Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

Linda Ames Nicolosi reports on a study from the peer reviewed Journal, Archives of Sexual Behavior, that indicates that lack of a healthy family environment during a child’s upbringing seems to lead to increased occurrence of same sex attraction dysfunction. Some snippets from her report:

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The study used a population-based sample of 2,000,355 native-born Danes between the ages of 18 and 49. Denmark — a country noted for its tolerance of a wide variety of alternative lifestyles, including homosexual partnerships — was the first country to legalize gay marriage. The researchers assessed detailed marriage records for all Danish-born men and women marrying a same-sex partner from the years 1989 through 2001.

With access to the “virtually complete registry coverage of the entire Danish population,” the study sample therefore lacked the problematic selection bias that has plagued many previous studies on sexual orientation.

The authors conclude: “Our study provides population-based, prospective evidence that childhood family experiences are important determinants of heterosexual and homosexual marriage decisions in adulthood.”

Here are some conclusions:

Men who marry homosexually are more likely to have been raised in a family with unstable parental relationships — particularly, absent or unknown fathers and divorced parents.

Findings on women who marry homosexually were less pronounced, but were still associated with a childhood marked by a broken family. The rates of same-sex marriage “were elevated among women who experienced maternal death during adolescence, women with short duration of parental marriage, and women with long duration of mother-absent cohabitation with father.”

Men and women with “unknown fathers” were significantly less likely to marry a person of the opposite sex than were their peers with known fathers.

Men who experienced parental death during childhood or adolescence “had significantly lower heterosexual marriage rates than peers whose parents were both alive on their 18th birthday. The younger the age of the father’s death, the lower was the likelihood of heterosexual marriage.”

“The shorter the duration of parental marriage, the higher was the likelihood of homosexual marriage…homosexual marriage rates were 36% and 26% higher among men and women, respectively, who experienced parental divorce after less than six years of marriage, than among peers whose parents remained married for all 18 years of childhood and adolescence.”

“Men whose parents divorced before their 6th birthday were 39% more likely to marry homosexually than peers from intact parental marriages.”

“Men whose cohabitation with both parents ended before age 18 years had significantly (55% -76%) higher rates of homosexual marriage than men who cohabited with both parents until 18 years.”

The mother’s age was directly linked to the likelihood of homosexual marriage among men — the older the mother, the more likely her son was to marry another man. Also, “only children” were more likely to be homosexual.

Persons born in large cities were significantly more likely to marry a same-sex partner — suggesting that cultural factors might also affect the development of sexual orientation.

There are many interesting suggestions here. it has been known for some time that the importance of both parents to provide different sex and same sex nurturing for children in a healthy and safe environment during formative years is a significant factor explaining the dramatic increase in social maladies in recent years. Particularly, the lack of loving fathers in children’s lives has been strongly associated with teenage pregnancy for girls and violence and crime for boys. There has also been a causal connection made between SSA disorder and boys’ inability to identify their masculinity with other boys and especially their fathers as children. Thus, the findings of this latest study fit well with this.

The medical journal The Lancet published a “study” which examined the rate of complications in women in South Africa and Vietnam who had early manual vacuum aspiration abortions performed by doctors or trained midwives and assistants.

In Vietnam, the rate of complications was 1.2 per 100 women who had abortions done by trained professionals and 1.4 per 100 women in South Africa. There were no complications in either countries in women who had abortions done by doctors.

No complications of abortion when done by physicians and under 1.5% when done by trained professionals? I guess it all depends on how they define complications or if the complications are reported at all. If we look at the foundation of abortion in this country which was based on fabricating the amount of deaths by back alley abortions and the use of the infamous clothes hanger (never again!) as their battle cry; I doubt the abortion industry has all of a sudden changed it’s stripes and designed a study that documented the truth vs. predetermined results.

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Watch Dr. Kamau Kambon, an affiliated faculty instructor at North Carolina State University, on C-SPAN calmly stating his case why it will be necessary for all the white people in the world to be exterminated, followed by a round of applause. This is just a short clip, and the full video can be seen here.

