"Gay Parenting:" Children Raised by Unchaste Adults Lead Difficult Lives

by Susan Fox

There were two innocent-looking ceramic turtles sitting on the coffee table.

The five-year-old girl studied them. Her cousins were friends with a number of artists in the 1960s. One of their friends had sculpted the turtles.

A little child is curious. So she picked up the turtles and turned them over. To her shock, underneath, they were human with male and female genitalia and breasts. They were almost pornographic in their detail.

This happened about 57 years ago. The image intrigued and bothered the little girl for a long time. 

When she was six, she went into the towel closet and dug underneath the towels. She  came upon a picture of her father (who had died) and her  mother. They had stuck their heads into a wooden cartoon frame for the photo. It depicted an attractive lady sitting in a bathtub and a man looking at her through a window. These images had her parents’ heads.

Perhaps the 1950s images were innocent and harmless, but the girl's mother had correctly understood that they were too adult for her child. That’s why she hid it in under the towels, thinking the daughter would never find it.

What was the little girl doing, digging under the towels in the closet? She was hiding her Barbie doll from herself. She had correctly discerned the almost anatomically correct doll was a near occasion of sin. How funny that both mother and daughter thought to hide lustful images in the same place!

These childhood peccadillos were nothing compared to those of Dawn Stefanowicz, who was raised by a father who self-identified as gay, her sickly mother, and her father’s various live-in boyfriends.  Stefanowicz, author of Out From Under and one of the writers for Jephthah’s Daughters: Innocent casualties in the war for family “equality,” was raised by a weak mother and an unchaste father.

Her personal visit to the towel closet included a trip to the nudist beach at Hamlin’s Point, Toronto Island, Canada. “We were the only kids there amongst all these gay males. But there would be a few females that were topless who were female models, but they were surrounded by14-16 gay males,” she said, also telling stories of vacations in Florida where she was left alone in the hotel pool while her father cruised the local “gay” hot spots.

Author Dawn Stefanowicz

 “My father would find out about another gay cruising area, and we’d actually switch hotels 50 miles down the road,” she said. Left alone with her two brothers while her father was cruising, Dawn said,   “I loved that pool looking up at the starry night sky. (But) I didn’t realize how lonely I felt inside, how rejected and abandoned.”  

Her comments in Jephthah’s Daughter’s appeared in the midst of a discussion with other adults who had been raised by same sex partners. The book covers over 70 cases of same sex parenting.

When she turned 12, Dawn had all kinds of boyfriends but in these relationships she was looking for the kind of male-affirmation that she should have gotten from her father. Self-identified “bi-sexual” Robert Oscar Lopez, raised by two same-sex attracted females, desperately wanted a father’s attention, so much so that at the age of 13 he began to prostitute himself to older men.

Lopez was fascinated by the fact that Dawn had a father, but felt fatherless.  “His attention was always centered on the males in his life,” she responded. “There were three key males (2 brothers, one father) in my life growing up, but there were also multiple partners that my father had, and his partners had, that they were involved with sexually. So in some ways it wasn’t like a couple, it almost seemed polygamous at times because my father and his partners could be involved with 12 other men at the gay bars downtown.” (Jephthah p. 54)

Dawn currently is a wife and mother, but she had to undergo counseling in order to learn what it means to be female.  Lopez – husband and father -- also felt confused about his sexual identity growing up with two “Moms.” He had a lisp, and only knew the mannerisms of women, so as a teenager he never fit in.

“What was it like when your father exposed you to gay culture?” Lopez asked Stefanowicz. “It’s something where as a little girl growing up I didn’t feel that my own femininity and womanhood was being affirmed, and valued, and loved. In fact, I felt it was better to be a gay male, or even a transgender male, than it was to be a little girl. I always felt that I wasn’t lovable because I did not see the men in my life loving women.” (Jephthah, p. 51) 

That is the crux of the problem. Besides creating a  highly sexualized environment, same sex parents are completely unable to model normal male/female roles and respect for the opposite sex. Everyone understands their identify as a child of a mother and a father, so if you treat one or the other as contemptible, the child loses his own self-respect.

