God Gave Us Sex For ‘Procreation of Children … This Truth Is Not Homophobia’

June 4, 2019  By Michael W. Chapman

Bishop Joseph Strickland, head

of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas.

(Diocese of Tyler)

(CNSNews.com) — In response to vicious attacks by homosexual activists and their supporters against a fellow bishop, Joseph Strickland, head of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, said that preaching the truth of the Gospel is not homophobic, that sexual intimacy is for a married man and woman “for the procreation of children,” and that this is “simply reality.”

Bishop Strickland made his remarks on Twitter in defense of Providence, R.I. Bishop Thomas Tobin who had advised Catholics not to participate in the LGBT activities of “Pride Month” in June because celebrating or endorsing sodomy in any way is contrary to Catholic teaching.

(Twitter.)

Tobin had tweeted on June 1, “A reminder that Catholics should not support or attend LGBTQ ‘Pride Month’ events held in June. They promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals. They are especially harmful for children.”

For his statement on Catholic teaching, Bp. Tobin was harshly criticized onlineby LGBT activists and their supporters.

In response, Bp. Strickland tweeted on June 2, “Please stop labeling bishops who speak the truth of the Gospel as homophobic. God gave us sexual intimacy for the procreation of children and the deeper union of a man & woman in marriage. Stating this truth is not homophobia, it is simply reality.”

(Twitter.)

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ 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.” (Emphasis added.)

(Twitter.)

The Catechism further teaches, “By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory. Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves. God himself said: ‘It is not good that man should be alone,’ and ‘from the beginning [he] made them male and female’; wishing to associate them in a special way in his own creative work, God blessed man and woman with the words: ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’

“Hence, true married love and the whole structure of family life which results from it, without diminishment of the other ends of marriage, are directed to disposing the spouses to cooperate valiantly with the love of the Creator and Savior, who through them will increase and enrich his family from day to day.”

Gay marriage is a contradiction in terms and illogical, according to the Church, because homosexuals use their sexuality in unnatural ways and do not reproduce. Unlike the unitive and generative nature of heterosexual coitus between a married man and woman, homosexual intercourse is non-unitive and non-generative.

(Twitter.)

Bishop Strickland also tweeted on June 2, “Bishop Tobin is simply speaking for one truth of the deposit of faith. God made humans male & female. Certainly those who are confused about their identity need Christ’s love & compassion, let’s remember Christ’s love is expressed when [he] dies on the cross for the truth.”

The Catholic Church teaches that same-sex attraction is not sinful but to engage in homosexual practices is gravely sinful.

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/us-bishop-god-gave-us-sex-procreation-children-truth-not-homophobia

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A D-Day hero makes a life-changing return to Normandy at age 94

June 6, 2019 By Martha MacCallum

The words used to describe the heroes of D-Day are not the current lexicon we tend to use for success. Humble, selfless, brave. Those are not words we attach in 2019 to superstars. They are words attached to warriors who are willing to die for a day they will never see, for the price of freedom, for those they do not even know.

Jack Gutman, who suffered from severe PTSD and the alcoholism it saddled him with, rejoiced this week because France was so beautiful and the people were so kind.

He never made it past the beach in 1944. He stayed down there while others went up and over the cliffs.

BRET BAIER: D-DAY WAS A GRAND GAMBLE

He was just 18, but he bore the heavy burden as a medic on the sands, of saving those he could and lying to those he could not.

He held their IV bag or their heads while they passed on. He says he knew in the frantic chaos of the beach that the boys who cried out for their mothers, had only him. That he would have to do. His face might be the last thing they saw on this earth. So he did the best he could to reassure them that they would be OK. That he was with them. That help was coming. Anything that would ease their pain, until they breathed no more.

He was 18.

rt, Jack went face first into his plate. He says it was so embarrassing. He felt terrible for his family and himself. Still, it had to happen. It was a low that changed Jack’s life.

After that that he finally listened to his daughter the therapist. She helped Jack get the help he needed. He is so honest about what happened because he wants some of those 20 vets who take their lives every day to know that there is another way.

Sobriety and therapy changed Jack into a man who at 94 decided it was time. Perhaps now that Normandy was no longer slamming wave after wave on him at home, he could go to Normandy.

So this week Jack and his son Craig, took a journey together to the place that had seared itself on Jack’s heart.  He got on the plane and took the long trip to Paris and then the bus to Normandy and then Jack saw that beach again for the first time in 66 years.

