A reader's questions answered

As I contemplated what to write about in these last days before my July blog fast, I thought about mourning over stolen innocence here (and the outrage of political injustice that fuels it; vote Obama out!), or lamenting our nation's loss of decency and shame here (may our all-pure and all-holy God have mercy), but then I remembered an email from a reader that I have put off answering for too long.

So, let me get to it.

Hi Leila,
I know you have a ton of worthy topics, but I was wondering if you would be willing to address any of these topics?


Sure! I am an expert on exactly nothing, but I love to throw out my thoughts!

* Raising boys in an over-sexed culture. (I am already praying for [my young son's] purity, but I am still concerned. I know guys are way more visually oriented than girls, and that once they get the images in their heads it is hard to get them out. Could you talk about how you parent your boys with regards to this?)


With six boys of my own (from age 19 down to 2), it's a topic near and dear to my heart. You are soooooooo right about the visual nature of the male mind. If women had any flipping idea how different the mind of a man is when it comes to sexual images and urges, they would be shocked, speechless. The very best thing I have ever read on the subject is something that I also required my teen daughters to read. The book made one daughter weep, because before that day she had no idea. Even I was stunned. I thought I knew. Parents, read it first, and then hand it to your teen daughters:

For Young Women Only: What You Need to Know About How Guys Think

It may seem weird that I'm recommending a book for girls when you asked me about boys. But I promise you, this book will give you so much insight into how your son's mind will work when he becomes a teen that you will be well-equipped to teach and understand him.

To specifics: My boys are raised to know that their bodies are made by God and are used to glorify him. Each son is told that his private parts are not play things, but that they have a very special and holy purpose for marriage. One day, if he marries, he will have the privilege of becoming completely and intimately united with his wife in a way that is unique among all other relationships, and which is reserved only for the two of them. This act of love is so sacred, so special, so transcendent, that it has the capacity to create new human beings who will live for all eternity. My boys understand that sexuality is a powerful gift that a man must learn to control, so as not to hurt any woman or child who might suffer for his selfish actions in this area.

We are not prudes here in my house, and we don't shy away from talking about sex (age-appropriate only, of course), but no one has yet had any trouble grasping the concept of chastity as virtue, the sacredness of marriage, and how important it is to live honorably in this regard.

Here's an exchange I have with all my sons (not limited to the sexual issues of course), starting at a young age:

I say: "Who is the strongest man in the whole world?"*

They answer: "The one with the most self-control!"

*I love that when they are little, they answer: "God!" or "Jesus!" Then I clarify for them that I am talking about merely human men.


I also remind my older boys that using pornography is not only a selfish act that is degrading to them and disrespectful to all women, but it is also highly addictive, and they will easily become a slave to it. Porn will render them weak and wimpy and pathetic -- not like real men at all. There is nothing honorable about it.

Also, they know that pornography and all other sexual sins are mortal sins. My boys have a healthy fear of offending the God Who loves them (and Whom they love). And while it's certainly not something we dwell on, they would prefer not to spend their eternities in the pit of hell, so they act accordingly. Go figure. ;)



* A review of how to prove or disprove an argument logically. (This is mostly because people on facebook and who comment drive me bonkers.)


I hear ya on the "driving me bonkers" thing.

I've never studied formal logic, so my approach is just what makes sense to me. When I encounter something nonsensical or evil that is being passed off as something reasonable or good, I start with a simple question (not a statement) that challenges a person to take his idea a little bit further. No more than a question or two at a time, or else the whole thing just becomes a non-productive multiplication of words.

If the person you are debating becomes emotional and insulting, you stay unemotional and kind. And ask the question again. And again (maybe with different words). Make the question concrete and logical, not nebulous or vague. Wait patiently for an answer, and if it comes, move on to the next logical question. Answer any honest question he has with clarity and truth, and if you don't know the answer, tell him you don't know, but you will find out and get back to him.

Side note: One sign that a person is not debating in good faith is when you get a question like, "How does it feel to know that you are entrusting your children to a band of pedophiles with funny hats?" (Though here's proof that on rare occasions even stuff like that can turn into good! She later apologized and was open to being corrected.) Another example of someone debating in bad faith is when a Protestant accuses Catholics of "worshipping Mary" and then won't accept Catholic teaching itself on the issue (i.e., that worshipping any creature, including Mary, is a mortal sin).

