Two courageous women, two evil court rulings

Long ago, I warned that Christians' misguided compassion would come back to bite them in the rear, and since that day, things have gotten so much worse. We Christians apparently still wish to be loved by the popular culture, and we don't seem to realize that the more we appease the beast, the more vicious the beast becomes.

Here is the latest, out of the very left-wing, very secular Washington State:

By a unanimous, 9-0 decision, the Washington Supreme Court...

... ruled that this 72-year-old grandmother [Barronelle Stutzman] who had employed gay workers and served gay customers for years, was required by law to participate in a gay wedding, even though this constituted a direct violation of her religious beliefs — beliefs which have been consistent and almost universally held among Christians for the last 2,000 years. 

Not only so, but the court upheld the attack on her personal assets as well — her house, her savings, her retirement funds — by requiring her “to pay the attorneys’ fees that the ACLU racked up in suing her,” fees which could reach as high as one million dollars.  [emphasis mine]

This kind and decent florist stated the following to the state's attorney general, regarding her motives and beliefs, and her refusal to accept an offer of "settlement":

You don’t really understand me or what this conflict is all about. It’s about freedom, not money. I certainly don’t relish the idea of losing my business, my home, and everything else that your lawsuit threatens to take from my family, but my freedom to honor God in doing what I do best is more important. Washington’s constitution guarantees us “freedom of conscience in all matters of religious sentiment.” I cannot sell that precious freedom. You are asking me to walk in the way of a well-known betrayer, one who sold something of infinite worth for 30 pieces of silver. That is something I will not do. 

I pray that you reconsider your position. I kindly served Rob [the 'gay' plaintiff] for nearly a decade and would gladly continue to do so. I truly want the best for my friend. I’ve also employed and served many members of the LGBT community, and I will continue to do so regardless of what happens with this case. You chose to attack my faith and pursue this not simply as a matter of law, but to threaten my very means of working, eating, and having a home. If you are serious about clarifying the law, then I urge you to drop your claims against my home, business, and other assets and pursue the legal claims through the appeal process.

I pray that the Supreme Court will eventually hear her case and undo the evil judgment that has been rendered against her.

I'll tell you what: I would not want to be one of those nine Washington judges when the ultimate Judgment is meted out by the Just Judge at the Day of Reckoning. Shudder. Pray for them; they need it.

Please read the short piece, here, and consider sharing on your social media. It will not go well with us if we continue to remain silent:

Shame on the Silent Christian Leaders 

Who Refuse to Stand Against Government Tyranny

Barronelle Stutzman (Alliance Defending Freedom)

We welcome any liberals of good will who will stand with us on this important issue of freedom of conscience, even if they disagree with us on gay "marriage". They will surely face a particular ridicule, venom, and attack if they speak against the liberal orthodoxy, but I beg liberals of good will to do what is right.

And if you want to understand how we got here, I implore you, watch Princeton's Professor Robert P. George explain. Take the time. It's so worth it. I was in the audience the night he gave the following talk, sitting next to our amazing Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, who nodded his head throughout. Some of our bishops truly understand, and we, as the laity, also have an obligation to SPEAK.

Stop being afraid, my friends! Cultivate the virtue of courage. It gets easier as you practice courage, I promise! God will give you the grace you need. Do you trust Him enough to take care of you, just as florist Barronelle Stutzman trusts?

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And now to another strong and courageous woman, an unlikely pro-life hero who stood up against the powers-that-be. 

Yesterday, we lost this wonderful lady, Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe, the plaintiff in the tragic Roe vs. Wade abortion ruling. After years of being used and abused by the pro-"choice" side -- she never did have an abortion, and her little girl was placed for adoption, by the way -- she was won by love (wrote a book by that name), became a Christian, and joined the pro-life movement. 

Norma ultimately became a devout Catholic, fighting for the remainder of her days and with all her heart and soul against the evil Supreme Court decision that bears her name. May God welcome His good and faithful servant, His beloved daughter, to her heavenly reward. She had a hard life; may she have eternal rest. 

 Requiescat in pace

A reminder from MLK, as he sat in jail...

Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn't too interested in a contrived "separation of church and state", by the way. 

