A Tribute Vice Pays to Itself, or, The Joy of Getting Gelded

"Satan Cast Down From Heaven"
by Gustav Dore, 1866

    A vivid picture of sin has been given to us by St. Augustine: homo incurvatus in se, "man turned in upon himself."  The image that conjures up in my mind is rather like a dog chasing his tail . . . or myself, in some of my less glorious moments.  The point is, we direct ourselves inward, away from God, away from other people, hoping to find within ourselves what can only come from beyond.  The world in which we are living today is becoming more and more a world not so much turned in upon itself, because that would imply that we're doing it together, but a world in which each and every one of us is turned in upon ourselves, eight billion dogs simultaneously chasing their own tails.

   
 Such intense self-absorption is bad for us, of course, because we were made for love by the God Who is Love (1 John 4:8), and love is willing the good of another. And therein lies a problem, because one effect of sin turning us inside out is that it turns love inside out as well, so that we find ourselves actually willing evil for others.

     A few years back I ran across a story that perfectly captures the essence of a world full of people curved in upon themselves.  Please click below to find my exploration of the wonderful world of Vasectomy Showers:

[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]

A Martyr for Marriage

  "'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one.'  So they are no longer two but one.  What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder."  (Mark 10:7-9)

"Marriage of Mary and Joseph in the Temple"
by Luca Giordano, before 1690

When I observed in my recent post "Sins of the Fathers . . .and of Kings" that "one of the greatest  contributors to poverty and other debilitating social ills today is the break-down of sexual morality", one reader commented: "It is enough to watch the news or TV for two minutes to realize that our miseries are not due to lack of dollars but to lack of morals." The connection between our sexual conduct and our societal health is impossible to miss, at least for those who aren't heavily invested in the so-called "sexual revolution". It is clear that the societal endorsement of sexual license directly undermines the institution of marriage, and the breakdown of marriage in turn has a profoundly negative impact on children most immediately, and from there on everything and everyone else.

     This last point is backed up by an enormous body of research accumulated over decades.  I'm not going to delve into that mountain of data here, except to illustrate with a small sample from a 2014 article by posted on the United States National Institute of Health website . . .

[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]

From Spes in Domino: Don't Be So Judgmental!

 

My, how times have changed.  We used to have the Seven Deadly Sins and the Sins That Cry Out to Heaven For Vengeance. Most of these don't seem of much concern to most people any more, even in many institutions that claim to be Catholic; some are even treated almost as virtues. In their place is a larger and ever enlarging Index of Forbiddden -isms: transphobism, climate denialism, islamophobism, etc., with the Granddaddy of All, the Wickedest Capital Sin, being Judgmentalism  (unless you're judging someone you're accusing of judgmentalism . . . or one of the other isms . . . in which case it is positively a virtue) . . .

[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]