Saints and Heroes

A popular writing assignment for elementary school children, and sometimes older as well, is the task of writing about someone the student admires, writing about one of their heroes.  One of my kids' middle-school teachers remarked to me after giving this assignment that her students didn't seem to have any heroes. She was confused as to why this would be so (she was British and a feminist) and disappointed that the kids often felt they were their own heroes.

An antidote for such an affliction is to read about Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko.  His short life is one of remarkable faith and fortitude, eclipsed only by the immense suffering he endured at the hands of the unspeakably brutal state which tortured and killed him.

His mother is interviewed in the series, Raising A Martyr, the first part, second part, third part and fourth.

Supreme Court Weighs Marriage

This is a good explanation of the two marriage cases before the Supreme Court.  The article is from New Yorker's Family Research Foundation

Parent, Child, Marriage

The same-sex marriage movement is presented innocently as nothing more than endorsing the 'right' of same-sex couples to marry just as heterosexual couples marry.  Supporters of same-sex marriage are quick to label any opposition to their view as bigoted, homophobic, hateful and just plain old stupid.  Those of us on the other side of the aisle look upon same-sex 'marriage' first as an oxymoron, but moreover as a move to re-define marriage, to toss out the traditional notion of marriage and to reduce the uniqueness of (heterosexual) marriage to naught, to profoundly change what is natural and normal. 

This slightly dry and tedious article illustrates how same-sex unions and same-sex 'marriage' include re-defining the relationship between parent and child.  Better to start at the end of this article with this quote,

As the sociological bonds between parent and child are perverted through a redefinition of marriage, it seems the resistance to breaking the biological bonds wanes as well. Replacing the marital act with various assisted reproductive technologies dehumanizes children and treats them as commodities to be manufactured and marketed for the pleasure of adults.

and read backwards.

Born This Way?

Michael Voris over at Church Militant.TV (also here) leaves few stones unturned.  Below he addresses homosexuality and whether it can validly be claimed that there is a sexuality other than heterosexuality.  This video is worth watching from the beginning, but if you're pressed for time, start watching at 2:14 as he develops the point that homosexuality is not another choice, but is disordered heterosexuality. (The presentation is original to him, but not the idea which is the position of the Catholic Church.)   His argument also attends to the claim that homosexuals are "born that way" and so can't help their behavior.  Were we to accept that view, then we would logically be led to accept, for example, that some people are just "born" wanting to have sex with children.  That is, we would be led to acknowledge pedophilia as a permissible and normal sexual preference, just as many are demanding that we believe homosexuality is a normal sexual preference.

 Voris borrows the analogy of colored vases to illustrate his point that homosexuality isn't just a vase of a different color but rather a broken vase. Vases, clay vases, clay pots, clay vessels.  Hmm.  Calls to mind that verse from 2 Corinthians 4:7 about the treasure we have in earthen vessels, the power of which comes from God and not us.