Mehmet Ali Agca has requested that the Turkish government release him for a day so he can meet with, and discuss “religious and mystic issues” with the current Pope. The former right-wing gangster was pardoned in 2000 from an Italian prison for his attempted assassination of John Paul, and was then extradited to Turkey. His motive for shooting Pope John Paul II in St. Peter’s Square is still a mystery, but some speculate that he was a hitman for Soviet-era East European security services due to his hard line opposition to communism.

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A South African man was fined in court for taking time off from work and trying to cover it with a stolen medical certificate from a health center used by his pregnant girlfriend. He was apparently unaware what gynecologists do. He also didn’t bother to read the note which attested that he was pregnant and needed a week off from work. (This article has nothing to do with picture.)

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ABC’s All My Children this week will introduce a soap operas first transgender character who will begin to make the transition from a man into a pseudo-woman. Much of the daytime drama viewers have slipped in recent years and according to Nielsen Media Research, All My Children’s average audience has slipped from 8.2 million in 1991-92 to 3.1 million last year. The show’s executive producer is aware that, “its audience is always interested in anything to do with sexuality“ and will consequently throw a whole lot of of desperate stuff against the wall to see what sticks.

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Scot McKnight, an evangelical Christian, has acknowledged two things: the first, most Protestants know next to nothing about Mary; and second, the popular conception of Mary as “hyper-pious, with her hands folded in prayer … like a nun,” has little to do with the “courageous, gutsy” young woman — “the real Mary” — of the Bible”. At that moment, McKnight vowed to “reclaim” Mary, a New Testament figure revered by Roman Catholics and largely overlooked by Protestants. McKnight is the author of, “The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus.”

“The Nativity Story,” a movie that chronicles the lives of Mary and Joseph and the birth of Jesus, hits theaters Friday, and Protestants around the country are using the film to re-evaluate the role of Mary within Protestant tradition.

McKnight and his publisher, Paraclete Press, have helped organize more than 60 Protestant groups around the country to host forums in early December to discuss the movie and the book.

The goal, as McKnight sees it, amounts to nothing short of a coup by the Protestant church. “There are a few of us who are in a Trojan horse,” said McKnight, 53. “It’s as if we’ve been released in the Vatican, and we’re swiping Mary and taking her back to the Protestant world.”

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Father Peter Dougherty, 65, and Sister Mary Ellen Gundeck, 55, both Michigan-based peace activists were, “sent by God” to help protect a Palestinian militant’s home that Israel has targeted for destruction. They were the first foreigners to join a weeklong standoff between Palestinian “human shields” and the Israeli air force.

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The Times OnLine is reporting that the Vatican is embarrassed the 16 year old actress, Keisha Castle Hughes, who plays Mary in the film The Nativity Story is unmarried and pregnant. It was also reported that the Pope will not attend the screening of the movie based on this revelation. As the case, more often than not, the media’s conjecture of motive is predictably wrong.

A Vatican spokesman said yesterday that the Pope “never was going to attend. The surprise would have been if he had.” His decision had nothing to do with the film. He is 79 and preparing for a visit to Turkey on Tuesday.

Father Melchor Sánchez de Toca y Alameda, deputy to Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Papal Council for Culture, which is hosting the screening, confirmed there were rumours that Castle-Hughes’s presence on Sunday had been “vetoed”, but said he “did not believe them”. He gave the film “8½ out of 10”, and said Castle-Hughes was “not expected to be a saint herself, only to do her work as an actress properly”.

Will is asking for help in saving the Wren Cross:

 I’m a student at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s the second oldest college in the country. The Wren Building on campus, the oldest academic building in the US still in use, has a chapel attached to it. The College was originally part of the Anglican Church. Recently our new College President ordered the cross removed from the altar table and locked away unless specifically requested to be out on the altar, in order to make the chapel less “faith specific” and because the cross made some students feel unwelcome- despite an existing policy whereby the cross could be removed upon request. Figured you might be interested in the story, our website where people are signing the petition (we have 3200+ so far) to have the cross restored is: www.savethewrencross.org.

