"Does not value"? "Hates and fears" is more like it.
For your bump lists, if you'd be so kind.
Come Holy Spirit.
PRAYER FOR THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
Christ Jesus, before ascending into heaven, You promised to send the Holy Spirit to Your apostles and disciples.
Grant that the same Spirit may perfect in our lives the work of Your grace and love.
Grant us the Spirit of Fear Of The Lord that we may be filled with a loving reverence toward You.
the Spirit of Piety that we may find peace and fulfillment in the service of God while serving others;
the Spirit of Fortitude that we may bear our cross with You and, with courage, overcome the obstacles that interfere with our salvation;
the Spirit of Knowledge that we may know You and know ourselves and grow in holiness;
the Spirit of Understanding to enlighten our minds with the light of Your truth;
the Spirit of Counsel that we may choose the surest way of doing Your will, seeking first the Kingdom;
Grant us the Spirit of Wisdom that we may aspire to the things that last forever;
Teach us to be Your faithful disciples and animate us in every way with Your Spirit.
Amen.
I am certainly guilty of that. I feel frightened by the most benign mentally ill.
You know that is why Terri must die.
SO ABSOLUTELY TRUE.
And a continuing growing edge challenge in my life. LETTING GO AND LETTING GOD is not an easy thing for me to learn well.
By His grace have made a lot of progress. But it's still a challenge. If you care about me, please pray for me in this area.
Bless you for posting this.
The culture of death reminds me of Johnny Cash singing about his kingdom of dirt.
The insurance companies like this because it will give them more options to pull plugs in the future.
With everyone mostly getting older as the largest part of the population soon, these euthanasia issues are arriving right on time.
More and more this world reminds me of that old movie Soylent Green with Charlton Heston. People were eating soylent green, which ended up being made of PEOPLE.
Are we so far off from that either?
Hell is defined best as an absence of God. We see a little more of that lately I am sorry to say.
From abortion, to pornography, to euthanasia, the Culture of Death is resoultely confronting and killing innocents; from the innocents unborn in the womb, to the innocent minds and souls of youth, to the innocent lives of the defenseless handicapped.
America, just like in Germany, where Hitler merely trod upon the ground prepared for him by psychiatrists and lawyers, is a killing fields for innocence where the battlefield was also prepared by doctors and lawyers.
It is over in America. Happy Easter.
ping to you
I have been giving much thought to the place of senitmentalism in contemporary culture, and I bet it's related to this aversion to dependency. Romulus, I know you're familiar with O'Connor's line about tenderness leading to the gas chambers. I reread part of Saint John's depiction of Babylon the other day: "How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow." -Rev 18:7 Many ignore this vale of tears, comforting themselves with the Panglossian fiction that absolutely everything is for the best. Someone is severely brain damaged? No worries, her soul is in a better place. Someone's a mass murderer? No worries, he's not really a member of the human race.
Do the proud ever weep? "Proud weeping" sounds like an oxymoron to my ears. It seems to me the most human reaction to the realization that we are not in control, or at least that the world is not as it should be. Irony, camp, and stoicism kill off one's ability to mourn.
Does suffering have any iconic significance? I tend to say no, since that would imply that suffering reveals the nature of God , and as I recall patripassianism has been condemned as a heresy for saying just that. John Paul II's apostolic letter Salvici Doloris is an excellent examination of the matter.
Alisdair MacIntyre also made a study of human dependency in his _Dependent Rational Animals_, though it's quite flawed and one of his weaker works.
For the past five seasons, I've been through a crucifixion of my own. A chronic illness of unknown origin has left me quite dependent. Prayers would be much appreciated, and reciprocated.