Women, Do Not Behold Your Son

The Church's teaching on IVF rescue is inscrutable. In Dignitas Personae #19, the Church tells us "All things considered, it needs to be recognized that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved." 

Think about that.

With that statement, the Church tells us that women cannot adopt frozen embryos.

This means IVF is a sin of such magnitude, that a Catholic cannot even offer her own womb as sanctuary for a child who will otherwise starve and freeze to death, buried alive in a frozen nitrogen grave. Yes, this is the fate of every abandoned embryo. Such children cannot even be baptized, for the simple act of baptizing an embryonic frozen child would kill the child. So, since the Church forbids IVF rescue and cannot apply the sacraments, all those thousands of abandoned embryonic children cannot be adopted, they must instead die unshriven, placing their salvation into a state known only to God. (CCC 1261).

Whenever anyone tells you the Church cares more about embryos than it does about women, bring forward this counter. It is essentially the only time a woman can be uniquely damned to hell for having saved a child's life. Women are forbidden to save children conceived through IVF.

The Church looks upon the freezing, starving IVF children, throws up her hands and says, "Well, isn't that sad? Ladies, don't even think about rescuing those children. You are not permitted to take up that cross or lay down your life for them, not even your wombs. For these IVF children, you cannot even temporarily donate the use of your organs. We're fine with wet nursing, but we have to draw the line somewhere. You just stand back and watch them die, do you hear?"

Makes you proud to be a Catholic, don't it?

Judeo-Christian Morality at Work

So, if today's Jews are REALLY Jews, and if Christians are grafted onto the Jews, so that our morality is founded on Jewish morality, what do we do with this?

According to Jewish theology, it's ok for a man to have sex with a two-year old.
Remember, this is "Judeo-Christian theology".

https://x.com/SMSASSASMS/status/1852052059073483009
Rabbi #1: ISIS are better friends to Jews than Christians
Rabbi #2: Islam should invade Europe, Europe must be destroyed
Rabbi #3: An adult man who has intercourse with a toddler... this is not a crime.
Rabbi #4: This rabbi and his colleagues were jailed in Mexico for trafficking minors in Chiapa State
We get upset with Mohammed for having sex with a nine-year old. Jewish men can have sex with two-year olds, and it's fine (link). This is "Judeo-Christian morality."
https://x.com/SMSASSASMS/status/1852111497343709634
Now, keep in mind the Vatican has said Christians should not target Jews for evangelization:

"In spite of the historical breach and the painful conflicts arising from it, the Church remains conscious of its enduring continuity with Israel....Judaism is not to be considered simply as another religion; the Jews are instead our "elder brothers" (Saint Pope John Paul II), our "fathers in faith" (Benedict XVI). Jesus was a Jew, was at home in the Jewish tradition of his time, and was decisively shaped by this religious milieu. (cf."Ecclesia in Medio Oriente", 20). His first disciples gathered around him had the same heritage and were defined by the same Jewish tradition in their everyday life." (#14) 

"[Thus,] In concrete terms this means that the Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed towards Jews." (#40)

Likewise, the Vatican condemns all forms of anti-Semitism: "The path that the Church has walked with you, the ancient people of the covenant, rejects every form of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, unequivocally condemning manifestations of hatred toward Jews and Judaism as a sin against God,"

So, Judaism teaches that men can absolutely have sex with girls under the age of three, and Judaism teaches that a girl aged three years and one day can be married to a man by virtue of having had intercourse with that man. But, remember, these two rules govern having sex with Jewish children. Jews can have sex with Gentile children under a different set of rules: Gentile children can be raped until they attain the age of nine years and one day. Since these ideas are integral to the Judaism taught by most of Judaism's most august and revered rabbis, then this must be respected. Christians who hate or reject Judaism's treasured theological teachings, which include the right to have sex with children, are arguably being anti-Semitic.