About 30 percent of kids raised by same-sex parents self identify as bi-sexual or homosexual, while the number is only 2 percent in the general population. (Jephthah, p. 53) In fact, persons who self identity as homosexual are generally understood to be a small percentage of our population, but on June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same sex “marriage,” giving same sex couples de facto rights to raise children. Therefore, the number of people, who self-identify as homosexual, is bound to grow in the future as a percentage of our population.

Stefanowicz, having interviewed and emailed numerous other kids raised by unchaste adults, believes that all of them experience some gender confusion growing up. “Almost all of us have had some level of sexual confusion. Not that we came out and labeled ourselves. But we struggled. A number of us ... there was sexual abuse. It’s a very sexualized environment (growing up with same sex parents) – not just within the home, but within the subculture that I was exposed to.” (Jephthah p. 53)

Raised by a single parent, who clearly understood her sexual identity as a woman, and exposed to the Catholic culture which esteems chastity, I personally have never suffered any gender confusion or insecurity in my entire life, but individuals like Dawn and Robert had the normal problems of growing up compounded by a sexual identity crisis. They had to face the question: “Who am I sexually?”

A Canadian economist Douglas Allen used Canada’s 2006 census to discover that young adult children of same-sex couples are 35 percent less likely to graduate from high school than young adult children of traditionally married opposite-sex couples. Daughters of same-sex couples do considerably worse than sons. They were 85 percent less likely to graduate than their counterparts raised in a traditional household.  Canada Study: Kids in Gay Families Hampered in School  

 “What is known from decades of research on family structure, studying literally thousands of children, is that every departure from the traditional, stable mother-father family has severe detrimental effects upon children; and these effects persist not only into adulthood but also into the next generation,” Dr. Jeffrey Satinover was quoted in the book Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior is Changing Everything by Robert R. Reilly.  “In short, the central problem with mother-mother or father-father families is that they deliberately institute, and intend to keep in place indefinitely, a family structure known to be deficient in being obligatorily and permanently either fatherless or motherless.” 

The American College of Pediatricians in 2012 echoed Satinover’s findings: “Clearly apart from rare situations, depriving a child of one or both biological parents -- as same-sex parenting requires -- in every case is unhealthy.”

Some years ago, Robert Lopez had a column in his Children’s Rights blog, the English Manif, where he linked to two Disney movies that he felt clearly depicted the behavior of controlling same-sex parents. One was the suffocating “lesbian” mother in Tangled  (think Rapunzel – literally taken

Suffocating mother in Tangled 

from her rightful parents and raised alone by a witch in a tower) and the other is the foster father of the hunchback Quasimodo, Hunchback of Notre Dame. Quasimodo’s “foster father” attempts to keep him hidden and controlled by saying he would frighten people by his appearance.

When I watched those cartoons that Lopez identified as modeling gay parenthood, I realized that the characters were acting like they had stolen the children -- like they really had no right to the kids they were raising. That’s why I titled this piece: “Children Raised by Unchaste Adults” instead of “Children Raised by Unchaste Parents.” On a very deep level, even same sex couples understand they are not the rightful parents of the children they are raising. This makes sense since they had nothing to do with conceiving them. They used illicit means to get them: a sperm donor, an incubator or they got some idiot adoption agency to hand over a helpless child. The children in same-sex households have literally been stolen.

Understanding who is and who is not your father can bring great healing. My mother re-married when I was 18. She dated my stepfather two years before that. It probably sounds whiney -- in light of the horrors Lopez and Stefanowicz suffered -- to say my stepfather never fathered me, but my mother and I tried to shoehorn him into that relationship anyway. “Daddy” treated me like the dirt under the carpet. I no longer felt welcome in my own home despite the fact that my mother was my best friend. But by the grace of God I came to understand that my stepfather was NOT my father. He was actually my brother in Christ; I was healed of the pain caused by that relationship. God is my Father. He is the only Father, who ever welcomed me into His home. He promised to kill the fatted calf, put a ring on my finger and throw a party for my friends. Such an approach could help others saddled with "step-parents."

The American Psychological Association -- in contrast with   the viewpoint of Jephthah’s Daughters -- has a number of studies which finds same sex households are equally nurturing as traditional married households. The organization was taken over by the LGBT movement in the late ‘70s. Because the courts have largely adopted the APA propaganda, it is not unusual to find people who self-identify as homosexual naively believing that others within their same sexual lifestyle can be good parents.  But Professor Loren Marks of Louisiana State University debunked the APA myths when he pointed out that “not one of the 59 studies referenced in the 2005 APA Brief compares a large, random representative sample of lesbian or gay parents and their children, with a large random, representative sample of married parents and their children.”

