Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Become Who You Are
#525 Is Pete Buttigieg Correct? Does Abortion on Demand Make Men Freer?
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In today's episode Jack and Linda Pieper link the insights of St. John Paul II's theology of the body, audience #97, as a roadmap for returning to our divine purpose amidst the brokenness we encounter daily.
Love versus lust—a distinction that's crucial yet often misunderstood. We discuss how the loss of supernatural grace has led to humanity's moral decline, critiquing contemporary views on relationships and procreation.
Recently, during a Zoom fundraising event for “White Dudes for Harris,” U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said that men have more freedom in a country where abortion on demand is the norm, because they do not have to take responsibility for their actions. According to Buttigieg, legal abortion makes men freer than they would be without it.
The implication was clear: abortion “frees” men from accountability, implying that women’s lives and choices are secondary to men’s convenience. Buttigieg’s remarks also overlook the profound effects—both physical and emotional—that abortion has on women.--Fr. Shenan Boquet
Marriage isn't just a social contract; it's a sacrament intertwined with redemption. Referencing insights from John Paul II and Christopher West, we explore how the union of man and woman mirrors the sacrament of redemption. We delve into societal issues such as LGBTQ+ relationships and pro-abortion platforms, emphasizing the necessity of returning to the grace offered by the sacraments.
Reflecting on the spiritual fruitfulness and motherhood within the Church, we highlight the spiritual battle against the distortions of sin and evil, advocating for a return to Christ's teachings to restore the sanctity of marriage and family and the dignity of woman in our civilization.
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Welcome to the Become who you Are podcast, a production of the John Paul II Renewal Center. I'm Jack Rigg, your host. Hey, thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 1:St Catherine of Siena said that if you become who you are, that you would literally set the world on fire. And St Athanasius, an early church father and a doctor of the church, said the son of God became man so that we might become God. You know I make a wild guess at this, but I bet you, most of us, are a bit disconnected from this divine life that these saints are pointing us to. Yet Saint John Paul II said there's an echo of this story, of this divine life that we're created for, inscribed in each human heart, in your human heart. And if you put on the proper lens if I put on the proper lens we can get in touch with this echo within us in such a way that we have that aha moment.
Speaker 1:See, that's the genus of St John Paul II's theology of the body. It connects our lived experience of life to the gospel in such a way that our life takes on a whole new meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today meaning and helps us answer those big questions that our whole culture is so confused about today. Who am I? What's my purpose? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness here on earth? How do I find love that satisfies forever?
Speaker 2:Hey, glad you're with me. Nice to be here. I was thinking as I was preparing for this audience and Christopher West himself said this is a very deep, rich audience. Most of them are honestly.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 2:The Pope goes so deep with this, just drilling down into our hearts, in a sense, almost asking us please understand this. And we knew that, Jack, almost 20 years ago when we started studying this, that this was something special. This really was something we needed to pay attention to. And, as you said, I was studying for this and it's like holy cow. It is so important for us to get this at this point in our history. It cannot be overstated, it's just truly amazing. It not only cannot be, overstated, linda.
Speaker 1:Our civilization is in a very rapid decline. Our nation, and also the world, it seems, is in a very rapid decline. Our nation and also the world, it seems, is in a very rapid decline. Something's happening, isn't it? We're separating the weeds from the wheat. Our hearts go out to young people who have never heard this message.
Speaker 1:And what are they hearing, linda, you start to talk to me about some thoughts on your mind from an article that you read and I think it's worth repeating here, even if we're not politically correct, because I think what we do when we bring these out and we're not looking—at the end of the day, we're all broken in some ways and we all have to say this right, we've all been broken, we came into a broken world. The problem is, as Christians, and as Catholics especially, we have an obligation to share the gospel with people and we're going to be held responsible if we don't. Because this is not about the pleasure we can, the hedonistic pleasure or any kind of pleasure we can suck out of this life today. We have to remember we're on a pilgrimage to eternal life. We're called into an eternal love story. You know just like. Jesus would come in and he would have dinner with everybody sinners, mostly sinners, in fact he was mocked for that. Why is he eating again? With sinners? Healing he would heal person after person, but he would always have the same idea and the same thread in mind. He would get up and he'd say go and sin no more. Go and sin no more. I'm calling you into an eternal love story.