Also, keep in mind that this teaching about sex with children is not new, or invented by post-Temple Judaism. Rebecca (hebrew רִבְקָה rivqah), wife of Isaac (hebrew יִצְחָק‎ yīṣḥāq), mother of the twins Jacob and Esau (hebrew יַעֲקֹב ya'ãqōb and עֵשָׂו êśāw‎), was underage when she met Isaac, her family sent her off with her nurse Deborah (hebrew דְּבוֹרָה Deborah). The Hebrew word translated as nurse (in Genesis 35:8) is מֵינֶ֣קֶת mêneqeṯ which comes from yanaq, a primitive root meaning to suck, causatively to give milk. Using this word in reference to Deborah indicates that she was a wetnurse, breastfeeding a child. But the text says nothing about Deborah having an infant. Who was the child Deborah was nursing? According to many strands of Jewish teaching, when she left her family to join Isaac, Rebecca was still a child. Her age is still debated, but some Jewish scholars hypothesize she was 3 years old:

Since Isaac was twenty-six years old at the time, and forty when he married Rebekah (Gen. 25:20), she was thus fourteen years old when she married (Seder Olam Rabbah 1). Another tradition gives her age as three years and three days when she left her father’s house (Tractate Soferim, Hosafah [addition] 1, 1:4).

Also, see the Khehot Chumash:

Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebecca, in the year 2088, when she was three years old.

So, child marriage and consummation by age three may have been common to Abrahamic Judaism. Child marriage is certainly accepted by post-Temple Judaism. It is reasonable to conclude that child marriage was common and accepted in first century Judaism, the Judaism of Jesus' time. 

Oddly, at no point did Jesus, Peter, Paul or any of the early apostles condemn adult-child marriage or sex. There is simply nothing in Scripture to support the idea that adult-child sex was in any way considered wrong or sinful. Indeed, recall that the Blessed Virgin Mary, greatest saint of the Church, could have been as young as 12 when she was impregnated by the Holy Spirit. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:

From the age at which Hebrew maidens became marriageable, it is possible that Mary gave birth to her Son when she was about thirteen or fourteen years of age. 

Even if one were to argue that the Church forbids it now (although young Catholic saints did it), it is clearly the case that adult-child sex is an ancient and venerable Jewish teaching. Therefore, it is a teaching Catholics cannot attack, lest they be anti-Semites. Indeed, since Catholics are not supposed to evangelize Jews in a way which attacks Jewish faith, Catholics shouldn't even try to persuade Jewish men that having sex with three-year old Jewish girls or eight-year old Gentile girls is wrong.

Furthermore, given the irrevocable salvific covenant God has with ancient Judaism, given the fact that God incarnated as a Jew "at home in the Jewish tradition of his time", Catholics can be assured that Jewish men who have sex with Jewish or Gentile children are going to heaven, as long as they follow Talmudic rules.

As a Catholic, that's certainly something to be proud of, right? 

Addendum:

So, this website has this amazing statement, which provides an alternate explanation for why Mary might be called virgin even if she had borne children other than Jesus:

“…the Greek parthenos could also mean that the girl was young and/or unmarried. In fact, in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament parthenos was used to render three distinct Hebrew words, ‘Virgin’, ‘girl’ and ‘young woman’. Already Rabbis in the Tannaitic era (first to second century ad) subscribed to further nuances, and there is no reason to think that all these were invented by them. Even the word betulah, which normally means virgo intact, when used by them could carry the laternal sense of bodily immaturity with the consequential inability to conceive. In Rabbinic terminology this type of virginity in a woman ceased with the physical onset of puberty. The Mishnah, the oldest of the rabbinic codes, defines a virgin: 

"Who is the woman characterized as a virgin in this context? It is any woman who has not seen the flow of menstrual blood in all her days, even if she was married and has experienced bleeding as a result of intercourse consummating her marriage." (Mishnah, Niddah 1:4).

The Tosefta, another early Jewish code of law, claims in the name of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (late first century ad) that such a woman would continue to count as a virgin even after she had conceived and borne children without prior menstruation:

Who is [considered to be] a virgin [for purposes of niddah] (see Niddah 1:3)? Any girl who has not seen blood in her days, even if she is married and she has children, I call her a virgin, until her eyes have seen the first. Do not call her a virgin with respect to virginity, rather a virgin with respect to blood. (Tosefta, Niddah 1:6)

To understand these statements, we must remember that in the InterTestamental and early rabbinic age, pre-puberty marriage was generally permitted."

