Not the first time the something contradictory is found in the Church or the Bible.
It's not contradictory. It's clear to me that that verse and the preceding lines are in agreement with the Holy See's interpretation of it, as given in the CCC.
The point is that God respects our free will. He requires our assent. No doubt He is calling you to do something for Him, like He is calling me and all of us. Whether or not you give your assent is up to you.
God knows everything, so of course he would pick a woman who would want to do it, and just told her after picking her. Which still sounds weird by today's standarts.
Of course God knew she would have wanted to do it. But she still had to say "Yes". Otherwise God would have been forcing Mary to be impregnated without her consent.
I suppose my classes and Church were not Real 1992 Catholics enough.
I don't know what your point is. Go to any Catholic church and ask the priest - did Mary have a choice whether to become the Mother of Jesus or not - I know they will say "Yes, she did have a choice". We mediate on Mary's fiat in the Rosary. It's part of many homilies. It's not a new interpretation. It's not modern. It's right there in the Bible.
Yes the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) promulgated by the Pope. Search for it if you don't believe me, I gave you the reference number. I located the reference in my hardcopy and gave a link to the first online copy I found. The Bible verse supporting this is Luke 1:38. I quoted it in my another response here.
Mary's choice is given in verse 38, which you didn't quote:
38“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
Mary is clearly giving her assent to becoming the mother of Jesus in this verse.
Her choice was prior to conception. Apart from cases of rape, every woman also has such a choice - she can choose whether or not to have sexual intercourse.
I was raised Catholic. At no point ever in the classes or church readings was she asked about carrying and birthing the son of God. She was told by an angel God had chosen her for that purpose.
I disagree with you. Mary agreeing to be the Mother of God is a key aspect of Catholic theology. I know it well because it is part of the mediation of the first Joyful Mystery of the Holy Rosary - The Annunciation. Mary giving her fiat, to allow God to act through her, is an example we should all follow when He calls us and asks something of us - we should make the same choice as she did and say 'Yes' to God.
You don't have to take my word for it as it is clearly stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (my emphasis):
488 "God sent forth his Son", but to prepare a body for him, he wanted the free co-operation of a creature. For this, from all eternity God chose for the mother of his Son a daughter of Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, "a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary":
The Father of mercies willed that the Incarnation should be preceded by assent on the part of the predestined mother, so that just as a woman had a share in the coming of death, so also should a woman contribute to the coming of life.
So yes, Mary did have a choice but this choice was prior to conception. Apart from cases of rape, every woman also has such a choice - she can choose whether or not to have sexual intercourse.
Many of the responses in these posts show the complete degradation of morality in Western populations. And also a complete lack of perspective.
For those of you who think planting bombs in electronic devices and detonating them in civilian areas is a 'good thing' because the targets are 'terrorists', or that the harm caused to innocents is simply inconsequential 'collateral damage', well, in case you haven't realized it yet, many of you are considered 'terrorists' by parts of your governments and your 'leftist' opponents. Therefore, this is the kind of attack that could be justified against you, or your friends and family.
Civilized societies don't do this kind of thing. Killing or harming innocent people is against the moral order. Tactics that knowingly lead to direct harm of innocents - such as detonating bombs in civilian areas - are abhorrent. Supporting these tactics ultimately leads to a destruction of civilized society, because these tactics are fundamentally uncivilized.
I fully believe that the the ultimate cause of slow destruction of Western countries is not, in fact, due to immigrants or 'leftists', but a lack of morality among these populations. Having turned away from our Lord and King Jesus Christ, and His moral teachings, many in Western countries have adopted non-Christian 'moralities' including principles such as "there are not bad tactics, only bad targets" or "the end justifies the means". These are against God's moral order.
