is God, and prayer. The secular world thinks only in terms of getting enough money, using highly skilled promotional and motivational persons and assets, and “getting their numbers up.”

“Stay on message.”

Catholics believe God is with us in all our struggles. I heard a priest several years back talk about the Church today: it will be smaller, it will have faithful people and it will continue to make a difference - today and in the future.

Ed

I think that it was Karl Rahner who said that the the Church of the future will be a Church of mystics.

 

[CaptFun]

I think that it was Karl Rahner who said that the the Church of the future will be a Church of mystics.

Or … was it Ron Kahrler who said that the Church of the Present …

… will be a Church of mistakes?

Per “the family” … it is undergoing death by a thousand cuts in the American culture.

And has been for quite some time.

youtube.com/watch?v=fLiRGW31nyk < It was in bad shape decades ago when “Grandpa Tell Me About the Good Ole Days” was first popular (1987).

Lyrics are included on that clip. ^ The Judds themselves (as well as younger daughter and half sister Ashley) were a disjointed family replete with divorce(s), separations, and other things that make the yearning in the song for that “old timey normality” of a family with clear roles, committed morality and a place for God … that much more poignant to me. :sad_yes:

“Grandpa (Tell Me ‘bout The Good Ol’ Days)”

Grandpa
Tell me 'bout the good old days.
Sometimes it feels like
This world’s gone crazy.
Grandpa, take me back to yesterday,
Where the line between right and wrong
Didn’t seem so hazy.

(Chorus) Did lovers really fall in love to stay
Stand beside each other come what may
was a promise really something people kept,
Not just something they would say
Did families really bow their heads to pray
Did daddies really never go away
Whoa oh Grandpa,
Tell me 'bout the good old days.

Grandpa
Everything is changing fast.
We call it progress,
But I just don’t know.
And Grandpa, let’s wonder back into the past,
And paint me a picture of long ago. (Back to Chorus)

azlyrics.com/lyrics/judds/grandpatellmeboutthegoodoldays.html

 

[edwest2]

I think that it was Karl Rahner who said that the the Church of the future will be a Church of mystics.

It will be about evangelization and personal conversion - a renewal. We will counter the counter-culture. It’s in the Bible. God always leaves a faithful remnant no matter how much bad was going on at that time or now.

Ed

 

[unstoppable_II]

The difference between God given equality of all humans He creates and the way the Government uses the term is instructive. The Government is much more inclined to only look at the “contractual law” view of the issue. There is no moral truth automatically built into the assessement of quality.
…

A once sensible view of equal “protection” or “equality” has been grotesquely perverted into an illustration of Justice Benjamin Cardozo’s famous reminder of “the tendency of a principle to expand itself to the limit of its logic.” This tendency has mutated into, “a principle’s expanding itself beyond the limit of its logic.”

 

[edwest2]

A once sensible view of equal “protection” or “equality” has been grotesquely perverted into an illustration of Justice Benjamin Cardozo’s famous reminder of “the tendency of a principle to expand itself to the limit of its logic.” This tendency has mutated into, “a principle’s expanding itself beyond the limit of its logic.”

That’s right. Thanks.

Ed

 

[MarkInOregon]

It is the Gospel (Power of God to save) that enables us to live the beauty of chastity.

It is the Gospel that enables us to share God’s beauty, love and happiness.

Jim–didn’t you get the memo? Chasity is no longer considered fashionable or good–it is something to be ashamed of–something to make you the target of jokes. Something to make a persons jaw drop. Today the common belief would be that the only way to beauty, love and happiness is through sex, sex and more sex. Discipline and self control are great if you’re training for some athletic event, or earning your college degree, we can be disciplined in all things except sex–over that we have no control–and those who say we can are thought to be mad. The Gospel that brought joy and happiness and love and peace to so many – that transformed so many lives and a society–has, for too long now, failed to be lived by those professing to believe it – so that it is dismissed by many who fail to see and grasp the true power in living it, and so they buy into and live a counterfeit gospel that can never bring true happiness or peace. Christians failing to live the Gospel are what made everything on the list possible.