Robert Lerner and Althea K Nagai in reviewing the same homosexual parenting studies for the Ethics and Public Policy Center reached the same conclusion: “The methods used in these studies are so flawed that these studies prove nothing. Therefore they should not be used in legal cases to make any argument about ‘homosexual vs. heterosexual’ parenting. Their claims have no basis.”

Professor Mark Regnerus, University of Texas, in his New Family Structures Study, managed to completely blow the APA studies out of the water for he used a large study sample that met the standards for research in social science. He found that children are more apt to succeed as adults “on multiple counts across a variety of domains” when they spend their entire childhood with their married mother and father, especially when the couple remains married to the present day. Unfortunately, this is becoming increasingly rare.

Children raised in same-sex households therefore are more likely to suffer outcomes similar to those from heterosexual stepfamilies and single parents. Specifically, they are more likely to be sexually abused, to be unemployed, less healthy, more depressed, more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, smoke more pot, have trouble with the law, have more male and female sex partners, and are more likely to reflect negatively on their childhood. (Regnerus)

Rivka Edelman also discusses some of the creepiness of her upbringing in a same-sex household in Jephthah’s Daughters. What most bothered her the most was her mother’s obsession with her own daughter’s sexuality.  

“A boy would be over and she’d be like, ‘you know, I think he wants to kiss you.’ And I’d be like, ‘Yeah, so what? He can go kiss a doorknob,’” she said, “I literally just completely closed down that way. I was just completely androgynous. I never flirted with a boy ever, in my life.”

Edelman really brings the point home that children of same sex relationships are trophies in a same-sex union. They have as their primary purpose making their parents look good and normal. For the kids, there is no freedom to regret the lack of a relationship with a father or a mother.

“Children learn to role play the part of living dolls,” said Edelman, “Our parents used us as little display objects. We existed only to make our parents look good, to feed the insatiable egos that were our parents. Does that sound like a happy childhood?”

“Looking back over the past 65 years of my life, I have come to understand that child abuse is not about parents who consciously want to do irreparable damage to their children,” said Lee Taylor, who was raised by a “gay” man. His comments appeared in Jephthah’s Daughters, p. 73.  “It’s not as if they plan ahead to turn their children’s world into a living hell. That comes quite naturally as they do their best to give what is truly theirs to give, all of the unconscious toxins which motivate their blinded lives.”

“There is not even the slightest doubt in my mind that my parents consciously wanted the very best in life for me and my brothers and sisters. There is also not the slightest doubt in my mind that they were among the most dangerous and destructive parents that any child could survive. Their lack of conscious awareness of their own psychic demons did nothing to assuage the pain and suffering of my physical, emotional, spiritual and sexual abuse. It would’ve been no less painful if they’d planned it,” Taylor concluded.

Pope Francis weighed in on the issue in a weekly papal audience: “Children also pay the price for immature unions and irresponsible separations: they are the first victims; they suffer the outcome of a culture of exaggerated individual rights, and then the children become prematurely precocious. They often absorb the violence they are not able to ‘ward off’ and before the very eyes of adults are forced to grow accustomed to degradation.” He has spoken out repeatedly against genderless “marriage” and the rights of children to have both a mother and a father wherever possible.

The American College of Pediatricians summarized the risks to children raised in same-sex households:

•  Violence between same-sex partners is two to three times more common than among married heterosexual couples.
• Same-sex partnerships are more prone to dissolution than heterosexual marriages with the average homosexual relationship lasting only two to three years.
• Homosexual partners are promiscuous with serial partners even in loosely termed “committed” relationships. 
• Individuals who practice the homosexual lifestyle are more likely to suffer from mental illness, substance abuse, suicide and have shorter lifespans.

In short the ACP believes that it is very hazardous for children to be raised by same-sex couples whether by adoption, foster care or artificial reproduction. (Making Gay Okay)

I met a self-identified homosexual man on Twitter, who  thought I was very naïve to raise questions about the success of “gay” parenting.  “We don’t have sex in front of our kids,” he said. But one divorced mother, whose husband dragged their kids into a homosexual household, said it was a shock to her son to see his father go into his bedroom with another man. This example alone is much more serious than a five-year-old turning over an obscene ceramic turtle lying on the coffee table.

