He died for you!

If you or I had been the only people to ever sin Jesus Christ would have died on the Cross for either one of us.

God loves each of us as the individuals we are; like a perfect parent God loves all of His children even as He is saddened that we don't always love our siblings.

It doesn't matter what you've done or what you believe God loves you.  That doesn't mean He'll force you to go to Heaven, we can all chose to reject God and chose Hell, but it does mean He's rooting for you; that He died a horrible death so that we, in spite of our sins, could spend eternity with Him.

When you look at the Cross ask yourself this who would you be willing to be tortured to death for? Surely not the people who have insulted you spit on you and treated you horribly. Yet Jesus died for all of us who have sinned against Him.

We are all loved. No matter how horrible you think you are Jesus loves you and yearns to help you become better. There is nothing Jesus will not forgive if you repent.

Whenever you're tempted to be depressed remember that the God who created you and the entire universe loves you so much that He died on the Cross just for you. God did not die for humanity but for each and every one of us as individuals.  He knew our names and our sins and yet He still died a horrible death, a death He could have walked away from, because He loves us so much.

Rejoice then that God loves you more than you love yourself. Do yourself a favor and love Him back.

Liberal Logic 203: Who pays the bills

A liberal posted a picture on Facebook claiming that the problem with government spending is that the Federal budget for defense is much larger than the Federal budget for education.

What the poster is ignorant of is that in America education is paid for mostly by state and local governments because that's their job.  Defense is paid for pretty much entirely by the Federal government because defending the country is the job of the Federal government.

One more example of why liberals, despite good intentions, can never come up with the answers to America's problems.

From Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel at Thomas Aquinas College in Ventura CA

In the end He wins

Sometimes it pays to remember that the truly good are not rewarded in this world so much as in the next.

Liberals, atheists, hedonists proclaim how happy they are but in truth they're not.  Once their looks go the hedonistic lifestyle becomes impossible. But even before then they realize how empty life is if it's just about things.

No amount of gadgets can bring anyone the happiness a child can yet liberals view children, in Obama's words, as burdens not blessings.

Sometimes it can be depressing to see how much the world condemns what is good but as He said if the world hated Him it will hate all who follow Him.

But the war's over, the battles won.  We need to run our race as Paul said to see which side we chose but we know that if we don't chose His we're going to lose and if we do chose His we will win.

While He died for us He also wants us to participate in our own salvation. We can never merit salvation just as a child never merits their allowance but He can, and has, told us we must do things in order to be saved just like a child needs to do chores to get their allowance.

So long as we cling to Him and do as He has requested we should be secure in the knowledge that we will eventually be with Him forever.

Helps make the insanely minor problems of this world look more benign.

Pope Francis

The first thing to note is that apparently he won't be Pope France I until there's a Pope Francis II.

Next contrary to the desires of many Pope Francis has always upheld the teachings of the Church on such controversial topics as active homosexuality and abortion so Catholic teaching is not going to be changing any time soon.

Also while Pope Francis continues the Church's preferential respect for the poor he does so by calling on all of us to live as Christ lived and to help the poor which is far from the liberal view of massive inefficient government redistribution of wealth as the way to help the poor.

In spite of all of the problems the media in America keeps telling us the Church has the simple fact is that the Church is moving on teaching what it has always taught just as it has done for 2000 years.

In today's America it's hard to believe that anything is stable, not even what is right and what is wrong.  But the simple truth is that the Church has been extolling the same Truth for 2000 years; the Didache, written around 80AD, condemns abortion for example.

If you're looking for truth that is not conditioned by the culture, truth that has withstood the test of time, truth that will make you happy in this life as well as the next I suggest you give the Church, whose earthly leader is now Pope Francis, a look, you probably won't regret it.

Why marriage matters

One of the major downsides of Artificial Birth Control(ABC) was the acceptance by society that sex could be separated from making babies.  At first glance that appears appealing, primarily to men, because sex can feel good--though the reality of casual sex is far from the wonderful picture painted by popular culture.

The problem arises because all things that feel good are not in fact good for us under all circumstances.  If someone is struggling to lose weight even though eating that bowl of ice cream feels good it's not really what they want  even though that bowl of ice cream would be great once they've gotten below their weight target.  Morphine is wonderful if you've just had a traumatic injury but it's horrible if used just to make someone feel great.

While the modern culture declares that sex is always good for us the reality is that sex, like morphine, is something that one has to be selective about.

Modern society compartmentalizes life so that the culture can simultaneously declare that casual sex is fine while wondering why STDs, unwanted pregnancies, and the feminization of poverty occur. 

The simple truth is that sex for fun's sake leads to all sorts of major problems for those who buy into that philosophy as well as for society.

Let's look at the hook up culture that is becoming more prevalent in colleges.  Boy meets girl they have sex. Society tells us so what they're consenting adults so it's fine. But the reality is that the boy and the girl are setting themselves up for a world of hurt. 

