seeds of disconnect

Our efforts to disconnect ourselves from our own suffering
end up disconnecting our suffering from God’s suffering for us.
The way out of our loss and hurt is in and through.
Henri Nouwen

(seeds emerge from the head of a sunflower / Julie Cook / 2021)

So an odd thing happened last week here in my little corner of bogland…
I had written two posts tipping a hat towards the Texas abortion law.

So before we press on…here is a little personal disclosure.

I am adopted—in turn, I am not a fan of abortion.
Plain and simple.

For you see, I was a afforded life and not a death sentence.
I may not have been “planned on” nor wanted…
however I was offered a chance
with someone else who did want me.

Therefore I believe in life and not death.

So you can fuss and cuss with me all day long, I’m not budging.
Life begins at conception…the current prolife laws are stating
that life begins at the detection of a heartbeat…hence the title
of many of these laws—the heartbeat bill—if there’s a heartbeat,
there is in turn life..
If you abort that heartbeat, you are killing a life.

Pretty straight forward.

Oh yeah, I’m also a Christian…I believe God is the Creator of all life.

So there you go…now let’s get on with this tale.

So it was from my second post–the one regarding abortion,
Texas, liberties and ideologies— a post mind you,
that was really just an excerpt from a book
by professor, theologian and author, Peter Kreeft—
How To Destroy Western Civilization And Other Ideas From The Cultural Abyss
when the trouble began.

The title of my post was “The elephant named “sex” sitting in the living room”
Kreeft was writing about religious liberty being attacked in the
name of sexual liberty and since I totally concurred,
I opted to simply copy two pages of his book as my post.

So 47 comments were generated from that post.

Some of those were obviously my responses to those offering their 2 cents.
Some cents are good cents…some cents made no sense.

So there was this gal who is known as House of Hearts who commented
and commented—with much disdain I might add—
Here we go—

House of Hearts:
“What’s happened in Tx is a travesty, the Supreme Court has
failed in its responsibility.
It’s time to add additional judges to SCOTUS and stop the filibuster.
Placing a bounty ($10,000) on your neighbors heads is fascist and unconstitutional.
Women are not the only one’s who will suffer.

My response:
I respect your thoughts–I wonder however,
if SCOTUS had rendered a decision that was more inline with your
thoughts on this issue, I doubt you would be demanding to
“pack the bench” —and as for filibusters, they are indeed a bit
of an oddity within our legislative branch.

And so here it comes…

HoH:
It’s time to take action against the ruthless far right.
Are you one the “no mandates, my body my choice”
but when it’s someone else’s body it is also your choice?
Indeed we must stand up against the corruption of
Trumpism that has infiltrated the highest court of the land.

Me:
I’ve had both vaccines—plus Covid despite doing everything I was told—
I’m not going to demand that someone else get the shot if they don’t feel
it’s best for their life’s circumstance—
I am not an anti vaccine person as I and my child had every vaccine
one is to get —however that being said,
no one knows what the long term effects might be of these shots
as the issue of fertility for younger girls who get
the shot is an a huge question .
I think Trump did very good things for the economy and did put US interests first.
I think Biden is a very weak man and totally handled the
pulling out of Afghanistan terribly wrong—
his poor planning cost the lives of 13 servicemen and women
and he simply left 90 billion dollars of taxpayer
funded military equipment behind for all
US enemies to have at their disposal…
there are correct exists and wrong exits—
he opted for the wrong one—
And as a person who was adopted as well as a
Christian who knows that I am the created and not the Creator ,
abortion is not something I can ever support—
I do equate it to murder of the unborn.
I respect your opinions and that you disagree —
I hope you will respect mine.

HoH:
I don’t correspond with Trumpers.

Wait, when did I say I was a Trumper???
And what does Trump have to do with my post???

Me:
That is unfortunate as you may miss an opportunity to share ideas

HoH:
I can tell you are completely brainwashed and a hopeless case.

Me:
I think when I accepted Christ around the age of 10,
it’s been a roller coaster, but I’ve never been the same—
brainwashed, no— servant of Christ yes—
it does not mean I agree with everything about Trump in the least bit—
but I believe in Our Nation’s republic and our constitution—
a democratic freedom— that has come at a great cost to many
who have defended it for over 200 years— I call that patriotism

HoH:
Trump is not now nor ever has been a patriot.
He has nearly destroyed our country ,
has no respect for the Constitution nor does his constituents.
He is a criminal , he is using misguided people like you.
I have nothing more to say to you.

Me:
Again, I appreciate your opinion— at 62, college educated,
31 year veteran educator and life lived with the school of hard knocks—
I wouldn’t call that misguided, more like wizened knowledge

HoH:
Masters degree in nursing. Common sense and quick to detect
the brainwashed

Me:
Also I never said I was a Trumper but that he did a marvelous
with the economy and I like that he put US interests first

HoH:
He’s a fascist,a bully, a misogynist ,
a fool who think he can “grab ‘em by the …..”.
I don’t get how a “Christian” can stand the sight of him.

Me:
Can’t say I agree with the false name calling

HoH:
Haha! You are a Trumper. Come on now, spill it.

Spill what I’m thinking…??!!

Me:
I wonder how Trump got into my post regarding sex and abortion

HoH:
Before I tell you what’s going on with you and that you are not the
solution but the problem I’ll end this discussion now.

Me:
Thank you for being a nurse

HoH:
Speaking for medical personnel we are fed up with religious nuts,
deniers of science, listening to Fox and filling hospitals to overflowing.
Even compassion has its limits when heart attack victims are being
sent away for lack of ICU beds.

