Prudence and Emotional Responses


Disclaimer: the information on this site is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical or spiritual advice, diagnosis, or treatment. For physical / psychological issues, please discuss the matter with your P.C.P. and/or seek anger management or mental health counseling. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so, nor are you “crazy”, if you take proactive steps for the sake of your health and of your mind. For spiritual issues, please amend your life, increase your life of prayer (particularly Confession and Mass attendance, as well as reading the Gospels and praying the Rosary) and discuss matters with your pastor. 

Hot-button issues bear one characteristic aspect: they incite emotional responses from the reader. Such responses can easily escalate into violence, either overtly or covertly, as we have been witnessing recently across the Nation.

We have to be very careful to monitor our emotions and regulate them so as not to lose control of ourselves and do things that will hurt ourselves – as well as others – and fuel our rage as time passes and our control over our passions becomes weaker.

Rage has a way of leading one to self-destruction in the search for peace. Sometimes it can lead to “self-medicating” with drugs or alcohol, or other addictive substances and behaviors. Their relief is short. The person then moves on to bigger and more “efficient” ways of expressing the anger. That is when anger can become physical: the destruction of property, for example.

If one is not stopped, such action only feeds the fire of Hell within, which keeps the anger burning with a flame that never runs out of fuel.

When destruction of property fails to suffocate the interior rage, the person then turns on living beings – animals first, then human beings – trying in every possible way to control them, provoke them, or bully them.

By that point, Satan is satisfied: he has been allowed to lead the person into serious evil. At this level, the person starts to make excuses instead of working on recovering interior peace. “See what you made me do?” or “If you had done it my way, we wouldn’t be having this problem“.

The demons sit back and laugh: the more one deflects the less they resolve their problem. The rage that has grown in the interior life distorts reality. If a real problem is distorted, any attempt to solve it is severely crippled.

To avoid all of the above, we must begin with ourselves. We must sit back and try to understand what is it that is truly provoking our rage. We usually see that what we are seeing is really the outer shell of a rotten egg… that rot can be something that has nothing to do with the target of one’s fury. It is only when we identify what really makes us angry that we can determine whether it has anything to do with us, or even if we are rightfully angry at all.

If we are justifiably angry, we have regained control over our emotions. Those feelings may not go away, but at least we can exert our free will and authority over our mind and emotions.

Any action that blinds our intelligence can lead us to the behaviors and damage that we described above.

Here are some additional online resources related to this topic.

Physical / psychological:

Spiritual:

Franciscans of Life
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Published in: on June 28, 2022 at 8:22 PM  Leave a Comment  

SCOTUS: “Held: The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion”


On this Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Supreme Court of the United States has formally held that the United States Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.

Furthermore, SCOTUS overruled both “Roe v. Wade” and “Planned Parenthood v. Casey” and stated that, in the United States, “the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives“.

The complete 213-page Statement by SCOTUS can be downloaded at https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf

We wish to quote some salient points from the Statement:

  • the Constitution makes no express reference to a right to obtain an abortion
  • procuring an abortion is not a fundamental constitutional right
  • the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition
  • the Fourteenth Amendment clearly does not protect the right to an abortion
  • Roe and Casey have led to the distortion of many important but unrelated legal doctrines…that effect provides further support for overruling those decisions
  • The Court emphasizes that this decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right.

A few more points worth quoting from the SCOTUS Statement:

  • until a few years before Roe, no federal or state court had recognized such a right. Nor had any scholarly treatise. Indeed, abortion had long been a crime in every single State.
  • by the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three-quarters of the States had made abortion a crime at any stage of pregnancy
  • Finally, the Court considers whether a right to obtain an abortion is part of a broader entrenched right that is supported by other precedents. The Court concludes the right to obtain an abortion cannot be justified as a component of such a right.
  • The nature of the Court’s error. Like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided. Casey perpetuated its errors
  • An even more glaring deficiency was Roe’s failure to justify the critical distinction it drew between pre- and post-viability abortions. The arbitrary viability line, which Casey termed Roe’s central rule, has not found much support among philosophers and ethicists […] viability has changed over time and is heavily dependent on factors—such as medical advances and the availability of quality medical care—that have nothing to do with the characteristics of a fetus.
  • Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act is supported by the Mississippi Legislature’s specific findings, which include the State’s asserted interest in “protecting the life of the unborn.” These legitimate interests provide a rational basis for the Gestational Age Act, and it follows that respondents’ constitutional challenge must fail.

