GOD'S MORAL MESSAGE
(MUSIC, MODEMS, MEDIA?)
by Fr. Jim Whalen, National Director, Priests for Life Canada
God’s standard for the use of music, modems,
and the media is very clear and direct. Whenever we watch a movie or
television show; whenever we read a magazine or listen to a CD;
whenever we sign on to the Internet; we should ask: Would Jesus
agree that this is good, true, right and beneficial for His brothers
and sisters? Is this helpful? Is this Pro-Life? What should occupy
our minds so that they can be uncluttered, clear and clean is
described in Scripture: “Whatever is true, whatever is noble,
whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is
admirable…If anything is excellent or praise-worthy…think about such
things.” (Phil. 4:8) The Holy Spirit inspires us by teaching,
guiding, and reminding us of God’s perspective in every situation
that we encounter. He runs a multi-task operation inspiring us to
live lives of love, joy, peace, mercy, and patience (cf. Gal 5:22).
A messed-up mind, filled with trivia and trash, useless junk, so
prevalent in today’s entertainment world, damages our lives and
hinders our growth.
The Holy Spirit wants to fill our minds with
“kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal
5: 22-23). Satan, on the other hand, wants to fill our minds with
worthless facts and fantasies, useless information, half-truths and
anti-life lies, so we do not have the time to think of God nor do we
have room for His Spirit to work in us. The struggle takes place in
our minds. Satan’s plan is to get us to ignore God, His standards,
and His moral teachings. Satan uses media, modems, music, and other
devices of this world, to lure our thoughts away from God. He tries
to stir up our minds with constant, selfish cravings through the
media, making it hard for us to be content. We find ourselves
seeking bigger, louder, sexier, smarter ‘whatever’s’ to own or to
do. Discontent creeps like cancer into our lives, chips away at our
relationships, and leads to dissatisfaction, chronic disappointment,
and restlessness. Satan’s strategy is to saturate our minds with
misinformation, myths, falsehoods, and immorality, thus trapping us
into self-promoting philosophies of materialism, consumerism, and
relativism, building a Culture of Death.
When an individual watches questionable scenes
on TV or exposes the mind to risqué descriptions in magazines or
books; when we revel in endless and ruthless violence of video games
of gawk at lewd pictures on the Internet; when we listen to vulgar
lyrics on a CD, we violate God’s moral message - His requirements to
keep our minds clear, clean and uncluttered. We are failing as
Christian custodians and Pro-life disciples. It brings guilt, shame
and sin into our lives.
The more we are exposed to something, the more
we are likely to engage in it. The daily diet of multi-media images,
lyrics, and statements, blur the distinction between right and
wrong, without consideration of anti-life or ungodly choices. Most
television shows accept sexual immorality and violence as social
norms because they sell. What is being sold is untruthful,
unrealistic immorality, tempting the individual with false beauty,
empty promises, temporary instant pleasures and counterfeit wisdom.
All this deception results in deadly decisions and chaotic living.
Our consciences have been dulled by endless extreme overexposure,
attacking our moral fiber and our violence levels of defence,
conditioning many to live lives of promiscuity, opting for a
contraceptive mentality, sabotaging the Holy Spirit’s workspace in
many instances.
The American and Canadian people seem to have
bought into the conditioning and conforming plans for youth by the
Culture of Death promotion in the media, modems, music, and in some
instances, education. Basically, it involves providing value-free
guidance on sexuality to teenagers; dispensing unlimited quantities
of contraceptives to adolescents through clinics and on campuses;
making sure by all means possible that parents are pushed out of the
picture; making available unlimited access to free abortions for
young women who are pregnant, without parental involvement or
permission. The Culture of Life plan counters these means by
advocating: that parents are involved in the system by strengthening
and supporting their positions of authority and as primary educators
of their children; by teaching sexual abstinence and chastity to
teenagers, informing them of the dangers and the myth of safe sex;
by removing the incentives for teenagers to become pregnant such as
government aid for those not living at home; by leading young
children and teenagers into a personal and meaningful relationship
with Jesus Christ. The basics of the Judeo-Christian value system
must be once again a priority in our lives.
God’s moral message and standards are clear.
We are to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ”
(2 Cor. 10:5). Every thought we allow should be able to pass the
examination proposed in Scripture. Is this thought, true, noble…
right… pure… lovely… admirable… excellent… worthy? (cf Phil 4:8) +
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issue
PRAYER
FOR LIFE
Lord Jesus Christ, You took our human
nature upon Yourself. You shared our life and death, our childhood
and adulthood.
You also shared our time in the womb.
While still God, while worshipped and adored by the angels, while
Almighty and filling every part of the universe, You dwelt for nine
months in the womb of Mary. You were our Redeemer in the womb, our
God who was a preborn child.
Lord Jesus, we ask You to bless and
protect the children who today are in their mothers’ wombs. Save
them from the danger of abortion. Give their mothers the grace to
sacrifice themselves, in body and soul, for their children. Help all
people to recognize in the preborn child a brother, a sister, saved
by You, our Redeemer in the womb.
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Deadly dangers - The Secular Humanist Agenda
The following are excerpts from CHILDREN AT RISK,
by Dr. James Dobson and Gary L. Bauer to inform parents about the
dangers they need to know about to protect their families; to stop
the media from corrupting children; to keep the children pure in our
sex charged environment; to reverse the effects of value- free
education; to plant firmly-rooted spiritual values in children (Word
Publishing Co., 1990).
-
Convince the public that the training and development of children
is far too important to be left to the whims and errors of parents.
Only child-development authorities and professionals, commissioned
by the government, can do the job properly. Mothers and fathers must
yield control to those who are better equipped for the task of
raising children.
