579 karma · joined July 8, 2014
Many things in history and politics are dense. It's expected that people will disagree on these things.
But every so often something happens which is genuinely quite simple to understand. This Ukraine invasion allows you to discriminate between those who are still committed to reality and those who are not.
If you cannot understand that countries desire to join Nato (because they understand the Kremlin better than most Westerners); that ex-KGB Putin holding a candle once a year doesn't make him the grand protector of Christendom; that Russians are victims of this regime too; that this invasion was predicted by many (see Kasparov); etc etc... Then I really cannot take you serious anymore.
Second, I doubt whether serial delusions of grandeur would be unanimously lauded on HN.
But if you give contraception a fixed place in your life, to have sex which is fundamentally closed to children, then you have introduced a contradiction into your body and into your life.
And yes, He rules over 100 billion galaxies (more if we live in a multiverse) and cares about such things. If you think this is petty or spiteful, then you think too little of your sexuality and of yourself. These 100 billion galaxies were required for you to exist as a human being, called to (try) living a life that prepares you for Heaven.
The Church is obliged to teach that sex is supposed to be about a man and a woman taking part in God's ecstatic act of creation, a selfless act of love. Sex without being open to life is porn: without the act of self giving and preparedness to receive children, you are left with a corrupted, self-directed form of pleasure.
This is why the Church is not against quite effective natural methods like NFP, because in this method it's the people who change their own behaviour, based on a natural cycle. It's quite effective but does not close fertility in a mechanical way.
Second, if people were really listening to Jesus Christ and the Church, much more people would hear a calling to lead a consecrated life, as a priest or a monk or a nun.
In the text of the interview, it doesn't say "broke away from the Catholic Church" but "from the Catholic rule". Which is also a confusing phrasing in itself and probably the source of the error found in the abstract.
> Edit: Also the definition of "mental illness" is somewhat nebulous and not historically fixed. Homosexuality was at one point called a mental illness.
Yep, insights and definitions of illness will keep changing. But while insights in the details of e.g. psychosis may vary, few would deny a correlation with chemical issues.
However, when we talk about decision mechanisms, we inevitably introduce the question of whether this decision mechanism can work better or worse.
“Free will” may be seen as a computational notion of “health” for this decision mechanism, similar to how we use the term health for our physical bodies. A free will is a healthy will, in the sense that our decision mechanism is not broken by e.g. drugs, electrodes or mental illness.
Second, many people, myself included, hold the assumption that the ordering between options A and B is not purely subjective. If there exists an ordering of options which is objective and external to the agent of choice, then the choices that are actually made can be compared to that external ordering. Free will in this sense denotes the observation that our choices may reflect an ordering which is significantly different from the ordering imposed by reality. This is not a scientific claim and cannot be disproven scientifically. Holding this assumption is in fact a choice.
And yes, Christ told us to ask for the things we need, including material things.
Other reasons for prayer: thanking God; glorifying God; offering things to God, like our happiness or our good works but also our misery and our flaws. Contemplation; meditation; or just being silent and inviting Him to do the talking.
Care to write a short but more explicit wrap up of how you see your two questions yourself?