Speaker 1:The universal call to holiness and holiness in the beginning was this original grace that we received.
Speaker 1:And I'll stop here, linda, because I want you to bring up this example, but I want to put it in a little context that in the beginning we were created to—all of creation is sacramental and all of creation, then is a sign of something of God. But the crowning point the human person created. Male and female were called to bring holiness and make it visible in the world, to take what God had given us. We were the only creatures created and we were as the crown of all creations. We took up all of creation within us. God blew Ruah and then we were to bring that sign of holiness. It has now entered into the world. Now we see the mockery in the Olympics we talked about and other examples of this, and we see the anti-sign. So when we say these things, it's not to judge the person, because we can't do that right, we're not called to do that but certainly the sign and the manifestation of that sign and the destruction of humanity because we're not receiving redemption. That's what we do need to talk about.
Speaker 2:That's exactly it, jack. You stated earlier, we are all broken and we break over and over again. It's not like broken and get fixed and we're good to go. It's not like broken and get fixed and we're good to go.
Speaker 1:In fact, I think, linda, don't you think, that's what attracted us so much to TOB 20 years ago Was? We go oh my gosh, I'm that broken person and I knew it, but I didn't know how to get back together again, and TOB gave us the model, the vision, and also brought us into the grace to step back into the story. That's what it did. Yes, and also brought us into the grace to step back into the story. That's what it did.
Speaker 2:Yes, and we step back into that story. But new circumstances, new things that happen to us, people that come into our lives, people we lose, their difficulties in life, all of that continues to create this ever-evolving story where we have to stay with an understanding that this is a love story and that our God is the God of life and love. And I constantly repeat that to myself life and love. What is all the implication of all of that for me? We are in a culture of death, that is a rejection of this God of life and love. We have totally misunderstood love. You know, we think freedom to do whatever we want is a part of that whole love story that we talk about, and it's very easy to misinterpret. You know what you're saying when you talk about this love story. What has our culture done with that? Love? Is love, right? It's, you know, totally twisted it in a deep misunderstanding.
Speaker 2:And yet, as you said earlier, we are the pinnacle of creation. Yet, as you said earlier, we are the pinnacle of creation and in these last few audiences today's, in 96, the Pope brings out too that in Ephesians and Colossians, st Paul talks about Christ being the firstborn of all creation, even though his incarnation happened at a point in history in time and that we were called to this holiness in and through Christ. And when I read that again, jack, it struck me in a new way that I've heard before that Christ's incarnation wasn't God's plan B, no, this was from all of creation. We were called to this holiness in and through Christ and that's what leads us to the sacrament of redemption. So I reflected on how this struck me.
Speaker 2:Now, almost 20 years later, once again I'm in a totally different spot in my own life and I'm looking at our culture, and now I have these grown grandchildren that are experiencing a culture that is like. You know what is going on here and I've had a few discussions with some of them about it. Just an example an article I read yesterday. It is from Human Life International, a wonderful pro-life organization. Father Shannon Bouquet is the head of that organization and he was writing about what's going on in the culture and this idea that the culture of death is surrounding us. Now this particular article is how abortion degrades men, and I did not know this earlier, but the Secretary of Transportation, pete Buttigieg, had spoken to this fundraising group called White Dudes for Harris, and I haven't really been following what that group is all about.
Speaker 1:But in addressing that group he said I don't think they know, just so you know. But I don't mean to interrupt, sorry.
Speaker 2:I don't think they know.
Speaker 1:The white men themselves don't know. They have no clue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean we could go off on that, but anyway, just to state what he had said to this group was that men have more freedom in a country where abortion on demand is the norm because they do not have to take responsibility for their actions.