We also encourage you to read the statements by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB): https://www.usccb.org/news/2022/usccb-statement-us-supreme-court-ruling-dobbs-v-jackson

as well as the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops: https://www.flaccb.org/news/statement-on-us-supreme-court-ruling-in-dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization

In a special way, we wish to highlight the statement of our Benevolent Ordinary, H.E. Archbishop Thomas Wenski: https://www.miamiarch.org/CatholicDiocese.php?op=Article_archdiocese-of-miami-wenski-statement-supreme-court-dobbs-decision

    Today’s decision of the US Supreme Court overturning the fateful Roe v. Wade is certainly welcomed by all those who recognize that human life begins at conception and that this is a scientific and biological fact and not merely a religious belief or ideological theory. As such the unborn child should be welcomed in life and protected by law. […]

    We hope that dismantling Roe will allow legislation protecting the unborn to move forward in our state legislatures and to survive constitutional challenges in the future.

    Abortion too often is seen as the solution to an unforeseen problem, a fall back position if contraception failed or was not used. But abortion is no solution — and it is no right. It is a wrong, a grievous wrong that has prematurely ended the lives of more than 60 million souls in this country alone since 1973.

A number of sources, among which we quote this one (without by this intending to endorse in any way the source) have summarized the current situation as far as individual States banning abortion:

Would ban most or all abortions.
Bbortion bans within one month
Abortion bans within weeks or months
Abortion bans uncertain
Abortion likely to remain for a while
(Click on map to enhance)

We encourage you to continue praying – in private, with your community, even with us – and to find out locally (as well as through the major Catholic institutions and associations) how you can continue supporting this aspect of the pro-life ministry at this crucial moment in the history of the United States.

The date chosen by Divine Providence is very fitting indeed. Today we celebrate Our Lord’s Most Sacred Heart, and tomorrow we celebrate the Immaculate Heart of Mary, ever-virgin, the most pure Theotokos who, when in her kindness she appeared at Fatima, promised triumph!

(C) SCTJM – https://www.piercedhearts.org/sctjm/congress2022/congress2022_mainpage.html

We continue united in prayer and action, against all violence and evil, proclaiming the sanctity of human life and reaching out – as much if not more than before – to women and men facing a crisis pregnancy.

To quote a recent article by the Director of Respect Life Ministry Archdiocese of Miami: “Our post-Roe plan is missing one thing: You!”

There is much work to be done – locally – and the Lord calls us to step forward boldly, here and now! Vita ad Vitam Vocat – Life calls out to life!

 

In the beginning was the Word

In Him was life, and that life was the light of humanity.

The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

 “I am come that they may have life, and may have it more abundantly!“

– Gospel of St. John, 1:1,4,10:10

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Published in: on June 24, 2022 at 2:40 PM  Comments (1)  

Euthanasia in the USA is Alive!


Most pro-life eyes are currently focused on one particular issue, namely the reversal of Roe v. Wade, etc. Surely this is due to the great hopes it has generated, after decades of prayer, penance, and advocacy…but also in no small part because of the dismal violence ensuing from the pro-abortion hordes (even locally), for which we have started a Rosary Crusade.

However, there is another critical pro-life issue that is spreading subtly, like poison, throughout several U.S. legislatures: euthanasia (assisted suicide).

The letter below comes from Mr. Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (which has a USA chapter). It provides an excellent summary of the situation here in America. With his permission to share, we invite you to read it in detail, bearing in mind that what we are beginning to witness in our Country is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Other countries either already have, or are in the process of approving laws that legalize this killing, not only of adults with full faculties but also of:

Not even (pro-life) religious institutions are a safe haven: some countries are already pushing laws forcing religiously affiliated medical institutions to provide euthanasia, and as recently as April we read of a pro-life hospice losing government funding and having its 10-bed hospice building expropriated due to their conscientious objection!

Here’s a visual reminder that Euthanasia is already legal, partially legal, or not illegal in most of the world:

Original file: Michael Jester, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons Edited by Br. Bernardo, FFV

[For clarification on the map above, passive euthanasia refers to denying someone, who is not otherwise dying, the basic necessaries of life to intentionally cause their death – and it is not morally acceptable. We will have a more in-depth article on these teachings published in the near future. ]

If we do not take action now – primarily and particularly through prayer and penance, followed by being proactive on these life issues in our ministries – when will we? Will we wait for euthanasia to (continue to) be legalized across the USA? Will it take a new kind of Roe v Wade, this time Euthanasia-centered, for the pro-life movement to stand up and speak up in unison against these evils?

Bear in mind that the Church infallibly upholds the sanctity and dignity of all human life – from conception to natural death!

Without further ado, here’s the letter (click on each page to enlarge!)

  [Link to Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/EPCUSA/ Link to Oct. 15 event: https://bit.ly/38CtUYp  or click here Another link to promote the Oct. 15 National Conference: https://www.facebook.com/AssistedSuicideConference]

    (click to enlarge)

Consider registering for the October 15 conference. We also invite you to follow Mr. Schadenberg’s blog to stay up-to-date, and to consider supporting the EPC’s latest initiative opposing Child Euthanasia: Protect Children’s Lives  

Note: if you wish to reproduce something published by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, all you need to do is ask for permission to

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Published in: on June 14, 2022 at 9:50 PM  Leave a Comment