Back to the question at hand, I have to be honest and tell you that not everyone should be involved in these kind of deep exchanges with clever secularists and zealous Protestants. We all have different gifts, and not everyone is cut out for long, philosophical debates. Sometimes an ill-advised or badly executed debate can do more harm than good. A person who is not cut out for the "battle" may instead want to be a powerful, behind-the-scenes prayer warrior while others do the debating, and/or simply have links ready so that a challenger can go to other legitimate sources for answers.

However, if one has a fairly good working knowledge of the faith and of the issues, then the debating part can be a learned skill. I'm learning every day, with things becoming more clear and focused to me as time goes on. I know that you (the original questioner) are fully capable of dialoguing in truth and love, so maybe just get some of the basic arguments and questions down pat, on the most important topics, and don't forget to pray before you type! (Or direct the person to the Bubble and I'll take 'em on, ha ha!)

Also, while I genuinely care about the folks I debate and hope to plant seeds, I know that most are not likely to change their ideology. But there are many fence-sitters, as well as Catholics who need to find the courage of their convictions, following the facebook/Bubble conversations. My discussions are often for them more than for the person whom I'm debating.


* Your view on how to best address the cultures descent into chaos. Do you think we should start with whatever the current issue is (e.g., the current one- gay marriage) or just start with contraception (since it all flows from there) or abortion/euthanasia (since you are more likely to encounter people who think they are wrong)?


While six months ago I might have said that gay "marriage" is the most pressing issue of the day, and six months before that I would have said it's definitely the foundational issue of contraception, today it's suddenly, eerily, the very issue of religious liberty itself, and whether we will lose the legal right to speak and live our Faith freely. The battleground is changing faster than I can keep up with it!

So, I guess each encounter in the battle is going to depend on the person and the situation. For example, it can be difficult debating evangelical Protestants and getting them fully on board the Culture of Life, because while they are in love with Jesus and they defend traditional marriage and the rights of the unborn with us (praise God!), they've simultaneously adopted the Planned Parenthood mentality on contraception (as you've said, it all flows from there), and the anti-establishment mentality of bucking (Church) authority. So we Christians are not fighting the Culture of Death effectively, as one Body. That's a sad legacy of the Reformation.

And encounters with secularists have their own special challenges, as it's hard to debate and seek truth among those who see the cultural train wreck as "progress", and who don't believe that an objective moral truth exists in the first place.

Ultimately, it's hard to say precisely where to start on the outside. But we do know where to start on the inside.

While this sexual free-for-all, the destruction of the family, and the loss of a sense of sin and shame has brought us to our knees culturally, it's also brought us to a moment of great grace. It's clear at this low point (ever lowering) that prayer and fasting and a return to God really are the most important weapons in the battle. There is only one thing that has ever overcome the darkness and despair and ugliness of sin, and that is Love. Jesus Christ crushed and defeated evil and death not by overpowering it, but by undergoing it, with love. So, the first step is to remember who we are, where we came from and where we are going. I promise you that the world needs saints more than she needs good debaters. The saints will win the battle for hearts and souls every time, because they have a moral authority and a teaching voice that rises above all others.

Be a saint. Teach your children to be saints.

And please, never despair, no matter how far into the abyss we go, because we have this assurance from the One Who commanded the very universe into being and yet Who stoops to love each of us as tenderly as a Bridegroom loves his bride:

"In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." -- John 16:33

I know that I would really enjoy reading any of your thoughts on these topics.  I know I don't comment much, but I definitely keep up with the reading! 


Thanks!

I did ramble on, so thank you for sticking with me!



PS: Anytime you place an Amazon order through a link on this blog, or click the Amazon link at the bottom, 100% of my commission will be donated to the orphans.



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Archbishop Dolan's warning letter to Obama

Hey, Catholics!

Remember when I warned you that your misguided compassion was going to come back to bite you in the rear? That we're in a battle we can't ignore anymore?

I'm relieved that the big guns have just blazed onto the scene.

Two days ago, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote a strongly-worded letter to President Barack Obama that expressed a "growing sense of urgency about recent actions taken by your Administration that both escalate the threat to marriage and imperil the religious freedom of those who promote and defend marriage."

That's us, guys. He's talking about Catholics losing religious freedom in America. If things continue on the current trajectory, the good archbishop anticipates "a national conflict between Church and State of enormous proportions and to the detriment of both institutions."

A national conflict of enormous proportions.

He's right. Things are bad. The culture war -- the very existence of which some deny -- is here and escalating quickly under Obama's watch. The archbishop's letter and research make that painfully clear.

Bubble readers, please read Archbishop Dolan's entire letter and the attachment.* Read every word carefully. You may feel like you don't have time, but it's only three pages. It won't take you long, and you must be informed. The days are long gone when we can just sit back and let things play out, trusting that all will be well. The Church is under attack now, from the highest levels of our government, and we must be an active Church with an educated laity.

