Ethos and Eros

I have 20 minutes before my apointment for internet is over; I'm at the library since the internet at home crashed. ok, 19 minutes now. Here's what I have to share with you:

Ethos and Eros are two types of love. Love, as I've said before, is wanting the best for someone and being willing to sacrifice to give that person the best.

Ethos. Jesus tells us to love our enemies. But who the heck wants to sacrifice for an enemy? This is when we need God. He loves all of His creatures, and we can only love those who are hard to love when we love with His love. God's love for us and our love of God is called agape. When we let agape spill out of us and share it with our fellow-humans, that is ethos. Ethos should be at the foundation of every relationship, from spouse to annoying naighbor (but don't look to me as an example of it).

Eros. This is the love between lovers and spouses. With this love the two aspire to God. I think it is like when you touch the one you love you are both reaching out together and touching God. Eros can get pretty darn perverted when it does not have agape as its example and ethos as its foundation,so it must be fused with agape. (Again, don't look to me as an example.)

So I am posting this to encourage myself and all of you to find love in God and so love others with the love of God. I pray we all are in heaven together someday where all the labours of loving our neighbors and (as of now future) spouses will be fulfilled in the satisfying overwhelming love of God. For ethos and eros are both like stairs to climb. Their foundation is agape and they reach to agape.

For more on this, read Deus Caritas Est by Pope Benedict XVI and The Love that Satisfies by Christopher West.
Hope you liked this post!

Why the Catholic Church Has No Women Priests

That is the name of a speech I wrote for the speech class I am taking. I think it came out well, and since it is such an often asked question, I thought I'd type here the answer I gave in my speech:

A question about the Catholic Church that has come up in recent times is why the Catholic Church does not ordain women priests. The Church is often considered sexist for this. I researched the writing of Pope John Paul II, who was Pope from 1978 to 2005. His Address to General Audiences on July 27, 1994 and his Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis especially discuss this question.

I think this question needs to be addressed because just as we need to know what is going on politically, we should also know what is happening when it comes to religion. Whether we belong to one religion or another, or even believe in a God at all, we all come in contact with people of many beliefs everyday. By knowing what is going on religiously, especially in such a big and often controversial religion as the Catholic Church, we can know what beliefs are effecting people we come in contact with, and so we can better understand how their beliefs will effect us. So, in this speech -blog post-, I will explain the Catholic Church's reasons for not ordaining women priests and then I will explain why this is not sexist.

The reason, essentially, is that Jesus did not chose any women to be Apostles. The apostles were the twelve followers which Christ specifically chose. At the Last Supper Jesus gave the Apostles the power of celebrating the Eucharist in His name. After His resurrection He gave them the power of forgiving sins. Jesus also gave His Apostles the mission of evangelization. Celebrating the Eucharist, forgiving sins, and evangelization are the essence of the priesthood. So Jesus gave the powers of priesthood to the Apostles, who were all men, and to no one else.

The Church has no power to change what Jesus did. Rather, the Church has the mission of continuing and spreading what Christ did. So since Jesus only gave the priesthood to men, then the Church does likewise, preserving what Jesus did. The priest continues what Christ did by representing Christ to the people. As Christ is a man, so must the priest be.

Jesus was not sexist in choosing only men, nor was He forced to choose only men because of the mentality toward women at His time. I found out from a Jewish friend that there was at Christ's time a group of men call the 'Essenes' who lived in the dessert and thought that it was impure to associate with women. Jesus went against this and any such view of women by allowing and welcoming women to follow Him. He talked openly with women, and even stood up for an adulteress against the people who would have killed her for adultery. God also chose to honor a woman above all His creation by giving this woman, Mary, the distinction of being the Mother of Christ and caring for Jesus as He grew up. Mothers have this added honor of being like Mary, hte Mother of God. So Jesus did not deny women anything, but gave them a differnt role.

That is why hte Catholic Church has no women priests. Ina nutshell, Jesus chose only men to give the priesthood to. Because of how Jesus was against distorted views of women, we know He made this choice freely. And the Church continues what Jesus did.

Education? Pshaw! just my JOB and $$$$

Tons of people are heading off to liberal arts colleges with the single goal of attaining the greatest good this world has to offer: A JOB. They are abusing and disregarding the college's purpose. A liberal arts college is not just about getting a job; it is about learning from vast fields of knowledge which have proved useful and applicable to the desired degree. In other words, liberal arts colleges are about knowing much in many different subjects and specializing in the field of your choice. This field of choice, or degree, can thenn be put towards many things, including a job. But what people want is only a job, nothing more, above or beyond that. And so one hears such things as, "I don't like high school; but, yeah, I'm going on to college." "I don't need this; I'm going to be a ---." If people want preparation for a job, let them go where they will get it and not ruin and disrupt the studying of those who want a liberal arts education. Let them get internships, apprenticeships, and go to vocational and trade schools. Then the liberal arts colleges will be able to better provide for those who do desire and want what they have to offer. Those who want a liberal arts education will actually be the majority and dominant student force in the liberal arts college.

