Love is a Many-Splendoured Thing

It's certainly a lot more than "I feel like I'm in love". Dr. Kaczor gives us some insights:

Dr. Christopher Kaczor on big myths about love and marriage:

Dr. Christopher Kaczor, author of The Seven Big Myths about Marriage: What Science, Faith and Philosophy Teach Us about Love and Happiness, was recently interviewed by Kathryn Jean Lopez, author of National Review Online:

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Does anyone really believe “love is simple” — your first myth?

CHRISTOPHER KACZOR: Unfortunately, I believed this first myth until fairly recently! I suppose there are at least some other people who believe something like I did. I used to think that love was just a matter of good will. If I choose to do what helps another person, then I love that person. Once I learned more about the nature of love, I learned that love includes not only good will for the one you love but also appreciation for and seeking unity with the beloved. All forms of love (agape) involve all three aspects, and the forms of love are distinguished primarily in terms of the third characteristic, the diverse ways in which unity is sought. 

Read the entire interview on the National Review website.

(Via Insight Scoop|The Ignatius Press Blog.)

Five Reasons

not to co-habit prior to marriage:

5 (secular) reasons not to live together before marriage:

One interesting aspect of undergoing a dramatic conversion as an adult is that it's given me the opportunity to be deeply immersed in two rather different cultures. Up until my mid-20s, I was very much a part of post-Christian secular culture. Then my husband and I changed our religious beliefs, and though we're still in touch with many of our old friends, we've increasingly found ourselves in social circles where most people are religious.

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent.)

Five Reasons

not to co-habit prior to marriage:

5 (secular) reasons not to live together before marriage:

One interesting aspect of undergoing a dramatic conversion as an adult is that it's given me the opportunity to be deeply immersed in two rather different cultures. Up until my mid-20s, I was very much a part of post-Christian secular culture. Then my husband and I changed our religious beliefs, and though we're still in touch with many of our old friends, we've increasingly found ourselves in social circles where most people are religious.

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent.)

The Two Iron Laws of HIstory

according to Mark Shea are:

1. What could it hurt?

followed by,

2. How were we supposed to know?

And so I give you the contemporary mantra: "Gays are people just like us and should have the right to marry and raise children just like us."

But Nature is only mocked at someone's expense. So we're entering phase two of the Gay Marriage debate already. And the children are the ones to suffer.

Cohabitation’s Dirty Little Secret

I meant to blog on this article when I first saw it. It reminds me of friends I knew who had lived together for some years prior to marrying. Empty-headed I said something conventional after their marriage like " at least now you two know each other better because of living together for a few years". She responded, not without bitterness: "No, I never knew him. After we got married he became a different person". They were divorced some years later.

Cohabitation’s Dirty Little Secret:

Back the 1970s there was a lot of talk that living together before marriage was a “wise” thing to do. After all, said its proponents, “You need to try a shoe on before buying it” and “You take a car for a test ride before negotiating the deal.” Never mind that human beings are a little more dignified and complicated than shoes or cars, and that we don’t “buy” one another. Never mind all that, according to the proponent of this theory, we were supposed to bow our heads to the obvious wisdom of “shacking up.”

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent World Watch.)

In Memoriam

With Mike Wallace's recent passing here is an opportunity for a two-fer: a remembrance of Mike Wallace and of Margaret Sanger:

Mike Wallace's classic interview with Margaret Sanger makes the rounds after Wallace's death...:

Margaret Sanger was many things admirable: a vibrant personality, a brilliant organizer, a canny reader of the temperature of the times, a woman who built powerful institutions in a man’s world. But she was also many things ugly and even despicable: an egotist who frequently clashed with others; a free-love advocate who had a dizzying number of affairs and who hurt many men as a result; and a eugenicist who argued that “birth control is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defective.”

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent World Watch.)

Speak the Truth

Here's an articulate discussion of the HHS mandate, contraception and gender in the light of the Catholic Faith by (gasp!) a Catholic laywoman:

The HHS Mandate gets Pwned:

Here’s how you fight it:

Don’t just call it an attack on religious liberty: make it clear that contraception is *morally wrong*, and don’t let people think it’s just ritually impure like eating pork.

And do it in the confidence that this is a winning issue for the Church and a losing issue for Obama. Don’t back down. Resist the Tyrant!

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

Thought and Prejudice

In this instance I'm struck by the reflexive approval of most, if not all, things homosexual. When I started on a reasoned argument (rant) about why homosexual unions should not be elevated to equality with marriage, my daughters, bless them, were embarrassed and demanded we stop talking about the subject. It didn't help this was in a public place (a restaurant for Sunday Brunch).

Their aversion to disagreements with the homosexual agenda puzzles me. They have or are getting a University education. Shouldn't reasoned disagreement be the heart and soul of their intellectual life? Even if they strongly disagree with me, I'm wanting reasoned arguments and facts. They seem to recognize no value to these things independent of achieving the results they have chosen to endorse. Is this how far the intellectual rigour has fallen at Universities?