The peace of Christ,
Mark

 

[edwest2]

Jim–didn’t you get the memo? Chasity is no longer considered fashionable or good–it is something to be ashamed of–something to make you the target of jokes. Something to make a persons jaw drop. Today the common belief would be that the only way to beauty, love and happiness is through sex, sex and more sex. Discipline and self control are great if you’re training for some athletic event, or earning your college degree, we can be disciplined in all things except sex–over that we have no control–and those who say we can are thought to be mad. The Gospel that brought joy and happiness and love and peace to so many – that transformed so many lives and a society–has, for too long now, failed to be lived by those professing to believe it – so that it is dismissed by many who fail to see and grasp the true power in living it, and so they buy into and live a counterfeit gospel that can never bring true happiness or peace. Christians failing to live the Gospel are what made everything on the list possible.

The peace of Christ,
Mark

Having lived through the time period of the 5 year plan, 1968 to 1973, temptations were greatly increased along with irrational and immoral decisions and a law permitting abortion. It was all planned to put sex, sex and more sex on our minds, when just a few years before, the worst one could do was buy Playboy. This great push for ‘any kind of sex with anyone,’ combined with “don’t listen to any authority, including mom and dad or priests and nuns” meant that some were lured into making bad to very bad choices on an industrial, nationwide scale. It was all planned. Add smoking dope and using other illegal drugs is “cool.”

Christians protested Adult Bookstores and all kinds of things but high priced lawyers kept religious nuts at bay. They claimed they had The First Amendment Right to show and sell filth.

Out of misguided compassion, some believed the lies they were being told by people dressed as Hippies and Anarchists. I saw them. I heard them. “Don’t trust anyone over 30!” Our trust was taken advantage of at a time when we trusted a lot of people, until the US Supreme Court stabbed this country in the back - allowing the Culture of Death legal protection.

We were lied to again and again at a time when trust in others in this country was high. No more. No more. And then the filth began to appear in movies and TV, gradually, very gradually - poisoning people who were used to two decades of clean and wholesome television. Movies were the worst, getting more and more filthy as the decades passed, with TV right behind.

If anyone doesn’t believe, look it all up for yourself. The Body of Christ in the West was slowly poisoned. Stop watching poison. Or hearing poison. Stop imitating what you see and hear. Then you will be helped in your recovery.

amazon.com/Noise-Media-saturated-Dominates-Dismantles-Families/dp/1932927948

amazon.com/Extreme-Makeover-Transformed-Conformed-Culture/dp/1586175610

Peace,
Ed

 

[Alexander_Wolf]

to show and sell filth.

Apparently we (and millions of other people) have a very different definition of filth

This is what I consider filth of the worst kind:

1. God drowns the whole earth. In Genesis 7:21-23, God drowns the entire population of the earth: men, women, children, fetuses, and perhaps unicorns. Only a single family survives. In Matthew 24:37-42, gentle Jesus approves of this genocide and plans to repeat it when he returns.

1. God kills half a million people. In 2 Chronicles 13:15-18, God helps the men of Judah kill 500,000 of their fellow Israelites.

1. God slaughters all Egyptian firstborn. In Exodus 12:29, God the baby-killer slaughters all Egyptian firstborn children and cattle because their king was stubborn.

1. God kills 14,000 people for complaining that God keeps killing them. In Numbers 16:41-49, the Israelites complain that God is killing too many of them. So, God sends a plague that kills 14,000 more of them.

1. Genocide after genocide after genocide. In Joshua 6:20-21, God helps the Israelites destroy Jericho, killing “men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.” In Deuteronomy 2:32-35, God has the Israelites kill everyone in Heshbon, including children. In Deuteronomy 3:3-7, God has the Israelites do the same to the people of Bashan. In Numbers 31:7-18, the Israelites kill all the Midianites except for the virgins, whom they take as spoils of war. In 1 Samuel 15:1-9, God tells the Israelites to kill all the Amalekites – men, women, children, infants, and their cattle – for something the Amalekites’ ancestors had done 400 years earlier.

1. God kills 50,000 people for curiosity. In 1 Samuel 6:19, God kills 50,000 men for peeking into the ark of the covenant. (Newer cosmetic translations count only 70 deaths, but their text notes admit that the best and earliest manuscripts put the number at 50,070.)

1. 3,000 Israelites killed for inventing a god. In Exodus 32, Moses has climbed Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments. The Israelites are bored, so they invent a golden calf god. Moses comes back and God commands him: “Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.” About 3,000 people died.

