The Diocese of Worcester's Commission for Women invites Peggy Patenaude to "Gather Us In"

Peggy Patenaude, a radical feminist who often conducts retreats at the La Salette Shrine in Attleboro, Massachusetts, will be a guest speaker at this year's "Gather Us In" Conference sponsored by the Diocese of Worcester's "Commission for Women," itself a dissenting organization.

Ms. Patenaude, in her newsletter, has said that: "In January, I had the privilege of facilitating my first retreat for five gay couples. It turned out to be an affirming experience for all. I was very moved by the warmth, goodness, depth and genuineness of these ten women. The fact that they were so receptive and appreciative confirmed for me the need for such programs in a world that is not always kind to minorities.

It was gratifying to see how much the participants enjoyed and benefited from the weekend. "The retreat exceeded my expectations. It gave us the opportunity to take time out to focus on us and our relationship which means so much to us," commented one woman. Another added, "The retreat was very helpful. It helped my partner and me to communicate better." The gratitude of all ten women for the supportive and respectful atmosphere was obvious. As one retreatant said, "We are just people in love…like any other couple." I am humbled and grateful for the opportunity to have assisted them in keeping their love alive. See here.


Dutch psychologist Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, Ph.D., a specialist on homosexuality, writes:

"The term neurotic describes such relationships [same-sex] well. It suggests the ego-centeredness of the relationship; the attention-seeking instead of loving...Neurotic, in short, suggests all kinds of dramas and childish conflicts as well as the basic disinterestedness of in the partner, notwithstanding the shallow pretensions of 'love.' Nowhere is there more self-deception in the homosexual than in his representation of himself as a lover. One partner is important to the other only insofar as he satisfies that other's needs. Real, unselfish love for a desired partner would, in fact, end up destroying homosexual 'love'!" (Gerard J.M. van den Aardweg, The Battle for Normality, Ignatius Press, 1997, pp. 62-63).

"Van den Aardweg says that the claim that homosexuality is normal is one of those statements that are "so foolish that only intellectuals could believe them." It is like saying that anorexia nervosa is healthy. And he denies that homesexuality is caused by the genes, or the structure of the brain; the evidence shows that it is acquired. Nor is it a necessary result of effeminacy; it is the child's "self-perception as masculine or feminine" that makes the difference. It is caused by pressure to develop an opposite-sex role. Often mothers do not view or treat their sons as "real men," and fathers do not view or treat their daughters as "real girls." (From the Catholic Insight book review of "The Battle for Normality."

Pope Benedict XVI reminded us that:


"The first novelty of biblical faith consists, as we have seen, in its image of God. The second, essentially connected to this, is found in the image of man. The biblical account of creation speaks of the solitude of Adam, the first man, and God's decision to give him a helper. Of all other creatures, not one is capable of being the helper that man needs, even though he has assigned a name to all the wild beasts and birds and thus made them fully a part of his life. So God forms woman from the rib of man. Now Adam finds the helper that he needed: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen 2:23). Here one might detect hints of ideas that are also found, for example, in the myth mentioned by Plato, according to which man was originally spherical, because he was complete in himself and self-sufficient. But as a punishment for pride, he was split in two by Zeus, so that now he longs for his other half, striving with all his being to possess it and thus regain his integrity. While the biblical narrative does not speak of punishment, the idea is certainly present that man is somehow incomplete, driven by nature to seek in another the part that can make him whole, the idea that only in communion with the opposite sex can he become “complete”. The biblical account thus concludes with a prophecy about Adam: “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh” (Gen 2:24).

Two aspects of this are important. First, eros is somehow rooted in man's very nature; Adam is a seeker, who “abandons his mother and father” in order to find woman; only together do the two represent complete humanity and become “one flesh”. The second aspect is equally important. From the standpoint of creation, eros directs man towards marriage, to a bond which is unique and definitive; thus, and only thus, does it fulfil its deepest purpose. Corresponding to the image of a monotheistic God is monogamous marriage. Marriage based on exclusive and definitive love becomes the icon of the relationship between God and his people and vice versa. God's way of loving becomes the measure of human love. This close connection between eros and marriage in the Bible has practically no equivalent in extra-biblical literature." Pope Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Deus Caritas Est, No. 11).

How much longer will Bishop Robert J. McManus tolerate (and even approve of) dissident speakers who spread their poison to confuse the faithful? 

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James Cash Penney's legacy betrayed by corporate promoters of homosexuality who violate the Golden Rule

LifeSiteNews is reporting that J.C. Penney's is promoting sodomy.  See here.  The company is running Fathers Day ads featuring two "gay" dads.  James Cash Penney's legacy is under assault.  He most assuredly would not approve of his chain of department stores being used to advance the sodomite agenda.