From "Letter From a Birmingham Jail", April 16, 1963. Emphases mine:



One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.

...

There was a time when the church was very powerful--in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators." But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent--and often even vocal--sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.

...

Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers?





Read his whole Letter from a Birmingham Jail, here.

Abortion: How to bypass the conscience

On January 22, we marked the bloodiest anniversary in our nation's history: 42 years since the legalization of abortion. Over 55 million irreplaceable, unrepeatable human beings directly killed. But how? How did we get here? How is it even possible?

Back in June 2011, I wrote about a phenomenal book called What We Can't Not Know, by Professor J. Budziszewski, former atheist. The book is a primer on Natural Law, and it covers a lot about the human conscience, including how we can circumvent it, ignore it, dull it, lull it, or trick it, but how we ultimately cannot escape it.

In a section called "Denial", Budziszewski hits specifically on the topic of abortion:

We can't not know that it is wrong deliberately to take innocent human life; parsing the rule, we find only six possibilities of rationalization.

To follow, I condense and paraphrase the six possibilities he lays out, beginning with what we all know through the light of human reason alone (i.e., the Natural Law):

"It is wrong deliberately to take innocent human life." 

So, in order to give ourselves permission to take innocent human life deliberately, we play with the rule.

1)  It is wrong deliberately to take innocent human life.

"I didn't want to get pregnant/didn't want my girlfriend to get pregnant, I didn't ask for this baby, so I'm not responsible for the abortion. The circumstance forced me to abortion. The circumstances are responsible."


2)  It is wrong deliberately to take innocent human life.

"I'm not taking this life, the doctors are doing it. I'm not really involved in this act, it's on the abortionist."


3)  It is wrong deliberately to take innocent human life.

"The fetus is not innocent. It is an aggressor, an intruder, an uninvited parasite, practically a rapist."


4)  It is wrong deliberately to take innocent human life.

"The embryo or fetus is a thing, not a human person with human rights. It's too small, it's not sentient. It has the potential to become a human."


5)  It is wrong deliberately to take innocent human life.

"It's not really alive. It's just a blood clot or a blob of tissue."

(This one is harder to slip by the conscience in the age of ultrasounds.)


6)  It is wrong deliberately to take innocent human life.

"But sometimes we have to do what is wrong."

Budziszewski's take on #6 (emphasis mine):

This is the most disturbing rationalization of all, because it embraces the wrong with eyes wide open. The temptation is ancient: "Let us do evil that good may result." .... [I]n the present state of the revolution that began with sex we go on past abortion and explore other kinds of killing, like infanticide and the slaying of the weak, the old, and the sick. You cannot justify one evil yet expect the others to keep their place. The cloth of the moral law is too tightly sewn for that; it is made of a single strand. Pluck loose one stitch, and the rest unravels too.... If we have already reached killing, what comes next?

I would argue that what comes next, specifically within the human psyche, is not a pretty place to be:

Laughing at Dead Babies and the Avenging Conscience

Please read it. It's so important. And it all makes sense, doesn't it?

It's often only after we fall into that dark and terrible place that we are moved to turn around again and face the light. Thank heavens for the workings of the conscience (however terrible), the truth of what we can't not know, and the severe mercies of God.

It is wrong deliberately to take innocent human life.

Progressives, when is your progress complete?

"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."  -- C.S. Lewis

Progressives, this post is for you. I have a question for you that is real and weighty I hope you can answer with clarity, so that I can understand what it means to be a progressive today. None of these are trick questions; they are asked sincerely.

The label "progressive" was chosen purposefully, I am sure. It is meant to convey that you are forward-thinking people, making progress in society.

Progress is defined as "advancement, or movement toward a goal", so I ask…

In the realm of sexuality (since that's the pivot point of the current culture wars), toward what final goal are you advancing?

If there is no specific goal, then where are you going? Are you simply wandering? And if you are wandering, do you wander indefinitely? How do you know when your progression has ended, or do you believe that it never ends and never should end?

But going back to the definition of "progress": If you believe there is a goal and you progress to it, do you then stop there?

