I attended a Requiem Mass awhile ago for a deceased relative of a family friend. My understanding of our Catholic faith was that we were coming together to pray for the deceased. But apparently the celebrant priest was under a different modus operandi.
[click to continue...]Have You Ever Heard of Dead People Having Their Period?
On the other hand, think through the consequences if the legal system decides to reverse Jahi McMath’s death certificate. For one, it will expose “total brain failure” as a fundamentally flawed diagnosis.
[click to continue...]Don’t Turn Off the Lights: New Study Questions Modern Brain Death Guidelines
The Journal of Medical Ethics article argues that those who are deemed ‘brain dead’ are actually biologically alive. Yet, the medical establishment refuses to acknowledge as much, in part because the organ transplantation industry relies so heavily on the prevailing definition of death.
[click to continue...]The Common Thread of the Recent Shootings of Police Officers Ties Back to the Culture of Death
If you’re unborn and an inconvenience, then you don’t have any “right” to exist any longer. If you’re old and too much of a burden, you become dispensable.
In essence, we live in a culture where certain people can decide certain other people’s lives are expendable.
[click to continue...]It’s Not Too Hard to Link Birth Control and Euthanasia
Just as children are so often deemed ‘burdensome’ with no value to contribute, the same can be said of those being euthanized, the elderly and handicapped. Rather than humans having intrinsic value, contraception asks its users to adopt a utilitarian valuation of human life. Only those determined to be contributing an arbitrarily-allotted impact on society are worth keeping around. Babies can’t work and don’t pay taxes—and neither do the very elderly or the handicapped. Together, they become disposable.
[click to continue...]I Stand Corrected on the Definition of Limbo
I admit it. I stand corrected on the definition of limbo.
This is me saying mea culpa.
I am eating a slice of humble pie.
I overstepped and misunderstood.
As so many tried to set me straight, I finally realized the error I made.
In my ignorance I got sloppy and failed to be precise in my language.
[click to continue...]Does a Deceased, Unborn Child Get Credited with the Grace of Baptism of Desire?
You may have heard it posited before. Perhaps a deceased, unborn child can be credited with the grace of baptism of desire, because the child’s parents desired to baptize their child upon birth.
This idea is often bandied as a comfort to those of us parents who have lost children to miscarriage, especially.
It is a pious thought to desire baptism for every soul. Surely we want every child to go to Heaven. But does it hold up theologically?
[click to continue...]Consider Subscribing to Celebrate Life Magazine
In the most-recent, Winter 2016 edition of Celebrate Life Magazine, I had the honor of being published in their wonderful magazine.
[click to continue...]What Happened to Limbo?: Answering Common Objections to the Doctrine
However, He has given us no revelation that this is, in fact, what He does for babies who die without being baptized. In fact, the Holy Spirit has led the Catholic Church to just the opposite/ revelation. In the Second Council of Lyons and the Council of Florence, the Holy Spirit led the Church to assert dogmatically that such souls do go to limbo.
[click to continue...]Popes and Saints Answering What Happens to Unbaptized Babies When They Die
Pope John XXIII:
“The Roman Church teaches… that souls of those who depart in mortal sin or with only original sin descend immediately to hell, nevertheless to be punished with different punishments and in disparate locations” (Nequaquam sine dolore [Letter to the Armenians], November 21, 1321) (Denzinger 493a).