extreme Catholic 

 
What would happen if

A child under the age of 9 years 3 months applied a product to their body that gives them the appearance of being 10 years younger.

This much I know: God created the universe when he divided zero by zero.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 1:07 AM   Permalink  

 
Among Homosexuals

As a Catholic blogger who's lived in New York City, I probably bring a different perspective to to this question. I'm not homosexual "Not that there's anything wrong with it!" to quote Jerry Seinfeld. He lived on West 81st Street, I lived on East 81st Street in the 1970's. I had lots of gay friends and my future wife had lots of gay friends. This a period where the street wisdom was that all sexually transmitted diseases were easily detected and treatable. A scene in Looking for Mr. Goodbar where the fallen-away Catholic girl, Theresa (Diane Keaton) mocks one of her many lovers for wearing a condom gives you an idea. Theresa is not presented sympathetically. Watching the film you wonder if she's going to kill herself or is one of her one-night stands going to kill her. You'll have to see the movie to see if she survives. Real places like Plato's Retreat were heterosexual casual sex clubs which eliminated the need to go cruising in bar.

It's over 20 years ago, but I believe that knowledge of GRID/AIDS/HIV became common in the gay community in 1982 and in the world outside in 1984. So while the sexual revolution didn't end then, it definitely fell off the fast track. If straights were now sexual anarchists, what justified the condemnation of homosexuality?

“Gay Power!” began in New York with a riot resisting the arrest of patrons of a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn in 1969. Gay people continued to be social outcasts. So the first gay character on television was Billy Crystal's it ran from 1977 to 1981. Overnight though it seemed, gay people became people to whom sympathy was given -- victims of a new fatal disease whose transmission was unknown, and which seemed to have the potential to be a worldwide plague. At work, many co-workers who show a blotch on their hands or face and disappear in a week. The symbols changed too. The common symbols of the gay movement were a pair of the alchemical symbols for men: circles with arrows at the 2 o'clock position and it was now the pink triangle which was used to identify gay men in some Nazi concentration camps.

In the meantime, the movement acquired urgency since they feared that AIDS that the potential to kill them all and a militancy. For me the memorable event of the era is the confrontation of ACT-UP at the Cathedral of St. Patrick in December 1989.

In 1993, with a Democrat in the White House and both Houses of Congress with Democratic majorities, the militant politics were over and the campaign for tolerance started. I first saw this at work with memos added sexual preference or sexual orientation to the list of criteria that discrimination in hiring was prohibited.

During this time I also learned about the Catholic teaching on homosexuality and saw presentations on it from Fr. John Harvey of Courage.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church stated ...homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law." This must have been a disappointment to many who expected that the Catechism in its final form would have more mitigation or at least more ambiguity.

Homosexuality is objectively disordered. For it to be sinful, a cooperating act of the will is necessary. The Catechism continues Homosexual persons are called to chastity We're all called to chastity according to our state in life. Nothing special about that. My attraction is to my wife, so I'm not contrary to natural law, and so my life is not a trial. My hope is to understand this teaching and to be better able to explain it. It truly is a hard teaching for many to accept today.

The current day brings us to two issues: gay marriage and the suppression of religious speech - or intolerance in the name of tolerance -- which are being explored in this blogs and blogs everywhere.

I still have gay friends, some of my kids are now old enough to have gay friends. I wonder if the images in my living room constitute a special trial for them: Padre Pio, the Sacred Heart, the Divine Mercy, St. Thomas More, St. John from the Book of Kells, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, etc.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 8:10 PM   Permalink  

 
Explanation

Things have been busy at work, so I'm not reading blogs there and at home my son whose has have pneumonia has been at this computer and it's winter break for the schools here in New York City. There's plenty to retro-blog.

I have not forgotten to pray for Terri Schivao and for the Holy Father.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 9:46 PM   Permalink  

 
Terri's feeding tube could be removed later today

Fr. Rob Johansen's blog has details.

Although there is another hearing on Wednesday, there's no legal restriction on Michael Schiavo on ordering later today the feeding tube removed which will certainly result in a slow, painful death for Terri this week.