Just having sex can create major problems.  If the two have no feelings for each other then that means that they're learning to treat other people as objects to be used not as people to be loved. If one has feelings and the other doesn't then that leads to all sorts of emotional issues. Then of course there's the whole STD thing; our culture says it's ok to not tell your partner about an incurable STD so long as you're fairly sure that you can't transmit it on the day you hook up.

Worst case the girl gets pregnant--ABC is not perfect and condoms are much worse--then what?  Well the most likely best case scenario is the girl has the baby and the baby is adopted.  The boy and the girl getting married and providing the family their daughter deserves is unlikely since the  boy and the girl were brought together by lust not love.  A very common scenario is that the boy tells the girl it's her problem and the girl is urged to kill her daughter. Contrary to the culture an abortion does not make a woman a non-mother it just makes her the mother of a dead child.

For some bizarre reason the culture can simultaneously declare that when a woman has a miscarriage or when her child dies in a car accident we should all be insanely sympathetic while telling us that if a woman voluntarily kills her own daughter that woman will suffer no trauma.  Many studies have shown that abortion can lead to significant emotional and psychological damage.  This should be obvious. The culture acknowledges the trauma a cop faces when he is forced to shoot a mass murdering serial killer because people, at least sane ones, don't like to kill even in self defense.  Yet that same culture thinks that a woman killing her daughter will have no consequences.

Anyone who understands the relationship between a woman and her children, anyone who has seen a woman rubbing her tummy when she's pregnant knows how strong the bond is between a mother and her child.  This is not shocking if you believe in the Bible but even if you're a hard core atheists the simple fact that woman have been formed by 4 billion years of evolution to make babies would make it clear that when a woman kills her baby she's going against her deepest biological instincts; that's why mothers will die protecting their children.

What then does marriage have to do with this? The answer is simple a marriage where a man and a woman commit to each other is the ideal environment for having sex because it's the ideal environment for having children. Marriage exists to protect and foster our children not to guarantee our sexual happiness.  In marriage a pregnancy is not a problem to be dealt with rather it's a blessing to be grateful for.

The introduction of ABC however allowed the culture to lie to us and declare that marriage wasn't about children but about adults because ABC can fool us into thinking that sex and babies are two unrelated things. The simple reality is that marriage exists so that we can have and raise children properly.  Does that mean that infertile people can't marry?  No since you never really know if a couple will have kids but it does mean that the idea of marrying with the intent to not have children is a violation of what marriage is really all about. Prior to ABC people agreed that you got married to have a family.

While it is true that if a man and a woman are going to have sex doing so in a committed relationship, and by committed don't read shacking up until the guy wants to move on, is better that doesn't mean that marriage exists so that adults can have sex.

Look at divorce. When a man and a woman with children divorce they're saying that their happiness is more important than their kids; they're saying that adults first responsibility is to themselves.  Oh sure the culture will say that it's better for kids if their parents divorce than if their parents are always fighting but that's a bunch of nonsense.

First if someone is in a job they can't afford to lose and they're having huge problems with a co-worker or their boss they will do whatever it takes to keep that job. How then can the culture say that parents job of raising their kids isn't so important that the parents have to make it work?  Second we all know that children are constantly hoping their parents will get back together which is a strong indication that kids really don't like their parents abandoning them. Third divorce often means poverty for the mother and the children; hardly a good thing for the kids.

But once the culture says that marriage is about the adults not about having children then it's easy to see why divorce should be easy.  If marriage is about sex and sex is about having fun then once marriage stops being fun the culture declares that we should abandon it and move on.

That's why so many in the culture support same sex marriage. If marriage is just about sex and the adults and not about raising children then any number of entities, not just people, can get "married". All a same sex "marriage" is is two people saying that their sexual relationship is a little different. In Holland where gay marriage has been legal they've found that gay marriages are very short lived and that the "couples" are rarely if ever faithful to each other.  This makes sense since lust unlike love is not long lasting or faithful.

The problem with legalizing same sex marriage is that it makes it official that marriage is not about the children but about the adults, thereby encouraging all sorts of hurt for the children.

Children are our greatest blessing and they need, just as we needed, two loving parents who are of different genders in order to grow up and be all they can be.  Two men cannot provide what a mother can no matter how much they love a child and two women can't provide what a father can no matter how much they love a child. Single parents, no matter how hard they try, can't be as good as a mother and a father. That doesn't mean that single parents are bad or that gays are bad it just means that because men and woman are different neither gender can do all of what both genders together can.

Opposing same sex marriage has nothing to do with dissing homosexuals.  It's all about what's best for the children.  Homosexuals can love children but they can't provide what those children need.

If our society accepts the historically unprecedented position that marriage is just about two adults establishing some sort of long term sexual relationship with kids being an option then children will suffer and society will decay; without children there is no future but children require huge investments of parents lives and of parents treasure and in a society where adults are told that the purpose in life is fun not children fewer and fewer adults will make the sacrifices to ensure that the society has a future.