1. The Amorites destroyed by sword and by God’s rocks. In Joshua 10:10-11, God helps the Israelites slaughter the Amorites by sword, then finishes them off with rocks from the sky.

1. God burns two cities to death. In Genesis 19:24, God kills everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah with fire from the sky. Then God kills Lot’s wife for looking back at her burning home.

1. God has 42 children mauled by bears. In 2 Kings 2:23-24, some kids tease the prophet Elisha, and God sends bears to dismember them. (Newer cosmetic translations say the bears “maul” the children, but the original Hebrew, baqa, means “to tear apart.”)

1. A tribe slaughtered and their virgins raped for not showing up at roll call. In Judges 21:1-23, a tribe of Israelites misses roll call, so the other Israelites kill them all except for the virgins, which they take for themselves. Still not happy, they hide in vineyards and pounce on dancing women from Shiloh to take them for themselves.

1. 3,000 crushed to death. In Judges 16:27-30, God gives Samson strength to bring down a building to crush 3,000 members of a rival tribe.

1. A concubine raped and dismembered. In Judges 19:22-29, a mob demands to rape a godly master’s guest. The master offers his daughter and a concubine to them instead. They take the concubine and gang-rape her all night. The master finds her on his doorstep in the morning, cuts her into 12 pieces, and ships the pieces around the country.

1. Child sacrifice. In Judges 11:30-39, Jephthah burns his daughter alive as a sacrificial offering for God’s favor in killing the Ammonites.

1. God helps Samson kill 30 men because he lost a bet. In Judges 14:11-19, Samson loses a bet for 30 sets of clothes. The spirit of God comes upon him and he kills 30 men to steal their clothes and pay off the debt.

1. God demands you kill your wife and children for worshiping other gods. In Deuteronomy 13:6-10, God commands that you must kill your wife, children, brother, and friend if they worship other gods.

1. God incinerates 51 men to make a point. In 2 Kings 1:9-10, Elijah gets God to burn 51 men with fire from heaven to prove he is God.

1. God kills a man for not impregnating his brother’s widow. In Genesis 38:9-10, God kills a man for refusing to impregnate his brother’s widow.

1. God threatens forced cannibalism. In Leviticus 26:27-29 and Jeremiah 19:9, God threatens to punish the Israelites by making them eat their own children.

1. The coming slaughter. According to Revelation 9:7-19, God’s got more evil coming. God will make horse-like locusts with human heads and scorpion tails, who torture people for 5 months. Then some angels will kill a third of the earth’s population. If he came today, that would be 2 billion people.

And we know from history how much suffering, persecution, death and blood people who who supported this filth caused to millions. We know that under the rule of this mob people could only dream of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights especially the freedom of religion and practice of religion.

This is FILTH. Naked human bodies and sex are no filth. It’s nature.

Peace,
Alex

 

[Sarcelle]

The focus here is the erosion of the family unit in the US. Both abortion and same sex marriage have grave effects on the family in America.

Well you can ban same sex marriage and abortion but if divorce remains widespread the family will continue to erode.

 

[Sarcelle]

Yes, graphic pornography is the new “opiate of the masses.” Hopefully, not for all

catholicherald.com/stories/Bishops-letter-on-pornography-still-relevant,25604

Ed

I agree

 

[DCNBILL]

Well you can ban same sex marriage and abortion but if divorce remains widespread the family will continue to erode.

That is on the list as well. We need to do a much better job at marriage preparation.:sad_yes:

1969 California is the first U.S. state to adopt “no-fault” divorces in the United States, other states would soon follow.

 

[DCNBILL]

Apparently we (and millions of other people) have a very different definition of filth

This is what I consider filth of the worst kind:

And we know from history how much suffering, persecution, death and blood people who who supported this filth caused to millions. We know that under the rule of this mob people could only dream of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights especially the freedom of religion and practice of religion.

This is FILTH. Naked human bodies and sex are no filth. It’s nature.

Peace,
Alex

It is Gods world He can do what He wants with it.

A note of caution here, please read the rules for posting on these boards if you wish to hang around and post your opinions.