But that’s not the worst that the children suffer when  they end up under the thumb of an unchaste parent in a divorce. “Their father moved into his new (male) partner’s condo, which is in a complex inhabited by 16 gay men. One of the men has a 19-year-old male prostitute who comes to service him. Another man, who functions as the father figure of this community, is in his late ‘60s and has a boyfriend in his ‘20s,” the man’s ex-wife reported. She says her kids are taken to transgender baseball games, gay rights fundraisers and LGBT film festivals, while on Halloween their father wears make-up and sex bondage straps. For her daughter it’s a very bad environment as the walls of the condo are adorned with large framed pictures of women in provocative poses. “Her father should be protecting her sexuality. Instead he is warping it,” the children’s mother said. It is no better for her son, who in interested in girls, but all the men around him seek sexual gratification with other men. (Jephthah, p. 92)

Hidden in the heart of this story is the issue of the dangers of pornography for little children.  Like the mother hiding the mature image in the towels, some same sex adults do try to hide their porn. But others just leave it carelessly lying around. Robert Lopez spent a lot of time reading his mother’s porn when he was growing up. Edelman and Stefanowicz discovered the same thing in their homes. Stefanowicz’s father moonlighted as an underground male model for underwear in a community magazine. Of course, for her that was a drop in the bucket given that her father and his male partner tried to solicit her 14-year-old boyfriend into a three-way relationship, and then dressed her up and used her as “gay bait” in public places.

Many researchers wondered why the outcomes for kids raised in same sex households were so much worse than for children raised in traditional homes. They theorized that it was the instability and volatility of the same sex relationships.  That undoubtedly had an effect.

Her mother and a succession of lovers raised Edelman. She remembers standing in the driveway when one of the more stable lovers was leaving her Mom: “She put plates on a table, with a glass, with food on the plate,” Edelman recalls. “She was leaving, and I was like in the driveway, saying, ‘Don’t go.’ And she said, ‘In a few years you’ll be able to get out of here.’ I was in sixth grade. It was a long few years.” Edelman  was grateful when someone called Child Protective Services, and she and her siblings were removed from their home.

But something that is not often alluded to by the researchers is the sexualized atmosphere children endure in “homosexual” homes.  No one seems to see that adult chastity is a necessary component of a healthy childhood.   

I began writing this post on the Feast of St. Maria Goretti, the 11-year-old Italian girl, who was stabbed 14 times by

St. Maria Goretti, murdered at age 11 by a man
obsessed with porn

Allesandro Serenelli. He had become obsessed with reading pornography, and Maria refused to have carnal relations with him. That ended in her murder July 6, 1902, the Feast of the Most Precious Blood. She forgave Allesandro before she died.

Serenelli testified in relation to her canonization that Maria’s concern during her stabbing was for his own salvation. “No, no it is a sin. God does not want this. If you do this, you will go to hell,” she repeated.

One hundred and thirteen years later, young children are exposed carelessly to pornography in the home, and at school their innocence is violated by “education” -- sex education. They are growing up in highly sexualized environments, exposed to lustful images and activities long before they are able to cope. Fr. John F. Harvey, O.S.F.S., who researched homosexuality and its causes, found early porn exposure in children as young as eight contributes to homosexual lifestyle choices later in life.

Ex-gay porn star Joseph Sciambra confirmed this in his book Swallowed by Satan. As a practicing homosexual, he thought he was “born” that way. But he came to understand that early porn viewing contributed to his choice to self-identify as a homosexual later in life.

This evil infiltrated our children’s lives in the 1950s. My uncle  had a Playboy calendar in his workspace in the garage. My innocent cousin was a little girl when she walked into the garage and looked at her father’s calendar. “Dad,” she said, “That lady doesn’t have any clothes on.” As an afterthought, she added, “Daddy, she ain’t got no pants either.”

In the 1990s, I had my son in a parent-run pre-school. In connection with this, my husband and I had to take a class once month in childcare. Well, one month – when my husband couldn’t attend -- the topic was self-abuse. The teacher was trying to tell us not to disturb our children if they began to play with themselves.