Speaker 2:According to Buttigieg, legal abortion makes men freer than they would be without it, so the implication being that this freedom sets them free from accountability or any responsibility. But he goes on to state in the article it implies that women's lives and choices are secondary to men's convenience. So his remarks overlook the profound effects, both physical and emotional, that abortion has on women. So I mean, he goes on explaining this and yet I thought how does that relate to what we're talking about here? Well, in the very first paragraph in Audience 97, John Paul II reminds us that, with original sin, that fall from that original grace and that sacrament of creation and that call to holiness, the perspective of procreation was darkened by that event of original sin. I thought, geez, as I say to you, look how what the Pope wrote a quarter of a century ago applies to the darkness that we are now enveloped by with the issue of abortion and the lack of our understanding of procreation and the sacrament of creation.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's the anti-sign. What he's talking about is license, right, you know, for all the people out there saying yes, aren't we freer because of abortion? And you know to your point. First of all, women are not free from this. You know, women undergo this and, no matter how much they say and many of them do, at least the more vocal ones say that there was no big deal. They're proud of their abortion, but yet there's wounds. There's deep, deep wounds in there, and we speak to those women all the time, and whether you can push that down or not and try to make yourself feel good is another thing, but there's some real wounds there.
Speaker 1:For men, though, this license that he's talking about, not taking responsibility I mean John Paul's work, his philosophical work, right before theology of the body, was love and responsibility. Without responsibility for the other person, there is no love. What Buttigieg is describing is use, is looking at another person as an object, to use them, and this is where his heart and his mind are at. I mean, this shows you how distorted his thinking is, and again I realize he came into a broken world again. I want to say that again, and so I'm not just judging an individual person here. He'll have to judge this for himself. But what the what? The idea he's pushing out to the rest of the world and for the all his audience listening, and to these white men who support Harris they love this stuff because I'm sure to them, these they're thinking yes, why do white men, you know, why did these guys sitting back right these actors and all these different dudes, you know? Why do these guys sitting back right these actors and all these different dudes, you know why do they support? Because they want the same thing. They want the sex without the babies and they want the sex without the unity of being one with another person. So they're rejecting Linda, not only the baby that comes out of this, they're rejecting the person they're making love to.
Speaker 1:Right, they call it love. Love is love, but this is just a momentary feeling, a lust. You know, john Paul would say the opposite of love is not hate, the opposite of love is lust. And using someone, they want a license to be able to go out and act out their lust on another person. It's the most pitiful thing if you understand it, but they've been sitting, linda, in this proverbial pot with this frog, and it's not just water that's heating up slowly. It's a slime and a sludge of moral relativism and they've been sitting in it so long. They have totally lost what it means to be human. And the last thing I'll say about this is what you said originally Before sin, we were full of grace.
Speaker 1:We were full of this holiness. We were natural men and women. So natural men and women were supernatural. We are no longer natural men and women. When we have given up and refused and turned our backs on grace, we are unnatural Unnatural. We actually become some of the worst of the worst, and you can see this in destroying and killing a human being called a child. That should be a visible sign of the love between a man and a woman. It's really sad to see.
Speaker 2:Right, right, this point of being unnatural, when we lost the supernatural grace which, by the way, was not owed to us at all. In fact, our whole creation of being created in the first place is gift. God didn't have to create us, he didn't owe it to us. But we not only fell from grace, it wasn't just going back to, you know, zero, ground zero. But we actually fell below that. We fell much deeper.
Speaker 1:We rejected the gift. We rejected that gift of life, divine life and love that you said.
Speaker 1:And you could see that in the beginning, when adam and eve put loincloths on on their sexual parts, well, shame had entered the the world. And so you see this, this is an old story. What pete budaj doesn't realize is this is this is an old story, it's the most boring old story and they all fall for it because they don't realize where we came from. And put it in context of where we are today and where we're going. And I see some of these old white men for Harris who probably have a couple more blinks of an eye and they're out of this life and they're giving up eternal life so that they can fantasize in their mind having sex with somebody and and being totally responsible, walking away from that person man, woman, whatever they are today, whatever they're doing today and and they want to have sex not only between men and women, but between anybody. And what?
Speaker 1:And what is Buttigieg really getting at? He's rejected already the sign of male and female, the sacramental sign that brings life into the world. So he wants to so totally destroy that sign so that he feels better. Just like I said, there are women that want to try to feel better about their abortion and we need to keep them in our prayers, but it's very difficult to do. And the same thing he's doing in a different way. He's rejected that sign of the unitive and the procreative sign, as in the beginning, which is a sign of divine life and love. When you reject that right, he's in a homosexual relationship. You know. He says he's married to a man and then they've taken children. And think about this. Here's a guy talking about abortion and freedom. Yeah, he took a child that they got a donor egg.