Learn what's happening. Teach your children, your friends, your neighbors. We are all responsible for each other now, as the moral landscape changes and we gear up for the battle (which in my opinion includes defeating Obama in November 2012).

In the words of Blessed John Paul the Great: Do not be afraid!

Just think what 60 million baptized, faithful and informed American Catholics could do. Yeah, I know we've got a long way to go to get everyone faithful and informed, so let's get started!

Go on, read it.


Related (disturbing) link showing the Obama Administration's determination to label Catholic teaching as bigoted and discriminatory:

Obama Administration: The Catholic Church spreads "homophobia" in Poland


*Archbishop Dolan's letter is specific to the topic of gay "marriage" and does not address the other alarming actions taken by the Obama Administration limiting our religious freedoms as Catholics.



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Protestants: It's time to come back

To my Protestant brothers and sisters:

It's time to come back to Mother Church. We want you, we need you, we love you.

I've spent a lot of time in dialogue with activist atheists recently, and the direction we are going is not pretty. We are witnessing a rapid cultural decline into amorality.

Satan seeks the ruin of souls through the destruction of marriage and family, and the quickest route to his goal is the profanation of sex. The truth and meaning of human sexuality is our era's cultural fault line, and unfortunately, Protestant denominations have been tumbling into its widening crevace at an alarming pace.

The first cracks denying the sacred nature of human sexuality began mere decades ago with the first tentative acceptance of contraception by a Christian church (the Anglicans). After 1,900+ years of unbroken Christian teaching on the immorality of contraception (including 400+ years of unbroken Protestant teaching), a moral evil was suddenly declared good. The entirety of Protestantism, although horrified at first, soon followed suit.

"Woe to those who call evil good" -- Isaiah 5:20

Then came other issues -- sterilization, masturbation, abortion, fornication and cohabiting, homosexual activity and homosexual "marriage". One by one, Protestant communities have broken from Christian teaching and sided with the secular culture. Many Protestant communities do not accept all the aforementioned evils as good, of course, and some are making a valiant attempt to fight one or more of them. However, there is no guarantee that those denominations won't eventually accept other sexual sins in the same way they accepted contraception, sterilization and masturbation. A majority vote by church leaders could launch an unsuspecting Protestant from the Spirit of the Gospel right into the spirit of the age -- the Planned Parenthood age.

Look where you are standing. Unless you stand with the Catholic Church, you may already have one foot off the cliff.

How to guarantee that you'll stand firmly on the ground of moral Truth? Come back home to the Catholic Church.

For over two thousand years:

The Catholic Church has never taught that contraception is a moral good, and she never will.
The Catholic Church has never taught that sterilization is a moral good, and she never will.
The Catholic Church has never taught that masturbation is a moral good, and she never will.
The Catholic Church has never taught that abortion is a moral good, and she never will.
The Catholic Church has never taught that fornication is a moral good, and she never will.
The Catholic Church has never taught that homosexual activity is a moral good, and she never will.

The moral teachings of the Church have never changed, and they never will.

Human sexuality is transcendent, life-giving and sacred, and the Catholic Church will teach that Truth till the last day.

Dear Protestant, a church with a changing morality is a church built on shifting sand. If you want to build your life and eternity on something solid, build it on the Rock of Peter. Don't be carried about by every wind of social change; come back to the Catholic Church and stand strong with us -- one united Body as Jesus intended.

America may not survive many more generations at the rate we are going, but the Church and her teachings will stand regardless, speaking the same Truths, undisturbed, till the end of time. Believe me, it's a really nice place to be in a storm. Extremely peaceful.

So, come on. You'll like it here, living in peace and joy and certainty. It's your rightful home anyway.

Come back to Holy Mother Church. It really is time.






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We are not dogs

In the past week, I've had the unpleasant experience of engaging in a series of exchanges with a herd of "freethinkers", secularists, atheists, and gay rights advocates. Lemme tell ya, it's dark and cold out there, folks. I've never thanked God so much for His mercy. In the meantime, a young Bubble reader, Margo, sent me a homily preached by her hometown priest from last Sunday. It fit in so perfectly with what I have witnessed this week that I have decided to reprint it here, with his permission. 

Fr. Josh Miller

Saints Peter and Paul Parish

Naperville, Illinois 

August 27, 2011

Two weeks ago, I preached a little bit about my family beagle and what dogs show us about sitting at the feet of the Master, and today I thought I’d continue that theme of exploring something else dogs can teach us about how we’re different from animals.