And if you stop at the goal, what of the others, those who keep moving on past the goal, progressing to the next place? Aren't they then the true progressives, the ones who boldly break the taboos and dismantle societal constructs? And won't you be seen as hindering progress, and repressing or oppressing those moving forward (maybe even seen as a hater)? Or will it be bad to be a "progressive" then, and will you switch to proudly wearing the label of "conservative"?

Let's get more specific.

I think it's fair to say that when it comes to sex, progressives champion the right of consenting adults to use their sexuality in any way they desire. In the past that meant working to end the stigma of contraception, masturbation, divorce, pre-marital sex, and human abortion, and today it means the normalization or mainstreaming of pornography, hook-ups, group sex, homosexual acts and most recently gay "marriage".

So, what next? When all these things are acceptable and enshrined, where do the progressives go? Who will the progressives be?

I would offer that we all already know, but when I dare to bring it up, I am shouted down. "How could you equate homosexuality with pedophilia or bestiality??!!" (I do not equate them.) "I don't see great hordes of people clamoring for those things to be accepted!!" (Neither did anyone used to clamor for the acceptance of pornography, fornication, or homosexual "marriage".)

I do know that respectable progressive psychologists, academics, and activists have been quietly working to destigmitize pedophilia and lower ages of consent, and I do know that the respectable, beloved progressive, Princeton professor Peter Singer, sees nothing wrong with certain occasions of bestiality.

These are forerunners of progressive thought in our culture. Distasteful now, but as we continue to "morally progress", it's just a matter of time before these ideas gain greater acceptance.

For the progressives reading who are disgusted by such ideas, what are your natural "stops"? Can there be any? As far as I can tell, you deny the natural law (i.e., the universal moral law that can be known by the light of reason). You don't believe in natural boundaries for sex, nor the concept of "order" and "disorder" in morality. So, where are the brakes? What are your principles for dismissing these other uber-progressives out of hand?

Because they're right behind you, out-progressing you as we speak.

Thanks for any answers you are able to provide.



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Laughing at dead babies and the avenging conscience

A few weeks ago, I read a disturbing blog post by Abby Johnson, former director of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic and author of the book, UnPlanned.

She recounts her early experiences in the clinic:

It took a few weeks before I got the alarm code to our clinic. I guess it takes that long for them to trust you. I remember getting the code and feeling shocked. The code was 2229. That seems innocent…until they told me what it spelled out…BABY. Really. Wow. We were really joking about that…our alarm code was mocking the murder of children. 

A few weeks later I was introduced to our freezer in the POC (products of conception) lab. This was the freezer that held the fetal tissue until the biohazard truck came for disposal. I found out the name for that freezer…the nursery. Again, that was a joke. How had that become a joke? 

A few days later I learned the password to our phone system…2229…BABY. 

A couple years later I remember walking in on my supervisor making jokes with the abortionist and another employee in that same POC lab. They were joking about how the fetal tissue floating in this dish looked like bar-b-que. Did I hear that right? Did they really just say that? Then one of them said, “I actually think this part looks like strawberry jam.” I turned around and walked out without saying a word. I felt sick to my stomach. How did that conversation begin? How could they say that? Was it enough to make me leave? No. I was one of them now. I am drenched in the evil of this place.

Later, she joined in their ghoulish humor:

About a year before I left, the Coalition for Life group had moved in next door to our clinic. We joked about sending them a “welcome to the neighborhood” gift. Maybe we should send them cookies in the shape of babies with red icing on them that resembles blood. We laughed. We thought we were so witty. It was not wit. 

I could go on and on. I look back now and wonder how I could let my mind become so numb to something so terrible.

Abby's post was remarkable to me, because just days earlier I had read an eerily similar account from another former abortion clinic worker, Jewels Green:

Even the macabre became commonplace. The gallows humor I’d seen in movies about medical staff that work around disease and death day in and day out was right at home in an abortion clinic. 

I vividly remember the cleaning lady who quit after finding a foot in the drain of the one of the sinks in the autoclave room (where the medical instruments were cleaned and sterilized after abortions) and how we all laughed and joked about it in the staff lounge for days and weeks afterward. 

