The pope today canonized Junípero Serra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jun%C3%ADpero_Serra

Pope Francis is in America now: My Concerns

So Pope Francis has arrived in the United States, He landed in Andrews Air Force Base in Washington DC to be precise. He'll also be visiting New York and Philadelphia during his 6 day trip. He will also be speaking at the United Nations in New York City.

It's really great that the pope has finally come to America. I'm in Canada, but this is as close as he's ever been to my country.

I am somewhat concerned about this pope. Every time he speaks, his apologists come out in droves saying "oh no, he didn't really mean what he said. he in fact meant the opposite." No one seemed to have to do this much with Pope Benedict.

Some people attribute this to the liberal media trying to put words in the pope's mouth which advance their cause, but why didn't this happen before? Again, no one put words in Pope Benedict's mouth except bad ones. So why, all of a sudden, are they using the new pope to push their agenda?

Often, papal apologists will say you have to put the pope's words into context. But even after reading the context, I still find the words troubling in some ways. There are many examples. From telling people they don't need to "breed like rabbits" at a time when Catholics are not even reproducing enough to keep the population going.

Or doing things like accepting a hammer and sickle shaped into a cross with Jesus on it. Vatican spokespeople will clarify these gaffs by essentially removing the pope's agency and saying he will pretty much accept anything. Are we to believe the Prince of the Apostles and the Vicar of Christ is incapable of standing up for himself? As a cardinal, he wore red to signify his willingness to die for his faith, but now that he's wearing white we are meant to believe he is not even willing to refuse a distasteful gift?

I believe the pope is the Vicar of Christ. I do not believe the See of Peter is empty or any other such thing. The Church will continue and the Holy Spirit will protect it from error. But should the pope even be speaking to the public as often as he does? I understand that he wants to cultivate a very approachable and loving image, but I think it can go too far. It's like the more you say, the less serious people take each word. In my opinion, the pope should mainly issue papal decree and be very careful about every utterance. We can already see the damage that he is happening from misinterpretations.

But it's not all bad. The pope has forcefully spoken against abortion, and even transgenderism. He has spoken rightfully about our duty to protect our fellow man and our need to care for the poor. Try as they might, the pope will never fit neatly into a Liberal soundbite.

But even the good things the pope has spoken against seem to lack something in my opinion. They lack the concept of individual holiness. He seems to focus instead of societal ills as he sees them. He appears to think of people in groups rather than as individuals. He even seems to oppose inanimate objects or concepts like air conditioning or economies of scale. In another post I will address the pope's economic theories and ideas. But I will briefly say with this topic too, instead of advocating personal responsibility, the pope seems to criticize an entire system of economics.

I hope this trip of the pope proves fruitful, but I am somewhat fearful that it will simply be exploited by the liberal media and institutions for their own purposes.

SHOCKING: Men and Women are Different!

There is a persistent myth being perpetrated by feminists that men and women should be exactly alike. This philosophy could be seen this past Friday when three sisters decided to ride through Kitchener Ontario topless. Everyone knows men and women are not alike, but feminists try to convince us otherwise. This all comes from a faulty understanding of equality. First of all, we are not equal in many ways. I find many modern-day philosophies are about simplifying concepts without nuance or distinction. Many socialists believe in “income equality”. Then they go around looking for any inequality in income and cry foul. They don’t consider the fact that the economy is rewarding the activities of some people and not others. They don’t consider that some people work long, hard hours, while others do very little. They see the simplistic inequality and that’s enough.

Same goes for sexuality issues. To any normal person, women’s bodies above the waist are much more sexualized than men’s. Part of the reason we wear clothes at all in western society is for modesty. This is such an important reason that it trumps every other purpose. Even if you are extremely warm you would never take off your pants in public. If you did you would be arrested. It’s not as if it’s not warm enough. In fact, during the summer in many places you could probably be fairly comfortable wearing nothing all day. Yet our norms about sexuality do not allow this and most normal people are embarrassed about walking around naked.

The fact is our bodies are different. The fact that this needs to be stated is surprising, but apparently it does. Also, men’s and women’s reactions to bodies of the opposite sex are different as well. As mentioned before, women’s bodies are much more sexual than men’s. A man not wearing a top will illicit much less sexual desire and stimulation in general than a woman doing the same. The fact is, everyone knows this. It is only brought into question by people who believe that rather than discovery human nature, it is our job to create and modify it to our liking. This has disastrous outcomes because God created us a certain way and if we try to act against it we only end up hurting ourselves. I might “decide” that I can live on just drinking Pepsi and nothing else. But this will have obvious negative consequences. I can protest as much as I like, I can join pro-Pepsi groups, but the reality will still hit me.