Everyone appeared to be accepting what she was saying so I raised my hand, and asked the elderly teacher, “If we don’t tell them to stop now, when do we tell them to stop?”  She said, “Why never! It’s an excellent practice for relieving stress even for married couples when one is away for a business trip.”

I looked at the shocked faces of the 40 couples in the room with me, and said, “Do you understand what she is recommending you do?” Then I turned to the woman and said, “Madam, I am not an animal.”

Now those kids are adults. They have been taught to indulge their sexual whims without restraint.  Sadly, the next generation faces further onslaughts of filth in their young lives because the U.S. Supreme Court has introduced them to same-sex households. The manure is hitting the fan. The consequences for the human race are catastrophic.  

“Our culture no longer corners us into virtue,” said author Robert R. Reilly (Making Gay Okay) “but impels us into vice. Almost every contemporary cultural signal militates against chastity, which is why the fabric of society is falling apart.”  

Did you enjoy this post? We have more! 

Same Sex Marriage, Natural Law and the New Apocalypse

Genderless "Marriage" Threatens the Foundation of Civilization

A Child's Right to Mom and Dad: Why Kids of Gays Oppose Gay Adoption

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Become a Prophetic Voice in the Heart of a Rebellious People

Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 5, 2015

Saints Peter and Paul Parish, Tucson, AZ

"And he said to me: Son of man: All these bones are the house of Israel: they say: Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off. Therefore prophesy, and say to them: Thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will open your graves, and will bring you out of your sepulchers, O my people: and will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord" (Ezekiel 37:11-13)

Ezekiel prophesizing over the dry bones
of Israel 

We are all called to be a prophet!

In today’s first reading, we hear from the Prophet Ezekiel 2:2-5. Ezekiel lived about 600 years before the birth of Jesus, and he was called by God to be a prophet… 

As we know, there were many prophets in the Old Testament such as the Prophet Jeremiah, the Prophet Samuel, the prophets Jonah or Elijah… The last prophet in the Bible was John the Baptist who proclaimed the coming of our Lord Jesus.

Most often, God called prophets in times of crisis to direct the people in the path of righteousness. This was the role of Ezekiel. 

Like most prophets, Ezekiel was called not simply to proclaim God’s message to the society he lived under at the time, but he was particularly called to proclaim God’s message to his own people, the Israelites, who had rebelled against God. “I am sending you to the Israelites who have rebelled against me."

Ezekiel incessantly prophesied the destruction of  Jerusalem and its temple. Like  the Prophet Jeremiah, who was living in Jerusalem at that time, Ezekiel would witness the fulfillment of the prophetic message of God when Jerusalem was finally sacked by the Babylonians in 587 BC.

My brothers and sisters, just as God called Ezekiel to proclaim His Word in the time of

Baptism of Jesus. Our Baptism imposes an
obligation on us to proclaim the Truth. 

the Israelites who had turned from God, He is calling each one of us to proclaim His truth today. We are each called to be a prophet for Our Lord by virtue of our Baptism.

Being a prophet doesn’t mean that we are called to go out into the desert and live on locusts and honey. Nor does it mean that we must walk around the streets yelling, “Repent!” No. To be a prophet simply means that we learn God's law and His word and proclaim it by the ways in which we live our lives.

Being a prophet for Our Lord is not easy. In fact, most of the Old Testament prophets did not want to speak God’s word because they knew it would bring enemies.

But, we are reminded that our faith is not about being liked. It is not about saying what others want to hear. Our faith is not about being popular. In fact, our Lord Jesus Himself,

Christ Beaten, Scourged &
Crowned with Thorns

who was the greatest prophet, says that we will be hated on account of His name. And, of course, we all know what happened to Jesus for proclaiming the truth.

Our call as a prophet for God demands that we recognize the times in which we live. We are called to understand current society in light of God’s Word. 

As the Prophet Ezekiel was sent to the Israelites by God to denounce their godless ways, we, too, by our Christian life are called to denounce the godlessness of the culture we live in today.

This weekend, our country celebrates Independence Day. The United States began only 239 years ago with the understanding that our nation is  a blessing from God! For most of our history, we lived under God’s law. But it is no longer so. We have now become a nation that has turned away from God and His Law!