Blogger Credit: Domenico Bettinelli

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 12:02 AM   Permalink  

 
Joining about a million other people...

taking a look at all 7000 gates. This particular view is near the bridge over to the Wollman Skating Rink.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 10:46 PM   Permalink  

 
Update  Parents meet over Catholic school closings : Newsday

Faced with the prospect of losing 26 Catholic schools in Brooklyn and Queens, concerned parents attended an emergency brainstorming session yesterday in Brooklyn in the hopes of saving at least some of them.

"Everybody's sad and bitter and looking around for new schools," said Mary McNeill, whose daughter Kristie is a fourth-grader at Resurrection School in Gerritsen Beach, one of the schools that will not reopen this fall.

Again, it's not merely money, but enrollment.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 12:40 AM   Permalink  

 
Summers said Catholics were underrepresented : Financial Times

Mr. Summers also told participants at the conference that women weren't the only group underrepresented in an important activity. "To take a set of diverse examples," he said, "the data will, I am confident, reveal that Catholics are substantially underrepresented in investment banking, which is an enormously high-paying profession in our society;...

I wouldn't be so confident, Larry. I'm a Catholic in investment banking. So are Catholic authors George Marlin, and George Sim Johnston. And I saw a lot of ashed heads around me on the various Ash Wednesdays when I was on Wall Street.

The most famous Catholic in investment banking may now be Lawrence Kudlow, a convert.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 12:26 AM   Permalink  

 

Egyptian Surgeons Remove Girl's Second Head

CAIRO, Egypt (Feb. 20) - Egyptian doctors on Saturday removed an undeveloped head that was linked to the skull of a 10-month-old girl, an official from the health ministry said.

Ahmed Barakat said surgeons at a hospital in the Nile Delta town of Benha, some 25 miles north of Cairo, treated the baby for craniopagus parasiticus, a rare birth defect where a child's skull is linked to the head of an undeveloped twin. The rudimentary head is usually thought to be parasitic.

Pro-abortion people take a special delight in mocking the sanctity of life argument made by pro-life advocates when it comes to difficult cases like this.

Pro-aborts can't tell you when life begins. These transcripts of the debate on Partial Birth Abortion but they know we can't be right that life begins at conception because of the cases of embryos which are expelled from the mothers body before futher development, or single embryos which split in two to form identical twins or two embryos which can fuse or combine.

The question is when do they acquire souls?

The Catholic answer is that creation of the soul is an event where the Church doesn't define the moment of the creation of the soul or its attachment to the human body.

This is a consequence of revelation itself: what has been divinely revealed to us is not what we're curious about but all which we need to know in order to be saved.

As a personal belief, I believe that Mary who was conceived without sin (the Immaculate Conception) was in existence in body and soul at conception and that the creation of the human soul at conception was not a unique event for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Apostolic Constitution Ineffabilis Deus (Pope Pius IX 1854) repeated the statement that the creation of the soul and infusion of the soul into the body as possibly distinct by quoting Sollicitudo Omnium Exclesiarun (Pope Alexander XIII) for which I have not been able to find an online text.

I believe that as God has a plan for me he has a plan for these unborn children. They are not lost and abandoned by God.

This summary is from Donum Vitae

From the moment of conception, the life of every human being is to be respected in an absolute way because man is the only creature on earth

• that God has "wished for himself"
• and the spiritual soul of each man is "immediately created" by God;
• his whole being bears the image of the Creator.

Human life is sacred because

• from its beginning it involves "the creative action of God"
• and it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end.

God alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can, in any circumstance, claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 1:23 PM   Permalink  

 
Christo's Gates in Central Park

On February 12, New York City and Central Park launched an extraordinary art event. Celebrated artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude unfurled THE GATES, PROJECT FOR CENTRAL PARK 1979-2005. On view for 16 days, the 7,500 gates will line 23 miles of pathways in Central Park, from 59th Street to 110th Street. Saffron-colored fabric panels will hang seven feet above the ground, blowing in the wind and delighting the public walking beneath with a warm glow of translucent color. The gates will seem like a golden river appearing and disappearing through the bare branches of the trees. The exhibit is free for everyone to enjoy and will not interfere with normal Park activity.

People seem to like the gates. I've not been to them. I have a sick boy to take care of. Perhaps tomorrow.

posted by Patrick Sweeney at 1:13 PM   Permalink