Hey, Brian Walsh over at the Maximus Group has free tickets available for a screening of The Nativity Story for next Monday night. If you live in/near/are willing to travel to one of the available cities, go over to Brian’s place and get some tickets (you will also have to go over there to find the names of the cities).

Many in the US today have adopted the European view of secularity. This view of secularity arises out of the French Revolution and so it is a view that God must be removed from the public sphere. However, this French tradition of secularity was an anti-clerical, anti-Christian movement and so it seems that the progeny are still quite loyal to their progenitor. In other words, secularists in the US seem particularly “allergic” to Christianity.

This anti-Christian bias can be seen in such things as crèches or anything associated with Christmas being singled out for removal from public Christmas, errrr I mean “holiday,” displays throughout the country, while the Menorah or Crescents are not seen as problematic. For some reason, Jewish, Muslim, or any other religion’s symbols are not greeted with the same “sensitivity” as are Christians symbols. The efforts of some in San Diego to get the Mount Solidad war memorial cross removed is another illustration of this targeted secularism.

Another aspect of this secularism is the perception of what is considered academic and what is not. In religious studies departments in public universities around the country, the common “wisdom” seems to be that one cannot be academic if one is a believer of a certain type, because he do not have sufficient distance from his subject matter. What type of believer do you ask. Generally, it seems to be Christians who the department would think to be Evangelical or a faithful Catholics.

Well, another recent manifestation of this seems to be at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. William and Mary was originally associated with the Church of England and then after the American Revolution, the Episcopal church. In 1906 it became a public university. Throughout all of this, it has maintained the Wren chapel, with a Christian cross near the altar. Yesterday’s Flat Head, the student newspaper at the College, reported that the new school president has decided that while the chapel will remain a chapel, the cross will be removed and locked up. It can be brought out only upon specific requests. Here is the paper’s report:

The cross from the altar area of the Wren Chapel has been removed to ensure that the space is seen as a nondenominational area, Melissa Engimann, assistant director for Historic Campus, said in an e-mail to Wren building employees.

“In order to make the Wren Chapel less of a faith-specific space, and to make it more welcoming to students, faculty, staff and visitors of all faiths, the cross has been removed from the altar area,” Engimann said.

The cross will be returned to the altar for those who wish to use it for events, services or private prayer. Student tour guides have been directed to pass any questions or complaints about the change on to administrators.

I suppose we should be happy that they are not turning the chapel into a study lounge or something like that, but this event still seems to me simply another manifestation of European style, US secularists trying to deny their culture’s Christian heritage and still “lingering” Christian presence.

A new Broadway musical called “Spring Awakening“, illustrates the obsession that our culture has with teen sexuality. It somehow views teens as being sexually repressed by a “rigid, hypocritical society that cares only about outward appearances and refuses to deal openly with natural sexual urges“, which can be liberated through masturbation, homosexuality and sadomasochism. The musical focuses on three adolescents who are grappling with emotional turmoil which is triggered by their “sexual awakening“.

The 14- year-old Wendla, for example, futilely begs her mother to tell the truth about how babies are born instead of more fairy tales of storks flying down chimneys (great realistic example on which to build a foundation of truth) . By the end this sort of repression and enforced ignorance lead to suicide, abortion and violence.

And we wonder why there is such a sick perversion problem in our culture? Sex is NOT and was never meant to be an obsession with self gratification, but an act of love in which a man and woman give themselves totally to the other. True sexual love can ONLY be attained through grace. Where there is love, there is no need for pornography, sex toys or fantasy for pleasure; these are tools needed by the sexually repressed who rely on lust to satisfy their physical urges. Where there is lust, there can be no spiritual fulfillment of authentic intimacy and love. This musical is evident of a society that has mastered the art of sexual slavery and perversion that mistakes lust for love; what good parent wouldn’t want this for their children?

