23 Genders?

Written by John Horvat

In matters of human sexuality, there are male and female. It is an established biological fact. It is from this fact that comes the family which assures the continuity of the human race. From the family comes society and the State which works toward the common good and perfection of our nature. There is nothing complicated about this obvious fact. It is simply the way things are and always have been.

However, there are those who claim this classification is completely and artificially constructed by society. Humans, they maintain, are not made male and female. Rather, in matters of sexuality, we should all be free to reject the “gender” identity forced upon us and adopt whatever “gender” we want. We are no longer male or female but can choose to be either one or the other, both, and/or neither.

Thus, we have seen the proliferation of behaviors and conditions that now qualify as sexual categories. Gender identity now applies to how one perceives oneself or even how one can surgically change oneself to fit that perception.

What began as a short list referring to homosexual, bisexual has now expanded to include a LGBTQI “community” – adding transgender, questioning and intersexed to the list.

However, that is not the end of the story. Once the floodgate is opened to give official status to any kind of sexual behaviors, there is no limit to the categories and genders that can appear. Thus, for example, the Australian Human Rights Commission has come up with a listing of 23 “genders” that it feels need protection under the law.¹ On this list, beyond the standard LGBTQI listing, one can find transsexual, androgynous, agender, cross dresser, genderfluid, genderqueer, intergender, neutrois, pansexual, pan-gendered, sistergirl and other classifications that are best left unmentioned.

What is clear from the listing is that the whole “gender” debate, which accuses traditional society of artificially constructing sexual roles, is itself artificial and counterfeit. Advocates of this unrestrained sexuality cannot restrain their imagination in expanding the new categories that must be protected, even to the point of taking it to the ridiculous and absurd. They are likewise creative in manufacturing a whole list of phobias (biphobia or transphobia) for those who disapprove of these aberrant behaviors.

Such findings are really not new. They are merely logical extensions of the sexual liberation movement of the sixties. Back then, any kind of free love between a man and women was made socially acceptable. Now, any other kind of sexual relationship must be accepted and given legal protection.

The only thing that is not tolerated is the insistence that male and female define human sexuality. It is not accepted that a natural law and a corresponding morality limits and regulates the strong sexual instincts so that society might perpetuate itself through the family. Essentially, this position holds that the ways of expressing sexuality are unlimited and that each one might define one’s own unique gender category beyond the current 23 and counting gender listing.

One day, when commonsense will again prevail, one might hope that all will return to the beginning when God created male and female.

What Cardinal Mindszenty Says About Mothers

Written by Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty

The most important person on earth is a mother.

She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral.

She need not.


“She has built something more

magnificent than any cathedral –

a dwelling for an immortal soul,

the tiny perfection of her baby’s body…


“The angels have not been blessed with such a grace.

They cannot share in God’s creative miracle to

bring new saints to Heaven. Only a human mother can.

Mothers are closer to God the Creator than any other creature;

God joins forces with mothers in performing this act of creation…


“What on God’s good earth is more glorious than this; to be a mother?”

— Cardinal Mindszenty

What is Meant by Perfect Contrition

Perfect contrition is contrition based on the motive of love, and imperfect contrition is that which is based on the fear of God.

Perfect contrition is that which flows from the perfect love of God.

Now, our love of God is perfect if we love Him because He is infinitely perfect, infinitely beautiful, and infinitely good (love of benevolence) or because He has shown us His love in such an admirable way (love of gratitude).

Our love of God is imperfect, if we love Him because we expect something from Him.

Accordingly, in imperfect love, we think above all about the favors received, and in perfect love, we think above all of the goodness of the One who bestows these favors. Imperfect love makes us preferably love the favor itself, whereas perfect love makes us love the Author of these favors, and that less for His gifts than for the love and the goodness that these gifts manifest.

From love, contrition flows. As a result, our contrition will be perfect, if we repent of our sins for the sake of the perfect love of God, whether from benevolence or from gratitude.

It will be imperfect, if we repent of our faults owing to the fear of God, whether because sin has made us lose the reward that we have been promised, viz., heaven; or because we have earned the punishment imposed on the sinner, viz., hell or purgatory.

In imperfect contrition, we think particularly about ourselves and about the evils that sin brings to us, according to the light of faith. In perfect contrition, we especially think of God, His greatness, His beauty, His love, and His goodness; we consider sin an offense and that it has been the cause of the many sufferings endured to redeem us. We wish not only our own good, but that of God.

An example will help us grasp it better. When St. Peter had denied our Savior, "he went forth and wept bitterly." Why did he weep? Was it for the shame that he was going to endure in front of the other Apostles?

In such a circumstance, it would have been a purely natural pain and without merit. Is it

because his divine Master is perhaps going to strip him of his dignity as an Apostle and Supreme Pastor, or drive him from His kingdom? In this case, the contrition would be good, but imperfect. No indeed! He repents, he weeps because he has offended his beloved Master, so good, so holy, and so worthy of love. He weeps because he has responded to that immense love with base ingratitude, and that is perfect contrition.

Now, don't you, too, dear reader, have the same motive as St. Peter to detest your sins, for the sake of love, for the sake of perfect love, and for the sake of gratitude?

Without any doubt, God's favors are more numerous than the hairs on your head and every one of them should make you repeat the words of St. John: "Let us love God, because He first loved us" (1 John, 4, 19).

And how has He loved you?

"I have loved thee," says God Himself, "with an everlasting love, I have had pity on thee and I have drawn thee to me" (Jer. 31, 3).

"With an everlasting love I have loved thee."