The blueprint for building a civilized society and maintaining one is following God's moral order. He has embedded that truth in the fabric of existence. He has provided us direct access to that blueprint through the Word Incarnate, His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Each of us has the free will to follow the moral order or not, and many of us stumble even when we are trying to follow it, but rejecting it leads only to peril. I firmly believe that is the truth.
unless a whole bunch of well armed, well organized, and well meaning White people
This is why you will get nowhere. "White people" aren't going to do shit. There is no unified culture based on skin color. Culture is based on religion, language and values. You've fallen for your enemy's trap, and are focused on one aspect of yourself that will go nowhere. If you were to instead, for example, identify as a Christian and unify as Christians, you might get somewhere. Alas, you have fallen for the heresy of Darwinism, and think that you have magical genes simply due to your skin color that will, apparently, magically help you fight off your enemies.
The only source of supernatural power that will help you is God. If you humbly turn to Him in prayer, beg His mercy, and ask Him to guide you, you might get somewhere. But Satan's heresies are far more seductive, and you are unable to see through them.
I highly recommend that everyone read "Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control" by E. Michael Jones. The author's thesis, which was originally written in the 1990s, is that undermining the moral order though sexual liberation, is being used as a way to control us. Subsequent events since it was first published have supported this thesis. The second edition was recently published and is available at the publisher's website.
The way to liberate oneself from this from of control is to reject sexual liberation and place one's passions under the control of reason. Otherwise we become slaves to sinful passions, which isn't really news as our King taught us:
Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, every one who commits sin is a slave to sin." John 8:34
Sex is a gift from God that is properly ordered towards the production of children in married couples. This doesn't mean everyone has to be married and have children, the long history of the Church has many saints who were virgins, and each has their own calling. But it does mean that each of us should make a concerted effort to fight against all sexual sins, including pornography, masturbation, and fornication.
It seems exploitative of women especially though, how was it allowed to happen?
Surrogacy primarily benefits women, not men:
- It allows women to have their 'own' children without becoming pregnant. This benefits women who unwilling or unable to become pregnant. In a sense, this allows women to emulate being men, who obviously have no choice but to have someone else carry their children.
- In countries where surrogates are allowed to be compensated financially, it allows the surrogates to rent out their wombs, much like prostitution thus benefiting financial.
Note that women generally support prostitution becomes it allows them to directly sell their sexuality (which many women consider their primary asset). Also, a characteristic modern women, especially in Western societies, is their rejection of their biological roles as the ones to carry and bear children as evidenced by strong support of contraception and of abortion, which is perplexing to me as this is one of God's great gifts to women.
You're right, of course, but that isn't going to sway the critics here. The modern world is full of people who have convinced themselves they know better than everyone else because they have spent five minutes reading watching a video about a topic.
They know everything they need to know about the Vigano and the Pope because they've heard it from the media. Even though they know the media is biased because, apparently, highlighting media bias is meant to be the whole point of this site. Even though they routinely virtue signal about how much they hate journalists ("you don't hate journalists enough!"). They can't see that the reality they perceive is strongly shaped by all this pervasive propaganda, especially with regard to anything that threatens evil, and that only holding on to clear objective principles - such as obeying the hierarchy instituted by our King - can we fight against our enemy, who is none other than the prince of this world.
This is your second post about this in a few days. If something "needs" to be done about Revolt.chat (never heard of it myself) then do it yourself instead of whining here for someone else to do it for you.
I understand what you are saying and don't disagree with your overall comment, but I have to take issue with this:
I do believe men do in fact need to change their behavior around women. Men and women are different. The kinds of things men do with other men to build respect/comradery and to test the men are not things men should be doing to women. Too many men make the mistake of treating women as equal to men when women are not equal to men at all. Men should be treating women as if the women cannot handle confrontation, conflict or anything too disruptive to their feelings. Men should be aware that women internalize everything and that women don't understand how to separate themselves from generalizations. This means men should in fact be "softer" around women because women can't handle men being truly men around women.
Then the times you do engage with women, make sure to treat the women differently because women cannot truly handle being treated the same way men treat men because they are women and they are different.