Pope Francis just came out with an encyclical on the environment. He urges the nations of the world to “build a better future” by seeking common solutions to environmental problems. Yes, God wants us to take care of the environment, but that requires what is most important for our world today -- conversion of heart.

We can strive to cut down on carbon emissions and reduce pollution, but if this country and world does not strive to radically eliminate personal and social sin with its multitude of rotten addictions, then our society will not be able to avoid the impact of the impending train wrecks that are already upon us! 

Just the fact that more than one million babies are legally murdered in the womb in this country each year is enough to bring about chastisement upon our nation! And now the courts have made same sex "marriage" the law of the land. Legalization of same sex "marriage" will have a disastrous effect because it is a decision that rebels against God! This decision will also be a litmus test for every Catholic: do we follow God’s prophetic message to be a witness for holy matrimony, or do we go along to get along? 

Every time the Israelites rebelled against God they suffered defeat. Our country will suffer the same if we do not let God lead us. History repeats itself. 

Fr. John Paul Shea 

My brothers and sisters, our country, our people, our world needs to turn back to God! Today’s Psalm 123 says, “Our eyes are fixed on the Lord pleading for His mercy.”

Fix your eyes on the Lord. Plead for God’s mercy. We have become a rebellious nation!

But what is even worse is that rebellion has infiltrated the Church itself. As the Israelites turned form God to follow the false gods of their neighbors, many in our Church have abandoned the teachings handed down to us from the apostles to follow the false gods of our culture: materialism, sex, and pleasure. More than 80 percent of American Catholics use contraception even though our Church teaches that it is wrong, according to statistics.  And according to the same surveys, 54 percent of Catholics favor the legalization of same sex "marriage"!

Pope Saint John Paul II, who is one of the greatest prophets of our current era, warned us about the state of our Church today.
When he came to the United States in 1976, as then Cardinal Wojtyla, he said, “We are NOW standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are NOW facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the

Cardinal Karol Wojtyla who
was later elected Pope John
Paul II

Gospel versus the anti-Gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence.”

My brothers and sisters, God is looking for faithful Catholics today. He is looking for prophets to proclaim the truths of our faith to a godless society and generation. Let us recognize the seriousness of the times we live in today and turn to the Lord. Let us be His prophetic voice of truth in our homes, our families, our work places and wherever He may send us. May God bless us and help us!

The people are waiting for your words #Speak 

Did you enjoy this homily? Fr. John Paul Shea has published many more on this blog. Visit How Desperate Are We For God? to hear last Sunday's sermon. 

Just Discovered! The Gospel of Symbols

by Lawrence Fox

"Oh, if only the Bible said what I think it should!" (21st Wisecracker saying of Susan Fox)

"Only a man who knows the Gospels inside and out can make a parody of the false interpretation," (34th Wisecracker saying of Susan Fox)

Author Theo-Symbolicus

These are  the hidden words that the Savior spoke while appearing among his apostles and companions, which I, Theo-Symbolicus, collected and wrote down so that you may have fellowship with us and know that the Kingdom of God is found within appearance and symbol.

“Now since it has been said that you are my apostles and true companions, examine yourself and understand the appearance of things. You who have ears must not listen and you with eyes must not see. In this way you will reform your senses and recognize that substance is symbol and existence is a reform against the physical."  

On the third day of their journey, the Savior and his apostles and companions attended a wedding. Mary came to Savior and said, “They have no more wine and not yet drunk?” Savior responded, “Woman, how does this concern me and you, my hour has not arrived?” Mary said to the servants, “Do not listen if he speaks in hyperbole.” 

So the Savior hearing their thoughts, plainly commanded the servants to fill six stone jars with water to the rim. He then plainly commanded them to draw some out from the jars and give it to the master of ceremony. They did so and the master tasted the water now turned into grape juice. The master then said to the bridegroom, “People normally

serve the best wine first and when the people have had their fill, the less quality wine but you have reserved the most wonderful grape juice till now.” This was the first of the Savior’s appearances. And that is why his apostles and companions celebrate his memory using bread and grape juice.