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A very good news story, for those who might not be aware of the apostolate, is the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS). FOCUS was begun by Curtis Martin in 1998 at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. It is an apostolate aimed at evangelizing university students on public and private university campuses. Martin followed the Campus Crusade for Christ model in developing his apostolate, with the difference that he has to his advantage the fullness of Catholic truth and the Sacraments. This is the amazing thing. FOCUS missionaries are college graduates, usually those who were served by missionaries while they were in school, who volunteer to give up at least two years to serving as missionaries. They are responsible for finding their own funding to support them during their time in the apostolate.

In less than a decade he has grown FOCUS to serving almost 20 universities. Martin does not intend to stop there. His goal is to reach every college campus and through reaching college students, to change the culture. A tall order.

I and my wife have personally met at least a dozen different missionaries. The first thing you notice is their maturity and their loving energy. They are also very selfless as a group. I met one young lady who gave up a slot in a very prestigious medical school to serve as a missionary. I have not yet met one of these young people with whom I was not impressed.

They have a very difficult task in trying to make in roads with the students but they do their job very well. I can tell you from first hand experience that this is a very effective apostolate in reaching and converting young students to a vibrant faith life. I can tell very quickly in my classes which students are involved with FOCUS. In fact, more and more Newman Centers and campus ministries across the US are starting to learn that the quickest and most effective way to get their ministries to take off is to invite FOCUS missionaries to come in.

The Diocese of Peoria in one that is sold on FOCUS. They now have four campuses with FOCUS missionaries and want more. Bishop Daniel Jenky is so impressed with them that last night he bestowed the Diocesan Spalding Award on Curtis Martin. At the Mass before the banquet, the Bishop mentioned that he would like four more FOCUS teams. FOCUS is also a very important tool in helping with religious and diocesan vocations.

College years are the time for discernment, and being involved with FOCUS gives students the opportunity that young women and men need. The only possibility of hearing a vocational prompting (I know, it’s redundant) is to understand it is something they need to be discerning and they need help in developing the spiritual maturity to overcome the noise of the secular world. FOCUS is very helpful in both matters.

Besides giving two years of their lives, as I mentioned, FOCUS missionaries have to find their own funds. Can you imagine such a proposition? Hi, what were you thinking of doing after you graduate? How about putting that on hold for a couple of years and trying to get college students out of the bars and into church? Oh yea, you will have to pay your own way for the privilege.

If you are interested in helping to change the culture, you ought to consider supporting FOCUS. You can even choose your own missionary to support. If you are interested (and able) in helping to make a difference, go here!

A homeschooled teen was denied entry into a school dance when other kids who were not students at the school were allowed in. This was after all the concerns of the school were adressed by the home schooled child and family. Mean while, the girl who originally invited the homeschooled teen, instead, took her cousin who was let inside – with no questions asked.

“My daughter and Steven (the homeschool student) have been friends since they were toddlers,” “her cousin was welcomed but (the school board) didn’t know whether my daughter’s cousin was male, female or a criminal who could have been a child molester. He didn’t ask.”

Rich Hilgert, the district’s director of student services, said homeschooled students can participate in high school sports and other extracurricular activities. But school dances are different.”The dances are a school function,” Hilgert said. “Principals get nervous when you have someone in the dance that you don’t know any background information on.”

Steven said he went to the school weeks before the dance to buy tickets. But, he said, he was turned away when assistant principal Jack Brady learned he was not enrolled at the school.He was told that he would be arrested for trespassing if he tried to come on campus again, the boy said.

Not to blow things out of proportion, but the weak excuses given for denying a homeschooled child access to a dance, despite his parents paying a school tax in the school district, wouldn’t sit too well with me. If the father of this child is paying taxes in this school district, he should be entitiled to demand a little more from this sorry excuse of a school board.

Most of us have heard that at last weeks annual bishops meeting, among the orders of business was their approval of the document, Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination. I’m sure that many a keyboard has been burnt up over the what the document said and didn’t say but I have not had much time to get around blogdom recently. Nevertheless, I still thought I would share my thoughts as I read through the document.