Me:
I can only imagine —
hence my having been vaccinated back in March

Then blessedly came the voice of reason from Citizen Tom
The calvary so to speak:

@House of Heart

The debate over abortion is neither simple nor straightforward. Is about a woman’s control over her body? No. Whatever an unborn child may be, that child’s body is its own, not it’s mother’s. The issue is whether an unborn child has rights and is entitled to the protection of the state.

Instead of addressing those issues,
you have engaged in hysterical name calling.
You shamed yourself with such behavior.

HoH:
Citizen Tom, watch your mouth.
You have shamed yourself.
If you think it’s ok for the state of Tx to put a bounty on a woman’s
head you should join the Taliban. The sorry thing is
The GOP’s concern for the unborn ends at its birth.
They are the first to withhold social programs for the needy,
medical care for mom and baby. Shame on you.
Your body your choice, woman’s body your choice.
You’ve sickened me.

Whoa, really??? “watch your mouth”, “you sicken me”
what kind of person tosses civil discourse out the window and immediately
jumps to the mud?????

Me:
Shame on you for your anger and disdain…
As well as for your tightly closed heart

Citizen Tom:
@House of Heart

More name calling. Instead of debating, you are trying to justify your irrational rage with lies. No one put a bounty on “a woman’s head” as you put it. Look at who can be sued and why.

It is calling abortion wrong you resent. You are in a rage that anyone would call abortion murder. So, you make up stuff to justify yourself.

HoH:
This blog is in spam now.

Huh…seem’s my little blog just fell in a rubbish pile, who knew?
Her words of “action” actually got me tickled.
I thought I heard the stomping of a defiant angry little foot..

Citizen Tom:
@House of Heart

You remind me a child who takes her ball and runs home because
her playmates won’t let her win.

Then our wise friend Oneta added:
You are sooo right.
The un-Godly always want to be sanctioned by the Godly.
Somehow that eases the conscience. Everybody is doing it.
God wouldn’t send Mother Teresa to hell so let’s force Mother Teresa
to validate us. Fine example: The issue of have a third restroom
for transgenders.
No.
That might cause them some offence.
Great post, Julie.

And then Oneta brought it home…

I see House of Heart responded to you six times after she said
she doesn’t correspond with Trumpers.
Funny!!
This is your blog; doesn’t she know it is a sign of being a good hostess
for you to respond to all comments.
People who accuse those of us who believe in adoption instead of
abortion should check some stats.
See who takes care of the living babies who are not wanted.
I know you are deeply troubled by her sending you to spam.

Now that you’ve weeded through a rambling conversation between several folks
all before one of them decided to take all their marbles home,
storming off in the midsts of a temper tantrum…
I wonder when did this younger generation, these lovely millennials and
the younger generations of whatever letter or moniker we’re currently on,
missed out of what it means to be able to have civil discourse with another
human being?

How and when did they miss out on the art of agreeing to disagree??

When did name calling become the go-to when faced with issues that produce
frustration or challenge?
Instead of working through the challenges, doing our homework and
due diligence when it comes to issues of debate, we’ve simply allowed
ourselves to become debased in our use of knowledge–we have
regressed to more animalistic reactionary antics then to
using our brains.

Plus, we have moved into a post Christian society.
God has been relegated to the annals of overinflated human hubris

History seems to suggest that humans have always looked for someone
to blame for the current ills du jour.
For much of history, those who were blamed were the Chosen of God, the Jews.
Now we throw in their Western Civilization kin, the members of Christendom.
The children of The Book…

The godless blame the Godly—and even worse, some who claim Godliness,
have turned on their own.

Today’s sacrificial lambs now abound in the realm of an ideological world war.
Socialism, wokeness, self inflation, atheism, cancel culture…
each vie for prominence while the Christians and the Jews,
those pillars of Western Civilization, are deemed expendable.

I don’t think I’m ready to quit the fight to right this
tipping ship.

Keep speaking up oh righteous ones of the One True God…

“There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars.
On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring
and tossing of the sea.
People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world,
for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.
At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with
power and great glory.
When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads,
because your redemption is drawing near.”
Luke 31:25-28
.

The elephant named “sex” sitting in the living room

“And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child,
how can we tell other people not to kill one another?
How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion?
As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves
that love means to be willing to give until it hurts.
Jesus gave even His life to love us.
So, the mother who is thinking of abortion,
should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans,
or her free time, to respect the life of her child.
The father of that child, whoever he is,
must also give until it hurts.”
Mother Teresa

(image from the web)

Here is another excerpt from Peter Kreeft’s book How To Destroy
Western Civilization And Other Ideas From The Cultural Abyss
or perhaps we should just call this part 2 of yesterday post,
God Blessed Texas….

“It’s the unmentionable elephant in the living room.
It’s sex.
Religious liberty is being attacked in the name of sexual liberty.

The current culture war is most fundamentally about abortion,
and abortion is about sex. Abortion is backup contraception,
and contraception is the demand to have sex without having babies.
If storks brought babies, Planned Parenthood would go broke.

Catholics, Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and Evangelical Protestants
are the only groups left in the West who oppose the Sexual Revolution
and uphold traditional sexual morality.
Everyone else assumes, without question or controversy,
that contraception has finally “liberated” sex from its servile connection
with baby-making and has turned it into a purely personal,
“recreational” option.

Our liberty is being denied because it threatens their liberty,
Religious liberty threatens sexual liberty.
Our religious freedom of conscience threatens their sexual freedom
of conscience.

It’s not their behavior that we threaten, it’s their conscience.
They want us to approve their
behavior, at least implicitly, by paying for it.
We are the last people in our culture who say no, who judge,
who dare to play the prophet. Prophets are always unpopular.
There’s no profit in being a prophet.
Prophets are lights that are a bit too bright.
They show up the artificiality in the air-brushed Playboy fantasies.
They threaten the fun. Prophets are X-rays that show cancers
to patients who are living in denial.

