Too much emphasis on "Green"? Part I: Food

In the first of a multi-part series, I will discuss whether we place the wrong emphasis on moral issues and whether our Catholic leadership may be somewhat to blame.

I think a lot of Catholics are confused by rhetoric we hear from our leaders recently. There is a key element to the confusion and that is order of importance. As you know, our current pope has made many comments regarding climate change, food shortages, capitalism, being more inclusive, etc. But what he usually fails to emphasize is context. Take food for instance. He says we shouldn’t waste food. I don’t think this is a forgone conclusion by any means. Obviously people shouldn’t purposely try to waste food but no one does that on purpose anyway. People at least intend to eat whatever they buy. So is it a sin to throw out rotten or expired food? In my opinion it’s not.

For whatever reason, people seem obsessed about food more so than other goods. This makes sense since food directly feeds us, so it seems bad when someone else is starving but we throw out food, in some cases things starving people would be willing to eat. Yet we have no problem with people throwing out clothing, furniture, electronics, or any other goods for the most part. No one says “Hey! Someone in Africa doesn’t have furniture, how can you just throw it out!” We can see this is not even logical. Whether or not you keep a couch will not determine whether the person in Africa will get one. Likewise with food. Whether or not I consume a rotten banana will not feed an African or Indian or anyone else. But the visceral reaction to food waste remains.

In reality, we can only help people eat by increasing economic prosperity for those people. The reason people cannot eat is because they have no money. Obviously the first thing you’ll spend money on is food. Our consumption or non-consumption is irrelevant. The Earth can easily produce more than enough food for everyone. So it’s not as if us wasting food leaves less for everyone else. In fact, according to basic supply and demand theory in economics, if we buy MORE food, the price will go down. Ironically, wasting food is therefore probably beneficial to people who don’t have enough.

Another option we have for providing food to the needy is simply giving them food or money to pay for food. I feel this is a short term solution, because ultimately we all know the saying about teaching a man to fish versus just giving him a fish.

My main point is I have never heard of anyone who purposely throws out good food for no reason except to destroy the planet or for lack of concern for the poor. It’s usually done because the food is gone bad. I do not see any moral issues here with this situation. Plus, if you make the argument that throwing out food means you could have given it to the poor, you could equally make the argument that spending money on too much house or too much clothing or too many movies could have instead been spent on buying food for the poor. I don’t see throwing out food as an important moral issue of our time. Maybe once we are morally perfect, this issue could be addressed. I don’t think the pope should be spending valuable time discussing this topic. There are far more important and immediate sins that must be addressed. Another reason to not discuss this so much is the ongoing confusion people have with real spirituality and a sort of pagan worship of mother earth. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that often people openly involved in manifest sin will emphasize saving the planet or saving animals and will pay little attention to moral sins such as lust, anger, pride, etc. They say as long as you are saving mother earth, all is good, because the “higher power” doesn’t really care about your personal life. With the pope talking about saving the planet all the time, this only lends credence to this pagan view.

I can’t blame the pope entirely for this state of affairs. He has spoken definitively on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, etc. but the media doesn’t like reporting this. They have branded him this new avant-garde hip pope who is “with it” and therefore doesn’t talk about those things as much. He’s the cool green pope. Or so they want to believe. Look, I, like a lot of devout Catholics, have an issue with how Pope Francis gives off-the-cuff remarks on a variety of topics, usually in an airplane which leaves the faithful confused. So I think he has to be extremely careful about the messages he purveys. People will always take the path of least resistance. If they believe they can be good people by recycling and posting pro-environmental messages on Facebook rather than actually being a morally good people, they will, and they will use any excuse they can to avoid the actually challenging stuff. That’s why I think it’s so important to have moral clarity in a time of confusion.

Tune in soon for the next installment of this series.

Trump's Audio Tape: Progressives' Hypocrisy

Progressives are out in force bashing Trump's latest audio tape where he makes lewd remarks about women. The level of moralizing coming from these leftist is astounding. It's just sheer moral outrage, as if an unspeakable crime has transpired.

In the meantime, this group of shocked progressives is the same group that actively promotes every and all forms of sexual expression, perversion and depravity. Nothing is off limits for these people adn their ilk, yet they feign disgust when Trump makes some locker room banter.

On the one hand, they promote every form of sexual depravity, telling us it's totally fine to have sex with as many people as you want, whenever you want, however you want. Republicans and conservatives are routinely bashed as being prudish and moralistic because they want to place restrictions on sexuality.

These progressives say there should be no youngest age to be sexual, nothing wrong with any number of partners, they condone all forms of sexuality including violent and degrading ones as long as there is "consent". Then of course when something inevitably goes wrong (or right because sex is actually designed for reproduction), they are the first group to advocate abortion.

So this group condones and encourages every form of sexual perversion and when this leads to pregnancy, they just as strongly encourage the killing of a small child.

If anyone complains that certain pornographic material is offensive or that sexual education in schools shouldn't include all kinds of weird and perverse things, the progressives are always the first to jump down their throats demanding they accept it all and teach it to their kids.

But then when Trump, the epitome of what they want for society in terms of sexual views, actually expresses his views from ten years ago, these fraudsters pretend they are all shocked and we've insulted and harassed their innocent ears.

It's all hypocrisy!

Martha Raddatz: "Sometimes there are good reasons for that"

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? During the debate tonight, moderator Martha Raddatz literally treid to debate Donald Trump. He was asked about what he woudl do in Aleppo, a city in Syria. While answering, he said it was a bad idea to tell the enemy the plans before they take place. He was INTERRUPTED by the moderator who insisted multiple tiems in a row that sometimes the military has good reasons for doing this including psychological warfare etc.