One of the first things to notice is the title of the document. It is ministry first to persons, not to “homosexuals” or “homosexual persons,” much less to “gays.” Here the point is that regardless of any other considerations, we are talking about persons, with the dignity all human beings share as being created in the image and likeness of God. It is also a precision that rejects the postmodern presupposition that sexual inclination is in someway a neutrally variable, ontologically defining human characteristic. In fact, the document seems to wholly avoid any use of terms that might suggest this except for a citation from a 1986 CDF document in which both documents emphasize the dignity of persons with SSA and the prohibition against any unjust discrimination against them (see footnote 3 subject document).

The bishops also very ably address the matter of sexuality and its purpose in God’s plan, basing themselves both on natural law as well as divine revelation. They show that one can easily see that the clear biological purpose to sexual intercourse is procreation. However, one can further see, aided by reason and made clear by divine revelation, that it is meant to draw a man and woman together in a permanent relationship aimed at nurturing an exclusive relationship oriented around the begetting and rearing of children. Here comes an issue that was the subject of some discussion. That is the use of the term disorder to refer to attraction not in accord with this natural end. Even with careful clarification, there is the concern the term will be used by some to misrepresent the bishops’ statement. In the end, the word disorder remains in usage, some 21 times. In fact, the term is used for both an inherent disorder (SSA) and a moral disorder (natural sexual attraction pursued outside of an act oriented toward the unitive and procreative purpose of the act). In no way, the document makes clear, does having a disorder by itself make the person disordered.

The document also takes up therapy for persons suffering from SSA. Removed from the document was a statement that suggested seeking therapy was not obligatory. However, the document is still ambiguous about this in that it only mentions those who desire to seek therapy. This section was criticized by Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons, a Catholic psychiatrist and one of the authors of the Catholic Medical Association’s document, Homosexuality and Hope. He indicated that the document ignored a wealth of currently available medical data that suggests causes, the dangers of not seeking treatment, and the effectiveness of treatment.

The bishops also make an excellent point that recognizes the quasi-Freudian presuppositions of our culture that says all sexual urges are self determining and so irresistible. This Freudian thinking further dismisses any attempts to master one’s desires as repression that will result in deleterious effects for the person. The document corrects such thinking:

The passions are not fixed, unchanging obstacles to moral action. They do not simply have to be repressed in order for one to act morally. Repeated good actions will modify the passions that one experiences. In fact, passions that have been properly disposed aid one in acting well.

The document draws on the classical teaching of the virtues and the ability and necessity for one’s practicing self-possession in order to master himself and control his passions. Whether the passions are inherently natural or unnatural, they both will lead to moral disorder if one succumbs to the Freudian error that advocates submitting to the id for true happiness and health. They also mention the necessity of cooperating with grace, a truth of which unfortunately all too many Catholics are ignorant or forgetful. The goal is one the Second Vatican Council emphasized, the universal call to holiness. Holiness is nothing other than achieving, through the aid of grace, total self-possession and complete self-determination such that we regularly and totally give of ourselves to God, holding nothing back.

A significant point that the document makes is to take on the fiction that somehow one is being “pastoral” or “caring” by ignoring the Church’s teaching on sexuality. The goal of pastoral concern is to help lead people to true happiness through holiness. The goal is not to avoid unsettled feelings that often will occur when one attempts to help people overcome lifestyles that themselves, ultimately lead to pain and unhappiness.

Another canard addressed is the claim that the Church promotes social injustice by its teaching on SSA. The document responds:

In fact, the Church actively asserts and promotes the intrinsic dignity of every person. As human persons, persons with a homosexual inclination have the same basic rights as all people, including the right to be treated with dignity. Nevertheless “‘sexual orientation’ does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc., in respect to nondiscrimination.” Therefore, it is not unjust, for example, to limit the bond of marriage to the union of a woman and a man. It is not unjust to oppose granting to homosexual couples benefits that in justice should belong to marriage alone. “When marriage is redefined so as to make other relationships equivalent to it, the institution of marriage is devalued and further weakened. The weakening of this basic institution at all levels and by various forces has already exacted too high a social cost.”