Why the Church is Two Centuries Behind

George Weigel, in his inimitably ignorant fashion, is bloviating about the latest synod and its discontents. Specifically, he deplores the invocation of Cardinal Martini (d. 1999). The problem, of course, lies precisely in the fact that Martini, might have been theologically insane in some areas, but he was also sometimes correct. Two of the points the First Things article decries are precisely the two points Martini got right: the Church is two centuries behind the times, and it is in need of another ecumenical council. 

The Catholic Church was wildly successful in a subsistence-level society. In such a society, everyone was poor. The corporal acts of mercy were used as an evangelization tool to bring everyone into the Church.

But in a surplus-goods society, especially a first-world society like the US, virtually no one is poor in the 1800's senses of the word. No one starves to death, no one dies of smallpox, anesthetics means pain and suffering is minimal even when major surgery or death approaches. No one can identify with the Cross in a way that EVERYONE could in 1800.

Now, we suffer from diseases of wealth, like addiction, alphabet people, and abortion. Try this: find an addiction treatment center for lay people in the US that has daily Catholic Mass or even a weekly priest visit. Good luck. There is only one such retreat center in the entire nation, and it is run by a married lesbian.

While the bishops natter on about the problem of poverty in a country that has essentially no poverty, millions suffer from diseases of the wealthy. The Church completely ignores them, because it has no objective bullet point in any of its works of mercy for them. The Church teaches celibacy as objectively superior to marriage, and wonders why the TFR is dropping even among Catholic populations.

In 1800, everyone lived in extreme poverty. Today, according to the latest poverty statistics, approximately 9.2% of the global population, or about 700 million people, live in extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is defined as living on less than $1.90 per day. The Church is still trying to sell a subsistence-level response to a world that is 90% wealthy people. It doesn't understand its own market.

Martini was also correct about the timing of the next ecumenical council. If you bother to look at the intervals between councils, the geometric mean between councils is 60 years. That puts 2025 smack dab at the geometric mean: 60 years since the last council.

The Catholic Church Failed by the Tenth Century

While I was involved in a conversation on the internet, I finally realized that Designed to Fail is incomplete because it doesn't explicitly lay out the problem. Remember, the pastor's primary mission (bishop or priest) is to form parents/adults in the Faith. That's what the Magisterium says. Adults, not children. 

Arguably, the existence of Catholic schools for children merely demonstrates that the Church began to fail in its mission of forming adults roughly one thousand years ago, The Church did not begin to establish schools for children until the ninth or tenth centuries. Prior to that, parents taught their own children the Faith. The fact that schools for children became necessary meant the Church was no longer properly teaching adults/parents. 

Now, you might argue that in the Middle Ages, there were many more orphans who may have lost parents and godparents. These orphans had no one in the world to care for them except the monastics. And, just as a child's natural parents are lay people, so most monastics are lay people. Most monastics are not under Holy Orders. A man can be a monk or brother without being a priest, and most were not ordained priests. So, we still had well-formed lay people teaching children the faith, so where's the harm? 

The harm lies in the fact that monastics began to supplant even surviving parents. Since lay monastic religious instruction was seen as superior to lay parental instruction, everyone - parents, monks, nuns, priests, bishops, popes - everyone lost sight of the proper ordering of society. When the Church began to take over the role of children's catechetical instruction, parental formation was neglected as superfluous. By allowing parish schools and monasteries to be viewed as necessary to children's instruction, the Church tacitly admitted it had failed to properly catechize the parents.

The parish came into existence at roughly the same time parish schools did. By creating the monastic school, the cathedral school, the parish school, the pastors proclaimed that none of the parents or other responsible non-monastic lay adults in the parish were properly catechized. The Church had failed in her primary mission of catechizing and making holy adults. It had lost control of adult culture, which meant it had lost control of its mission to make every culture holy.

So, the problem isn't Vatican II or Vatican I or the Council of Trent. It goes back to at least the time of the First Lateran Council (1123) and possibly the Fourth Council of Constantinople (869). It goes back to the first parish and monastic schools. For a thousand years, the Church has taught that parents are the primary educators in the Faith of their own children, while it has functionally denied parents that role and failed to form them for that role. 