If Jews and Christians could just erase two of the Commandments,
the ones against adultery and lust, the new post-Christian culture of
Western civilization would have absoutely no problem with religion.

They call us “judgmental” and “authoritarian”,
but it’s because we are exactly the opposite,
because we do not claim the authority to contradict our
Creator and Commander,
because we do not dare to be so judgmental as to judge His judgements
to be mistaken, because we dare not erase or change the line
He has drawn in the sand.
We cannot compromise our consciences because we believe our
conscience are His prophets, not society’s.

It’s not that we seek to impose our sexual morality (or any other part of morality)
on others by force.
We propose; we do not impose.
We seek only liberty of conscience for everyone, including ourselves.
No one wants to send sexual storm troopers into fornicators’ bedrooms.

But they seek to impose their sexual morality on us.
They do not merely propose, they impose.
They want to force us to compromise our consciences or be punished by
a fine (or something worse).
Why?
We can tolerate them; why can’t they tolerate us?
Why are they so threatened by our minority view?

Because they know it is not a minority view,
but the majority view in all times and places outside
twenty-first-century Europe and North America
(for example, every culture in history and “backward” cultures like
Africa and Latin America still today)
and the view of all the great religious of the world.
If our principles were merely quirky,
like the principles of a small Native American tribe that
sees the hallucinogenic peyote as a regions sacrament or the principles
of the Amish that see electricity as evil,
the Establishment would not be threatened by tased principles
and would readily grant these fringe groups the right to be exceptional
for the sake of conscience—as they do.
The do not insist that the Amish pay a penalty for not using electricity.
But they do insist that we pay a penalty for not paying for abortions.

Why?
Perhaps their consciences are still alive, after all, and feel guilty about killing
their own unborn children. How could they not?
If they can get us to compromise our consciences,
they won’t feel so bad about having compromised their own.
“Everybody does it” has always been a very effective and convenient excuse for
any kind of evil, even slavery or genocide.

That’s what this is not just about contraception or abortion or whether
every human biological life is intrinsically valuable.
It’s about whether every human conscience is.

a sorrowful truth

“We’re not interested in the truth.”
Ken Burns

(Julie Cook / 2021)

Doesn’t seem to matter whether I purposely keep the television off…off
from any sort of current events and news…it still seems to seep out of
those dark and odious cracks.

Two different stories caught my eye via an electronic news feed.

The first tale is distressing, disturbing and actually quite stomach turning—
as in I felt as if I was reading some surreal Frankenstein tale…

The reality, however, was that this tale is actually rooted in the research
facility of a major leading University.

Here are a few of the highlights in which to whet your curious whistle.

With tales of harvesting body parts…body parts from freshly aborted,
near term babies.

I felt sick to my stomach as well as broken hearted.

Sick to my stomach that aborted babies are teated like a “pull down menu”
of body parts.
Broken hearted that we humans have relegated our most vulnerable to
being literally harvested for research.

There is a cold callousness to such a business.

As well as emptiness which has lead to a true loss of humanity.

Harvesting is for fruits and vegetables, not body parts from
near term aborted babies.

Yep. Aborted. Near term. Babies.

And how odd Dr. Fauci’s name pops up in this stomach churning tale.

The link to the full tale is at the end….following

A few paragraphs I’ve chosen to highlight.

Millions in federal money flowing to tissue bank that collects fetal ‘heart, gonads, legs, brain’: report
University of Pittsburgh said it ‘complies with rigorous regulatory and ethical oversight’
By Sam Dorman

In a PureFlix interview last year, former university employee Lori Kelly
discussed a federally funded project with researchers seeking to collect
bladders and kidneys from babies as late as 24 weeks into pregnancy.
Kelly said that as project manager, she worked to develop
“a pull-down menu of baby body parts for researchers to choose
from to submit to the tissue bank, so that we could send the
body parts to them.”

Tuesday’s revelation adds mounting scrutiny to a program that has
already received attention for fetal experiments.

Earlier this year, Pennsylvania’s state legislature held a hearing
in which members discussed an experiment involving grafting
fetal scalps, containing “full-thickness human skin,”
onto rodents.

That particular project utilized tissue from the university’s
human tissue bank. It was also supported by grants from the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID),
which is led by top coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci.
While it’s unclear exactly how much federal money was spent on that project,
it was funded through two large grants —
one $1,498,642 and one $430,270.

The documents uncovered by Judicial Watch also show Pitt discussing
its effort to minimize warm ischemic time, or the amount of time an
organ maintains its body temperature after blood flow has been severed.
It’s unclear how these procedures take place, but Daleiden
has raised concerns about the university’s stated use of labor
induction abortions.

“If the fetus’ heartbeat and blood circulation continue in a labor
induction abortion for harvesting organs,
it means the fetus is being delivered while still alive and the cause
of death is the removal of the organs,” reads a press release from his
Center for Medical Progress.
Typically, abortion procedures rely
on digoxin to kill a fetus. However,
both that and dismemberment tactics can ruin viable tissue intended
for donations.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pittsburgh-fetal-tissue-project

The next tale dealt with a story regarding filmmaker historian Ken Burns.

If you’ve ever watched a PBS special, no doubt you’ve seen and heard
Ken Burns with his melodious voice extol the paths of our collective US history.

And now it appears as if Ken Burns is taking FB mogul Mark Zuckerberg to task.

Ken Burns is no conservative Republican…he is a historian… an individual who looks back to just how we came to where we are today.
A historian who is keen to the truth of past…be it good or bad or both…
because he understands that history is indeed both, good and bad… as we today must learn from both that good and bad.