 

[Sarcelle]

Apparently we (and millions of other people) have a very different definition of filth

This is what I consider filth of the worst kind:

And we know from history how much suffering, persecution, death and blood people who who supported this filth caused to millions. We know that under the rule of this mob people could only dream of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights especially the freedom of religion and practice of religion.

This is FILTH. Naked human bodies and sex are no filth. It’s nature.

Peace,
Alex

Sex by itself is not filth nor is the naked human body. I agree with you on that. However I see something wrong with human trafficking worldwide to support the sex industry.

Are you accusing the people here by virtue of their beliefs, of supporting or approving the filth you have enumerated in your post?

 

[SWolf]

Excellent List! One might ponder about the realative inability for Christian Religions to “hold their families together as well”. Perhaps we have just missed the core message of Families in general, and “tainted” that message by including artificial birth control in the same context as sodomy, SSM, or abortion?

Families are nutured by Parents and Church. If both are comitted to the raising of kids in a nuturing way, with emphasis on Christ’s teachings of service, then regardless of other distractions, families should remain relatively intact.

From my 63 years of perspective (43 years married to one women), men and women have become ever less prepared for marriage commitment, once they decide to marry. Yes, the secular world will try to minimize the importance of marriage and commitement…but we the people of the Church should be working to emphasize helping families grow and mature. Should our Church’s focus become Families? Should we really stress programs that help new couples through the first years of marriage and child rearing.

I wonder if this focus might just be a way we can fight the losses seen in the secular world.

Marriage prep is not the problem. Social acceptance of divorce is the problem.

Marriage can be restored if we remove birth control, remove no-fault divorce, remove the divorce financial windfalls, criminalize adultery, and bring back the heavy social stigma of divorce.

However, that is a tough pill to swallow, even for many Catholics.

 

[edwest2]

Sex by itself is not filth nor is the naked human body. I agree with you on that. However I see something wrong with human trafficking worldwide to support the sex industry.

Are you accusing the people here by virtue of their beliefs, of supporting or approving the filth you have enumerated in your post?

Let’s call “human trafficking” what really is- Slavery.

ed

 

[DCNBILL]

Marriage prep is not the problem. Social acceptance of divorce is the problem.

Marriage can be restored if we remove birth control, remove no-fault divorce, remove the divorce financial windfalls, criminalize adultery, and bring back the heavy social stigma of divorce.

However, that is a tough pill to swallow, even for many Catholics.

In 95% of the annulment cases that I handle at least one or both parties had no clue what a Sacramental Marriage should be.

 

[edwest2]

Marriage prep is not the problem. Social acceptance of divorce is the problem.

Marriage can be restored if we remove birth control, remove no-fault divorce, remove the divorce financial windfalls, criminalize adultery, and bring back the heavy social stigma of divorce.

However, that is a tough pill to swallow, even for many Catholics.

“Engineering consent” is the problem. No-Fault Divorce is another legal fiction that was advertised as a “practical” move to clear court dockets since some spouses were concealing assets and there were bitter disputes and other time-consuming things. Divorce for cause was the norm, but now it’s nobody’s fault, pay the lawyer and sign here. (No. I’m not referring to abuse cases.) And the media, instead of painting such easy divorce as a social wrong, an injustice, it was portrayed as a good thing through propaganda, pure and simple. Lawyers aren’t cheap. I can’t think of anyone that could pay the money for extended, lengthy divorce negotiations.

It took 40 years for the Body of Christ to be slowly poisoned by the media, making easy divorce seem like no big deal. I blame them for the suffering brought upon the children and I blame lawyers who ran ads like this - cheapening marriage: “No kids? $75 and you’re out. Call 800-DIVORCE”. The Church never wavered on divorce but then I saw a billboard in Detroit. It showed a young black woman sitting at a desk, filling out some papers. It read: “Do It Yourself Divorce.” “Call …” Get it? (I’m referring to everyone reading.)

We need to bring back Vice Squads as well.

Ed

 

[SWolf]

In 95% of the annulment cases that I handle at least one or both parties had no clue what a Sacramental Marriage should be.

I used to think that, and now find it hard to believe. The vows husband and wife say to each other are explicitly clear what the duties of marriage are.

One could argue they just think it’s words they say, but then I don’t see how more marriage prep would not seen just as “something you just go through.” The best it can do is make the some of the lukewarm think it’s not worth it and just find some protestant pastor to marry them in a park.