J.C. Penney's father was a Baptist preacher and farmer who raised his family with strict discipline in the Christian faith.  Victor Parachin, writing for Mature Living magazine, notes how, "The influence of Penney's godly parents became evident with the growth of his business.  He described his chain as 'The Golden Rule Store,' based on the words of Jesus in Matthew 7: 12: 'Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.'  See here.

As Dr. Germain Grisez explains,  to apply the Golden Rule, benefits and harms must be considered.  He writes, "Since the point of applying the Golden Rule is to exclude partiality, no attempt should be made to apply it without first carefully considering the possible matters concerning which partiality could be at work.  These are different potential benefits and harms to the different persons involved.  Since one must be fair not only in what is intended and chosen but also in accepting whatever side effects are foreseen, all foreseen benefits and burdens of choosing and carrying out a possible action - or, alternatively, not choosing it, and perhaps choosing some alternative - should be considered.  It is necessary to ask:

Whom will this action benefit?  Whom will it harm?  If the act is not chosen, whom will that benefit and harm?  And, likewise, for any alternative

Considering each benefit and harm, what sort of good is at stake?  Is it a basic good of persons or an instrumental good?  How extensive and serious will each benefit and harm be?

Reflecting as a Christian, a person must bring fully into play any specifically Christian benefits and harms.  For instance, does doing or not doing an act, doing this or that, involve risk to someone's salvation?  Does it involve harming or enhancing apostolic witness?

To the extent that a point of view is determined by immorality, it is of no help in reaching moral truth to take that point of view, whether the person holding it is subjectively guilty or not.  Thus, in applying the Golden Rule, one should refuse to take into account the views of others [such as the homosexual movement, my note]insofar as these are morally unacceptable.  Of course, such a refusal may be considered unfair by those concerned.  For example, pederasts sometimes complain that a boy who refuses to accommodate them is unfair to them.  However, the boy's refusal need not be motivated by partiality, for it can be based on a prior moral consideration, the wrongness of sodomy, and an emotional detestation of it entirely in harmony with reason."

J.C. Penney's is betraying the legacy of its founder James Cash Penney, Jr by violating the Golden Rule which he cherished so dearly.  For, "There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family.  Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law.  Homosexual acts 'close the sexual act to the gift of life.  They do not proceed fom a genuine affective and sexual complementarity.  Under no circumstances can they be approved.  Sacred Scripture condemns homosexual acts 'as a serious depravity'...This same moral judgment is found in many Christian writers of the first centuries 'and is unanimously accepted by Catholic tradition.'" ( Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons," No. 4).

What a shame that J.C. Penney's is not committed toward promoting the common good while honoring the Christian legacy of its own founder.  The corporation has decided instead to undermine the Golden Rule by assaulting others with immorality. 

A real tragedy.

 

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Terence Weldon: Archbishop Vincent Nichols is wrong, let's damage the institution of marriage further

Terence Weldon, the same anti-Catholic radical homosexual activist who has suggested that Pope Benedict XVI has a homosexual inclination and who has blasphemously asserted that Our Lord Jesus may have been a homosexual, is now angry with Archbishop Vincent Nichols (his own Bishop).  Why?  It seems that Archbishop Nichols, while delivering a homily at Westminster Cathedral to celebrate marriage, warned of the damaging consequences which would result if homosexual unions were legally recognized and marriage essentially redefined in the United Kingdom.

But the Archbishop was merely emphasizing what the Church already teaches: that the legal recognition of homosexual unions would only weaken marriage and devalue it further.  In its document entitled Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith refuted the objection often raised by homosexual activists that laws allowing homosexual unions would not impose anything or harm the common good:

"In this area, one needs first to reflect on the difference between homosexual behavior as a private phenomenon and the same behavior as a relationship in society, foreseen and approved by the law, to the point where it becomes one of the institutions in the legal structure.  This second phenomenon is not only more serious, but also assumes a more wide-reaching and profound influence, and would result in changes to the entire organization of society, contrary to the common good.  Civil laws are structuring principles of man's life in society, for good or for ill.  They 'play a very important and sometimes decisive role in influencing patterns of thought and behavior.'  Lifestyles and the underlying presuppositions these express not only externally shape the life of society, but also tend to modify the younger generation's perception and evaluation of forms of behavior.  Legal recognition of homosexual unions would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage."