Yet, as Ken Burns is learning, there are many who no longer wish to learn but rather those who wish to forget…all the while preferring to rewrite what was…

“Filmmaker Ken Burns calls Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg ‘an enemy of the state’
who belongs in jail
‘He doesn’t give a sh-t about us, the United States,’ Burns said”
story by Brian Flood

https://www.foxnews.com/media/ken-burns-facebook-mark-zuckerberg

“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship
in spirit and truth.”
John 4:24

“Be brave and try to detach your heart from worldly things”

“Be brave and try to detach your heart from worldly things.
Do your utmost to banish darkness from your mind and come to understand
what true, selfless piety is.
Through confession, endeavor to purify your heart of anything which
may still taint it.
Enliven your faith, which is essential to understand and achieve piety.”
St. John Bosco

(Notre Dame pre fire / Julie Cook / 2018)

Yesterday, I wrote a post about a Catholic priest from Wisconsin,
Fr. Altman, who is being relieved of his duties by his bishop.
The bishop states that Fr. Altman is both “divisive and ineffective.”

The real reason for his removal is due to his publicly stating that
one cannot be a true Catholic while supporting abortion…
one cannot be a true Catholic and a democrat.

That was a comment directed to both then presidential candidate
Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Two politicians who espouse to be practicing Catholics yet
are both very vocal regarding their support for abortion.

Support for abortion is a stance that is in direct opposition
to the teachings of the Church.
Or so we thought…

Fr. Altman was also very critical of fellow prelates who would deny their flock
communion during the course of the pandemic.

Father Altman doubled down on his stance despite the threats from the Church
hierarchy.
“Jesus warned the Apostles and us that if the world hated him,
it would hate us, just because we are trying to be faithful.
In other words, the world will be divided by the truth,” he continued.
“There will be we who are faithful, who follow the truth,
divided from those who are not faithful and who oppose the truth.”

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-fr-altmans-bishop-has-asked-him-to-resign

My post brought about a powerful comment from our biology leaning friend IB
(aka Insanity bytes)

I don’t think she will mind if I share that comment here:

Good stuff, Julie! This really triggered me,
“other shepherds are offended because I simply state
the fact that they abandoned their sheep in a time of need.”

Yep!

My church stayed open, never wavered even when things got heated,
so I was really blessed!
Just the same, every church around me shut down and some are
still shut today.
It’s been such a huge betrayal,
such a feeling abandonment that goes all the way down to my toes.
I had always thought the church would be there for us,
the church is our refuge when an asteroid is heading right for us
or a global pandemic comes.
I did not expect to see so many collapse and abandon their
people immediately.
A church who is not there for her people during hard times
is not a church. A two week quarantine is understandable,
forgivable.
But more than a year?
Get off my planet!

Obviously I got some powerful feelings about all this. 🙂

My response was a resounding AMEN!

It is a betrayal really.
A betrayal by those who’s calling has been to be the very
shepherds and polestars…those who are charged with directing souls
to the risen Savior.
And as IB states so succinctly, it has been a total collapse.
A collapse of the very institution that has been charged
with spreading the very Word of Salvation.

My response to IB:
“Indeed IB— if the Church—as in our sanctuaries, our places of refuge,
our earthly tangible connection to Jesus himself…
if they lock us out during our very hour of need—
if they remain(ed) silent when seniors were shut away from all family
with many dying isolated and alone,
if they refused communion to a spiritually hungry fold or if they
side(d) with death rather than life—
that is not the Bride of Christ as we know her.
Shepherds of the world or shepherds of Christ—
they need to truly ask who it is they serve!!!

When I think of our Church, our bulwark never failing,
I am always reminded of the scene from that classic 1939 movie
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with the cries of Quasimodo “SANCTUARY”…
meaning one is safe and protected within the walls of the Church…
the Church will protect those who seek her aid…

Here is a scene from one of the greatest films of the 1930s.
The gypsy girl Esmeralda (Maureen O’Hara) has been sentenced to
hang for witchcraft in front of Notre Dame cathedral by
the Chief Justice (Sir Cedric Hardwicke).
She is saved from certain death by the cathedral bell-ringer Quasimodo
(Charles Laughton) to the delight of Gringoire,
who loves her (played by a young Edmond O’Brien) and given sanctuary.

And so if the Church now decides to side with the world…our
sanctuary… our help in ages past and hope for years to come,
has become just another victim, lost to the cancel culture wars…

“Whenever that sacrifice of Christ is memorialized in the Church,
there is an application to a new moment in time and a new presence
in space of the unique sacrifice of Christ Who is now in glory.
In obeying His mandate, His followers would be representing in
an unbloody manner that which He presented to His Father in the
bloody sacrifice of Calvary.
After changing the bread into His Body and the wine into His Blood:
He gave it to them (Mark 14:22).
By that communion they were made one with Christ,
to be offered with Him, in Him, and by Him.
All love craves unity. As the highest peak of love in the
human order is the unity of husband and wife in the flesh,
so the highest unity in the Divine order is the unity of
the soul and Christ in communion.”
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, p. 401-2
An Excerpt From
Life of Christ

Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox…it matters not

“Give that child to me. I want it. I will care for it.
I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to
give that child to a married couple who will love the child
and be loved by the child.”
Mother Teresa

‘What really is at play here, dear family,
is that other shepherds are offended because I simply state
the fact that they abandoned their sheep in a time of need.
If this alleged virus was allegedly a fraction as dangerous
as they said it was, it was all the more reason to keep our
churches open and get you the sacraments so that you
stayed in a state of grace.
They put your eternal souls at risk!’
Fr. Altman

Recently I’ve been following a story about a Catholic priest who made
a comment during the past 2020 election that if one was a professed Catholic,
one could not also be a democrat.
The priest made this comment based upon the two leading democrats at
the time, who were Catholic but who were also very outspoken
regarding abortion.