The Savior spoke to Nicodemus, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he born from above with water symbolically and spirit literally.” Nicodemus responded, “How can a man be born from above? All things above are invisible and hidden and therefore their substance is symbolic in nature. To reach this new life with us, you who have ears must not listen and

"Plug your nose, George, there's incense."
"What? I can't hear you."

you with eyes must not see and you with lips must not taste and you with nose must no longer use incense. In this way you will reform your senses and recognize that substance is symbol and existence is a reform against the physical. Until all substance is gone you cannot worship the Father in Spirit and Truth.”

The Savior said to his apostles and companions, “Who do you say that I am?”

Thomas said, “Savior, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom you are like?"

Matthew said, “You are like a wise philosopher.”

Simon, son of John said, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

The Savior responded, “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you. You are intoxicated with wine. Therefore I shall name you ‘the insignificant stone (Peter)’ and upon you this pebble will rise up an appearance of my church which the gates of hell with never overcome. To you pebble, I will give symbolic keys. What you appear to open will be opened and what you appear to close will be closed.”

The other apostles worried about the meaning of the Savior's words. The Savior then said to Thomas, “This heaven will pass away and the one above it will pass away. The dead are not

Fake keys, not real ones 

alive and the living will not die. Remain with Peter and your unity will remain invisible to others. No one will know where you, my apostles, have planted your feet or established my words. In this way, Satan will not know whom to attack.”

The Savior said to his apostles and companions, “If you fast you will give rise to sin for yourselves. And if you pray without ceasing you will be condemned. Those who remain celibate for the Kingdom, will be lost. For your works possess no substance. And that which does not exist in this life will certainly have no value before my Father in the next life?"

While moving through the towns a woman rejoiced, “Blessed is the womb who gave you flesh and the breast that nourished you?” The Savior responded, “All bodies of men are like beasts and begotten irrationally. My mother

"Ma, is that Jesus' Daddy?"
"No son. That is a demiurge.
Jesus' Daddy is God the Father."

conspired with demiurges and conceived me in death. But it is the Pleroma my Father in the Heaven above all Heavens who gives me life.”

The Savior said to the Jews, “I am the appearance of a door to heaven. Those who wish to reach the Father must reject nature.”

The Savior said to the Jews, “I am the appearance of bread from heaven. I am the bread which came down from heaven. I speak to you in hyperbole, unless you eat an appearance of the flesh of the son of man and drink an appearance of his blood, you have no life within you.”

The Savior said to the Jews, “For the symbol of my flesh is real food and the symbol of my blood is real drink. By participating in symbols you will abide in me and I will abide in you and raise you up on the last day.”

Many of his disciples said, “These are hard sayings. How can a person be saved by eating the symbol of flesh and drinking the symbol of blood?” Many of his disciples left him that day since they understood worship as consisting of both visible and invisible?

The Savior turned and said to his remaining apostles, “Do want to leave also.” Peter (little pebble) responded, “To whom shall we go? You speak the words of eternal appearance. We believe you are the Holy One. We know you always speak in hyperbole and symbol.”

On the night before the Savior was to receive the death due to his mother conspiring with the demiurges, he celebrated the Passover with his apostles and companions. The Savior prayed, “Father, I pray that they may appear to be one and you and I appear to be in likeness. In this way, the world will know that you sent me when they discover the oneness is an appearance of truth.”

After praying, the Savior then took the loaf, blessed it, broke it, and distributed it to them saying, “Take and eat. This is a symbol of my body which shall be broken for many. Do this act as a symbolic memory of me.” In the

Jesus pouring the Welch's Grape Juice for
Symbolic Last Supper 

same way, he took the cup filled with grape juice and said, “This is the symbolic cup of my blood. Take and drink as a symbolic memory of me.”

The Savior after His Resurrection entered the room in which his apostles and companions were hiding for fear of the Jews. The Savior breathed upon his apostles and said, “I am sending the Holy Spirit upon you so that you deal with sins symbolically. Those sins you forgive are symbolically forgiven so that the faith of your disciples remains rooted in which is appearance and separated from substance. Those sins you hold bound are symbolically bound so that the sins of your disciples remain united to substance.”