I think you have misdiagnosed the issue and have things the wrong way around. Men don't and have never treated women the same way they treat men. As we know, feminism isn't really about 'equality' at all. So, feminism itself does not actually advocate for men to treat women like they do other men, but rather feminism advocates for men to treat women the way women want to be treated. This is as opposed to men treating women as men themselves want to treat women, based on the men's own principles.
To give you a mundane example to illustrate my point, a woman asks a man "Does this dress make me look fat?" The dress does indeed make her look fat. The woman values her feelings more than the truth, therefore expects the man to say "No, it doesn't" regardless of reality. Men, however, tend to value truth above preserving 'feelings'. He is inclined to simply say "Yes, it does make you look fat" (and then is mystified when she gets upset - he was just being honest after all).
The feminist solution is for the man to adopt the female value and thus dishonestly tell the woman she doesn't look fat. This is, after all, what the woman's girlfriends would tend to tell her. The proper answer, however, is that male principle here was the the correct one. The principle of honesty is more important than protecting the woman's feelings (in the mundane example above, the man, if he doesn't want an argument, might have to find a way to tiptoe around her feelings while still being honest). This is what men would do among each other - tell it like it is rather than worry about each other's feelings.
Therefore, to overcome feminism, men need to treat women more like they treat men, not less so. Assassin47 has makes a similar point - the issue is feminization of society, in which men are adopting female values, instead of sticking to their own male values. Men need to stick to their own principles, treating women differently for sure, but treating women differently according to their own male values. Not treating women differently according to female values.
Then you underestimate normie gamers/geeks and their inability to resist FOMO.
It's not just "normies". People here consider themselves "non-normie" yet the majority of talk in the last several days here has been about what? A non-normie game(s) that aligns with their values? Or is it this normie game that is woke?
But we need to talk about it to fight against this company doing evil things! (paraphrased)
Sure. It's necessary for most of the posts here to be about it. Great strategy, making sure everyone who participates constantly has this "normie" woke game on their minds because of the sheer volume of talk about it. "There is no such thing as bad publicity" might not be an absolute truism, but it has some truth to it.
Hint: If you want people to avoid playing this woke "normie" game, perhaps the best thing the "non-normie" gamers here could do would be to talk about "non-normie" games that aren't woke? i.e. actually offer them an alternative.
Please explain how inaction is "rationally" the better course in this instance?
For example, one could ignore the black samurai and talk about actual samurai. Build your own ideas and have your own debates. Not devote your focus on the enemies content and having the debates that your enemies want you to have.
I think you've dove too deeply into analyzing whether or not merely responding to an action is an advantage to them. There's "the only wining move is not to play," and then there's "do nothing as your world is ransacked around you by barbarian hordes."
No. I stand by my view. Allowing your enemies to set the terms of your actions means that they are likely still in control of the situation. You talk about "rejection of propaganda" but I see no such thing. Sure, perhaps fewer people will buy the new Assassin's Creed, but people are still talking about what Ubisoft wanted people to talk about - a black samurai. And in doing so, you have given them far more power over you than they deserve.
My point was for people to own their own debates, own their own culture, talk about what they want to talk about. Is it samurai? Great, talk about samurai then, but there is no need to talk about a black samurai who never existed when there are a vast number of actual samurai to talk about.
No, because this sounds too much like "just let them win, leave them alone, why do you care so much?" I'll fight every bit of the way because inaction and apathy is death; death of my country, death of my culture, death of my future.
Still, you are "fighting" on their terms. The best way to fight death is to create life, like I said. Built your own content. Develop your own ideas. Care about your culture and future? Build communities you want embodying this culture you love, build your own future using your own values. Stop focusing on fighting "enemies" when they have designed the situation so that they also win by you fighting them.
If you feel compelled to overanalyse a meme
Meme or not, it's a useful analogy.
I'd imagine the more meaningful takeaway would be that the conditioning, triggers and events have a designer.
God provided us with free will, regardless of any human weaknesses we might have. How we use it is up to us.
Is this some kind of meta-bait? I'll nibble a bit.