For the first thousand years, the Church fought a new heresy every century. It fought by calling councils, puzzling out doctrine, laying down new norms and more nuanced teaching. It fought back by catechizing and teaching adults. Adults contested with and taught each other the Faith. There were always new groups of adult pagans to catechize. But, once every adult was baptized and there were no more adult catechumens... that was the end of adult catechesis.

And, with the rise of monastic, cathedral and parish schools for children, the Church thereby admitted it no longer had the skills to instill the Faith in the average lay adult. More and more, it switched to teaching primarily children. The first crusade to free Jerusalem took place in 1095, the first crusade against the Albigensians in 1209, but by 1212 we already see the Children's Crusade, in which children are expected to do the work of the adults in converting the Muslim invaders to the Catholic Faith. 

Today, you will often hear Catholic school teachers, priests, even bishops proclaim that they teach Catholic children who then go home and proclaim the Gospel to their parents. Think on that. The children do the work of the priests and bishops (catechizing adults), the priests and bishop do the work of the parents (catechizing children), and the parents become children, with no responsibilities to anyone. This is a complete perversion of society, and this was clearly in place and going like gangbusters by 1212 AD. 

Another example of the failure to properly catechize adults can be found in the high number of decrees of nullity regarding marriage. And to understand what level of importance the Church assigns to marriage preparation, consider this: while canon law requires a novice to be 21 to declare religious vows, and 26 to be ordained, it also stipulates a person need only be 16 (if male) or 14 (if female) to be married. Up until 1981, the ages were 12 for women, 14 for men). In canon law, for the purposes of sacramental reception, one is considered an adult at age seven (the age of reason, CIC 11). 

So, the Church assumes that adults between the ages of seven and twelve (fourteen for males) can be prepared for sacramental reception of the life-long vows of marriage. If you want to enter a convent or religious orders, that is, if you want to work directly for the Church, then you must get more formation and you have to be older, but for marriage, yeah, twelve or fourteen is good enough. 

Pope Francis has called for a one-year preparation for reception of marriage. Meanwhile, canon law requires someone to prepare for at least three years prior to taking religious vows (CIC 658), to be a deacon requires five years of preparation (CIC 1032) and ordination cannot happen prior to age 23 (CIC 1031 ff), if he is married, he has to wait until he is 35 (CIC 1031.2), while a priest must be at least 25  and have at least six months to a year of preparation beyond that of the diaconate (CIC 1031.1). 

Those rules are enshrined in canon law. That pretty much sums up where preparation for the Sacrament of the Order of Marriage rates in comparison to Holy Orders or even the mere discipline of monastic vows. Suffice it to say that adult formation has not been at the forefront of Catholic praxis for at least a millennium. 

For these reasons, and for others I lay out in my book on Catholic schools, Designed to Fail, I can only say Catholic schools for children delenda est. 

What Are The Odds?

2.4% of the US population is Jewish:

• Ivanka Trump's husband is orthodox Jewish,
• Ivanka converted to Orthodox Judaism,
• Chelsea Clinton's husband is Jewish (Chelsea was BFF with Ivanka until Don ran against Hillary),
• Kamala's husband is reform Jewish,
• Ashley Biden's husband is reform Jewish,
• Hunter Biden's current (second) wife, Melissa Cohen-Biden, is Jewish,
• Beau Biden's widow, Hallie, is Jewish (Hunter screwed her).

Trump's inner circle has many prominent Jewish advisors

Obama's inner circle had so many prominent Jewish advisors that he held a private Seder at the White House for eight years running.

The United States is 25% Catholic.

Of the above, only Ashley and Hunter are nominally Catholic.

Olympics and Genetic Disorders

Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD) appear to affect roughly 1 in 5000 births, or 0.018% of births. 

Two dozen U.S. boys under 17 swim faster than Katie Ledecky in her best event.

DSD certainly does affect athletic performance. Olympic testing has shown Olympic athletes are much more likely to have a DSD than is the general population:  

All women were screened in Olympic competition from 1992 onwards, with over 2000 tests performed at the 1992 Barcelona games. Fifteen tests were reported positive, with a further eight out of over 3000 positive tests at the Atlanta games in 1996.

