Powers and Principalities Attack the Holy Father

1. The vicious attacks on the Holy Father by the media and the cognoscenti increase, over his common sense and undeniably true statements about condoms, HIV/AIDS, and Africa. See here and here. The ideology of sexual libertinism is so powerful that it will brook no dissent. And, as the Holy Father noted in his recent public letter, there are some groups and people whom it is considered fashionable to hate. Let's never forget that the principalities and powers have an agenda to drive the Church from the public arena and to persecute us. Please pray for the Holy Father and Holy Mother Church, especially on this Solemnity of St. Joseph, our Patron.

2. As Msgr. William Smith used to say, verbal engineering always preceeds social engineering. Now some of the leading dictionaries are changing the definition of "marriage" to include same-sex couples.

3. The Temple of Moloch, er, I mean Planned Parenthood, continues to cover up the rape of children. At some point, will the Department of Justice start a large-scale interstate investigation of this?

4. A record 40% of births in the United States are now out of wedlock, in part because more people are deliberately choosing to have babies without marriage. Of course, this doesn't count the children lost to abortion, which would push the out-of-wedlock pregnancy rate even higher. This bodes ill for the stability of society.

5. There was a very disturbing article over the weekend, based on a report by the International Red Cross, about the use of torture by our government in the war against Islamic terrorists. There is no way that the kind of conduct described in this article, if true, could possibly satisfy the standards of the moral law (see CCC 2297-98 and 2312-13, and the USCCB's webpage on torture). The impulse to use "whatever means are necessary" is not a Christian sentiment, and we cannot approve consequentialism in any of its disguises.

6. Interesting analysis of Archbishop Chaput's recent comments on the media and their coverage of the Church. What surprises me (well, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised) is the shocking ignorance of the remarks by Sally Quinn, who supposedly is qualified to cover religion for the Washington Post. Would they assign a reporter to cover baseball who doesn't have a clue that there are four balls, three strikes, and three outs?

7. This is just weird -- the Japanese are getting closer to developing a robot that resembles a human to an uncanny degree. I'm very worried about this. Didn't they notice that the robot is dressed like an Imperial Storm Trooper?

8. St. Joseph, please pray for us, especially us men, that we may be better husbands, fathers, and men.