When the power went out one time for hours and we were all explicitly instructed NOT to open the freezer where all of the medical waste was stored (read: dead baby parts in bio-hazard bags) but inevitably, someone did open that freezer and I will never, ever forget the stench of decaying human flesh for as long as I live —but we all laughed as we gagged and joked how at least “they” had it better in that non-functioning freezer because at least they couldn’t smell it. 

[I]n my heart I always knew it was wrong. All of it was wrong….

Horrifying as their stories are, it makes sense that they joked about what they were doing, to the point of mocking the dead babies themselves. For one to cooperate in an unthinkable evil, one must assuage the avenging conscience in some way or another.

Professor J. Budziszewski discusses the conscience -- and the revenge of conscience -- in his book, What We Can't Not Know (which I reviewed here).

The human conscience operates in three modes:

In the cautionary mode, the conscience acts as teacher:  "I shouldn't do that; it's wrong."
In the accusatory mode, the conscience acts as judge: "I should never have done that; it was wrong."
In the avenging mode, the conscience acts as executioner. We shall see how that works in a moment.

The "Five Furies" of conscience that come into play when we transgress the natural law (i.e., the universal moral law) are something we can all grasp:

1. Remorse
2. Confession
3. Atonement
4. Reconciliation
5. Justification

Professor B describes the rightly ordered way that the guilty conscience responds to the Five Furies (emphases mine):

The normal outlet of remorse is to flee from wrong; of the need for confession, to admit what one has done; of atonement, to pay the debt; of reconciliation, to restore the bonds one has broken; and of justification, to get back in the right.

However, if the guilty party does not respond to the Furies in rightly ordered ways and return to moral goodness, the Furies don't just suddenly go away (emphases mine):

But if the furies are denied their payment in wonted coin, they exact it in whatever coin comes nearest, driving the wrongdoer's life yet further out of kilter. We flee not from wrong, but from thinking about it. We compulsively confess every detail of our story, except the moral. We punish ourselves again and again, offering every sacrifice except the one demanded. We simulate the restoration of broken intimacy, by seeking companions as guilty as ourselves. And we seek not to become just, but to justify ourselves.

All the furies collude. Each reinforces the others, not only in the individual, but in the social group.    (pp. 150- 151)

In the buildings where women's wombs were forcibly opened and their living babies were shredded and dismembered and thrown out with the trash:

"We laughed. We thought we were so witty."
"We all laughed and joked about it for days and weeks afterward."
"We all laughed as we gagged and joked."

"In my heart I always knew it was wrong. All of it was wrong."
"I look back now and wonder how I could let my mind become so numb to something so terrible."

Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down.    -- G.K. Chesterton

Praise God for the gift of the avenging conscience. For to be pursued by the Five Furies, even to the very edge of the pit of hell itself, is a severe mercy given by a loving God Who will use drastic means to call us back to Himself.







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Is it sin or "personal preference"? Why it's so hard to evangelize today.

When I posted "We are not dogs" a few weeks ago, I knew I wanted to showcase more gems from our holy, faithful priests. So today, even though I have not yet created my "Priests Speak" icon for this new little feature, ha ha, I want to present you with the priestly wisdom of Fr. John S. Grimm*. Thanks to Nicole C. at Mom and Then Some for bringing the words of her priest to my attention. 

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Fr. John S. Grimm

Holy Spirit Parish

New Castle, Delaware

September 2011

READINGS FOR SEPT. 4 23RD SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 

(Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-10;

Matthew 18:15-20)

In his homily to begin the conclave of cardinals that would elect him pope, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said that the world was laboring under a “dictatorship of relativism.” By that he meant moral relativism specifically, the notion that moral truth is subjective, that is, totally dependent on one’s intention and external circumstances.

Moral relativism denies that any action is always wrong; moral choices are mere expressions of one’s feelings about certain behavior. Thus, actions that in previous generations were condemned as sinful are in our time considered a matter of personal preference, above all in the area of sexual morality.