1 in 5000 births only works out to 0.018% of births, but if the 1992 Olympics tested positive 15 of 2000, that is 0.75%, which means, in 1992, DSDs were 41 times more common among female Olympic athletes than expected. Similarly, 8 of 3000 positive tests in the 1996 Olympic means 0.266% positive, or a DSD rate nearly 15 times more common than expected. That's way, way above normal distribution. 

The incidence can create enormous disparities in women's sports. For instance:

Here are a few recent examples just from Olympic podiums in track and field: In Tokyo in 2021, an XY DSD sprinter took silver in the women’s 200 meters. In Rio de Janeiro in 2016, three XY DSD athletes swept the women’s 800-meter podium. In London in 2012, the same athlete who won gold in Rio rose from silver to gold after the winner was caught doping.

Some might claim that androgen insensitivity and similar DSDs confer no special advantage, but the numbers tell us this is not true. 

Clearly, if DSD conferred no advantage, there would not be an enormously disproportionate number of DSD athletes competing in the women's Olympics. The fact that the numbers clearly demonstrate this disproportion also demonstrates that someone isn't telling the truth about DSDs and their effect on women's sports competitions. 

Apparently, the Olympics is now much more about the athletics of genetic disorders than it is about female athletics. It's sad that the Olympics allowed this to happen.

Bruce Jenner weighs in

Duke Professor of Law weighs in

Why all the Illegal Immigrants?

Why are so many first-world countries accepting inordinate numbers of immigrants? It is obvious that the immigrants, legal and illegal, are changing the very fabric of first-world society. Why allow this?

There are many people who would default to the easy answer: political groups allow it because they hope for more votes from the immigrants than they can get from their native citizens. While this isn't wrong, it also doesn't really deal with the heart of the problem: total fertility rate (TFR).

Take Europe, for instance (although America is really no different). Europe's "Christians" are not having children, so they aren't really Christians. Whatever basis in Christian society Europe has had, has been fading since at least the Protestant Reformation, if not earlier. Western society has slowly been moving away from Christianity for centuries, which is how today's political monsters got into power to begin with. But politics isn't the practical problem. TFR is.

Every nation's leaders know this: if immigrants are not brought in, the nation disappears within a century as native citizens die off without having offspring... and the immigrants will move in ANYWAY because the country grows emptier each year. It's not like anyone can stop this. Look at the numbers:

• Median age of Europe is 42.5
• Median age of North Africa is 24.7
• Median age of Africa overall is 19.2

European leaders are hoping that if they bring in immigrants, legal and illegal, while Europe is still somewhat youthful(!), maybe they can assimilate the migrants and enculturate them with European values before the current European population ages out and the REAL deluge of youthful migrants starts.

They're wrong, of course, but you can't blame them for trying. You think waiting until the median European age is 50 or 70 is going to work better?

Hint: it won't.

What else can they do? They can't start an African war. Wars just increases infant mortality. High infant mortality increases TFR. Nobody wants Africa's TFR to go up. Europeans want it to go down. That means they have to reverse centuries of policy in regards to Africa. They have to figure out how to make Africa wealthy, ASAP. 

For centuries, Europe and the US has been deliberately keeping Africa poor and starved so it can mine African mineral resources. Well, that worked just great. Europe got rich on African mineral wealth. But, it turns out that the resulting European wealth depressed European TFR while the resulting African poverty and high infant mortality rates kept Africa's TFR high. 

Nobody thought about that.

So, they sowed to the wind, now they are reaping the whirlwind. Europe got wealthy at Africa's expense, now Africa comes to Europe to get their share of the pie. 

North America is similarly getting its come-uppance, and for similar reasons. America stole literally half of Mexico, we illegally occupied the Philippines for most of the 20th century, and we have been having fewer and fewer children each generation since 1800. As our wealth steadily increased, our TFR steadily dropped. For the last forty years, America's TFR has been below even that of 1930s Depression-era America. We're one of the wealthiest nations on earth, and without immigration, we would essentially disappear within roughly the next century. Already, America's median age is 39, in some states it is nearing 45. That's post-menopausal.

Mars Needs Women, and every country in the world needs immigrants. We're stealing other countries' populations in order to prop up our own. Europe is doing the same. That's why this is happening.