AMORIS LAETITIA (The Joy of Love)

 It seems I've read every imaginable explanation--and no one is happy with this document.  Could Pope Francis have been more vague and unclear? Can the church no longer use the word adultery because it would hurt someone's feelings?  World Over, April 4, 2016, with Raymond Arroyo, Father Gerald Murray and Robert Royal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee8f6IuWCZE


 

https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2016/04/23/reflections-on-amoris-laetitia/

 http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/amoris-laetitia-and-the-constant-teaching-and-practice-of-the-church/

http://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/otn.cfm?ID=1147

 http://www.onepeterfive.com/the-bishop-schneider-intervention-distilled/

Who's behind the latest organized harassment of women?

What exactly is the political motivation of this attack on women? 51% of the population we are, almost. Is it more men competing in athletic competitions designed specifically for women? Maybe some smaller men can't compete with men, so they'll go for the gold against women? Would you really want Bruce Jenner in the senior women's games? 

More voyeurs in dressing rooms? Shouldn't peeping Toms be in the bushes where they can be arrested instead of being protected by city ordinances or the federal government? More photos of women on toilets uploaded to the internet so men can laugh at them? 

Is it passive aggressive hate because we're just getting too much power--women running for president in both parties? Filling top positions in government and business so let's harass them. First the media tried to inflate campus rape statistics (perhaps to scare women away?), while college administrations demand that students having sex use consent forms, then they offer to give away our privacy for some political cause which can easily be solved other ways. 

It seems to be entirely coming from the left. And Democrats. Are they conflicted about their sexuality?

We asked for it

Free college for the gullible

Bernie Sanders is promising "free college" to gullible millennials who have never voted in a national election, or paid a bill, and have a lot of college debt. What would they owe if they didn't work for 5 years, paid no tuition, and just sat around smoking pot? About the same. What he isn't telling them is that the return on investment (ROI) is waaaay below the same amount invested in the stock market over their lifetime. The ROI for Harvard is about $650,000; the ROI for investing $50/week for 45 years is over a million.

Huge disagreement on this depending on what you check. But I'll stick with my premise.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-06-28/college-big-investment-paltry-returnbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice

And all of this in the last four years

Think back to 2012.  Just four brief years ago, before Obama's second term.

• President Obama was still supporting traditional marriage.
• Dead baby parts were being sold, but the public didn't know and main stream reporters weren't defending it. 
• Women could use women's restrooms and locker rooms without concern that men would wander in with camera phones ready to share the space. 
• In 2012 no one could imagine that the government would be suing nuns who take care of the elderly poor. 
• A line in the sand from the President actually meant a threat instead of a joke. 
• In 2012, people weren't being threatened for knowing and stating climate change is one more scam by the liberals. 
• Low income people didn't need to fear a raise of $1 that would bump up their health insurance costs $500. 
• Who knew in 2012 that Christians, the most persecuted religious group in the world, would find no welcome in the U.S. when fleeing Islamic jihad. 
• Bakers weren't being forced in 2012 under threat of ruin and jail to participate in weddings. 
• College age voters actually knew what socialism meant--well, maybe not--cross out that one. 
• Methodist pastors still took seriously the vows they'd made. 
• Teens weren't buying birth control without medical checks. 

And this is just scary enough to bring out the Trump vote.

Maybe Baltimore should return the money

I got an e-mail from the NAACP today on the Baltimore anniversary, maligning the female Democrat Mayor and city government and minority control of that city. Whuddathunkit! Baltimore received over a billion, $1,831,768,487, though the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in a Democrat controlled Congress with a Democrat black president. Not that they ever mention the party in power.

 "The unrest of Baltimore on April 27, 2015 shocked many people, in Baltimore city and across the country, into confronting the history of segregation, racism, and indifference of the past, and its role in mass unemployment, crime, poverty and neglect that remain today." 

Still think Bernie or Hillary have the answers with socialism?  If all that federal assistance can't fix any of these problems, I guess Baltimore is just going to have to elect a better government.

When you send junior off to college . . .

Sometimes we forget how far back the brainwashing goes. This guy attended college in the 1960s.

"So I went into the university, a modern university, where they taught me the three things that I think you get at a modern university: hate your family, hate your country, hate God (Who "doesn't exist," but hate Him anyway). That's what my head was filled with. So that when I graduated and went on to graduate school, my head was filled with absolute nonsense. I still knew nothing about religion, although I would talk about it at length, mainly to try to debunk it. As far as I was concerned, there was only nature. Nature was all we needed. Everything was material. There was really only one "Commandment", that was, "We should be nice to each other even though life has no meaning" - which is a very peculiar thought. 