Another thing is how easily people dismiss cultural norms without ever investigating where they came from or what purpose they serve. I recently watched an episode of VSauce which briefly touched on the idea that people wear clothes to protect and hide their sexuality from the public which promotes monogamy and ordered sexual relationships. I don’t have a thorough or full answer to the purpose of clothes at this moment, but suffice it to say, there are true and valid reasons which developed over millennia.

As a side note, I find it funny that these women have Muslim-sounding names (last name Mohammed). In general, that religion seems more concerned about modesty than most, yet these women seem to have none.

 

One Step Closer to Destroying Marriage on a Civil Level

There’s been a lot of hoopla over five American Supreme Court justices deciding there is a right to gay marriage contained within the constitution. As Justice Scalia pointed out, finding things like this in the constitution somewhere is essentially legislating from the bench. Clearly the Founding Fathers did not see any such right and did not believe that marriage was some amorphous concept that should incorporate all definitions. In any event, the job of the supreme court is not to create legislation, but to interpret existing legislation in the face of challenges. This is not what happened here. Here, the justices somehow discovered the right of same-sex couples to marry. As Scalia pointed out in the dissent, this means for well over 100 years, states were unconstitutional.

The dissent for this ruling by the 4 in opposition was rather scathing. Scalia’s criticism basically amounted to the idea that 9 unelected lawyers are now creating legislation, overriding the desires of so-called democratic states. Many states in the US had even amended their constitutions to say marriage is, by definition, the union of one man and one woman. Then using no actual legal basis, the supreme court overrides the will of the people by discovering a right that had never previously existed.

Of course, the reaction of most people was one of elation. The hashtag #lovewins has been trending heavily on Twitter. I suppose given the absurdity of this supreme court ruling, you might as well believe the Supreme Court was deciding whether love would win or lose. Or maybe they were deciding if love would win or hate would win. Four justices apparently chose hate and five chose love.

When you search “Scalia on gay marriage” or something similar on Google, who wrote a dissent of the opinion, for about the first 50 results all you see are personal attacks on the justice, calling him close-minded, homophobic, etc. Never mind he doesn’t even express his own viewpoint and is simply interpreting the law, he’s still hated. Justices, as Scalia points out, are not supposed to give their own opinions or imbue them into their decisions. They are meant to be objective interpreters of laws made by the legislative branch or to verify their constitutionality.

There are a few issues here. First, declaring that marriage no longer has any sex-specific requirement simply takes away one more criterion for the definition of marriage. This requirement is so essential to the definition that removing it basically makes marriage a nebulous and unspecific concept with no real definition. Originally, marriage was a permanent union of a man and a woman for the purpose of procreation and raising of children. The definition has already been severely tampered with. First there was legalized divorce. The process for this kept getting easier and easier, to the point where we now have no-fault divorce and people can separate for any reason. This removed the permanency of the union. Then contraception attacked the idea that marriage was procreative. Many couples chose never to have kids. All was left was that it was between a man and a woman. But now even that last requirement has been removed. Now a lot of people don’t thinks twice about 2 men marrying, having a childless relationship, then splitting up after a couple of years. The only shred of the original definition is the number of people involved, but that is now being challenged by those who want to legalize polygamy.

Now that marriage has almost been completely emptied of all meaning from the civil point of view, there is just one step left – complete annihilation, which on a civic level I’m totally okay with. The thing people don’t get about marriage is that they think the people for whom it is legal is some kind of sappy recognition of their love. But why would a faceless entity care about someone’s love? I love my mother, is there some form of official recognition for that? There isn’t even a form of recognition for other unions. Recognition only comes about for some state-related reason. The reason marriage was recognized by the state is because it helps promote a safe and stable environment for the raising of children and creates better citizens. Statistics clearly bear this out. But now people see it as some kind of badge of honor, but for what? Committing immoral acts? What benefit does that have to society? Plus, homosexual activity has been legalized in all first-world countries already, so that’s not the issue. Annihilation of marriage on the civic level would also hopefully destroy any legal hope gay activists would have to force churches to perform them. It should be a strictly religious institution anyway.

Bottom line: marriage has already lost most of its value and meaning when it comes to the state, and declaring something legal does not make it morally good.

