The Catholic Defender: Back To The Edge Of Reality

We are living in strange times, it is like people are living between a blur of reality and illusion. By the time people wake up to real life, it may be too late as people have accepted the illusion.

People try to hide their misery because they can’t face reality. They prefer to live within the shadow of darkness and refuse to be confused with the facts.

Faith is the “realization of what is hoped for and the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1) and people choose to believe what they see.

What is sensual versus what is sexual? There is nothing wrong with being attractive, but not to the point of vanity that causes sin and vice. Consider the following facts:

The Social Organization of Sexuality (SOS-1994) hints at some of the difficulties facing American families today.

Consider the report that those who cohabit rarely practice their faith. That plays an important role in the lives of the contemporary American.

Without maintaining a firm foundation, the societal conditions emerge resulting in a growth of premarital sexual encounters.

As I will show, this has tremendous impact on society with great social consequences. I want to stress on the report that those who cohabit rarely practice their faith! Again, that plays an important role in the lives of the contemporary American.

I have shared this before, but it is as true today as it was yesterday. Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) now are the most common diseases in America next to the common cold and flu. Each year nearly 20 million new STD cases are reported.

That equates to something like 55,000 people per day being diagnosed with an STD. Tragically, this includes more than 10,000,000 teenagers (and growing), per year. Recently, the hard cold reality, 1 in 4 Americans have been statistically been diagnosed with an STD, including young girls down to the age of 12.

It is important to note that today, there are more than 110,000,000 total infections of Americans with an STD.

For many, young people may not know they have such a disease as 60-80% are infected with STD’s that do not develop initial symptoms.

Because of the alarming rates today, female Soldiers are required to undergo annual Pap Smears because STD’s such as gonorrhea can hide behind mild cases of bladder infection or a vaginal infection. Nearly 50% of Female Soldiers had been diagnosed with gonorrhea.

New strains of gonorrhea are resistant to penicillin so treatments vary, but this has become far to routine across America today.

We are certainly living in a very confusing time. American Family values have been totally ignored and rejected. Children are learning how to have sex thanks to our government run public school system.

As we have seen going back to the Kinsey studies, sex education early on were devoid of teaching social norms and morality. It’s not surprising, with this knowledge, there are very little to say about values being offered with these programs in public schools.

This feeds right into the classic stereotypes of boys and girls moving towards puberty growing up. Teenage boys are out to make conquests and the girls are looking to be wanted, accepted, and loved.

As a result of the rejecting of our Christian foundations, there are many children being born out of wed-lock, many being born without Fathers. Many of the Fathers are “Dead Beat Dads” who care little for the children they help create.

This has hit the Black community the hardest. They have a 70% plus rate of children born out of wed-lock. The book (The Social Organization of Sexuality) reports that Black men and women were more inclined to have “three or more partners in the last twelve months.”

It is not easy for teenage mothers raising children and still go to school. Careers are put on hold as our youth are many times growing up to fast in a fast paced world.

Everything in the media want to make the culture of the Sexual Revolution look enticing, fun, even recreational, yet unfortunately, the reality of this glamorous life style is misery.

I am hearing that people are questioning why men are becoming less emotionally involved with members of the opposite sex. Is this why many men resort to homosexual relations? That could be a future study in itself.

It’s interesting that the SOS (pardon the pun) reports that nearly half of co-habitations end within a year.

Some might marry, but many end in divorce.

Tragically, the impact this has on Americans leads to more broken families. I think that is because “romance” is lost and the human heart is absent from the marriage covenant.

With the constant barrage on married couples, it would seem hard to find many aging couples out there. But they are out there! It is always great when we have couples celebrating their 50th anniversary in our Parish!

I maintain that there is a huge differences between desire and lust, about as wide a difference as marriage and prostitution.

Lust only cares about self-gratification where desire leads to wanting to please your spouse. Courtship used to be a major way to date, but not today, dating today, our social norms and expectations have turned our society upside down.

That is the per-marital condition. Within marriage, it is still showing that 70-80 percent of Americans still disapprove of adultery, maybe this is residual of a standard gone by, but it is still considered taboo.

In conclusion, it is evident that sexuality in America is like a two-headed coin, because of what we have learned, there are remarkable advances we can take that can enrich marital sexual health.

However, like a loaded gun, if sexuality is not properly understood it can literally destroy people. If sex was love, America would be a very loving Country. That does not seem to be the case. Sin destroys.

Matthew 19:4-6 He answered, ”Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ’Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Year after year the United States Government pours out millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood who is one of the largest Abortion providers in the Country.

They are wanting to make Abortion accessible to all nations.

I once told Jane Fonda that if the people of the world would obey the teachings of the Catholic Church, Abortion, AIDS, and all the problems associated with Sexually Transmitted Disease would be gone over night. That has not changed, but the message of the Sexual Revolution is in full swing as if they have conquered.

Homosexual liberation is part of the Progressives agenda and they have the political influence to win due to the Progressives in Government.