Speaker 1:Some woman out in the world right has donated eggs multiple eggs and then they had to have a surrogate and that surrogate actually took that life within her, brought it all the way up into life and then rejected, had to reject the baby and also that child who deserves a mother and father. You know, they have no mother in their home. I mean, you know, this is so bad, linda, that I almost get sick. But here's the thing when you reject responsibility for new life, you reject responsibility even for a child to have a mother, the right to a mother and a father. This is really selfishness taken to another level, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's so many ripple effects and it just goes deeper and deeper into the new wounds that are created, rather than bringing the pleasure that they're seeking. I would like to understand, for example, what Buttigieg and his husband were thinking and why they wanted a child in the first place, the first place.
Speaker 1:I think that may tap into what we speak about that echo, where we know the fruitfulness should be there, right, Jed yeah unpack that, because what Buttigieg and it's a great point you're bringing up, there's an echo, john Paul would say, within us of that original story. And what is that original story? It's to enter into this divine life and love of God and be an efficacious sign of that. Again, we're a reflection of Trinitarian love in the world, created in the Imago Dei, in the image and likeness of God. What does that mean? To be filled with divine life and love and then to bring it into the world. Again, we're called to initiate holiness through us, through our bodies, into the world, into all of creation, all of creation, which is a sacramental sign. Look at the stars, the sun, reflecting something of God, of the creator, of the mountains, right the seas.
Speaker 1:But, we were called to bring the actual divine life story into the world as a sacramental sign of the two becoming one, becoming three. And there's no way that Pete Buttigieg or anybody outside of the marriage of a man and a woman can have the possibility of bringing that new life into the world. Well, this isn't just about us. This is a sign of God's eternal life, of the Father, son and the Holy Spirit, the Trinitarian love story. Linda, when we walked away from this and think about this when we walked away from this, we walked away from what John Paul calls in here the sacrament of redemption that you had alluded to earlier. When we do that, we don't have much hope to be restored, so we're just going to stay and wallow in our sins until what? Until death takes us over, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's so much here, jack.
Speaker 2:I'd like to refer to something Christopher West says when he unpacks this, and he's talking about this very idea that so our primordial sacrament mirrors.
Speaker 2:The sacrament of sexual love is intended not only to advance the work of creation through procreation that God intended right but to spread the same sacrament of creation to further generations of human beings, that is, to spread the supernatural fruits of man's eternal election by the Father in the eternal Son. So twofold here procreation, the actual physicality of new life, but also that call to holiness. As I see it, it's another way to say that we're to spread that to further generations. You see, that echo is so deep in our hearts that even those who cannot procreate as a man and woman do husband and wife. They have that desire right, and to me that's the only thing that would explain why they would go to such great lengths, as you just described, to bring in a child into their home. And so we can see how it runs so deep in us what the Father's plan really is for us that even when we're rejecting it and distorting it, we can't let go of it.
Speaker 1:And think about those two things now that you just brought up right, the unitive right, bringing the two become one, actually become one person physically and then open to life, is the three. So Pete Buttigieg again you know the pick on him now, I guess now I'm on a roll and his so-called husband. They had to enter into that sign in a warp-twisted way. In other words, that echo led them to a woman who donated right, who had to supply the womb for the seed and not only supply the womb as the egg that had to be fertilized, but also carry that child into existence. Or some woman had to carry that child into existence. So they had to enter into the sign, even though in a way it's an anti-sign right, because they never entered into the sacrament obviously, and it's not efficacious, the grace is not going to come into their relationship because the sacrament itself has to take place between a man and a woman.