I thought it was pretty obvious that I was calling many people here NPCs because of the completely predictable way they were responding to the black samurai being in Assasin's Creed (5+ posts at the top level in the last 24 hours or so). I suspect most people knew what I was doing and didn't like it (unsurprisingly). But, regardless, the real reason I posted it was to encourage people to think about what they are doing instead of responding instinctively based on simplistic emotional reasoning.
It's normal to reinforce reality when reality is challenged. When someone says something that is incorrect, it is completely understandable why someone would want to correct them. One may well call any reaction at all to be "NPC" at that point. The word loses its meaning.
No. An "NPC" reaction would be one that is based on simplistic or instinctive reasoning, instead of one based on actual thinking about the best way to respond to something. Responding to bait is a clear example of this. Sure there might be good reasons to respond to something, but my point is that propaganda is far more insidious than most people realize. Propaganda is often set up so that the propagandist wins either way - accept the propaganda as true, and they win. Try to prove the propaganda wrong, and they also win. The reason is both responses allow the propagandist to set the terms for what is being debated. I am trying to encourage people to think more about what they are doing, and how they are being lead and herded, instead of just reacting all the time.
One of the biggest powers of the media of all forms that is underappreciated is that they choose the topics that are being talked about. In doing so they still get to define the terms of the debate. Case in point - everyone here is talking about a black samurai. The game designers have succeeded in making plenty of people here start to talk about black samurais even though black samurais never existed. If a fictional black samurai is not something that people here are interested in, isn't it a bit strange that so many people here talking about it?
It's possible to outsmart propaganda, but it requires rational thinking and discipline. Such as training oneself not to be baited into responding instinctively to obvious propaganda.
How do you determine the "non-NPC" response to someone who is saying something false, and especially when it is verifiably false?
If someone can predict how a defined group of people are going to respond with a high degree of certainty then those people are acting like NPCs because they are responding instinctively, not intellectually. Of course, it's simply an analogy to make a point though, there is no definite NPC response vs non-NPC response.
In any case, you are still thinking inside the box in that the best thing to do is to respond in some way. Maybe the best thing to do is to ignore it?
I agree with your theory. Men and boys tease each other amongst friend groups as well. The reason they do this is exactly the same as your proposal about why they'd do it with the women and girls in their life - to help each other build a thicker skin. Being teased in a safe environment, and learning how to deal with it, means that they are able to deal with when teased or verbally attacked in an unsafe environment. It allows them to learn how to deal with negative emotions, like you'd pointed out.
Women and girls are much less likely to do this in their friendship groups. Instead, they are 'nice' to each other (even fake 'nice'). When they verbally attack each other they usually are doing it to actually attack each other, rather than to help the person being teased by strengthening them.
It is very likely that this male behavior is beneficial to women and girls as well, when men do this with the females who they are close to.
The loss of this dynamic is partly to do with feminist discourse that entirely misunderstands this aspect of male interpersonal communication. Feminists see men teasing each other as men "not having proper friendships" or "men treating their friends badly". They are unable to see that male teasing is actually a sign of a strong friendship, that men do it with each other to help each other. They also don't see that men use it carefully - like you've pointed out - men are perfectly capable of using their empathy of determining when they might have overdone it and pulling back, and most do so. (It is true that men tend to dislike other men that are unable to take any teasing and always over-react, but there are good reasons for that as well). This means that feminists discourse encourages men to stop doing this and instead be 'nice' to each other, to the detriment of both men and women.
I don't know anything about her or this particular situation, but I have no doubts you are right simply by looking at her picture. She is most likely the kind of woman that uses manipulation to her advantage, including underhanded tactics and selling her sexuality for attention.
For all the complaints about women being "emotional" or "shouldn't be allowed to vote" that are frequent here, all it takes is a pretty face saying "based" things and suddenly all that is forgotten - the "based babe" is now going to lead the fight against leftists or immigrants and be successful at it, rather than act like most other women. The number one problem is men thinking with their dicks, and even so-called "red-pilled" or "based" men are generally not much different. Their reason is not in control of their passions. It is the other way around.