One thing about dogs, if you’ve ever noticed this, is that they’re relatively easy to make happy. Food, water, attention, and they’re good to go: the tail’s wagging, they’re happy and content if their needs are met. This is because dogs live from one stimulus to the next: they’re hungry, they’re sleepy, they want to play. They move from one thing to the next and seem absolutely contented when they get what they want.

But this isn’t so true for human beings. We’re more complicated: We all know that we can have everything we need and be miserable; we can have everything we need and still feel like something is missing. This is because human beings seek fulfillment, not just happiness. We need a grander sense of accomplishment, of having achieved something; that desire we have for absolute and total fulfillment in life is a strange thing, something my dog cannot experience.

So let’s look at St. Paul today. Paul tells us about the need to “offer [our] bodies as a spiritual sacrifice,” and warns us not to “conform [ourselves] to this age.” He warns us of this because in every age, but most certainly in ours, perhaps in our age more than Paul, the world around us always seems to be focused on happiness, rather than fulfillment. And this is where the world stands to get us in trouble, because it treats us as if we were animals rather than human beings. Modern society confuses happiness for fulfillment and urges us to move from one stimulus to the next, like my beagle.

Just to give you an example of this, how we continually confuse happiness for fulfillment in this culture, John Paul the Great deals with the concept of “freedom” in his Veritatis Splendor. Now, don’t feel embarrassed here if this is your view, but when I say the word “freedom” most Americans in our society today would say that “freedom” means an individual should have the right to do whatever he or she desires so long as it doesn’t impede upon the freedom or rights of others. But what John Paul the Great notes is that this is actually a perversion of the word “freedom,” since the word has always meant our unimpeded ability to choose what is good. Not whatever we say is good, not whatever we designate as good, but what is truly and objectively good. What modern society has done in the past couple of centuries is say that freedom is all about your happiness, what you desire, rather than what will bring you absolute fulfillment, and this is absolutely problematic in our current society.

Modern society has reduced us to dogs. Everything in our culture has become emotionally driven nowadays. We make our decisions, we focus on everything through emotional desire, what we want in the moment. This is what St. Paul warns us about.

One of my favorite living Catholic writers is a man by the name of John C. Wright. He’s a brilliant man, and he spends most of his time writing science fiction novels. Strangely, the best and the brightest Catholic writers nowadays are writing in the science fiction and fantasy genres. I came across a quote this week that highlights precisely what I’m trying to get at with this misplaced emotion in our society, and I thought I’d share it with you. John C. Wright says:

We live in the midst of a Dark Age, that is, an age when intellectual and literate things are despised by the intellectuals and the literati. A Dark Age approves of emotional rather than intellectual response, the emotions judged and ranked according to purity and glitter, like precious stones.

It seems to John C. Wright, as it seems to me and countless others in the Church today who attempt to live according to the Gospel, that we have become entirely emotionally and impulsively driven. Humanity has been prone to this throughout time; when Peter is rebuked by our Lord in today’s gospel, he’s rebuked because he’s let his emotion overcome him. In his bravado, in his emotional understanding of things, he stands up and says, “No, Lord, we can’t let anything like your suffering and death happen! This won’t work!” And yet Jesus, who actually thinks things through, is focused on fulfillment. And this is precisely why he rebukes Peter, tells him to get away, to stop tempting him with his nonsense.

Nonsense. That’s really what the world offers us. If left to my emotional impulses I end up like my dog, moving from one thing to the next, endlessly choosing what makes me “happy” without ever finding fulfillment. And God forbid someone should try and break that chain for me, tell me that something I’ve chosen is actually toxic to me in the grand scheme of things: How dare they try and do that, when my emotional senses tell me something is good?

People sometimes ask me why priests never preach on controversial topic x, y, or z. The answer there is that the greatest social crime someone can commit in our fickle culture is making someone else feel bad. And because people today tend to form their opinions through emotional desire, preaching what is objectively true through Reason, which does not account for your feelings one iota, can end up with a lot of hurt feelings. The truth hurts, especially in a culture that rarely stops “feeling” their emotions long enough to think. Abortion, euthanasia, and a host of other topics are debated on the other side of the Church not through reason-able, rational argumentation, but through emotion, through that false sense of what freedom means, through our desire to make no one feel bad or put out. But what the Cross shows us time and time again is that fulfillment, humanity’s highest end, is often going to feel bad. Fulfillment isn’t always going to feel good.