At the time, the priest was obviously referencing candidate Joe Biden
and Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi…both professed Roman Catholics
who were each touting a ‘woman’s right to choose’—a woman’s right to
use abortion as a means of birth control or a means to end something
that might just be more than one wishes to bear.

The priest also had qualms with not being able to administer
Communion to parishioners who wanted to partake in Holy Communion during
the pandemic quagmire we all endured.

Well, not being Catholic, I actually whole heartedly happen to agree
with this priest.

As in I don’t know how one can be Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian.,
Methodist, Anglican, Orthodox, etc and calmly proclaim from the roof tops
that abortion is certainly fine and dandy.

It is an abomination to God.
Plain and simple.

Our burdens that we bear on this earth are all known by the Father.
Believers know that the gate will be narrow…not wide.
Many will opt for the wide gate…wide is easy yet it is a gate
that will lead to one’s demise.

The narrow gate leads to Salvation…a simple fact.

Our perceived burdens are not meant to be isolated.
Our very lives are tools for teaching.
Our lives, our actions, teach others.
How we opt to handle our burdens is paramount to others.
And yet we don’t or can’t grasp that small fact.
Everything we do has a direct impact upon another…
be it for good or for bad.

Our culture prefers easy and calm…heck, who doesn’t
But that is not what life is all about…easy and calm.

The disciples were each called by name and it was made clear
up front that their opting to follow Christ would not be
a cake walk. It would not be an easy journey.
Choose or not to choose.

However the disciples knew that to not follow would be the lesser
of the two choices…it would equate to death.

He requires a great deal of us.
Plain and simple.

Pick up your mat and walk, He commands us.
Sin no more.
Go forth and proclaim the greatness of the Lord…

BREAKING: Fr. Altman’s bishop has asked him to resign

Shockingly, Fr. Altman announced this past Sunday that his bishop,
Bishop William Callaghan, has asked him to resign for being
“divisive and ineffective.”

Fr. Altman is the priest who said,
“You can’t be a Catholic and a Democrat” in 2020,
and who, more recently, has been strong in his criticism of the
pro-abortion Biden Administration and, separately,
has admonished the U.S. bishops for denying the Sacraments to church-going
Catholics during the COVID crisis.

After delivering a powerful Pentecost Sunday homily, Altman explained:
“I regret to inform you, they want my head on a platter.
They want my head now for speaking the truth.
I apparently have created enemies in the hierarchy.”

“To paraphrase the great, great Cardinal Burke,
‘When I die, I will stand in judgment before the Lord,
not any Bishop of the church, nor as the great Cardinal Burke
specifically said, the USCCB,’” said the embattled priest.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/breaking-fr-altmans-bishop-has-asked-him-to-resign?utm_source=UPDT5_ALTMAN&ct=t(UPDATE-SUPPORT-FR-ALTMAN-5-25-21)

popping back up for air and holding onto the life buoy…seek while you can

Not all saints have the same sort of holiness.
There are those who could never have lived with others saints.
Not all have the same path. But all arrive at God.
St. John Vianney

(commercial recreation specialists)

During this somewhat self-imposed fasting from the world, I have been forced afforded the opportunity to step back from the world’s madness while sinking into my own moving madness.

Yet whereas I may be currently focused on the latest box to sort,
the latest immediate crisis repair screaming for attention,
or the simple task of navigating new and unfamiliar terrain…
I am not totally unaware of the continuing idiocy reigning supreme in this world of ours.

A pandemic remains.
Isolation is a reality for many.
Socialism and Marxism continue to be the current ideological darlings.
Civil unrest, Antifa, and protests just won’t go away.
Impeachment is a never ending taxpayer’s nightmare demanded by politicians who
don’t seem to care for said taxpayers.
Persecution of The Church is rampant.
The media is a rabid dog.
Zero tolerance for the unborn looms large as abortion is seen as some sort of unalienable
right.
All the while a cancel culture hopes to cancel out us middle Americans.

Yesterday marked the day of remembrance for the Holocaust.
It appears that it went largely ignored by our oh so pious news outlets.

Ode to the shifting tide.

And so I wonder…why have I even bothered coming up for air?
Is it any wonder that I opt to cling to a life buoy?

I suspect it would behoove all of us to cling to that life buoy…

That we must seek Him while we can.

That we pray while we still have the opportunity—
the only life line to He who is Holy.

Prayer is, as it were, being alone with God. A soul prays only when it is turned toward God,
and for so long as it remains so. As soon as it turns away,
it stops praying. The preparation for prayer is thus the movement of turning to God
and away from all that is not God.
That is why we are so right when we define prayer as this movement.
Prayer is essentially a ‘raising up’, an elevation.
We begin to pray when we detach ourselves from created objects and raise ourselves up to the Creator.”
Dom Augustin Guillerand, p. 91
An excerpt from
The Prayer of the Presence of God

the distortion of discernment—I think we call it fear

“. . . we are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil,
death and life, the “culture of death” and the “culture of life”.
We find ourselves not only faced with but necessarily in the
midst of this conflict: we are all involved and we all share in it,
with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally
pro-life.”
(Evangelium Vitae)
Pope John Paul II

(detail of a painting I did 11 years ago/ Julie Cook)

According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of distortion is:
the act of twisting or altering something out of its true, natural,
or original state

The definition of discernment is:
the quality of being able to grasp and comprehend what is obscure

After reading Oneta’s post yesterday over on Sweet Aroma, I was moved
in wanting to echo her thoughts regarding her topic Roe v Wade and the
near cataclysmic and apocalyptic affect the notion of a new Supreme Court justice,
who happens to be a practicing Catholic and mother to seven, is having on the
Democratic party and those who are ardent Pro-Choice supporters.