Don't worry about the downvotes. Being willing to speak the truth as you see it after thinking about a topic (as opposed to a mindless usually emotional reaction) is a virtue. Internet points are meaningless.
It's not particularly shocking to me. Most people have an innate morality, their conscience, that tells them that genocide - the mass murder of innocent individuals - is fundamentally immoral. Those condoning genocide inevitably need to use propaganda to undermine this sense of morality, usually by dehumanizing those being murdered. But propaganda can only go so far. Most people are able to realize that Palestinians are actually people, and those Palestinians who are innocent do not deserve to be murdered, and so will naturally feel abhorrence at those who are murdering them. So 'noticing' is inevitable once the propaganda is no longer effective.
At a population level, the collapse of the power of pro-Israeli propaganda in Western countries is likely due to the rise of multiculturalism. For whatever problems multiculturalism may have, the reality is that the mention of the "Holocaust" and charges of antisemitism does little to dissuade non-white individuals, and especially does not dissuade Muslims. The rise of non-white people being able to criticise pro-Israeli power in Western countries inevitable leads to charges of antisemitism losing their power on white people as well. Some might call this "the cunning or reason", with pushing of multiculturalism to undermine Western countries actually backfiring on those doing the pushing. Evidence that God Himself, the Logos, ultimately being in control of human history.
I'm not going to engage with material from an account using a picture of a scantily clad woman on it, and I encourage all men to do the same. Regardless of the message, someone using a photo like that is using female sexuality to sell their ideas to men, which means they are trying to manipulate you. Men are not going to find any solutions if they keep letting their dicks do the talking.
No doubt there are many contributing components. I don't disagree with your comment, but I would put it another way - the priesthood reflects the population they are from, or in other words, we get the priests we deserve.
I still think the most important factor, at least the one the individual men can actually make a dent into, is that men as a whole are too enslaved by sin to lead as Christians. You just need to look at this forum to see multitudes of men defending their own enslavement by pornography, masturbation and fornication (sexual sins are probably to most easy to fall into, especially for men, which is why chastity is a universal virtue). At a first step, individual men need to choose not to sin for their own sake, i.e. their own personal salvation, and once they start doing so they can step into the role God intends - to lead their societies according to His law.
Christianity is heavily feminized, and has been for atleast a century. Likely two or more.
And the solution to this, from my point of view, is for men to rightfully reassert their positions within Christianity as the leaders. The start is for men to start going to church again and playing an active role. Men need to stop conceding ground to women and recapture what they have lost.
No, seriously. Historically, women have been seen as the spiritual center of the family, while the husband deals with earthly matters. So scripture and teachings on sunday are focused and interpreted to appeal to... women! Women also influence the purse strings of the family, encouraging more spending toward the church. Win win.
I think this may be true in recent times - probably due to the rise of feminism in the West and is knock-on effects - but in my view this is certainly not what God intended. Christianity is meant to be patriarchal because that is the natural order of things. It is men's role to lead. This could not be any more explicit than Ephesians 5:24:
As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands.
As Christians, men are meant to lead spiritually and they need to do so again. They can do so by getting themselves in order - turning away from sin and being faithful to the Gospel - and being role models and eventually leaders as they continue to develop spiritually and in their relationship with God in their local Christian communities. And spreading the Good News to other men to do the same.
Any good videos to jump start an interest in exploring what Christianity used to look like in that context?
You won't get this from videos. One way is to explore the writing of historical Christian intellectuals, such as Saint Augustine or Saint Thomas Aquinas. It can be quite heavy but that is part of the point - I would say engaging with Christianity using reason and our rational ability is a quintessentially masculine way of doing so. In contrast, the feminine takes complex concepts and tends to simplify these to caricatures often based on on emotional reasoning, such as "love of neighbor and love of enemy" as meaning "being nice to everyone so you don't upset them", which is certainly not what Christ meant.
All you are really doing is pointing our the absurdity of Sola Scriptura.