You Cannot be a Good Catholic and be Pro-SIN

What do you call a basketball player who dislikes dribbling? When he gets the ball, he just carries it and runs toward the hoop and shoot it, a good basketball player? I think not!

What do you call a citizen who disagrees with the concept of private property that he steals from other people, a good citizen? I think not!

What do you call a Catholic who supports and promote abortion, contraception and the liberal immoral homosexual lifestyle, a good Catholic? I think not!

Sadly, many Catholics believe they can go disobey Catholic teaching on Faith and Morals and at the same time be “good Catholics.” It does not really make sense, But somehow it does to them.

A good basketball player is the one who plays by the rules. A good citizen is the one who conforms to the law of the land. A good Catholic is the one who submit themselves to Teaching and the Magisterium of the Church. 

If you start breaking the rules, you stop being “good”. It is that simple. Yet somehow, many don't get it!

When the Church reminds her children to follow the rules or accept the consequences (all our actions have consequences… that is called the Law of Cause and Effect), the Church is accused of living in the “Dark Ages”. If the referee calls a foul when there is a foul, is the referee “living in the Dark Ages?” Or if a judge puts a thief in jail, is he “living in the Dark Ages?” It is the person who broke the rules is the one who placed himself in that situation, not the referee, not the judge and not the Church.

Once we enter in any kind of sports, country, organization or institution, we bind ourselves to their rules. If you decide to live in the Philippines and be a Filipino, you have bound yourself to the laws of the country. If you decided to be a basketball player, you have bound yourself to the rules of basketball.  If you have decided to be or remain a Catholic, you have bound yourself to Teachings of the Catholic Church. Common sense? Yes?

One does not shove his twisted logic into the Church so he can justify his sins. He cannot make the wrong, right and the right, wrong, for his convenience.  The Church will never bow down to his twisted logic. The Catholic Church was not founded to please sinners but to save them.  And the Church’s Truth can never be changed by anyone, for its Author is God… Truth Himself.

So you cannot be a good Catholic and be Pro-SIN.

Common sense will tell you that it is simple as that.

Get it?

I hope so.


Notes from the Catechism:

Homosexuality
2357: Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,141 tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."142 They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2396: Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity are masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices.

Contraception
2370: Periodic continence, that is, the methods of birth regulation based on self-observation and the use of infertile periods, is in conformity with the objective criteria of morality.158 These methods respect the bodies of the spouses, encourage tenderness between them, and favor the education of an authentic freedom. In contrast, "every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible" is intrinsically evil.

2399: The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception).

Abortion

2270: Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.

2271: Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:
You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.
God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.

Additional Notes:
Canon 915: Those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, and others who OBSTINATELY PERSIST in MANIFEST GRAVE SIN, are not to be admitted to holy communion.

The Pruning of Pride

Today, society views pride as a virtue and not as what it really is… sin. Pride has become a sign of a person’s confidence and not of a soul’s weakness.

The Catholic Church has always and continues to teach that pride is one of the “seven capital sins.” Pride is the mother of all sin. It is the sin of sins. It was Lucifer’s pride that said to God, “Non serviam” (I will not serve). It was the pride of Adam and Eve of wanting to be gods themselves that (original) sin came to this world. Pride is hell’s favorite sin, for it was the pride of the fallen angels that created it.

In His love for us, the Father prunes our pride. For pride is a block to His grace. And the more we block His  grace, the less we become alive. Sooner or later, our soul will dry up.

A healthy plant is watered plant. A healthy soul is a soul filled with grace.

So the Father permits trials, crisis and pain to prune our pride. When our arrogant self-reliance is broken and we find ourselves eating dirt, we come to realize how weak we really are, and in desperate need of God’s help. Until we are helpless, we shall not cry out for help. Until we are brought down to our knees, we shall not bend them.

It is when we hit rock bottom that we open ourselves to the heavens. Out of the depths we cry for help. And in that place of humility, grace flows. When we stop relying on ourselves and solely on God, His power is made manifest in us.

“But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.”  2 Corinthians 12:9

And we shall be fruitful.

“Jesus said to his disciples: "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.” Jn 15:1-2

(#2094 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church)

One can sin against God's love in various ways:
- hatred of God comes from pride. It is contrary to love of God, whose goodness it denies, and whom it presumes to curse as the one who forbids sins and inflicts punishments.

The Boringness of Sin

We sinners have a tendency to think and believe that sin is fun. There are sins that do bring some physical, emotional or psychological pleasures. But all these pleasures of sin always end up boring, always end up in boredom.

Why?

Because the pleasure of sin is fleeting and superficial. And not to mention it is self-destructive to one’s being.

Let us take a sinner who lives for lust, someone who is addicted to the pleasures of the flesh. Now, MTV and the media has brainwashed us that “this is the life.” But is it? A man who lives for lust only lives for lust. His whole life’s preoccupation is “to get some.” The rest of his humanity is set aside for this god, his lust. He stops being a dynamic person because he has become only “one thing.” Eventually, his lust becomes boring to the people around him. One can only listen to another person’s sexual exploits and still be interested in hearing it over and over again.