-
Propagandize heavily against the use of corporal punishment as a
disciplinary measure with children. Equate it with child abuse, even
when administered judiciously by loving parents. Ultimately, secure
legislation to outlaw the practice.
-
Continually emphasize an exhaustive list of “children’s rights”
which will provide wedges to separate kids from their parents.
-
Provide mandatory schooling for every four-year-old, so that
young minds can be controlled. This will be accomplished first
through government-sponsored childcare centers. Once established
with federal funds, they should eventually drive unassisted
church-based facilities out of competition.
-
Teach students that gay and lesbian lifestyles are no less moral
than heterosexual relationships, and that they typically involve
long-term monogamous commitments. Teach girls that it is just as
appropriate to fall in love and have intimate relationships with
another girl as with a boy (and do the same for boys). Design counseling programs for gay and lesbian students that will permit
subtle recruitment services. (This is being done in Los Angeles City
Schools through a program called Project 10. It assumes that ten
percent of students are homosexuals, and provides programs to
recruit and support new converts).
-
Demystify the occult. Shirley MacLaine has assisted immeasurably
here. Any belief system other than the Christian faith is seen as an
improvement, including the mysticism of Eastern religions.
-
Remove all references to God from school literature, such as with
regard to the Pilgrims’ worship on Thanksgiving, and from every
dimension of public life.
-
Work to remove tax exemptions for religious institutions and
begin to control them through regulatory and legislative mandates.
-
Require churches, businesses, and schools to hire gays, lesbians,
and others who contradict their faith.
-
Promote gay-pride celebrations in every
American City, and seek equivalent legal status of families for
homosexual and lesbian partners.
-
Expand the power of government and its bureaucracies to control
every vestige of private life.
-
Increase the tax burden on families, forcing more women into the
work force and their children into childcare facilities.
-
Require military women to fight in combat.
-
Repeal all laws relating to obscenity and even child
pornography.
-
Eliminate the motion picture rating system so that patrons (and
parents) cannot easily avoid violent and explicit sexuality in
films.
-
Make homemakers feel exploited, stupid, and useless, especially
at the college and university level. Ridicule female students who
wish to marry, to have a family, or to postpone or avoid a career.
-
Oppose with vengeance any effort to teach, or even mention
creation as an explanation for the earth’s beginnings.
-
Monitor every judge appointed or seeking election. The judiciary
is the key to the leftist agenda.
-
Secure far-reaching rights of students on junior and senior high
school campuses. Limit the authority of teachers and principals to
enforce rules of conduct.
-
Implement an aggressive sex-ed. program, beginning in
kindergarten, that is guided by no moral code. Safe sex is its
centerpiece.
-
Provide for legal infanticide in cases of severe handicap or
mental retardation.
-
Guarantee the “right to die” to anyone desiring suicide.
Physicians should be free to assist in the act of dying.
-
Fight tooth and nail to retain the right to abortion on demand -
up to the moment of birth - for any reason whatsoever.
-
Operate aggressive “death education” classes in public schools
to desensitize children to dying and to help them see life
materialistically.
-
Work to encourage contraception and birth control (Added by Priests
for Life Canada).
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The
Unborn Baby
after Conception
(Abortion is permitted in Canada
throughout
all nine months of pregnancy)
Click below to listen to the heartbeat of an
unborn child.
Heartbeat at: 9.5
weeks; 11.5 weeks; 15
weeks; 26 weeks; 32
weeks (All ages noted here are LMP; therefore the baby's age from
fertilization is actually two weeks younger than the number. These heart tones
were recorded through a Doppler speaker by Dr. David M. Ramsey, III.)
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The
enemy, to put it bluntly, is after our souls.
Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., states it this way: “In a sense,
contraception is worse than abortion... in the case of abortion, the
unborn child can, in God’s mercy, still achieve heavenly bliss,
whereas, in the case of contraception, the child that God wanted to
be, that now doesn’t exist for all eternity, that’s a loss that can
never be replaced. In the case of contraception, married couples are
robbed of their most important blessing - children.
Humanae
Vitae and Evangelium Vitae state the Church’s position clearly:
generosity is what is expected of married couples in regard to
procreation. The unitive and procreative aspects must not be
separated. Natural Family Planning is permitted for serious reasons.
Pope John Paul II, speaking in Rome recently to a hospital
conference gathering stated, “The moment has come for every parish
to have personnel available who can teach married couples how to use
Natural Family Planning methods”.
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, Colorado, reminds us of the
truths in Humanae Vitae: “It is a key to our freedom. The issue of
contraception is not peripheral, but central. We cannot compromise
the truth or the Gospel”.
For more information on contraception,
write to Priests for Life Canada.
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Box 43
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Catholic Life and Family
a semi-annual publication by
Priests for Life Canada
Box 43, Cumberland, Ontario K4C 1E5
Tel: (613) 732-3950 Fax: (613) 732-9196
e-mail: priests@priestsforlifecanada.com
www.webhart.net/vandee/priests.shtml
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Members of the Board
National Director
Rev. Fr. Jim Whalen
Box 99, Cumberland, ON K4C 1E5
Tel/Fax: (613) 833-3264
Rev. Fr. Danny Wilson, Chairman
Rev. Fr. Paul Burchat, Past-Chairman
Rev. Fr. Joseph Hattie, OMI
Rev. Fr. Gerard Monaghan
Rev. Fr. John Burchat
Rev. Fr. Lindsay Harrison
Rev. Fr. Brian Boucher
Rev. Deacon Bernard MacDonald, Secretary
Rev. Deacon John Poirier
Bernadette Johnson
Michael Vande Wiel
(Acting Managing Director/Treasurer)
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