Speaker 1:Where the two become one, there's actually a grace that comes into there and we pull that grace, linda and maybe you want to talk about this from the sacrament of redemption. You know, in Ephesians 5, they're tied together what we're doing and white men for Harris, because this is a very pro-abortion platform and that's why he could say it right. I mean, if there's anything we know about that political party, I'll say that Kamala Harris belongs to, and her words on this. The number one thing that you'll always hear her say at least if it's not the first thing out of her mouth, it would be the second or third is that it's our right, our right to destroy the child in the womb. So this is really something when we enter into this. So the, the, the sacrament of redemption, has been rejected, and so god has been rejected, and, of course, the church is being rejected or twisted and distorted you know, in, in, in, the, in the say with an lbgtq, acceptance you, and twisting and distorting the inner life of the church itself, which is another travesty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a couple of tracks I want to go on. One, in light of our language, of unitive and procreative, it's another way to say love and life, you know. And again, when the love becomes so distorted, instead of being agape and self-sacrificing, as happens in the sacrament of redemption, we find just the opposite, the self-gratification. And of course, we find the rejection of life in all the forms of death that you know, is enclosing us. But when we look at what is the sacrament of redemption, I think it's in paragraph two in our audience, where John Paul talks about this connection between our primordial sacrament that was connected to the supernatural grace we received and then lost through original sin, that the new gracing was brought about by Christ, when Christ loved the church and gave himself for her in order to make her holy. So he clearly draws the connection that we have a continuity here. But now it is the redemptive gift of self for the church that we're all called to that he identifies as the sacrament of redemption and he says that it clothes itself in the figure and form of that primordial sacrament.
Speaker 2:So when I was attempting to teach this, when we were looking at the sacrament of marriage, I had a little diagram where, once again, it becomes clear that the union of man and woman in the primordial sacrament, and Christ and the church and the love they like interchange.
Speaker 2:You know, we see the old gracing having been lost and now continuing through the new grace of Christ in the church, so that what it meant to me was, if I am in marriage, my husband and I, we receive grace because of the sacrament of redemption when we enter into the sacrament of matrimony, and it is through that grace that we model the Trinitarian love. The two become one, become three, as you say. And yet Christ's love for the church is not only what models what self-sacrificing love looks like, but it also graces us with the power to be able to live that out. And that's what we've lost, that you and I are trying to, you know. Help us understand we need to get back to, which is the only way of pulling our culture out of this depth of darkness that we're in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's no other way. There's no other way because this is the primordial. Primordial meaning, the sacramental sign of God's love in the world before sin, and that was the primordial. There were no other sacraments In the Catholic Church, of course we have seven sacraments, but all of those are a splinter, kind of like a rainbow is what Christopher West brings up, and you think about the rainbow today, how that's distorted. But the actual rainbow is like a prism. You know all these differentousal meaning of the body and this relationship, the spousal relationship with.
Speaker 2:Christ.
Speaker 1:Baptism again is the washing, getting ready for the nuptial bath. Confession is a way of again offering our sins to God, being sorrowful for them, being humble and saying you know what I need your help, come back into my life as it was kind of in the beginning. You know, when we think about marriage and itself, you know, be this efficacious gift. You know the two people, you know getting ready to exchange their vows. You know, underneath the crucifix, this is bringing this Ephesians 5 right back together, this married couple looking up at Christ, receiving confession, hopefully first before they came there, and then receiving the Eucharist, receiving into their bodies this divine life and love that we lost in the fall and giving this back to each other. This is bringing this into what John Paul II would call, and Christopher West does a great job of saying one great sacrament right. So that's what these two ends are.
Speaker 1:That St. Paul's talking about marriage of man and woman, and Christ and the church become one great sacrament again, as it was in the beginning.
Speaker 2:Right and using the term, this is the great mystery. So from that sacrament of redemption, right and using the term, this is the great mystery, you know. So from that sacrament of redemption, the Pope states that, united with Christ, the church draws her whole spiritual fruitfulness and motherhood. And I starred that in my book because we refer to Holy Mother Church. Right Fruitfulness in that sense is just critical to the whole thinking of what we mean by life and love. And that's why the church is where we receive and find the sacraments and we draw from that as we do initially from our mothers at birth.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I want to kind of back up a little bit for everybody that's been listening to us today, because you start to contrast the way we open this up with the way Jesus did it again, and you've heard us talk about this before. But Jesus answered the Pharisees again. Have you not read that? He who made them from the beginning, made them male and female. What, therefore? God has joined together. Let no man separate. But therefore, god has joined together, let no man separate.