It also becomes boring to himself (the sinner, the addict.) His lust will lead him to more perversions to make things interesting for him. But even perversions have its limit. And when he reached the pinnacle of his perversions, we shall realize that there is no more. He is left in a panic. And it was all empty.

Addiction to sins leads to perversion. The sinner always wants to take it to another level. Unfortunately, he does not realize he is taking it DOWN another level. Down to hell. The more he becomes perverse, the more he loses his humanity. The more becomes sinful, the less becomes human. In the end, he is just a “legion” of sins.

Sin is Satan’s lie. A lie that says sins bring us life, “Wanna live life? Sin some more.” Those who have bought this lie always ends up bored and jaded, just look at famous people who live sinful lives, there are not the picture of a healthy, happy and fulfilled human beings.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:23

Sin will always end up in boredom, for it always lead to death, both body and soul. And dead people do not enjoy life.

There is no real joy apart from God.

Only God can take away our boredom in our lives. For He alone is dynamic. He alone can lift our humanity to its fullness. He alone can raise us from our boredom to life everlasting.

God alone can give us true ecstasy.

Eternal Bliss.

Thus says the LORD:
Cursed is the man who trusts in human beings,
who seeks his strength in flesh,
whose heart turns away from the LORD.
He is like a barren bush in the desert
that enjoys no change of season,
But stands in a lava waste,
a salt and empty earth.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose hope is the LORD.
He is like a tree planted beside the waters
that stretches out its roots to the stream:
It fears not the heat when it comes,
its leaves stay green;
In the year of drought it shows no distress,
but still bears fruit.

Jer 17:5-8

By Daxx Bondoc

Discovering God’s Love in Pain and Adversity

Most of us like to box God’s love.

Many of us have a check list on how God should love us. The check goes like, if God loves me then He should make me rich, famous, powerful, give me what I want and the list goes selfishly on. If God loves us in a way that is not in the “The-Way-God-Should-Love-Me” checklist, we feel that God as abandon us.

When God asked Moses to take the Israelites out of Egypt, the Israelites was ecstatic. They have a preconceive notion on how things will work out. They thought that the path to the Promise Land was all sunshine. But it was not so. And so they complained. And complained some more.

What Israelites failed to understand that their time in the desert was something necessary if they want to reach the Promise Land. The Promise Land was God’s land and there are no other gods permitted on it. Because of the years they stayed in Egypt, the Israelites have absorbed the idolatry and pagan ways of the Egyptians. And they needed to be cleansed off it before they step into the Promise Land. So for 40 years in the desert, God cleansed the Israelites. And it was a painful cleansing for the Israelites was not as cooperative as they should have.

God takes us to our own desert. Not because He enjoys seeing us suffer, but because we need to be cleansed. We need to be cleansed of the idolatry of our own ego and greed. We need to be cleansed of our pagan ways, the ways of the world. Most of all we need to be cleansed of our sins. Sometimes taking us to the desert is the only way it can be done. For in the desert, we are free from distraction and superficialities. In the desert we are confronted by our very survival. There, we cannot run away from our demons. And like Jesus, in the desert, God shall help us defeat our demons.

Sometimes, God’s love comes to us in what seems to be pain and suffering. But that pain and suffering are sometimes needed to save us. A cancer patient needs to go through a painful operation to get the cancer out of his body. He needs to endure the pain so that he might be cleansed of the cancer cells. We sinners have something worst than cancer, we have sin in our being. Cancer kills the body, Sin kills the soul. The Divine Operation sometimes uses pain and suffering to bring our souls back to health.

Jesus can give us His crown of gold or His crown of thorns to us. Both of them come from His loving hands.

We should stop selfishly defining how God should love us. We should learn to see God and His love outside of the box. The box is a very small and dark place to live in.

There is no box can contain God’s love.

Let us let God love us the way He does and not the way we want to.

God loves us more than our tiny boxes can imagine.

Written by Daxx Bondoc

492. What are the principal sins against chastity?

Have Sin Blinded You to All That is Beautiful?

To live in the darkness of sin is to be blind to the beauty of God’s creation. Sin blurs the true, good and beautiful. We cannot see and appreciate the true, good and beautiful in creation because we are obsessed in abusing creation. A lustful man cannot see the beauty of a woman for he only sees her body, only her body. He has stripped her and her body of any sacredness and dignity. Her body becomes merely an object of his lustful and perverse desires. A greedy man cannot appreciate what he has for he has already set his eyes on his next object of desire.

Sin also blinds us because it stops us from seeing others. We only see others in relation of their use to ourselves. When a lustful man sees a woman he thinks “I want to use her.” A greedy man sees others as a means to his goals.

With sin there is only “I” there are no “others”.

“I am the light of the world.” says Jesus. Only in His light can we see the true, good and beautiful in creation and in people. In His light and by His light creation finds meaning. In Christ we see not only the beauty of a person, but his value, his worth. Man is worth dying for. And that is what God did.

We can only see our beauty in light of God, for He is the only and true source of our dignity. Take God out of the equation, we all become commodities to each other.

How long we live in the darkness of sin? How much more misery before we repent and turn our back from our sins? How much wretchedness will we endure before we walk toward the light of the Son?

Jesus is waiting for us.

He wants to heal our blindness.

Step out of the darkness and into His own marvelous light.

Written by Daxx Bondoc