Here is the link to Oneta’s post
REVIEW NOT WANTED

The entire fiasco taking place in this very public and radically vicious and divisive
confirmation hearing over the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett is not based
on the merit of her time spent in court nor of the legal training or arduous education
she labored over in order to become a lawyer and judge, but rather,
it is over one simple thing…that thing, being fear.

It is the fear that a legal precedent determined in a court case in 1973 will be
automatically reversed.
As in POOF…should she be appointed to the bench, the henny penny folks
are thinking that suddenly a ruling from 1973 becomes null and void.

It doesn’t work that way folks.

Yet it is fear that is driving this train.
Fear for and over both life and death.

I thought I’d google quotes for the phrase “the sanctity of life”

One would think that Goodreads or even brainyquote, two of the top sites when one
is searching for a quote, would have tons of good quotes…but oddly
both had a mere handful—mostly obscure, a smattering of the well known, and
several of those in favor of population control.

I did not see the quotes by those who I knew in the past had spoken out very strongly
on that very thought.
And if memory serves me well, I had found those quotes among those very sites in past years.

My number one thought being Pope John Paul II…Mother Teresa coming in second.
I had to go back and google quotes by JPII just to find his words
on the subject…and find them I did.

I am still baffled by those who call themselves Catholic in faith and yet defend and even
promote the very idea of abortion…
How can you call yourself a Catholic and voice support for things that
are totally opposed to the tenents of your faith?

Or how can you call yourself a Christian and support the things that are
totally opposed to the command of God?

Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden are two that come to mind.
Catholic in name only—and if I recall, such a person is usually not
allowed to receive Holy Communion—for to oppose the doctrine of the Church
is to cut one’s self from the Chruch.

The following are a few of Pope John Paul’s thoughts regarding the
sactity of life—both for the unborn as well as for the dying.

“A society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members;
and among the most vulnerable are surely the unborn and the dying.”
(Address to the New Ambassador of New Zealand to the Holy See May 25, 2000)

“As the family goes, so goes the nation, and so goes the whole world in which we live.”
(Homily, Perth, Australia, Nov. 30, 1986)

“No country on earth, no political system can think of its own future otherwise
than through the image of these new generations that will receive from their parents
the manifold heritage of values, duties and aspirations of the nation to which they
belong and of the whole human family. Concern for the child, even before birth,
from the first moment of conception and then throughout the years of infancy and youth,
is the primary and fundamental test of the relationship of one human being to another.”
(Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations Oct. 2, 1979)

“Every individual, precisely by reason of the mystery of the Word of God Who was
made flesh (cf. Jn 1:14), is entrusted to the maternal care of the Church.
Therefore every threat to human dignity and life must necessarily be felt in the
Church’s very heart;
it cannot but affect her at the core of her faith in the Redemptive Incarnation
of the Son of God, and engage her in her mission of proclaiming the Gospel of life
in all the world and to every creature (cf. Mk 16:15).”
(Evangelium Vitae)

“Not only is the fact of the destruction of so many human lives still to
be born or in their final stage extremely grave and disturbing,
but no less grave and disturbing is the fact that conscience itself,
darkened as it were by such widespread conditioning,
is finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between good and evil in
what concerns the basic value of human life.”
(Evangelium Vitae)

when the death of an earthly saint wages war against God’s earthly warriors

“The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort.
You were made for greatness.”
Pope Benedict XVI

“The devil fears hearts on fire with love of God.”
St. Catherine of Siena

(the beach before the storm / Julie Cook / 2020)

I must confess that I never quite got the whole obsession with RBG,
aka Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

There are books out with quotes and snippets of her wisdom.
There are bobblehead dolls.
There are T’ shirts…
She had quite the massive cultural cult following.

And I never got it.
Heck, I still don’t get it.

I feel very badly for her family that she has passed away.
Just as I am always sad whenever I hear that a soul has lost their earthly battle…
however, I am absolutely bumfuzzled by the near mystic-like response her death is having
on so many in our society.

And it is not simply her death that is reverberating throughout this nation of ours
but it is the void now left in her professional life that is the beginning of
a massive storm.

Justice Ginsburg was a very vocal proponent of women’s rights–
particularly that of abortion.
Not that I think that is so much of a right as it is a fault.

So there is a storm now brewing over her replacement.

The word is that President Trump has narrowed his list down to two women…
both of whom are Catholic.

And so it seems everyone is now up in arms…

In a recent article on The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson, pens a piece about
the Democrats embracing an anti-Catholic bigotry regarding any SCOTUS nomination

Davidson notes that “President Trump is expected to pick a Supreme Court nominee
to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
as early as the end of this week.
Two of the people on Trump’s short list of possible nominees are Catholic women:
Amy Coney Barrett, a federal appellate court judge in Chicago,
and Barbara Lagoa, a federal appellate court judge in Atlanta.

Davidson continues…
The media has wasted no time casting aspersions on Barrett for her Catholic faith.
On Monday, the Washington Post ran a kind of explainer on Barrett,
which included an out-of-context quote from a talk she apparently gave years ago,
that a “legal career is but a means to an end… and that end is building the Kingdom of God.”

The statement itself, even without context,
is an altogether ordinary expression of sincere religious belief that any devout person,
whether Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or Muslim, would readily affirm.
Yet the Post’s Ron Charles highlighted it in a tweet Monday,
as if to warn us that Barrett might try to usher in a Catholic theocracy
if she gets onto the Supreme Court.