Speaker 1:So, from the beginning, there's this explosion, the cosmic explosion of Trinitarian love in the created world, to bring holiness into the created world. And how did that happen? You know, this is God. You know, let us make man in our image, in our likeness. So God created man, men and women in the divine image. How Male and female, he created them Smiling. You could see God, before sin, smiling upon this newly married couple, adam and Eve. And then God blessed them, saying what? Be fertile and multiply, fill the earth, bring forth children, for they are very, very good. And so this is what happens, linda. This is the whole sign, the unitive sign and the procreative sign. So what happened there? Empty the tempter, you know, enter the tempter. And so this mysterium in equitatis. It's a Latin phrase which means the mystery of evil. And there he is. He's already there. Now his evil hasn't been unleashed upon the world because God is going to allow us the freedom to decide whether that comes in or not. And every one of us is standing at that tree in a sense.
Speaker 1:Linda, pete, buttigieg, me, you and again, we're all broken in our own way. I have faults. By the grace of god, go I. I had a brother that died of aids from entering into a homosexual lifestyle. The good news with with my brother, danny, is he had come back into the church. And this is what we would hope for, pete, and and his and his husband and and everybody, and give those kids a chance you know to to have, you know christ come into their life, hopefully right, because right, because here's the end.
Speaker 1:Satan doesn't have his own clay. He can only twist, distort and seek to destroy the Imago Dei, the sign that God created good. This is the attack you see today, linda, on the Imago Dei and human beings created in the image and likeness of God. You see it attacking the innocent and the vulnerable in abortion. If that child makes it through the womb, we render them sterile with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. And just as diabolical. You see these teachers in these classrooms handing kindergartners and preschool kids, these LBGTQ rainbow flags to walk around. Well, why do they do that? There's all different reasons we've unpacked in the past, but at the end of the day, it's robbing them of their innocence. It's robbing them of this Imago Dei. It's taking God out and saying here we have man, you can be like God, so maybe I'll do this.
Speaker 1:This is Genesis 3. Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the Lord God had made. And the serpent asked the woman did God really tell you not to eat from here? This is what Pete Buttigieg is saying you don't have to be responsible for this. You don't have to take responsibility for this. Did God tell you this? You will not die, you'll be fine and so at the end of the day.
Speaker 1:What happens? Death does come into the world, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. Yeah, Satan's goal is to keep us from that destiny that we have with Christ, our eternal destiny. That's his goal. That's all he ever wants is to pull us away and for us to lose our soul. So he has to plagiarize everything right, Twist and distort everything. So he's twisting man and woman's union, which really, as you say, is becoming an anti-sacrament. You could look at it that way. That's nothing more than the denial of that gift, doubting first and then denying it that gift of life and love. And he plagiarizes, you know, with our own bodies, which we can see, which the agape is self-donation gratification. He plagiarizes it and twists it into self-gratification.
Speaker 2:I brought that up before. And if we could just see that for what it truly is he's the father of lies and we could enter into what Satan says and does, what is against what God has said and done, as all lies, let's face it right, it's lies. And where is that? Where I bought into it and mistaken it for the truth. And if I could start thinking about it that way. Like you say, we're not judging anyone, we're just trying to bring the light of Christ's truth to everyone, because the darkness of the lies will just keep us suffocating if we don't look for that element of where it's been twisted and where the truth is.
Speaker 1:And here's what you're seeing today and this is what I think we're sensing today is the weeds and the weed are separating themselves. In other words, the people that have accepted what we're unpacking the beauty of God's plan and those that have rejected it and don't even want to take responsibility for the person that they're using for sexual pleasure. I mean, this will not bring happiness. This doesn't bring happiness because we're not being prude when we say, you know, don't go out and have sex just to have sex, that there's a meaning, a purpose and a beauty behind it. And just let me remind everyone that, you know, two men or two women cannot enter into an actual sexual act, you know?
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, my wife and I have a lot of similarities, right, we have the same two lungs and the same stomach. We both have two arms and two legs. We both have systems that work independently a digestive system, a cardio system, a skeletal system, a nervous system, right, a digestive system. But there's one system, linda, I'm going to quiz you here. There's one system that doesn't work by itself. Any idea what that is, lynn.