He walked the rows of white crosses and that was where he wept. Their pristine white shapes stand snapped at attention, tall and fresh like the boys below once did.

Jack saluted them. Promised he would never, ever forget them.

He thought about all the life he got to live. Marriage. Children. A daughter who saved him and a son who helped him heal by being at his side as he walked the rows.

He said, some of these boys I tried to save.

It always haunted me, said Jack, could I have done more?

But mostly Normandy transformed into a place of gratitude for Jack this week. He met the people of the villages they fought to liberate. Everyone was so nice. France was so pretty.

He’d only seen the beach.

He said of his return, it changed my life! Again. This time by softening his worries, laying them down.

Jack and others told me this week that at times they felt like celebrities. And celebrate them we should. Not because they are glamorous or athletic, but maybe because they are not. They are what we should all want to be, though.

Selfless, humble and my goodness, so astonishingly dashing and brave. These men are true heroes. They battled the Germans, and so many like Jack, silently battled their demons, wrestling with them all these years.

But Jack won. And we salute you, Jack. We salute you.

 

Martha MacCallum currently serves as the anchor of The Story with Martha MacCallum (weeknights 7PM/ET). She joined FOX News Channel (FNC) in January 2004 and is based in New York.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/martha-maccallum-d-day-hero-jack-gutman-normandy

Mother’s Day: Honoring Moms,Teaching the Next Generation ‘The Noblest and Most Precious Work’

May 10, 2019 By John Stonestreet

(Screenshot)

On Mother’s Day, most of us take intentional time and effort to show our moms how much we love and appreciate them, and how much we’re thankful for their love and sacrifice. I’m not always as intentional as I should be about honoring the moms in my life, especially the one who gave me life and the one who’s currently doing the really heavy lifting caring for our kids.

But especially in this cultural moment, Christians should be the first, not only to honor current mothers, but also to celebrate and encourage future mothers.

Andrea Burke, writing at For the Church, suggests that we’re not always very good at this. As a result, for too many young Christians, cultural attitudes toward motherhood are setting the tone. And it’s not a positive tone.

Burke calls motherhood “the one life dream that makes a girl blush.” In her work directing her church’s women’s ministry, Burke regularly sits down with single, young women to talk about the future. They often confess that although they could pursue further education or a successful career in any number of fields, what many of them want is to get married and raise a family.

By Burke’s account, these young women are smart and accomplished. They don’t have to prove anything to anyone. Still, they regularly talk as if choosing to be a wife and mom is a silly cop-out—somehow a waste of their lives. “When a 21-year-old sits across the table from me and tells me that she wants to be a mother,” Burke writes, “she blushes and gives a thousand caveats as to why she knows it’s not the optimal choice.”

Where do young women get this low view of motherhood? Well, look around. According to a New York Times article last year, the average age at which women become mothers is now at a record high—30 or older in some parts of the country. The Times reported this as if it were a good thing, talking up the wonders of a “fulfilling career” and all-but-openly suggesting that the only reason any woman would have children young is because she couldn’t achieve the ideal professional life, and needs a substitute rite of passage to adulthood.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the average birth rate failed to rebound after the Great Recession, and now sits at a rock-bottom 1.77 children per woman on average—that’s down over 16 percent from a decade ago.

So now there’s a gap in our culture between the number of children women want to have, and the number they end up having.

The Times explains, “it’s unlikely any future baby boom will be able to fully offset the baby bust of the last 10 years.” This means that “millennial women are likely to experience the largest shortfall in achieved fertility verses their stated family desires of any generation in a long time … .”

What does all this have to do with young women embarrassed about wanting to become mothers? Well, they need honesty from us—specifically from their parents, that whatever society says about the wonders of a successful career, they’re statistically likely to regret prioritizing promotions over parenthood.

At BreakPoint.org, my colleague Shane Morris recently wrote a beautiful letter to his six-year-old daughter, in which he encouraged her to think of marriage and motherhood as callings worth pursuing, not as afterthoughts. Shane described how his daughter already is in the habit of tucking her little brother’s trucks to bed. Shane is right in seeing in those nurturing instincts things worth celebrating and cultivating.

His letter reminded me of Martin Luther’s praise for nurturing tendencies in his commentary on Genesis: “How becomingly even little girls carry infants in their arms,” he wrote. “And how appropriate are the gestures with which mothers dandle the little ones when they hush a crying infant or lay it in the cradle … .” Elsewhere he says: “In all the world this is the noblest and most precious work.”

