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Sometime last year, I was listening to a podcast episode of the Thomistic Institute. I don't recall the exact topic of the presentation, but the speaker was developing for his audience the different related meanings of the term "word." He was going through the idea that a word is, first and foremost, an immaterial idea, thought, or concept in the mind. By the action of the voice, the word is expressed into a material/physical reality as a collection of sounds. The collection of sounds is what we normally think of as a "word," and that's where the speaker started off, but he was getting to a deeper point about the sounds being for the purpose of carrying the content of the immaterial/conceptual word to others who, by receiving and internalizing the sounds, then have that same thought or concept in their own minds.
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Since the promulgation of Traditionis Custodes, various bishops and certain cardinals have made it clear that they view the liturgical controversy not merely as a question of unification–that all the Church (at least the Latin Rite of the Church) should be using the same liturgical forms–but more so as a question of stamping out everything and anything that smacks of "the old ways." I won't bother to go hunt down citations because proving this isn't my point, here, but I have specific memories of reading on-the-record quotes by bishops (or letters to the priests in their diocese) that express that intention explicitly. In one case, it was almost word for word.
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My wife and I have enjoyed watching the various seasons of Criminal Minds over the years. Criminal Minds, for those who don't know, is a crime drama that centers on agents in the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). The series ended a few years ago with a sappy finale that drew heavily on the modern trope that many modern crime dramas seem to tap into, that a group of work colleagues are (mostly) the only "family" to each other.
Well, recently they (whoever "they" are) decided to resurrect the series with some new seasons. This time it's called "Criminal Minds: Evolution." It doesn't have the same enjoyability as the earlier seasons, but the episodic case stories are interesting enough to keep us watching it.
But it's now set within this long arc that spans the several seasons (maybe the idea is to just make it an ongoing backdrop that never resolves), and boy do they pour it on with the psy-ops.
For one thing, one of the team is a lesbo, whose "lover" also works for the government, so there's all of that drama. When that comes up, I get up to get a drink or whatever. But that's not the real meat of the psy-op game in this series.
The long arc involves this mastermind serial killer that's been known about and is being hunted by the government, but his existence is classified. He even has a classified designation within the government: Gold Star. The BAU team learns about it through one of their own investigations, but the higher echelons are reluctant to let them in on the hunt. Various political games and shifting alliances ensue.
Eventually, the team catches a serial killer mastermind (not Gold Star, but a different one named "Voit") and the FBI director is so eager/frantic to find out who Gold Star is that he's conned into letting Voit "help" him. The director orders the BAU team to work/cooperate with Voit, bringing him case information so that he can look at it from his cell and provide insights, etc.
Part of the psy-op is that they keep bouncing around this concept of a "social contagion." The concept is that a dangerous thought, belief, or idea can be like a regular pathogen, spreading from person to person and infecting a society to the point where either the whole society is sick, or to the point where the "wrong person" becomes infected and it causes them to become dangerous to society. It's clear that the concept is just in the background of an idea that maybe the First Amendment should be re-thought a little bit. After all, if the government has the just power to enact laws and constrain people's freedom to prevent the spread of physical pathogens, then they should have the same power when it comes to psychological "pathogens," right?
But then there's the big (rather laughable) psy-op they rolled out two episodes ago: While trying to figure out who Gold Star is, they also are trying to figure out what Gold Star is. Is he just a serial killer? Is he an ex-secret government agent of some kind? Is he a freelance assassin?
No, he's worse than all of that: He's a CONSPIRACY THEORIST (gasp!)
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Apparently, the Pope has written a forward (or preface, or something) to a book in the process of being published by James Martin. I haven't read the forward (or preface, or whatever), nor have I looked closely into the book or what it's about. According to a couple of podcasts that I've heard refer to the book, the expectation is that the book is an invitation to those suffering with LGBTQPZ+ disorders to "come out" (of the closet), and that the book places this invitation in the context of Jesus' command to Lazarus to "come forth" from the tomb.
Given the work done by James Martin, I suspect that most of what people (those who would support the book and those who would oppose it) think about the book is correct in terms of what its basic message will be.
But there really is something for those in the LGBTQPZ+ lifestyle to find and appreciate in the episode of Lazarus' death and in Jesus' act of calling him forth from the tomb. There is a very real way in which such people are always invited by the Church to "come out:" They are invited to come forth from the tomb.
The tomb is the tomb of sin. It's the death of the soul. It's the slavery of the person to the disorder, whether physical, psychological, or spiritual, that keeps him or her active in or attracted to his or her deviant lifestyle. Those who are in or attracted to a sexually deviant lifestyle, of whatever letter, are invited to leave the tomb of that disorder and enter into the world of life. The Church calls them to "come out" of that grave into the life of the Grace of Jesus Christ and the love of His Sacred Heart. The Church calls them to repent of their sins, abandon their disordered affections, and enter into the Communion of Saints.
This is probably not what James Martin means by relating the episode of Lazarus in the tomb to the lives of those with LGBTQPZ+ disorders. But it should be.
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According to this article at LifeSite News, the Canadian Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages, Randy Boissonnault, said "Our government believes in equipping women for success...That is why contraceptives will be free under our pharmacare plan. That is why we will defend a woman’s right to choose [abortion.]"
Let that sink in for a bit, because putting aside questions about women's proper roles in society, this pairing of women's success with contraceptives and abortion says volumes about how the Canadian government views women qua women.
To understand what I'm getting at, think about what the Boissonnault didn't say: He didn't say, "Our government believes in equipping women for success. That is why we are helping young women develop skills to resist pressure to jump in the sack." He didn't say, "Our government believes in equipping women for success. That is why we are teaching young men to restrain their sexual impulses and refrain from preying on women as sexual conquests." He didn't say "Our government believes in equipping women for success. That is why we are teaching young men and women to treat sex as a solemn privilege for those in a position to raise children, rather than as a recreation."
No, Boissonnault didn't say any of those things. Instead, he said that to help women succeed, the Canadian government is giving them free contraceptives and making sure they have access to abortion.
Again, ignore the question of what women should be doing in a society. Forget the fact that motherhood is the highest and most significant success of which a woman is capable--far more significant than (for example) being the CEO of a multinational corporation. Let's accept the view that success for women is worldly and requires them to avoid having children.
The Canadian government's solution isn't to give women the tools to exercise sexual control over their own bodies. No, that would be unreasonable. "What? You mean women ought to be able to refuse a sex-filled lifestyle? You mean boys shouldn't pressure their girlfriends to put out? You mean women should feel free to reject the hook-up culture? What a kook!" Instead, the Canadian government's official position (apparently) is that women don't have a right to not participate in our hyper-sexed culture; therefore, in order for them to be successful, they need contraceptives.