Speaker 2:Let me think Could it be a reproductive system?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's important, don't you to bring up?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. You said over and over that we've lost the fact that there's a meaning and purpose to our sexual activity. That sexual union I am yours, you are mine is what that union is, that we are saying to each other as husband and wife, and that goes to the depths of who we are, at every level of person, psychological, emotional, physical, all those things together. And that is, by God's plan, indissoluble once that union and commitment has happened. And the Pope points out, using that very word, indissoluble that, realized by Christ, he gave himself for the church in an indissoluble love. And see, we totally lost that. So not only the meaning of the sexual act itself, but what that self-giving really is.
Speaker 1:And I mean what a great point you're making there. Because, don't forget, this is extended out to neighbor. This is not just between a man and a woman. You know, this is the sacramental sign, and Christ would say it this way you know, it's the two great commandments to be filled with divine love and love right, love God. And then to be loved to that neighbor right, go and love your neighbor. And he said those two parts go together. You don't just be filled with divine life and love without going out and becoming love manifesting in the world, because this gets back to the original plan that we are the sacramental sign of holiness in the world. So we have to bring it into the world, but we can't bring it in unless we have it.
Speaker 1:We have to have it first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, before I lose this thought.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:If husband and wife have that understanding and enter into their union with that understanding of total gift to self, and then that extends first to their children and then the greater family and then our neighbor that we do. What was said earlier in this spreading of the supernatural fruits that was the Pope's words. That's exactly what it is is that this extends out to our neighbors. Love God and love neighbor. As it has been shortened for us so many times, it's total sensical to me. And then the beauty just emerges of what God's plan was.
Speaker 1:And you can see it again just on the streets. Just on the streets, you can see the violence versus kindness. You can see person after person being compassionate and helping and others knocking them over the head, stealing from them. You could see people praying outside of abortion clinics for those children and for the women that are in there, and also the men that are in their lives too, in quiet prayer. And you could see the vitriol, the spitting, the yelling, the screaming of people that were taking their rights away, right, and so you really see this division. You see it in wars, you see it in all of these things. Right, the same party that you know, the same party that's, is pro-abort, is just funneling more and more money into these wars, like ukraine and russia, and so it's just fueling wars and wars and wars.
Speaker 1:And John Paul said this already in 1994 in his letter to families. He wrote this Think about this. He could have said this again yesterday too. He said unfortunately, various programs, backed by very powerful resources, nowadays seem to aim at the breakdown of the family. Nowadays seem to aim at the breakdown of the family. At times, it appears that concerted efforts are being made to present as normal and attractive and even to glamorize situations which are, in fact, irregular. Indeed, they contradict the truth and love which should inspire and guide relationships between men and women, thus causing tensions and divisions in families, with grave consequences, particularly for children. The moral conscience becomes darkened you mentioned that earlier what is true, good and beautiful is deformed, and freedom is replaced by what is actually enslavement. In view of all this, he says how relevant and thought-provoking are the words of the Apostle Paul about the freedom from which Christ has set us free and the slavery which is caused by sin.
Speaker 2:That's.
Speaker 1:Galatians, 5, verse 1.
Speaker 2:Yes, and that so sums it up right.
Speaker 1:It sums up everything we've been talking about here, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and see my thought too. When a husband and wife do not understand truly what their sexual union is about and they have difficulties to the point where there's anger and frustration involved, how can they then go out and spread love, kindness and all those things to others when even in their own relationship, in their home, it is not what it should be? So we can see both ways that if we get it and we're working through grace, trying to do, you know, the thing of really the self-gift as it extends out. We see that happening and we see exactly the opposite when it doesn't, which is why Satan once again is going to attack marriage and then the family as it extends out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, every communist, every yeah, socialist, marxist, communist, in other words. But it goes all the way through the gamut. When you reject God, you always are going to attack marriage and the family. It's done this throughout history, and especially the most innocent among us. It's all through history. We're going to attack the child and you want to take out God? Right, you're going to burn churches.
Speaker 1:You're going to take out Christ and the church. Once you do that, there's an inevitable decline in civilization. What happens, linda? The actual Satan just sits back now, because once he's taken those signs out, men will destroy men and women will destroy each other. He doesn't care which war we get into. He doesn't care who kills who. He doesn't care how many babies die or which color they are, long as it's human beings getting killed and getting massacred.