Ok, rant mode off. Here is an interesting article about how research itself is produced and disseminated in a doctrinaire fashion to promote the ideology of the day:

Who could possibly have predicted this?:

Research showing the risks of lesbian and gay parenting is ignored in the race to make a political case

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

Liberal Fascism

I had occasion to write about competing orthodoxies. There are a number of disturbing things going on that indicate that the intolerance of the new orthodoxy is be ratcheted up:

Proposition 8 Thuggery:

When eerily convenient Prop-8 directories and Google maps were released earlier this winter, accounts of threats and thuggery began accumulating. But how much of this was real intimidation from the left, and how much was the pretense of doom from the right?

Read the whole thing.

(Via First Things.)

A little bit more on that...thing...in Newsweek

Some more erudite comments on that article:

A little bit more on that...thing...in Newsweek:

Really, what do you call it—that thing featured on the cover of the December 15, 2008, issue of Newsweek? It's not journalism. It's not news. It's not coherent, logical, well-argued, or well-written.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog.)

Sola scriptura minus the scriptura » GetReligion

Those supporting things like Same Sex "Marriage" are caught in a confusion about the arguments against the same. They believe that their opponents are arguing a Divine Command kind of morality. The philosopher, following Socrates, wants to know, are things moral because God says so (ergo morality is arbitrary) or does God command it because it is good (ergo morality is superior to God). Saint Thomas answers "that God creates moral norms that reflect his own essence, meaning that his demands are not arbitrary...". All of this is covered in Professor Kreeft's book, of course. And this is the foundation for Natural Law reasoning . Which lead us to Professor Finnis' book. Aren't we glad that I read and shared?

So are senior editors up to Philosophy 101? Well, not everyone:

Sola scriptura minus the scriptura » GetReligion:

Newsweek’s cover story when I read the first line. It was just that bad. It was written by senior editor Lisa Miller who oversees all of the magazine’s religion coverage. Which is pretty shocking when you look at the unbelievable ignorance on display in her grossly unfair first paragraph:

Read the whole thing.

(Via GetRelgion.)

Read for the Day

Here's a referral to a good summary of the issues surrounding "gay marriage":

What's wrong with 'gay marriage'?: Michael Novak, "Defining Marriage Down" (The Catholic Thing, October 21, 2008):

A question posed by Bill O’Reilly has been nagging at me for a couple of weeks: “What is wrong with gay marriage?” None of his on-air guests had given him reasons...."

Read the rest of Novak's fine analysis (linked above).

[Hat tip to E.E.]

(Via Musings of a Pertinacious Papist.)

Technorati Tags:
Ethics, Politics, Marriage,
Democracy

Today We Celebrate

(1) "pornography and the objectification of women’s bodies"

(2) "divorce, abortion, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and venereal disease"

(3) "forced abortions in China to involuntary sterilizations in Peru"

(4) and plastic surgery and silicon breasts

All of which, at least indirectly, was predicted by Pope Paul VI on this day forty years in his notorious encyclical Humanae Vitae. We continue to ignore this prophet at our own peril:

The Anniversary of Humanae Vitae: "You know the story. Forty years ago —on July 25, 1968 a tired, grumpy, and celibate old man in Rome issued an encyclical called Humanae Vitae, solemnly declaring that birth control is bad, and half the world responded with a shrug. The other half responded with a sneer.
It’s hard to imagine a worse moment for Pope Paul [...]"

(Via FIRST THINGS: On the Square.)

Things to Be Thankful For

I'm inspired by this:

FAMILY-FRIENDLY COMMENCEMENT SPEECH [Kevin Miller]
5/23/2008


A reader emailed yesterday (and I didn't get a chance to blog it, but want to do so before I start my break):

Courtesy of NRO: A former speechwriter to Pres. Bush addressed Benedictine College last week. In that speech he laid out "three propositions that are easily forgotten and only painfully re-learned" and that are very much congruent with HMS ideals:

First, who you marry is far more important than what career you choose. Over the course of a life that has taken me across three continents, I have met many accomplished men and women. And I have always been astonished by the number who give more thought to choosing the job they may hold for a couple of years than to choosing the spouse to whom they will pledge – before God and their friends – to remain with until death they do part.

Second, no professional achievement – no matter how extraordinary – can match the thrill of seeing the absolute love and confidence reflected in the trusting eyes of a child who calls you Mom or Dad.

Finally, you will not find lasting happiness by pursuing it. Happiness is the byproduct of a contented life. And the surest path to a contented life is to put the needs of others before your own.

And my reader added in a follow-up:

Of course, right after hitting send I came across a link to the whole speech. It's good. And he has a nice expression in there after drawing the distinction between romance and simple physical intimacy: "And so those of us who speak fluent Audrey Hepburn find it difficult to communicate in a Sarah Jessica Parker world."

Yes, that is a very good speech. Thomist that I am, I might have put the point about happiness in a somewhat different way (for Thomas, following Aristotle, there is such a thing as the legitimate pursuit of happiness - happiness is our end - and it's something more than a "byproduct"). But I nonetheless agree with McGurn's point.
E-Mail Author

via Heart, Mind & Strength

A Lenten Checklist

Via Gregory Popcak, whose radio podcasts with his wife I enjoy so much:

9 TASKS OF MARRIAGE. [Gregory Popcak]



2/7/2008


Here is an interesting look at the 9 tasks every marriage must accomplish in order to be healthy.

How are you doing?

Via Heart, Mind & Strength.