If you’ve got daughters (like I do) or granddaughters or even nieces, proudly tell these young women that if motherhood is their dream, they’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.

John Stonestreet is President of The Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview and BreakPoint co-host.

https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/john-stonestreet/mothers-day-honoring-moms-teaching-next-generation-noblest-and-most

Don’t Let Bitterness Ruin your Marriage

Marriages break because of bitterness

Marriage is Work in Progress:

Marital problems are real and the bitterness usually justified. If you’ve been hurt by your partner,  it is advisable to confront the problem calmly. Do not harbor the pain inward or compare yourself with other married couples because each marriage is unique in its own way.

I once spoke to a lady who wished to be in her neighbor’s position; because they seemed to be in a happy marriage. The fact is, people don’t announce their issues to the outside world. They keep their domestic problems behind closed doors. Smile and public hands holding can hide much.

No relationship is a complete smooth sail because nobody is perfect. Surprisingly the reason most marriages don’t heal is not only the problem at hand but also the prideful bitterness the wronged partner guard in their heart. Almost all break ups and divorce happen because of the hurting partner.

Bitterness Cuts the Host:

Bitterness is a blade meant to hurt someone else but it eventually serves the hand that conceals it. When it finds a place in a relationship, it destroys the foundation one step at a time. It stores itself in the soul slowly poisoning the one who carries it.

When you harbor resentment, love becomes numb and hardens the heart. Unfortunately at this point most people walk out. I have learned from talking to married couples that it is common for a wife or husband to say or do something disapproved by the other.

These things are bound to happen. But in some cases, a spouse forms a repetitive pattern regardless of being confronted. To the wronged partner, each hurtful action takes residence in the heart. It reaches a point when there’s no more room left. Thus the beginning of bitterness manifestation and damage beyond repair.

Communicate your Feelings:

If you are in such a position, the truth is, bitterness doesn’t give your spouse a chance to seek forgiveness or even change. As a matter of fact, they may not even know to what level they’ve offended you. Your bitterness comes from the hurts you suppressed without communicating.

Women are especially guilty here, I used to do it and know many women who still do. We tend to hold things inside expecting our husbands to read between the lines. Imagine taking a bottle and filling it up with pressure. It will eventually explode right?

In the same way, the outburst in your heart can result in a broken marriage. Your husband on the other hand may have no idea what’s going on. He may not even see it coming. I think women need to open up a little bit more. Communicate your feelings, don’t show them, your husband can not read your mind.

We all know that men love to fix things, he will do what’s necessary to make things work. I will write a different article about us women and how we push our husbands away.

 

Bitterness spreads like wild-fire

Bitterness Spreads Fast:

Perhaps your spouse is aware of your unhappiness but continues in the same patterns. It happens especially if he/she is trying to stir something up. The situation here is totally different and it calls for stronger measures like counseling.

However, this does not negate your responsibility to remove bitterness from your heart. You still need to at least be kind enough to set yourself free from stress related health issues. Bitterness will give your future health a bitter struggle. Nothing is worth your own health, take care of yourself, things can get better if dealt with rightfully.

I like to compare bitterness with wild-fire. Deadly wild-fire like the one we had ranging in California can begin with something as simple as a flat tire or tossed cigarette butt. That spark, combined with tinder-dry forests and howling winds, can be all that’s needed for a catastrophic wildfire to start.

Bitterness grows in the same way. One little bit of bitterness can spread throughout your heart and finally take over your whole body. It  starts to manifest itself in your attitude, demeanor, and finally your health.

In addition, the spreading will affect your children and family. Your criticism will make everyone critical. When you reach this point, it is not possible to make any sound decisions. There’s too many voices. The only way to start working towards reconciliation is to let go all bitterness.

A Positive Attitude is Attractive:

Find some undistracted time to discuss the issue with your spouse. If you find it hard to talk to him/her alone, find a close friend mentor. We all have one. Remember to speak in love, rationally and gently. Talk about all your hurts without being critical.

Finally when all is said and done. Work on yourself, not your spouse. He/she is the only one who can change themselves. You do not have the power to do so. The only part you can play, if you want to see some permanent changes is to pray. The greatest inspiration that can trigger change, with your spouse is your attitude. You might end up in the best marriage ever.

I’ve seen damaged relationships fully restored and the couple’s live happily there after. Most problems occur due to lack of knowledge. It is okay to seek help especially if you are stuck in hurtful cycle of marital problems.

https://sheqoz.com/dont-let-bitterness-ruin-your-marriage/