From all eternity, before there was even a trace of you upon the earth, He cast upon you this look of love that penetrates everything. He prepared for you a soul and a body, heaven and earth, with all the tenderness of a mother who prepares to welcome the child who is going to come into the world. It is God Who has given you life and heath; it is He Who gives you the good things of nature every day.

This idea was sufficient for the pagans themselves to bring them to the knowledge and the perfect love of God. For a greater reason, it should bring you there - you a Christian who possesses the love and the supernatural goodness of God for you. Through the prophet He says, "I have had pity on you."

You were condemned like all men as a result of original sin; God sent His only Son who became your Savior and redeemed you with His blood by dying on the cross.

It was of you that He lovingly thought in His agony in the Garden of Olives, when He shed His blood under the whips and the thorns, when He followed, carrying His cross, the long and painful path of Calvary; when, nailed upon the cross, He expired in the midst of ghastly torments, it was of you that He thought, with a tender love, as if you had been the only person in the world. What shall we make of that? "Let us love God, because He loved us first."

Moreover, God drew you to Himself by baptism, which is the first and chief grace of life, and by the Church, in whose bosom you were then incorporated. How many men have been able to attain the true faith only through the strength of effort and sufferings! But to you, God gave it to you from the cradle, out of pure love. He drew you to Himself, He draws you every day by means of the sacraments and by numberless graces, interior and exterior, with which He showers you.

You are, as it were, submerged in an ocean, the ocean of goodness and divine love, and He wishes again to crown all these graces by placing you near Him and making you eternally happy. What will you give Him for such love?

Isn't it true that you must make a return for these advances? Then let us love our God, since He loved us first.

Let us come to the point: How have you responded to the love of a God so lovable and so good? Without doubt, by your ingratitude and by your sins. But do you repent of this ingratitude? Ah, yes, without any doubt, and you burn with a desire to make amends for it by a limitless love. Well, then, if that is so, you have at this moment perfect contrition, that which is based on the love of God and which is called contrition of love or of charity.

But in contrition of charity itself, there is a degree, more elevated yet, that consists in purely loving God, because He is infinitely glorious, infinitely perfect, and worthy of being loved, the abstraction of His mercy for us. Let us make a comparison. There are, in the firmament, a number of stars so distant from us that we cannot perceive them, and yet they are all as large and as bright as the sun that so freely imparts to us warmth and life.

Likewise, suppose that man had never been in possession of this eternal star that is God's love. Suppose that God had created neither the world nor any creature: He would be no less great, no less beautiful, no less glorious, no less worthy of being loved, for He is

Himself and in regard to Himself the greatest good, the most perfect, and me most lovable.

Such is the sense of the formula: I am heartily sorry...because You are infinitely lovable and You deplore sin. Reflect a moment and consider God's love; especially contemplate the Savior's bitter sufferings. In this light, you will easily understand, and it will pierce your heart through.

(Written by J DE DRIESCH, PERFECT CONTRITION:THE GOLDEN KEY TO PARADISE.)

Mugabe Attends Ceremony Despite Attacks on Church

Newsday reports that Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe attended the beatification ceremony for the late Pope John Paul II, a few days after lashing out at the Roman Catholic Church.

The brutal octogenarian leader attacked the church at a Zion Christian Church (ZCC) conference in Bikita.

He said: “Often Catholic bishops expose that they are not their own men. They are mere puppets of Western countries. I grew up in the Catholic Church but now I am totally frustrated by how these so-called men of God lie. All Catholic bishops are liars, they demonise my party every day.”

President Mugabe attended Catholic Jesuit schools in his youth. Now, Catholic priests and especially former Bulawayo Archbishop Pius Ncube, are exposing political injustices of his regime.

Recently, a Catholic priest from Lupane, Father Marko Mnkandla, was arraigned before the courts in leg irons for the "crime" of holding a Mass for survivors and victims of Mugabe's brutal suppression of any who oppose his corrupt regime.

Rejoice! Justice is Done!

Osama bin Laden was arguably the man who most symbolized hatred for the United States in the world today.

In 1998, Osama signed on to a fatwa ordering Muslims everywhere to kill Americans and their allies: “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip.”¹

In 2001, he masterminded the attacks of 9/11, which killed 2,977 people, mostly Americans.

Now, in an act of justice his body lies at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. He was killed on May 1 by a heroic team of our tremendous Navy Seals. May God be praised!

A cruel and cowardly enemy of the Christian West is dead. Rejoice! Yes, rejoice! We do well to rejoice over bin Laden’s death.

We do not rejoice at the demise of any personal enemy. Rather, we rejoice over what the great Saint Bernard defined as a “malecide,”² the just execution of a malefactor. Indeed, Osama bin Laden was the common enemy of the Christian West. He killed innocent people and wished to destroy America, and, with our nation, the remnants of the Christian order in the world.

A Call to Vigilance
As we rejoice at the death of this great common enemy of the Christian West, we prepare in prayer, vigilance and ever greater resolve to face the difficult moments and crises that will surely come ahead.

If we are faithful to Christian principles in our war against Islamist terror and Osama bin Ladens of every stripe, we can certainly expect God’s blessings on America.

May the Immaculate Conception, Patroness of America, favor and help us carry out these difficult responsibilities.

May 2, 2011

The American TFP

Footnotes:
1. Osama bin Laden was the first of five to sign the 1998 fatwa. See the English translation at http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/docs/980223-fatwa.htm [back]
2. Saint Bernard de Clairvaux, De laude novae militiae, in Migne, Patrologia Latina, Vol. 182, col. 924. [back]