It was one of the most blatant examples of the moderators trying to help Hillary Clinton. Under absolutely no circumstances is it the responsibility of the media or moderators to debate Trump when he is supposed to be debating his opponent. I don't recall them helping Trump against Hillary. This reminds me of when Candy Crowley was trying to help Obama when he was debating Mitt Romney by taking it upon herself to debate Romney.

I can't find the exact clip, but here's a small sample of this moderator interrupting and trying to debate Trump:

Trump beats Hillary in 2nd Debate

After watching the entire debate and reading some of the comments online, it seems very clear, Trump won the second debate.

Right from the get-go Anderson Cooper, one of the moderators, attacked Trump on the new audio tape released where he makes lewd comments about a woman and women in general. It wasn't enough that Cooper brought this up, the other moderator, Martha Raddatz had her turn with virtually the same question.

The moderators of this debate were clearly in favour of Clinton. If Trump went a second or two over his time, they would pounce on him. Very often, while he was answering a question, the moderators would cut him off to say he wasn't answering correctly or challenge him on his answer. This rarely if ever happened to Hillary. Hillary was only interrupted a couple of times, while it was a constant occurrence for Trump.

But Trump wouldn't let all that happen that easily. He called out the biased questioners and said he was not being treated fairly which was 100% true. They never brought up the 33,000 deleted emails, even though at least twice they brought up his recent tape where he made lewd comments over 10 years ago. Last, I checked though, lewd comments didn't threaten national security.

Trump had a number of good zingers. When Clinton blasted him or not paying more in taxes, Trump responded by saying it's the government and specifically her that is responsible for the laws, he just follows them. It's a pretty stupid argument anyway that someone is not paying more than they are required to.

So despite the moderators actively debating Trump and him having to take on 3 to 1, Trump clearly came out the winner, and this isn't just form my perspective. I think overall most commentators will believe the same thing.

They keep interrupting Trump

Trump isn't taking this lying down.  Goes after Bill Clinton's horrendous record with rape and sexual assault and Hillary laughing about getting a rapist of a 12 year girl of without conviction.

Anderson Cooper goes for jugular right away bashing Trump about the tapes.

Trump says we need to focus on ISIS.

Donald Trump's Lewd Comments: A Catholic Perspective

So by now you've all heard about Trump's derogatory, base, sexual comments about women. This happened about 10 years ago when he was with Billy Bush from one of those celebrity shows kind of like Entertainment Tonight. It's not clear to me if he knew the mic was on. But anyway, let's just say Trump made some very vulgar comments about women. That footage was released in the past 24 hours.

They say the comments were made in 2005, not sure the exact day. But that means Trump was probably just married to his new wife Melania, whom he married in January 22, 2005. So he just got married and he was making some very explicit and lewd comments about other women. So let's analyze this from a Catholic perspective.

Guys and Lust

So clearly Donald Trump's comments showed a level of lust towards women. But the comments were also degrading and vulgar. In any event, many men have lustful or lewd thoughts when seeing or interacting with women. This is not uncommon. Now, in Catholicism we are called to be chaste and pure. Sexuality is reserved for the marriage bed and we must try, to the best of our ability, to be respectful and not lust after women.

But I don't think this was just about lust. It was also a show of dominance on his part. He wanted to show the other guy his sexual prowess. Keep in mind also during this interaction, Trump is in his late 50s. He just married a woman (third marriage). You'd think he would have learned by now.

So the point of this section is simply to say a lot of guys have lustful thoughts, but really it's up to us to try to contain them and to look upon women with respect and love, not as objects of our base desires.

It Was Done Publicly

One of the problems with these comments by Trump is the public nature of them. Again, I don't know if he was aware he was being recorded. But he spoke them out loud. They weren't private thoughts. He was announcing them for other people to hear. I think this adds to the severity of it.

Asked Forgiveness

In the end, once this footage was released, Trump immediately apologized. He didn't make excuses, he just apologized and said he is sorry for saying those lewd comments. I, for one, accept his apology. For one thing, many many guys unfortunately engage in this type of banter. That doesn't make it good, but it does happen. Secondly, we as Christians are obliged to accept someone when they apologize for their actions. He said it was wrong and he's sorry, we should leave it at that.

Plus, let's not act like we've never looked upon a woman with lust or done something immoral or talked a certain way. Why are we holding everyone else up to a higher standard than ourselves? This happens a lot. And if the person apologized, then leave it at that. Trust me, Jesus has forgiven you for a LOT more than this. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

Who is Overall Better President

When you look at it overall, Trump is still obviously much better than Hillary. Hillary doesn't apologize for promoting and encouraging abortion. No number of comments, no matter how lewd, can ever equal the killing of an innocent person. Yet Hillary never apologizes. She is unapologetic of her promotion of abortions all throughout pregnancy. The Democratic party thinks it's a wonderful thing! I don't think there's any comparison.

Then you look at her running mate's comments which basically amount to saying "I know it's immoral and wrong to promote abortion, but I don't care what my church (read: conscience and morality) think about this, I will promote it and fund it ANYWAY.

You tell me who is acting more in line with moral law.

My Own Life

Sadly, this kind of talk toward women is all too common. Most workplaces, especially ones with predominantly men or blue collar workplaces, this type of talk is ubiquitous. If you refrain from engaging in it, you soon become the butt of jokes yourself. A true moral superhero could withstand this, but to many guys the pressure is too much. Obviously there are some who want to talk like this, but many others are pressured into it. That's a sad part of culture. The point is, it exists. Trump does it here. But he's not the first and will not be the last. We must use our good Christian witness to show people how to talk about others respectfully.