Pope Paul VI viewed Abortion as related to Artificial Birth Control (HUMANAE VITAE). They are closely related. The past few years it has been the Government policy to sell condoms as “safe sex”. As a result this icon of the Sexual Revolution, has pushed equality for those who push for the Progressive message: Anything goes.

Let’s take a good look at some of the results to this new found freedom. In 1964, when the Beatles hit America by storm with the Ed Sullivan show, their song, “I want to hold your hand” at that time was revolutionary.

1 out of every 32 graduating Seniors that year was diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease (STD). 1964 was close to the beginning of the Sexual Revolutions beginnings. The next few years saw radical changes and Woodstock would be a voice of a generation.

In 1982, Olivia Newton John had one of her greatest hits “Physical” which says, “I took you to an intimate restaurant, then to a suggestive movie, there’s nothing left to talking about it, except horizontally,I want to get physical, I want to get animal, I want to hear your body talk”. This is a bit more explicit from “I want to hold your hand”. That year 1 in 18 graduating Seniors had been diagnosed with a STD.

You push into the 1990′s and things really began to heat up. Music really began to become far more raunchy with the creation of “HipHop” and MTV’s popularity, the University of Michigan conducted a study finding that the average listener was hooked into the music 8 hours per day. By 1996, HipHop was gaining popularity through their artists such as Ludacris. By this time, 1 out of every 4 graduating Seniors were diagnosed with a STD.

The constant message of sex has it’s consequences. Young people will imitate whom they admire and grow into whom the imitate. The Apostles instructed us to imitate their example.

Today, our youth have been exposed to a lie that is tearing down the fabric of Society.

Pope Paul VI was very prophetic. Consider what I have already reported:

STD’s are the most common diseases in America next to the common cold and flu.

20 Million new STD cases are reported each year. That is about 55,000 per day.

60 million Americans are infected with an incurable STD.

There are now more than 60 different kinds of STD’s that exist.

20 different STD’s are rampant among teenagers.

63% of all STD’s occur in persons less than 25 years of age.

STD’s infect 10 million teenagers each year and growing.

Last year it was reported that 1 out of 4 girls have been diagnosed down to the age of 12. 60-80% infected with an STD do not develop initial symptoms.

AID’s has been a leading cause of death (among 18-25 year olds) despite wonder drugs that help extend life, there is no cure. The following statements reveal the danger condoms present in acquiring STD’s:

Dr. Nicholas Fiumara, Former director of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said, “In summary, then, it’s ineffectiveness makes the condom useless as a prophylactic against gonorrhea, and even under ideal conditions against syphilis”.

The U.S. Public Health and Human Services Task Force warned, “The risk of condom failure in anal intercourse is so high that the practice should be avoided entirely-with condoms or without”.

Dr. Robert Redfield, AIDS Specialist at the Department of Retroviral Research, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research states, “Condoms are not safe. They’re dangerous. Sex with a condom with an infected person is not protected. It’s very unprotected. It’s very, very dangerous”. He goes on to say, “The truth is, condoms are not an appropriate medical or public solution to this epidemic. It’s not going to work, and we are losing precious time to re-educate, train and equip our young people on how to avoid becoming a statistic in the AIDS epidemic”.

Dr. Harold Jaffee, Chief of Epidemiology for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, refering to AIDS stated, “It is just too dangerous a disease to say that people can do whatever they want as long as they wear a condom”.

Dr. Malcolm Potts, Once President of the Family Health International and one of the inventors of condoms lubricated with spermicides, confessed that "anyone who tells a person who engages in high-risk behavior to use a condom “is like telling someone who is driving drunk to use a seat belt”.

Infectious Disease Specialist Robert C Nobles warned, “Passing out condoms to teenagers is like issuing them squirt guns for a four alarm blaze”.

Theresa Crewshaw, M.D., Past President of the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists, and a member of the Presidential AIDS Commission, says that equating condom use with safe sex “is, in fact playing Russian Roulette. A lot of people will die in this dangerous game”.

Formerly, Pope Benedict XVI was attacked by the Obama Administration because he said condoms is not a good policy to deal with the AIDS crisis in Africa. The Secularists and the Progressives will continue to push condoms and the billions spent at Planned Parenthood. Taking what the Scriptures teach and the 2,000 year constant tradition of the Church, I will proclaim the good news of the Lord.

The last real point is what condoms do to the soul, the spiritual death that takes you away from God. Sex outside of marriage is a mortal sin.A condom does not change that fact.

Mother Mary warns that more souls go to Hell because of the sins of the flesh than any other reason.

Despite that fact, people are not listening. Recently I drove from Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, back to Texas. You can learn a great deal from just talking to some of the In and Out Marts where you fill up with gas and get water and chips for the road.

People are conditioned to live on the Edge of Reality where people living the illusion. The goal of temptation is to get you to fall, that is it. Wake up and remember the call of Jesus, “Come Follow Me”. Jesus is the Deliverer and through Him we stand on reality.