But that’s what it’s all about. Fulfillment, finding our Highest and most Perfect Good. The world tells us that it’s to be found in emotional happiness. Don’t buy it.

Rather, pray for what St. Paul calls “a renewal of the mind,” so that we might sharpen all the tools God has given us to choose what will bring us to fulfillment. Let our emotions serve our minds, and not the other way around. In doing so, we will know a sense of true freedom as we continue to grow ever closer to the Highest Good in God, who is that Good which no greater can be thought.



Amen!






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If you read only one book this year, make it this one.

If you read only one book this year, I hope it will be:

What We Can't Not Know, by Professor J. Budziszewski

Not only will I be re-reading it myself, it will also be required reading for my older children.

I think I may be obsessed with it.

It takes me an inordinate amount of time to read a book these days, and in the past several months, I have been stealing every spare moment to read this one. I finally completed it. All along the way, I have been wanting to blog about what I have learned, and yet I knew I should finish it before I posted about it.

For years, I have had a vague notion of the natural law. And throughout the year or so that I have written this blog, I have alluded to natural law time and again, each time learning a little more about it myself. But I needed more.

Why?

Well, all the discussions we have had on this blog with our leftist/secular/atheist friends like College Student, L, Miss Gwen, MaiZeke, Michelle and Peter, have left so many of us Catholics frustrated, and even baffled. If you're like me, you have asked yourself a thousand times, "Did I read that right?" "Is that what she really wanted to say?" "He couldn't really mean that, could he?" and "How did we get to this place?"

I have often been kept awake at night, going over some of the positions and arguments of those whom we debate. The overriding sentiment of my heart and mind in the throes of the most troubling exchanges is: "But she knows that isn't right!" and "He can't not know that!"

Professor B helped me make sense of what we see playing out here on the Bubble, and even among our own friends and family. It is charitably written (Professor B himself was once a committed atheist), but clear and honest, pulling no punches. He covers the natural law tradition in a way that is understandable and then applies it to the cultural situation in which we find ourselves today.

It's important to note: The book is written for a Christian audience (or those who are "half-persuaded"), and not for atheists and secularists (although I cannot wait for that book, Professor B!). However, he does invite the secular left to read along if they are interested in how we Christians discuss this subject among ourselves. He says this to those on the other side of the culture war:

[Y]ou are not part of my expected audience. But that does not mean that I want to hide the book from you; you are welcome to be a fly on the wall and listen in. Nor does it mean that I don't want to talk to you; this particular book is not a good vehicle of that hoped-for conversation, but by all means let us talk. But let us be honest too. We are on different sides.

Some people consider it "uncivil" to say so. They think the "culture war" is the fault of people who admit there is a culture war, and that the very use of terms like "culture war" demonizes people on the other side. In their view, we must pretend that we all want the same things. But we don't all want the same things, do we?

No, we don't. And lemme tell you, that type of honesty and clarity is so refreshing in this politically correct, morally confused world. While it can be unsettling and overwhelming to be presented with a true picture of the problem that lies before us, it is necessary to know what we are up against. The book is also balm for my own soul, personally, as it confirms that what we have been doing here in the Bubble has a good purpose.

The book is divided into four main sections:

I. The Lost World 

(includes just what it is we can't not know)

II. Explaining the Lost World 

(includes the "four witnesses" to the natural law and some objections)

III. How the World was Lost 

(this is the section you must read; I'll get to that in a minute)

IV. Recovering the Lost World 

(includes the "public relations" of moral wrong and moral right)

My hope is that each and every one of you would have your own copy of the book to read for yourself and to have available for your children. But, realistically, I know that is not going to happen. So, here is my proposition to all of you busy folks who, like me, find it very difficult to commit (in time or finances) to yet another book. I originally read What We Can't Not Know on my Kindle. However, I recently bought two "real" copies of the book: One for me, and one for all of you.

Here's how I want it to work: I will mail the book to anyone who is committed to reading at least Section III of the book ("How the World Was Lost") in no more than seven days (it should take you much less time than that -- less than a day, actually -- but I want to give everyone a good week to get to it*). Then, your only other task is to mail it to the next person on the list, whose address I will supply to you. If you are interested, please email me at littlecatholicbubble@gmail.com, and I'll take it from there.

Catholics, I think it's that important. Understanding what Professor B lays out really is the key to understanding the morally chaotic world swirling around us. Please get this book. Or email me and I will get it to you.



*Of course, if anyone wants to read the whole book in those seven days, feel free! I just want to make sure the book keeps moving to those who want to read it. And don't be shy if you've never commented before but still want to receive the book. E-mail me!


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