The Big Lie

Now Obama and his liberal friends aren't mass murdering anti-Semites but they do seem to like the Nazi technique called the big lie. Goebbels said that if you make up a big enough lie and repeat it enough people will believe in it.

Clearly the current liberal meme that the economy is doing fine and that government spending is not out of control is the biggest of lies. Unemployment is near 8% with the real unemployment, counting those who've given up hope of finding a job, running around 11%.  The jobs created under Obama have been low paying and part time.  Thousands are losing their health insurance due to Obamacare.  Energy costs are soaring and the average American's economic situation is deteriorating. The US's credit rating has been downgraded and the deficit is growing at an astronomical rate.

Now the Obama team will point to the stock market as an example of how wonderful the economy is. However the people who benefit most from a booming stock market are the wealthy, precisely those people who Obama says are the villains.

Do you remember when Bush was president? Even though the economy was still growing and unemployment was on the order of 5% or less the media was screaming that we were in a recession. But now with much higher unemployment and stagnant growth the same media is telling us we've never had it so good.

Don't buy the big lie; the Obama economy is a mess and he's not even pretending to try and fix it anymore. All Obama cares about is raising taxes so he can spend more of your money.

The Truth doesn't change

It always surprises me that the people who so obviously hate, or at least strongly dislike, the Church know so little about it.

Truth does not change with time.  Truth does not change with the Pope.  The simple fact is that the Pope is merely God's agent. The Pope does not define Truth his job is to spread God's Truth to all men so all can be saved and rejoice in God.

In one sense the Papal election is unimportant; it will not change the teachings of the Church.  On the other it is very important because it will define how the Church will go about spreading the Truth it has received to all ends of the earth.

When you hear some talking head on a TV show, often a "Catholic" who disagrees with most of what the Church teaches, say that the new Pope should change this or that doctrine remember that the Church has been teaching the same Truth for 2000 years.

When you see the helicopter shots of Rome during the coverage of this Papal election and you see the Colosseum remember that the Colosseum construction was started more than 30 years after the Church was founded.  Remember that the Christians who were martyred in the Colosseum professed the same beliefs, the same Truth, that the new Pope will profess.

Civilizations come and civilizations go but the Church, like its founder, sails on unchanged.

Another liberal lie

A liberal who has constantly been telling me there is no voter fraud, amazingly enough he grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and must be the only Chicagoan who thinks the elections are fair, sent me a link to an article, on a liberal blog, which shouted that two Republicans had plead guilty to voter fraud.  He then claimed that there must be voter fraud but only by Republicans.

What makes this emblematic of liberals lying is that if you go to the original article cited, only as a link, by the article on the liberal website you find out what really happened.

First the folks who committed voter fraud worked for a company hired by Republicans. But you also find out that when the Republicans found out the company was breaking the law the Republicans fired them. That alone destroys the basis for both the article and the liberals ranting and makes both lies.

To add insult to injury however it turns out that when the Republicans found out about the crimes not only did they fire the company the Republicans filed a voter fraud complaint against them.

Now the liberal who sent me the link was just being stupid by trusting an obviously biased source. But that liberal web site knew that this story wasn't about Republican vote fraud but they reported that it was; now that's a lie.

It's not an election

The Pope is not selected by men unless the Cardinals choose to ignore the Holy Spirit. As such all the time spent speculating which candidate is likely to win would be far better spent on praying for God's will to be done.

Even if you're not Catholic it would be wise, given the influence the Pope has on the world, to pray that God's candidate is chosen and that we get the best possible Pope in spite of our sins and failings.

One interesting way to motivate yourself to pray is to go to www.adoptacardinal.org and be assigned a random cardinal to pray for.

Why do liberals always lie?

I see some heated charges by conservatives but I rarely see out and out lies, other than from the lunatic fringe. But pretty much every post I see by a liberal on Facebook is factually incorrect.

I remember being told that the dastardly conservatives were going to cut the Center for Disease Controls budget by $110B.  But then I found out that the CDC budget is only $12B each year.

I see the Republicans being blamed for the sequester even though Bob Woodward says that the sequester is Obama's idea and it's a matter of public record that Obama signed the law containing the sequester.

I see Republicans being blamed for cutting troop benefits even though they've done no such thing.

I guess the real truth is that modern liberals are motivated by the will for power and they don't really care too much how they acquire power.

Are we all dead yet?

At first I was suckered in by the media into thinking the sequester would be a disaster.

But then when I discovered what a small cut in total spending it would be I realized that the world would not end.

However now the liberals have a problem.  If no one dies due to the sequester then it becomes clear that contrary to what Obama is saying not every single penny spent by the government is absolutely critical.

Which in turn means that just like every huge company there is fat that can be trimmed from the Federal Government.  Companies are forced to trim when their costs get too high and people stop buying their stuff. Their is no similar mechanism for the government other than the ballot box.  Keep that in mind and  look at your smaller paycheck and higher health care costs next time you vote.