From CNS:
Pope Benedict XVI said young people should understand that the church does not want to “suffocate” the joy of love between a man and a woman.

This is a fine little brief that relates a statement by Pope Benedict that the Christianity doesn’t place barriers in the way of the happiness of mutual love. To this, I would add that in fact the happiness of mutual love is best understood through the lens of the Church, because of the parallel between the marriage of a man and a woman and the marriage of Christ to the Church. Christ gives Himself without holding back by placing Himself in the Eucharist, within the Church, and within our bodies as we are collectively the Body of Christ (wow), and likewise, man and woman are called to give themselves fully to each other in marriage (and yes, that’s another plug for NFP.)

An Italian priest has put a sign up at the entrance to his parish: “God knew what your navel looked like even before you were born, so there is no need to expose it in church.” In other words, this priest is sick of seeing teen and pre-teen girls dressed up like they’re heading to their job on the street corner after Mass. The concept of modesty is hopefully going to be revived. I know my little girl is going to learn modesty from an early age. What I don’t understand is how people who wear skimpy clothes to church can’t get their heads around the fact that it’s a distraction and it causes others to stumble. (I think a certain number of them want to be distracting.) With an extra measure of grace, perhaps we can avoid our daughter seeing all the skimpy slut-wear and wanting to wear it. Perhaps the manufacturers will slow down on their marketing of such clothes to kids. Glenn Beck created the word “prosti-tots” and I think there’s something to it…from the kind of clothes we’re talking about here, to those pants and shorts for girls as young as age 5 that say “player” or “tease” or whatever else across the seat. You want to grab the parents by the collar and say, “how could you think it would be a good idea to turn your kid’s a__ into a billboard?”

This is an article from another blog, but I think everyone should read it…it’s about the Rainbow Sash people being denied Holy Communion, and how someone received Communion for them, then broke the Body apart and handed it out to them. Thank God, an usher put a stop to this.

A couple of points:
1. A priest or Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion can’t know the state of a person’s soul – whether they are in a state of mortal sin or not. However, it makes sense to me that if they regularly flaunt canon law, it makes sense to deny them Communion. Rainbow Sash people are essentially spitting on canon law. It makes you wonder why they would want to be in communion with the Church that wrote said canon law; they have excommunicated themselves. Likewise for politicians who are public advocates of abortion…why would they want communion with the institution that stands for the exact opposite of what they stand for?

2. A commenter on the blog post points out that this would be less an issue if we didn’t have communion in the hand. I have been taking communion on the toungue lately because I have been carrying my daughter (15 months old) forward, and my hands are full. My understanding of the awesomeness of the Eucharist has evolved as a result of taking it on the tongue…I am recieving the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ from the priest acting in persona Christi and it is an act of humility on my part to not touch His Body.

Oh well, go to Adora’s blog and leave her some positive comments.

Courtesy of the AP, via Breitbart, we have this nugget of joy:
“For both to win first, it is awesome,” said Don Jacklin, an Idaho businessman who helped finance the cloning project. “I think it is going to open a lot of eyes as far as cloning. I think the race experience will go a long way to show what cloning can do.”

For both of what to win, you might ask? The story is on a couple of cloned mules who have beaten naturally bred mules in a recent race, winning an $8500 purse.

Now we already know that Dolly is not doing to well (did she die? seems like she did) but nonetheless, our ingenuitive minds as men have permitted us to create designer mules, apparently able to do better than nature’s mules. Insert mule joke here.

But, there but for the grace of God go human babies. This looks to be history repeating itself. We start by creating a master race of mules…can it be that long till we are designing babies? We are already aborting babies with club feet and other such minor problems that are easily corrected. Hitler’s scientists were running tests and performing experiments trying to eliminate imperfection. They called it eugenics at the time, officially instituted by Hitler.

There were Americans interested in eugenics too. Here’s part of a lecture by Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society:
Eugenics led directly to the birth control movement. All the same players were involved, such as Margaret Sanger, who was a member of the American Eugenics Society and was the editor of the Birth Control Review. The primary philosophy was trumpeted on the cover of the Birth Control Review: “More Children for the Fit. Less for the Unfit.” She made it clear whom she considered unfit:. “Hebrews, Slavs, Catholics, and Negroes.” She set up her Birth Control clinics only in their neighborhoods. She openly advocated the idea that such people should apply for official permission to have babies “as immigrants have to apply for visas.”

I know artificial contraception is pushed like candy on kids by doctors who tell them that their parents won’t have to know that they have it…but why has the history of contraception been supressed? How many people would possibly swear it off if they knew the history. Further, how many mainstream organizations support Planned Parenthood as part of their official platform (including the NEA, an alleged nonprofit) and do they know this history? At best, they’re supporting an organization founded on racism and bigotry, the very things that they claim conservatives are filled with.

Chesterton wrote a book Eugenics and other Evils which you can find out more about by following the “lecture” link above. GKC was prophetic at that time, and 40 years later, so was Pope Paul VI when he told us that if we accepted artificial contraception, we would accept so many more unnatural practices. Can society pull a 180? Can we slow down or stop with this stuff before we destory ourselves? I hope so. I hope that we will see sexual and reproductive idiocy begin to cycle down to be less prevalent. More people using NFP, more people waiting till they’re married to act married. May God lead us this way.

Courtesy of Catholic News Service, we have the following:
As in all countries of the world, the church in China does not seek any privilege but only wants to be free in its internal organization,” Archbishop Lajolo said.

He said this was a matter of church law and did not represent an intrusion in the affairs of the Chinese state.

“Likewise, Chinese political authorities should not interfere in the internal ordering of the church and especially in the appointment of bishops,” he said.

Well, I applaud the statement, and am glad to hear the Vatican taking a stand on such an issue after avoiding taking stands on similar issues before (like Bill Clinton taking Holy Communion or calling the liberation of Iraq a “defeat for humanity.”) This statement ought to just be a big “duhhh!” though. Of course the Church wants its autonomy respected by the Chi-coms. But guess what – communism cannot coexist with religion. In fact, any means of government other than one which respects individual rights of religious preference cannot be hospitable to organized religion. In this case of China, they’ve had this “Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association” for many years, and it’s been the government-imposed religion with its own association-selected priests and bishops. At the most basic level, it ain’t the Catholic Church, it’s government agents playing church. I doubt we’ll see the situation change until communism takes its one last great fall. God speed that day.

From EWTN’s newslink today:

ANGLICAN BISHOP QUESTIONS PRINCE’S DESIRE TO BE ‘DEFENDER OF ALL FAITHS’

London, June 01, 2006 (CNA) – A senior Anglican bishop has questioned Prince Charles’ intention to be seen as the defender of all faiths, rather than just Christianity, should he succeed to the throne.

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester said differences between the faiths makes it impossible to defend them all. He said the coronation service would oblige the new king to take an oath to defend the Christian church if he succeeded to the throne.

The bishop told the BBC that the basis of British society, including the monarchy, is Christianity. Legal arrangements are also derived from the Judeo-Christian ethic, he said.

Is is indeed possible for us to defend all faiths while maintaining our identities within our particular faith? This is a tough one. Personal opinion: It is possible to defend the rights of all people to practice their faiths, to the extent that said practice does not infringe the natural rights of others. That is – of the practice of your faith calls on you to kill people of other faiths, as in the case of radical Islam, then you should be prevented from that particular practice. I don’t for a minute think that we should essentially create a conglomerate of all faiths and become unitarians.