This article was prompted after reading the following, a type of personal story we will probably be inundated with in the coming days:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/mount-pearl-man-living-in-u-s-excited-to-finally-be-able-to-marry-same-sex-partner-1.3131510

 

Bruce Jenner and More Transgenderism Talk

So Bruce Jenner is on the cover of Vanity Fair wearing women's clothing. Most people are praising this as a huge step forward for trans rights. But I think we need to step back and analyse the situation a little more closely.

Bruce Jenner is a 65 year old grandfather. He has 6 biological children and 5 grandchildren. Rather than being the patriarch of his family as he should be, he has decided to dress in women's clothing and act like a woman. I am not here to judge Bruce, who has now decided to call himself Caitlyn. I'm here to point out some information that others are unwilling to touch.

As if there is no objective reality anymore, the minute this man decided to call himself "Caitlyn", and say he is a woman, almost every news outlet decided to follow suit. Apparently what determines if a person is a man or a woman is entirely based on what they tell you, not biological fact.

Would we apply the same logic to a white man who insisted he was black? Would news outlets immediately start calling such a person African-American once he decided that's what he is? Would objectors be called bigots. The person in question would argue that despite his outward appearance, he is in fact black. Then I suppose this person could seek out benefits which only apply to visible minorities. On what grounds could anyone object to this person calling himself this, using our current thinking?

Dr. Paul McHugh who has studied transgenderism in depth, and was psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins University, believes the modern-day approach to the issue is wrong. A year ago in a Wall Street Journal article, McHugh points out that people who undergo mutilation of their sexual organs to appear more like the other sex, also known as sex reassignment surgery, have a suicide rate 20 times higher than average. Usually pro-trans sources will say this is because society hasn't fully accepted them yet. However, no evidence shows this to be the case.

As an expert who has published 5 books and 125 peer-reviewed medical articles, Dr. McHugh believes transgenderism is similar to body dysmorphic disorder wherein a person believes false things about their body despite being clearly untrue, such as is the case with people suffering from anorexia.

There are disorders similar to this as well, such as body integrity identity disorder, wherein a person believes they should have been born missing a limb. Some of these individuals will go to great lengths to accomplish their desired bodies and will sometimes have healthy limbs amputated, often illegally.

Before you think this is just too weird and abnormal, keep in mind that this is precisely what is happening with "sex reassignment surgery". Often healthy limbs are amputated, fake limbs are added, and unnatural hormones are added to disrupt healthy and normal hormone production. The same type of process could theoretically be used to achieve any number of changes in a person's body.

The clear disregard for the obvious here is just a case of the emperor's new clothes. It goes along a well with the modern-day notion that beauty or even truth is not something to be discovered, but to be invented and is highly personal.

Dr. McHugh wrote a great article, which can be seen here, for First Things Magazine. After conversing with hundreds of pre and post-op transsexuals, he realized certain peculiarities about them. When these operations first started in the 70s, the operation candidates were all men. What he realized is that despite their insistence on being women trapped in men's bodies, they were not true women in many ways. For example, he says they seemed almost completely uninterested in babies and children, and that many of them expressed an attraction to women and preferred to be called "lesbian".

Also, although surgery can successfully lop off certain limbs and change certain body parts, many telltale signs remain, such as a larger Adam's apple, larger hands, smaller hips, and other things only seen in men. On top of this, many people who interacted with these transgender men said they did not "seem" like women. There are certain subtleties about women which these men did not possess.

Much of the desire for certain men to "become" female was not from a longstanding view of themselves as women as such, but rather an arousal they achieved from dressing as women and looking like women. What Dr. McHugh also noted was that years after the sex reassignment surgery, most of the patients displayed the same mental issues they had before the operation. The underlying problem had apparently not been properly addressed.

Other startling discoveries were made by Dr. McHugh's associate Dr. William Reiner in the area of males who were raised as girls from birth. In some cases, newborn boys' genitals were so badly malformed, some doctors suggested their genitals be removed and to have female genitalia constructed. Despite their genital mutilation present at birth, all the boys with one particular condition had received all the same hormones as a healthy boy in the womb.

The results were shocking. In 14 out of 16 cases, the boys were raised as girls. In 2 cases, the boys were raised as boys. Out of the 14, 8 had since declared themselves to be male, 5 were living as female, and 1 was of unknown gender. Also, every one of the 16 had displayed typical male characteristics during childhood, such as rougher play and traditionally male-child interests.

What all of this information tends to show is that transgenderism, far from being an indicator that there is in fact a woman born in a man's body or vice versa, what we really have is a person with a mental disorder who needs help. Such is the case with Bruce, now known as Caitlyn, Jenner. This man needs help, and his family needs a father.