Also Monday, Newsweek published a somewhat hysterical piece about how Barrett
is affiliated with a Christian religious group, People of Praise, that served as the inspiration
for “The Handmaid’s Tale”—as if Barrett, a woman on the president’s short list for the Supreme Court,
somehow exemplifies the oppression of women by a religious patriarchy.
(Update: Newsweek posted a correction to this piece Tuesday, saying Margaret Atwood
never mentioned People of Praise as an inspiration for “The Handmaid’s Tale,”
which calls into question the entire point of the article.
The social media headline, however, remains unchanged.)

Elected Democrats have been even more frank about their antipathy towards Catholics,
even to the point of appearing to support an anti-Catholic religious test for nominees
to the federal bench. It was during Barrett’s 2017 confirmation to the federal
appellate court that Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein admitted openly that the judge’s
Catholic faith was a problem for her, infamously telling Barrett,
“the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”

“During those same confirmation hearings, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin grilled Barrett
on her faith, suggesting there’s something nefarious about being an “orthodox Catholic”
and asking her, “Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?”
She replied, “I am a Catholic, Senator Durbin.”

It’s hard to imagine the religious beliefs of any Democratic nominee to the federal
judiciary being questioned with this much open disdain,
and with the strong implication that these kind of Catholics—the kind
that take the teachings of the church seriously on issues like abortion and gay marriage—
aren’t fit for positions of public trust.

Some Democrats don’t even bother to imply this,
they just come out and say it.
No one stands out more in this regard than Democrats’
own vice presidential candidate, Sen. Kamala Harris.

It was Harris who last year accused federal judicial nominee Brian Buescher of having
“extreme positions” simply because he’s a member of the Knights of Columbus,
a Catholic benevolent society that also adheres to church teaching on things
like abortion and gay marriage.
(Full disclosure, I’m a member of the Knights of Columbus.
Lucky for me, I’ll never have to go through a Senate confirmation.)

“Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to
choose when you joined the organization?” asked Harris, implying that the Knights
are just a bit too Catholic for someone like Buescher to be trusted as a federal judge.

Harris was joined in this calumny by Sen. Mazie Hirono,
who asked Buescher if he would end his membership in the organization
“to avoid any appearance of bias.”
The exchange prompted Sen. Ben Sasse to introduce a resolution declaring it
unconstitutional to reject nominees because of their membership in the Knights of Columbus,
which was approved by unanimous consent.

The article continues with a bit of history as to how America has always had a mistrust
of Catholics.

But what I found so ironic in all of this disdain for a possible Catholic SCOTUS nominee
is that both Madame Speaker, Mrs. Pelosi and presidential candidate Joe Biden are
both Catholic.

And yet both are very vocal about their stance on women’s rights and pro-abortion.
Being pro-abortion is a glaring contrast to the Catholic faith…not to
mention to the Christian faith.

Obviously, their faith is not their focus in life.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/09/22/in-scotus-confirmation-fight-expect-democrats-to-embrace-anti-catholic-bigotry/

And so that is the single area of contention…it is the key issue that seems
to be at the heart of the deeply drawn line in the sand.
The intentional killing of babies–those in utero and those who are actually live births.

Our Democratic leaders seem hell-bent on finding a replacement for RBG who will
maintain the frantic race to abortions.

I’ve written so much about this issue that my heart grows heavy with each passing day.

I was moved by Oneta’s comment yesterday to what I posted on Monday:
“Leviticus 20 says the man looking on and doing nothing is open to the same punishment
as the man who sacrifices the child. Chilling thoughts if we do not cry out
for forgiveness AND do something to make it stop.”

I later read a post by our friend Sue over on awriterscorner.blog
regarding a new book by Jonathan Cahn.
Cahn wrote The Harbinger and has penned a part two–The Harbinger II, The Return.

Sue also commented like Oneta to my post:
“I just finished reading Jonathon Cahn’s HARBINGER 2 and it blew my mind!
The murder of our babies in the womb is exactly why we are under God’s judgment
and the silence from Christians is reprehensible.
This prophecy confirms all that Rabi Cahn said also.”

Jonathan Cahn Does it Again!

Later in the day, I read an article concerning the actress Patrica Heaton and her
foreboding warning to fellow Christians.
She was warning against an ensuing onslaught against Christianity…Christians,
be they Catholic or Protestant, whether they like it or not, will find themselves caught
up in the middle of the filling of RGB’s post on the Supreme Court.

Christianity is about to be drug through the mud and the Progressive Left
will be very happy to bury us all right there in that mud.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/patricia-heaton-onslaught-ignorance-religion-supreme-court

And so I say to you, I say it to us all—to any of us who call themselves Chrisitan…
be we Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant or non-Denominational….
A line is now drawn.
And God has spoken.
What side of that line will you stand?
And when God asks of your stance, what will you be able to say to Him.

The Lord said to Moses,
“Say to the Israelites: ‘Any Israelite or any foreigner residing in Israel who sacrifices
any of his children to Molek is to be put to death.
The members of the community are to stone him.
I myself will set my face against him and will cut him off from his people;
for by sacrificing his children to Molek, he has defiled my sanctuary
and profaned my holy name.
If the members of the community close their eyes when that man sacrifices one
of his children to Molek and if they fail to put him to death,
I myself will set my face against him and his family and will cut them off from their
people together with all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molek
Leviticus 20:1-5

How can you mend a broken heart…

And how can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
What makes the world go round?
Song Lyrics, Robin and Barry Gibbs (the Bee Gees)

(The Mayor itching to get in the rain / Julie Cook / 2020)

These are pictures of The Mayor itching to get out into the rain
What is it that draws kids to the water…itching to get out into the rain???

