Showing posts with label Catholic Book Club. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholic Book Club. Show all posts

Sunday, 29 July 2012

Day for Life

I am glad that my PP ignored the guff from Eccle's Tonsquare and reminded us that today was about praying for an end to abortion, euthanasia and similar evils. It reminded me that I had intended to post a few more thoughts on the topic. 

If, as I take to be axiomatic, the battle against abortion and other evils associated with it is primarily a spiritual battle, we should take care to think about it primarily in spiritual terms.

As I have said before, the Devil attacks life at its weakest stages because he is a coward.  But it is worth considering what else we know about him. 

We have it on the best authority that he is a liar and the father of lies. and that too is reflected in his onslaught on humanity waged via abortion.

Off the top of my head, I can think of 4 lies at the heart of the abortion business (I am sure there are more):

Lie no. 1: The unborn child is not a human being (or variants of this lie: eg is not endowed with the same rights as born human beings etc)

Lie no. 2: Abortion will make everything the same as it was before for the mother; ie as though she had never been pregnant.

Lie no. 3: Abortion is a medical procedure.

Lie no. 4: Abortion is necessary to ensure women’s rights and freedoms.

Each of those is demonstrably untrue, and the fact that the abortion industry is built on lies is one of the reasons that it is so disastrously damaging, not just for the unborn children who are killed, but also for their mothers (and fathers and others) and also for the medical and other staff involved. And Satan laughs.

If my supposition is correct, that it is primarily a spiritual battle, then we should be fighting primarily with spiritual weapons: at one level, truth and charity; and at another level, prayer and fasting. I will come on to this in my next post...

In the meantime, here is a passage from Gaudium et Spes which Ttony highlighted over at the Catholic Reading Group as being a fantastic summary of a truly Catholic pro-Life position:
“Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.” (Gaudium et Spes, §27)

Saturday, 5 May 2012

Catholic Reading Group

The Catholic Reading Group is now up and running.  The first text under discussion is Sacrosanctum Concilium, and there are already some interesting discussions taking place.  So dig yout your copy of SC, refresh your memory, and join in the discussions!

Friday, 4 May 2012

The Book Club Goes Live

The Online Book Club now has a Wordpress Site thanks to John H @JohntheLutheran.  This allows nested comments, which should make discussion easier, and stops my stats spiking, which is a shame...

Wednesday, 2 May 2012

Online Catholic Book Club

On twitter the other day, the idea arose of an online Catholic Reading Circle. In the first instance, we are proposing to read Sacrosanctum Concilium.

 I promised I'd post some ideas for discussion on how this might work in practice, so here goes.

I suggest that we agree to read the agreed text by the weekend, at which time I will post some questions for discussion.

 Discussion will take place in the comms box.

To make that work, I suggest that we refer to the questions and the paragraphs of SC by paragraph number, and that we also number the paragraphs in our responses, so that we can easily refer to each others' responses.

 I also suggest that we agree to discuss the document for a week or so; so that anyone away at the weekend can take part, and also so that there is time for reading, reflecting on, and responding to each others' contributions.

I also propose that this is a discussion for those supportive of, or genuinely interested in understanding, the Magisterium. It will be moderated (by me) and people whose past contributions on other blogs have been boring ( to me) or hostile to the Church need not bother posting. (You know who you are...)

 If this discussion is useful, I suggest we then discuss how it went, with suggestions for improvements, and then agree on another book or text we would like to discuss, and agree who can take a lead role (eg suggest the questions for discussion) as I don't want to do it all...

These are ideas for discussion: please improve my ideas in the Comms box.