Weldon, apologist for a sodomite "gospel" and same-sex "marriage," argues that, "The institution of marriage in the United Kingdom is already in a poor state...Is there any reason to believe that extending marriage will make the situation even worse?"  See here.

What a lovely philosophy.  Marriage is already going down the toilet in the UK so let's make matters worse.  While Weldon, blinded by his own homosexual agitprop to the point where he can no longer see, let alone understand, the truth of Catholic moral teaching, cannot appreciate the damaging consequences of same-sex "marriage," others have documented the damage wrought by legal recognition of these unholy unions.

The good people over at Mass Resistance explain that, "Anyone who thinks that same-sex 'marriage' is a benign eccentricity which won't affect the average person should consider what it has done in Massachusetts.  It's become a hammer to force the acceptance and normalization of homosexuality on everyone...It’s pretty clear that the homosexual movement’s obsession with marriage is not because large numbers of them actually want to marry each other. Research shows that homosexual relationships are fundamentally dysfunctional on many levels, and 'marriage' as we know it isn’t something they can achieve, or even desire. (In fact, over the last three months, the Sunday Boston Globe’s marriage section hasn’t had any photos of homosexual marriages. In the beginning it was full of them.) This is about putting the legal stamp of approval on homosexuality and imposing it with force throughout the various social and political institutions of a society that would never accept it otherwise.  See here.

Archbishop Nichols is right about the damaging consequences which result from the legal recognition of these unholy unions.  Since he is being publically criticized for upholding Catholic teaching by an individual who claims to be Catholic and who has been deputed to serve as an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist at the infamous Soho Masses, His Excellency should take the appropriate action and remove Mr. Weldon from any official role within his diocese.

Terence Weldon is not in communion with the Church.  He should be denied Holy Communion in accord with Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law.

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Clark University is, in effect, attempting to criminalize reason

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its document entitled Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, emphasized that: "Homosexual unions are totally lacking in the biological and anthropological elements of marriage and family which would be the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition.  Such unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and survival of the human race." (No. 7).

Homosexual unions violate the common good on both the individual and social plane. On the individual plane, as Dr. Germain Grisez explains, "...although it is true that partners in sodomy also could conceivably share in a committed relationship with sincere mutual affection and express their feelings in ways that would be appropriate in any friendship, the coupling of two bodies of the same sex cannot form one complete organism and so cannot contribute to a bodily communion of persons. Hence, the experience of intimacy of the partners in sodomy cannot be the experience of any real unity between them. Rather, each one’s experience of intimacy is private and incommunicable, and is no more a common good than is the mere experience of sexual arousal and orgasm. Therefore, the choice to engage in sodomy for the sake of that experience of intimacy in no way contributes to the partners’ real common good as committed friends."


On the social plane, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith explains that, "The inevitable consequences of legal recognition of homosexual unions would be the redefinition of marriage, which would become, in its legal status, an institution devoid of essential reference to factors linked to homosexuality; for example, procreation and raising children. If, from the legal standpoint, marriage between a man and a woman were to be considered just one possible form of marriage, the concept of marriage would undergo a radical transformation, with grave detriment to the common good. By putting homosexual unions on a legal plane analogous to that of marriage and the family, the State acts arbitrarily and in contradiction with its duties." (Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, No. 8).

At Vatican II, the Council Fathers spoke on fostering the nobility of marriage and the family and said, "The well-being of the individual person and of human and Christian society is intimately linked with the healthy condition of that community produced by marriage and family. Hence Christians and all men who hold this community in high esteem sincerely rejoice in the various ways by which men today find help in fostering this community of love and perfecting its life, and by which parents are assisted in their lofty calling. Those who rejoice in such aids look for additional benefits from them and labor to bring them about.

Yet the excellence of this institution is not everywhere reflected with equal brilliance, since polygamy, the plague of divorce, so-called free love and other disfigurements have an obscuring effect. In addition, married love is too often profaned by excessive self-love, the worship of pleasure and illicit practices against human generation. Moreover, serious disturbances are caused in families by modern economic conditions, by influences at once social and psychological, and by the demands of civil society..." (Gaudium et Spes, No. 47).
In No. 48 of this same document, the Fathers of Vatican II teach that, "The intimate partnership of married life and love has been established by the Creator and qualified by His laws, and is rooted in the conjugal covenant of irrevocable personal consent. Hence by that human act whereby spouses mutually bestow and accept each other a relationship arises which by divine will and in the eyes of society too is a lasting one. For the good of the spouses and their off-springs as well as of society, the existence of the sacred bond no longer depends on human decisions alone. For, God Himself is the author of matrimony, endowed as it is with various benefits and purposes. All of these have a very decisive bearing on the continuation of the human race, on the personal development and eternal destiny of the individual members of a family, and on the dignity, stability, peace and prosperity of the family itself and of human society as a whole. By their very nature, the institution of matrimony itself and conjugal love are ordained for the procreation and education of children, and find in them their ultimate crown. Thus a man and a woman, who by their compact of conjugal love "are no longer two, but one flesh" (Matt. 19:ff), render mutual help and service to each other through an intimate union of their persons and of their actions. Through this union they experience the meaning of their oneness and attain to it with growing perfection day by day. As a mutual gift of two persons, this intimate union and the good of the children impose total fidelity on the spouses and argue for an unbreakable oneness between them.