When I began teaching, that's the sort of nonsense I was teaching. Absolute nonsense, because I knew nothing. I had no business being in front of a class teaching anything because I didn't know anything. But I was a modern teacher with a head full of feathers and sawdust that I spewed out around the room. Then one day, when I was teaching at Temple University in Philadelphia, I had a student in the back of the class, who raised his hand and challenged me. He began debating me in the classroom. In no time at all, I became aware of a situation that most teachers live in terror of: I had a student in my class who knew a hundred times more than what I knew. I was an absolute ignoramus and this student was really smart."
David White, professor of literature at the U.S. Naval Academy

Missing you

I'm missing the Foxy ladies--they are so great, especially the noon "Outnumbered" and "The Five." Terrific fashions, also. Too bad. "Fox News, as Mark Levin has observed, has become a Trump super-PAC instead of a news organization. From morning throughout the day and night, it is Trump, Trump, Trump."

 Rush is almost as bad, as is Breitbart. I'm listening to Michael Medved and Hugh Hewitt on the radio, and Dennis Prager.  Medved can't stand Trump and says he won't vote for him, and neither will I.  I never did like O'Reilly and Hannity, but enjoyed Neil Cavuto and some of the business Fox people who guested on Fox News.  Oh well.  They'll get what they deserve.  Donald.  I wonder how much money the owners get for this slavish support?

Abortion and fathers

"I was climbing the ladder of success in the acting and performing world. I was not at all Christian back then. My girlfriend at the time was an actress who was using an IUD for contraception but it didn't work and she became pregnant. We both felt we could not go through with the baby because our careers were just getting rolling. I felt I was being very responsible and loyal boyfriend for helping pay for the abortion. I went down to the clinic with her. I read magazines in the waiting room, waiting to escape from the responsibility of being a father. She came out of the room, a changed person. She tumbled into an intense depression. I tried to avoid the pain and dove harder into my career. . . 

I did not learn my lesson. Soon after that I met a woman who was a doctor (M.D.). She was also being considered to become an astronaut. She became pregnant even though she was on the pill (it shows that contraception doesn't work). We agreed that it was an inconvenient time to have a baby because we were "building our careers." We aborted the baby. 

Although my girlfriend wanted the abortion also, the moment she was on the operating table and the doctor was using a suction machine to remove the parts of our baby, she had a powerful urge to say "put that back!" It was devastating to her emotionally. No amount of medical training could explain away the emptiness. There was no explanation for this emotional tumble, except that we had done something horribly wrong. Nothing could cover her motherhood. After the abortion, an emptiness swallowed me. Like many couples who have abortions, not long after it we broke up."

http://catholicbridge.com/catholic/abortion.php

Hillary spreads lies on the campaign trail

Notice, Hillary has been saying "equal pay for women's work," not for same work, or equal effort, or same position--and that's not even the law. Female surgeons earn more than female pediatricians. Female Librarians earn higher salaries than female library clerks. Female McDonald managers earn more than female cashiers. Female Target and trans female execs who have their own private restrooms make more than female middle school teachers (who make a hefty $57/hour, btw). Female engineers earn more than female daycare workers to watch their children 15 hours a day. Do you see a theme? If there are female linemen and female demolition workers, they make more than male retail clerks and male truck drivers and male nurses. Hillary LIES. In most major metropolitan areas single, college educated women make more than their male peers. But her own staff do not have pay equity.

Experimental antiretroviral treated vaginal ring

I've been reading JAMA for about 30 years, and reports of using African women and children as lab animals never cease to surprise me, because the benefits are usually accrued to western women. All the early contraceptive testing of 50+ years ago by the major drug companies, some really harmful; many nutrition tests on babies some getting supplements, some not, which could never be done in Europe or the USA; bed nets for malaria prevention when the disease was all but conquered by DDT before Rachel Carson.

" Antiretroviral medications that are used as prophylaxis can prevent acquisition of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infection. However, in clinical trials among African women, the incidence of HIV-1 infection was not reduced, probably because of low adherence. Longer-acting methods of drug delivery, such as vaginal rings, may simplify use of antiretroviral medications and provide HIV-1 protection. Abstract

The latest I saw is an experimental antiretroviral treated vaginal ring, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in Malawi, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe.  168 acquired HIV, 71 from the treated ring group and 97 from the placebo group. And when data from 2 sites were excluded, there was higher rates of protection. I wonder how the researchers obtained consent? I wonder if the women were told that the only way to avoid HIV is no sex at all, since being sexually active was one of the requirements to participate. And I looked through the instructions.  Compliance must have been rough. And for 18-21 year olds there was low adherence--no surprise there. In most cases, an investigational drug must be proven effective and must show continued safety in a Phase III clinical trial to be considered for approval by FDA for sale in the United States.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1506110#t=article

http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/QA/Pages/ASPIRE-ring-study-qa.aspx

http://www.ipmglobal.org/the-ring-study

http://www.ipmglobal.org/our-work/our-products