The soft thinking that argues unjust discrimination with respect to issues like so-called “same sex marriage” assumes that there is no objective moral order, that everyone has an intrinsic “right” to define themselves and act as they please, and ignores the intimate interrelationship all persons with one another is a society.

After some debate, the bishops finally recognized the important work of the apostolates founded by Fr. John Harvey, Courage and Encourage. Unfortunately, the detractors were able to limit this recognition to a footnote (see footnote 44).

Importantly, this document makes no reference to the problematic, Always Our Children. This was a document put out, not by the entire bishops conference, but by the Committee on Marriage and Family in 1997. I read as a rejection of that problematic pastoral. Hopefully with this new document, the other one will be withdrawn.

In the end, there is nothing surprising and much good in this document. It makes important points about being sensitive to the way that those suffering from SSA experience their affliction. It encourages bishops to develop programs that reach out to all those suffering from SSA and providing them with assistance to live in accord with the way they were created in spite of their affliction. I think the document, all in all, is a very good one.

China has finally publicly admitted that many of the human organs used in transplants are taken from executed prisoners and that many of the recipients are foreigners who pay big money to avoid a long wait.

“Apart from a small portion of traffic victims, most of the organs from cadavers are from executed prisoners,” said Huang, reported the English-language China Daily newspaper Thursday. “The current organ donation shortfall can’t meet demand.”

Acknowledgment of what had been an open secret on the Internet, in local magazines and among people waiting for transplanted organs came weeks after China announced tighter oversight of death-penalty cases. Legal experts say requiring the country’s highest court to approve death sentences could reduce them by a third.

It’s estimated that China is responsible for at least 80% of executions world-wide.

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It’s going on a hunch, but I’m willing to bet the movie Caterina Murino has been trying to get made for the last two years may slant towards the heretical. Now that Caterina Murino has a high profile as the latest “Bond girl” in the movie, Casino Royale, she plans on going ahead with her effort to complete a movie about a Sicilian girl who, in 1914, fought the Catholic Church to become a priest. About my hunch? It’s based on what she said about her role in Casino Royale; “Solange is a modern woman whose husband has beaten her, so she takes revenge by sleeping with James Bond,” she says. “It would be nice if all women who have been hit by their husbands were able to do this!”

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A children’s picture book called And Tango Makes Three is adapted from a true story which occured in New York City’s Central Park Zoo, where two male penguins adopted a baby penguin named Tango. The children’s book has most recently caused some controversy in a suburb of Chicago, after a mother read the book to her five year old daughter, who checked it out at her school library. If the authors would have just told the story of the penguins and put it into the proper perspective, then I don’t think there would’ve been a problem with the book; unfortunately, the authors chose to project the animal behaviors into human connotations.

The book begins to describe how boy penguins begin to notice girl penguins and searching for the right one to “become a couple.” The narrative continues…

Two penguins in the penguin house were a little bit different. One was name Roy and the other was named Silo. Roy and Silo were both boys. But they did everything together…They didn’t spend much time with the girl penguins and the girl penguins didn’t spend much time with them. Instead, Roy and Silo wound their necks around each other. Their keeper, Mr. Gramzay noticed the two penguins and thought to himself “They must be in love.”

Personally, when I was five, I may not have gotten it, but it’s irresponsible for the authors to disguise mature subject matter like this into a little kids picture book. Memo to authors: Leave it up to the parents to make the decision of what, when and where they will address the subject of homosexuality with their children.

Update: Silo leaves Roy and settles with chick by the pool. (Thanks to Scott for the link)

A kindergarten teacher has sued and won a decision against a gynecologist for child support until the child’s 18th birthday, which will total about $150,000. The ruling isn’t being based on damages, but on the fact the single mother is unable to work to support herself and her baby. I would like to propose a bill which would hold everyone in the contraceptive industry to this standard.