Modernity’s embrace of moral relativism is not only a rejection of Catholic morality, but of the morality of all previous eras. For instance, the hearers of the Apostles knew and accepted an objective moral law called the natural law. And they knew that they failed to keep it, at least perfectly. As a result, the ancients knew they needed a savior and the Apostles’ message was experienced as “Good News.” But under the influence of moral relativism, modern people are told that there is no objective standard with which to make moral choices. In this setting, our Lord’s message that we must repent sounds strange to some people. They ask: repent from what? Recent popes have said that the modern world has lost its sense of what sin is. Without a sense that we are sinners, why do we need a redeemer?

Therefore, the church finds itself needing to preach the “bad news” that we are sinners in need of forgiveness before she can preach the Good News that Christ offers us forgiveness.

Today’s readings presuppose an objective moral order and man’s need for reconciliation with God and neighbor for failing to act in accordance with that order.

In the first reading, Ezekiel is appointed watchman for God’s holy people and instructed to warn the people when they stray from the path of holiness. Should he fail to warn them of their misdeeds, the guilt of their sins will fall upon him. St. Augustine taught that this duty to warn the faithful is now placed upon all the bishops and priests of the church. The preacher who fulfills this duty is likely to meet a cool reception in some quarters because of the relativism in our culture. Nonetheless, as the Holy Father taught in his 2009 encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate” (“Charity in Truth”), the proclamation of the truth is an essential way of charity.

Our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel are similarly in conflict with the spirit of our times. One must believe in objective right and wrong in order to have the grounds to confront another with the injustice of his behavior; otherwise, it degenerates into a contest of wills. Moral relativism puts an end to moral dialogue since moral judgments are only expressions of one’s feelings.

Our Lord instructs us to do more than dialogue with others, we are to confront a brother or sister with his misbehavior if he falls into sin. This can only be done in a way pleasing to God if it is motivated by charity. Notice that if our brother offends us, we are to tell him about it, not everyone but him. Even if someone truly wrongs us, we must be mindful of not sinning through detraction, which is the revealing of our neighbor’s defects to others without a just cause.

As St. Paul in the second reading says: love does no evil to the neighbor. Paul means even when the neighbor has first done evil to us. All that we do is to be done for the sake of charity; when the church is forced by the sinner’s recalcitrance to “treat him as you would a gentile or tax collector,” this is done for a charitable purpose. The hope is that once made aware of his injustice he will repent and be healed.



*Fr. Grimm's article is found on page 20 










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Stop moping around!

If you are like me, you've been disheartened by the vote to legalize gay "marriage" in New York.

But tonight I read Thomas Peters' excellent reminder that we Catholics aren't getting nor reporting the full picture. We tend to follow the "mainstream" liberal media's reporting habits, and the media spend far more time touting the few gay "marriage" successes, and not much time discussing the much broader support for true marriage.

For example, did you know that two blue states, Maryland and Rhode Island, shot down gay "marriage" bills recently, thanks to the Democrats? I confess that I didn't! Yes, those and other victories for marriage have been taking place all around us, and we have allowed the defeat in New York to discourage us.

But stop and think about it: We are talking about New York! Remember that New York City is the epicenter of the Culture of Death in America: It was recently reported that a full 41% of NYC's unborn children are aborted. Should we be shocked that that gay "marriage" would eventually come to this place?

New York has dark days ahead if it stays on this path, but most states are not this far gone.

We Catholics need to stay strong ("Be not afraid!" as Blessed John Paul II so often told us), and we must have the courage to fight for traditional marriage in the public square, as Pope Benedict XVI has exhorted us:

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable….

His list includes:

Recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage and its defense from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role.  (2006 speech to European politicians)

It is clearly part of our job as Catholics to bring back the understanding that rights are based on natural law (self-evident, inalienable rights, with which we are endowed by our Creator), and to beat back the idea of a "right" as "something you really, really want, and it would be mean to deny it".

And from here on in, I will be much more aware of the media's propensity to give "extra attention" to gay "marriage" victories while downplaying its defeats.

I hope you will too, so that we all have the fortitude to stay in the game.

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On a personal note, I am beseeching prayers for a friend, the mother of five small children, who has recently been diagnosed with stage 3B Hodgkin's lymphoma. If you could send up a prayer for her healing and her family's comfort, right now, as you are thinking of it, I would so deeply appreciate it.

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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