Our Economy and the Real Causes

I here have in crude cartoons and captions my view on the economic situation.


1. Ideal Situation: With children and the elderly and some other groups, there are a little more consumers than workers. Of course, workers are also consumers.




2. But then, there came along the abortion
and the contraceptive and the spendomaniac
and the debt, and all of a sudden, there
weren't enough consumers and the
consumers there were weren't spending.

3.The number of consumers kept shrinking. So the number of workers kept shrinking. Because not all co nsumers are workers, but all workers are consumers. And when there's no one to buy, what demand is there to fulfill and who has money to pay workers, who in turn have no money to buy. Because there aren't enough of them to create a demand.

4. There are not that many children. There are not enough consumers.
If someone is not a worker, what are they? Are they unworkers?
Because there are not enough consumers.
Because there are spendomaniacs and debts
and there is the contraceptive and the abortion.

here is a much more informed video on this topic

WHY

and i am beginning to think that people simply do not ask WHY enough and they call their teenagers selfish and immature for asking but i think maybe they are afraid of the answer and we teenagers are perhaps too stupid to know fear and common sense we only want to know WHY and have a way of asking WHY in the most inconvenient of times
we are desperate to know and as we do not find out we become complacent and stagnant and the rush of emotions stills and the tornado is over everything is much more settled but there is no real foundation things are only settled because they are settled and we have grown too adultish to ask WHY only we smirk at teenagers when they ask as if we knew and we wish they thought we knew but obviously we teenagers know they adults dont and what makes a person an adult anyway
if you dont have a foundation of answers to WHY then you are merely a settled teenager and nothing more but where there is a foundation there can be something real and strong and strong enough to always be a tornado and always be asking WHY and not be silenced by adultish people who are merely settled teenagers but really finding the answers

Pondering the Quiddity of the Palpable

You figure out what "Pondering the Quiddity of the Palpable" means.


I think that thinking of anything that can be sensed automatically leads one to ponder that which cannot be sensed. Because the rules and consistencies behind the palpable are the impalpable.
The apple falls from the tree because of that force know as gravity. We can sense gravity upon our own bodies, but in a much more abstract way than how we sense the apple in our hands.
Pushing this thought farther, take something like a hug. Palpable indeed, but there is an impalpable truth behind it- love. Love may lead to palpable sensations, but love itself is beyond our senses.
That is why I chose the least palpable color- gray. This picture represents the moment when the human mind leaves off pondering the quiddity of the palpable and transcends into the impalpable.

The Uninvisibles

Shimmering and glowing, they stand up and are seen.
They are the shimmering and glamorous,
and they force us to look and behold.
Their splendor dazzles us until out eyes are
too contracted to see anything else.
They are like rotten eggs that have been painted;
they have pretty shells.
They are the visibles.

They slip by peacefully, content in unpublicity. Simple.
Unwanted by the visibles except to be
their audience and source of loyal acclaim.
They're hardly noticed. They attract no attention
into their humbly lit world.
They are like plain surfaced rocks;
perhaps there are crystals inside.
They are the invisibles.

They're what both worlds bear alike
though not received alike by both.
They are the growing ones, too small to be seen,
too beautiful to be ignored.
They beg our attention, yet we hardly notice
with our contracted and dimmed eyes.
They are like delicate flower buds;
there is a promise if they are not killed.
They are the uninvisibles.

PRESSURED TO BE LEADERS OF AN UTOPIA

Does it ever seem that you are bound down by a sense of duty, a strict idea of what is 'right', and that somehow your happiness lies beyond this 'right', so maybe it's not really 'right' after all? It seems as if the young people of today are expected to do so much, be tomorrow's everything, the hope of their fellows,and the saviors of the world form undoubted and unidentifiable doom. It's as if I and my peers are not allowed to breath unless we are breathing in our tireless work to help people and save the world.
I don't understand this. Our parents perhaps had the same pressure, and as they did not live up to it, they place it on us. Generation after generation, placing their hope for the future in their children. I'd like to object to this legacy on 3 points:
1. Does the future have to necessarily be good? Considering that our parents will be dead by the time this 'future' rolls around, what do they care? If the future is not heaven, at least it is reality.
2. If the future is, by some unknown decree, supposed to be utopia and all that, why should we be the ones to bring it about if so many generations before us have obviously failed?
3. Isn' it rather ridiculous to place one's hope in one's children, especially since so much of the child's faults are inherited from the parents?
I think in this sense, the parents are the ones being irrationally idealistic, and the teenagers the ones being understandably rebellious, not because of some idea of drug and sex freedom in their own minds, but because of the perfect economy and relaxed lifestyle dream of their parents.