Well, we had to take the Mayor back home yesterday and naturally, it broke my heart.
It always breaks my heart to take her home.
She was adamant that she did not want to go home.
I suspect that it had a great deal to do with the fact that she did not
want to go home because she knew that the new daycare was in her future, once again.
Funny that a 2 and half-year-old knows what the cards have in store.

And naturally, it breaks my heart that I can’t just keep her 24/7.

I can’t tell you how much I love those kids–The Mayor and her brother, the Sheriff.

And so I think about how much we love our children and our grandchildren…
and yet I think about what just happened in Georgia–

The Georgia House bill—the Abortion Bill 481–aka the Georgia Heartbeat bill,
was unsurprisingly ruled unconstitutionally this week.

A heartbreaking ruling…

Children are our future, our hope, our love…not some sort of commodity that can
easily tossed aside on some sort of whim…

Life is not a mere whim…

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/georgia/federal-judge-says-georgias-heartbeat-abortion-bill-is-unconstitutional/X6N3AMLHRJCORN424DJK672ZYA/

There are six things that the Lord hates,
seven that are an abomination to him:
haughty eyes, a lying tongue,
and hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that make haste to run to evil,
a false witness who breathes out lies,
and one who sows discord among brothers.
Proverbs 6:16-19

this is the moment

Faith is a force, one so powerful that it cannot tolerate anything next to it.
How weak in faith we are: we are constantly letting things outside of God take up space in us!
Adrienne von Speyr
from Lumina and New Lumina

(a meme sent by a friend)

This meme pretty much sums up our collective year thus far…
as in 2020 probably won’t be the year you’ll want to invest in that special case of wine
to save for a momentous occasion on down the road.

The way things are going, there may be no more momentous occasions and
there may be no more roads…just saying.

So yeah, 2020…NOT, a very good year.

My husband and I basically quit watching the news almost two weeks ago.
It had gotten to such a depressing point.
Leaving us feeling helpless, frustrated, and downright mad.

Our leadership is abysmal—plain and simple.

They’ve not been able to handle a pandemic and Lord knows they
are not handling this cultural civil war worth a flip.

Arrogance, infighting, ignorance, hatred…you name it.

I do believe the President is truly trying to cull the madness but
the opposition, along with some of his own party, are making all things
impossible.

I feel like a person who’s been cut adrift in a raft,
drifting helplessly out to sea.

I imagine I am not alone.

I could write on and on about Antifa or Black Lives Matters, both
Marxist organizations bent on violence as an end means at any cost.

I could write about a society that wants handouts rather than hands up.

I could write about the never-ending demands for abortions and the deaths
of babies aborted who actually live– those so-called late-term abortions
that are gone awry.

I could write about a sexually confused swarth of society that
no longer believes in biology.

I could write about the lunacy over the “defund the police” movement…
as that is plain idiocy run amuck.

I could write about the destruction of monuments, statues, buildings,
churches, synagogues all because of a white European legacy…
all of which is simply stupid.

I could wirte about the capitulation by Church leadership
bending to the whims of a progressive culture that takes
no prisoners.
You either get on board or you get destroyed.

I could write about a culture that will strike you dead for
disagreeing with their rabid ideals.

I could write about being woke…or is that arrogantly ignorant?

I could write about violence, hatred, anger and zero civility.

I could write about the emotionalism found in a younger generation who
feels compelled to kneel against a flag and anthem of which is simply
misguided and historically ignorant.

I could write about a pandemic that has crippled a global economy
while leaving those in the know scratching their heads.

But I won’t.

I won’t belabor what the sane amongst us already know.

About 7 years ago, when our son was engaged to be married, I decided,
as the mother of the groom, I needed to get myself into some kind of
presentable shape.

My husband had bought me an elliptical machine for Valentines…a truly heart-healthy
gift…and so I decided I needed to get serious about using it.

I would spend between 30 to 60 minutes daily pushing, pulling and trucking
myself to nowhere all in the confines of our basement.
Sweating like a pig in the process.

After about two weeks I could actually feel a difference in my legs and ‘behind’.
A good difference.
My shorts fit better.
That was then…no so right now but I digress.

When I’d “workout”, I played music to help me push through the pain and strain.
One of the peppier songs was ‘Can’t Hold Us’ by Macklemore.

I didn’t really know all the lyrics…if I had, I probably wouldn’t have listened to it
but the beat was great when one was pumping one’s arms while practically running uphill
via a machine.

I still recall one part of the song that still resonates in my head…

Can we go back?
This is the moment
Tonight is the night, we’ll fight ’til it’s over
So we put our hands up like the ceiling can’t hold us
Like the ceiling can’t hold us

And so yes—
“This is indeed the moment”

All week long I’ve waxed and waned about the notion of discovering one’s true calling.
I’ve written about the differences between a vocation versus a job.
I’ve written about the curse of the repetition of history.
I’ve written about a world gone simply mad.
I’ve written about being lost while longing to be found.

But the one thing I do know, and know most clearly, it that
this is the time for those who call themselves Christians to stand up and stand firm.

You have not been called to be timid.

Those who waffle will fall.
Those who prefer appeasment will be dismayed.
Those who yield to the world will be damned.

It is the one thing that I know more clearly than anything else.

God has called us to be resolute.
This is our Spiritual call to arms.

Accepting a rewritten version of God’s word is unacceptable for a follower of Christ.
Condoning death as a viable and convenient option rather than choosing life is a sin.
Marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman, end of sentence.
Denying Christ before the vile and violent mob, kneeling before the world might
spare your earthly life but it will not find you seated by Christ’s right hand.

Enough is now enough.
God has given us a voice.
It’s time we use it.

They can kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul.

Cry aloud; do not hold back;
lift up your voice like a trumpet;
declare to my people their transgression,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
Isaiah 58:1