Christ the Lord abundantly blessed this many-faceted love, welling up as it does from the fountain of divine love and structured as it is on the model of His union with His Church. For as God of old made Himself present to His people through a covenant of love and fidelity, so now the Savior of men and the Spouse of the Church comes into the lives of married Christians through the sacrament of matrimony. He abides with them thereafter so that just as He loved the Church and handed Himself over on her behalf, the spouses may love each other with perpetual fidelity through mutual self-bestowal.

Authentic married love is caught up into divine love and is governed and enriched by Christ's redeeming power and the saving activity of the Church, so that this love may lead the spouses to God with powerful effect and may aid and strengthen them in sublime office of being a father or a mother. For this reason Christian spouses have a special sacrament by which they are fortified and receive a kind of consecration in the duties and dignity of their state. By virtue of this sacrament, as spouses fulfil their conjugal and family obligation, they are penetrated with the spirit of Christ, which suffuses their whole lives with faith, hope and charity. Thus they increasingly advance the perfection of their own personalities, as well as their mutual sanctification, and hence contribute jointly to the glory of God."

And No. 50 says that, "Marriage and conjugal love are by their nature ordained toward the begetting and educating of children. Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and contribute very substantially to the welfare of their parents. The God Himself Who said, "it is not good for man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18) and "Who made man from the beginning male and female" (Matt. 19:4), wishing to share with man a certain special participation in His own creative work, blessed male and female, saying: "Increase and multiply" (Gen. 1:28). Hence, while not making the other purposes of matrimony of less account, the true practice of conjugal love, and the whole meaning of the family life which results from it, have this aim: that the couple be ready with stout hearts to cooperate with the love of the Creator and the Savior. Who through them will enlarge and enrich His own family day by day."

The Catholic Church respects reason and the Natural Law.  And because she does, she understands, as Cicero articulated so well, that, "..right is based, not upon men’s opinions, but upon Nature. This fact will immediately be plain if you once get a clear conception of man’s fellowship and union with his fellow-men. For no single thing is so like another, so exactly its counterpart, as all of us are to one another…And so, however we may define man, a single definition will apply to all." [ Cicero, Laws I x 28-30]

But Clark University does not respect the Natural Law, which is known through the use of reason alone.  Having succumbed to radical homosexual ideology, that institution is attempting to impose a false morality on the rest of society while attempting to criminalize those who respect the Natural Law.  And this pseudo-morality rests on the philosophical premise that objective moral norms do not exist and that the individual's choice, and that alone, should determine human behavior.

Clark University officials would do well to ponder this warning from Pope John Paul II in his Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae:

"Democracy cannot be idolized to the point of making it a substitute for morality or a panacea for immorality. Fundamentally, democracy is a 'system' and as such is a means and not an end. Its 'moral' value is not automatic, but depends on conformity to the moral law to which it, like every other form of human behavior, must be subject: in other words, its morality depends on the morality of the ends which it pursues and of the means which it employs. If today we see an almost universal consensus with regard to the value of democracy, this is to be considered a positive 'sign of the times,' as the Church's Magisterium has frequently noted. But the value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes. Of course, values such as the dignity of every human person, respect for inviolable and inalienable human rights, and the adoption of the 'common good' as the end and criterion regulating political life are certainly fundamental and not to be ignored.


The basis of these values cannot be provisional and changeable 'majority' opinions, but only the acknowledgement of an objective moral law which, as the 'natural law' written in the human heart, is the obligatory point of reference for civil law itself. If, as a result of a tragic obscuring of the collective conscience, an attitude of skepticism were to succeed in bringing into question even the fundamental principles of the moral law, the democratic system itself would be shaken in its foundations and would be reduced to a mere mechanism for regulating different and opposing interests on a purely empirical basis." (Evangelium Vitae, No. 70).

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