Speaker 1:And this is what we're seeing over and over again and it's only going to get worse here until we this is the key right here until we hold up those two pillars life from conception to natural end and marriage in the Imago Dei and the image and likeness of God.
Speaker 1:If we let one of those pillars go, which we have now done both right in the United States, allow abortion and also take in and redefine marriage, I don't see how you build up the civilization, linda. It started to go down, you know before that, but you know to get us to that point where we legislated into law. See, it's one thing for individuals, pete Buttigieg, me, you, all of us sinners right brings our own individual sins in the world. It's another thing when you throw out the Ten Commandments and you institutionalize, you legalize, you codify laws to protect sin, laws to protect sin. See, now that's a whole other level when human beings actually put a law together to actually make that sin legal. Now you find your whole country, your whole culture, and that gets back to that hardness of heart that Jesus always talks about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the visual image that popped into my head was the Ten Commandments being inscribed in stone and the anti of that is codifying in our law. All the anti, all deaf right. It's just amazing, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah. We can lie and you see it? I mean, don't you see it in the political ads? Not only the fifth commandment right not to kill, the sixth one right, which is really talking about chastity and talking about, basically, marriage and the family. You have the seventh one don't steal. What do we do now? It's legal to steal up to $1,000. It's legal in certain family. You have the seventh one don't steal. What do we do now? It's legal to steal up to $1,000. It's legal in certain cities.
Speaker 2:Don't lie, well, we've thrown that out right.
Speaker 1:Everybody lies about everything. Today, I mean, we have the deep state and, unfortunately, linda, we have the deep church and then, finally, don't covet your neighbor's goods or your neighbor's wife, and that means our hardness of heart. We actually desire to be in sin. We actually desire to be in sin. So we've thrown all of that out. And why? Because we threw the first three out, which is God. We've taken those three out. When those three out, the other ones come, which includes honoring parents. We're now, you know, we set them up for euthanasia now and get rid of them as fast as we can, or put them in some home, someplace where we don't have to deal with them. You know, yeah.
Speaker 2:You and I could write a book on that, just taking the Ten Commandments and showing people the opposite. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I think I'd be depressed by the time I was writing it.
Speaker 1:Let's leave them on a good note, Linda. And leave them on a good note. Let's talk about just for a minute, as we're signing out here, this redemption in Christ, Because this is our faith, our hope and love. We're all here, called back into this story.
Speaker 2:So I say, jack, listen to that echo that you may have drowned out, it's still there. Listen to that echo within your heart as the beginning of breaking through that hardness of the heart we may have and then believing in the power of grace. Because if I don't believe in that, I'm going to try to do it on my own and it won't work. So those would be my two key points to bring some hope in some direction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it won't work, because natural man is supernatural and the only way you can become supernatural is with supernatural grace right. So it's impossible to do this on your own. Supernatural grace right. So it's impossible to do this on your own. I mean, men and women have tried it all the way through the Enlightenment and most recent times and all the way down to us, isn't it so?
Speaker 1:yeah, go back to church, go to confession, receive the Eucharist. I mean, that's probably the most powerful thing you can do. Pray the rosary every day. And those three simple things that I always talk about is, before you look at your phone, get on your knees and say, god, let it be done to me according to your word. Just like you go back and read Luke, chapter one, with the annunciation. Know that you're going to be tempted, but use temptation as an invitation to prayer. Every time I'm tempted, that's just an invitation for me to pray and open this up. Then the third thing just go out and love the next person you see and if.
Speaker 1:I see Pete Buttigieg, then my job is to love him, because that's what we're called to do Not to hate people in their sins, but to love them in their sins, and that's a difference. That's a big difference between people that embrace Christ.
Speaker 2:Right, you're loving them enough to share the truth of Christ with them. Yes, and then go, sin no more.
Speaker 1:That's a tough thing to tell people. Yeah, you know and I always say, on top of that, linda I said, you know, by the grace of God go. I know Sure, from moment to moment. You know we can all fall you know so.
Speaker 2:Right hey.
Speaker 1:God bless you, thanks. So, hey, god bless you. Thanks for being with me. Thanks, everyone. Talk to you again soon.