The Savior then met with his apostles and companions one last time. He said, “Go and make disciples of all nations, immersing them symbolically into my death and resurrection with all the authority of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

Paul writing to the Church in Corinth said, “Is not our participating in bread symbolic of our participation in the body of Christ? “Is not our participating in the cup also symbolic of our participation in the body of Christ? For whoever eats and drink this symbolic meal as if it is literal is eating and drinking condemnation to themselves. That is why some of you are sick and dead because you considered the Lord’s Supper as something Sacred and Literally Real instead of being symbolic and only bread and only grape juice."

These are the hidden words that the Savior spoke while appearing among his apostles and companions, which I,Theo-Symbolicus, collected and wrote down so that you may have fellowship with us and know that the Kingdom of God is found within appearance and symbol. To reach this new life with us, you who have ears must not listen and you with eyes must not see and you with lips must not taste and you with nose must no longer use incense. In this way you will reform your senses and recognize that substance is symbol and existence is a reform against the physical. Until all substance is gone you cannot worship the Father in Spirit and Truth.”

Did you enjoy this piece? Here is the serious version of this post: Who Were the Nicolaitans? A Mystery Decoded

Other Satires by Lawrence Fox:

U.S. President Creates Bureau of Vital Fetal Organs

Denver Night Trolling 

A Fairy Tale of Categorical Proportions

For the Obama Lady: New Product from Smoke and Mirrors!

The LGBT Agenda: Why We Care When Others are Doing "I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT!"

And the Great Classic: Adam Was a White Man from Baltimore 

Anglos Living the Life of the Migrant

 by Lawrence Fox

Navigating the motorway in search of nuevo fascination. 

Leaving the hullabaloo of urban home and occupation.

Traversing the motorway in search of mojo destination.

Tweaking the radio and pegging out the agitation.

A quien le importa as the wireless blares.

The road rises like a sparkling flare.

Leaving the hubbub of urban home and occupation.

Coxing the coche with rápido intention.

View and vistas garnishing poco attention.

Snooping stations is nuestros present captivation.

Hasta la vista to our urban home and occupation.

Traversing the motorway in search of nuevo restoration. 

How Desperate Are We for God?

Sermon by Rev. John Paul Shea

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 28, 2015

Saints Peter and Paul Parish, Tucson, AZ

How desperate are we for God? 

In today’s Gospel passage (Mark 5:21-43),we hear of a series of healings by Our Lord.

We first hear of a man named Jairus who approaches Jesus and begs Him to heal his daughter who is dying. He falls at the feet of Jesus and cries out, “My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.” As Jesus goes to heal the girl, we then hear of a woman who is suffering from hemorrhages. She had suffered for a long time, and the doctors could not help her. She had spent all her money! She heard about Jesus and desperately went to Him for healing!

My brothers and sisters, in each incident in today’s Gospel the persons were desperate

Fr. John Paul Shea

for the healing power of Jesus. They were desperate for the intervention of the Lord in their life situation, and they begged the Lord for help.

It is when we also turn to the Lord in our need for Him that He acts in our lives. But, Our Lord does not want us to wait until we are facing a life crisis before we come to Him. He wants us to be desperate for Him now. He wants us to live our lives for Him.

When we live for Christ we are given grace to help us prepare for future struggles… Each one of us will face struggles in life. Many of us have faced major struggles already. Wherever we are at in our lives at this time, today’s Gospel calls us to turn to the Lord and beg for His help and mercy!

So many people today live their lives in misery because they do not turn to the Lord. So many today wander around each day with no hope. We harm ourselves. We misuse our bodies and our sexuality… Some get hooked on drugs… Others get taken up with other wrong behaviors. It is often not until we hit rock bottom in our destructive behaviors that we realize our need for God. But it is when we acknowledge our need for Him and beg for His help that He comes to our aid.

We are reminded in today’s Gospel that we need to come to our Lord in faith. We must trust that He will provide for our needs. When the woman in today’s Gospel approaches Jesus and falls down before Him He says, “Daughter, your faith has saved you.”

If we want the Lord to work in our lives, we must come to Him in faith.

So let us ask ourselves, “Where is our faith today?” Do we trust in our Lord? Do we submit ourselves to His will in our lives even though we do not see Him face to face?

The woman in today’s Gospel simply wanted to touch the cloak of Jesus. She said, “If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured.” My brothers and sisters, as Catholics we don’t simply

touch a piece of our Lord’s clothing. We receive Him into our very bodies through the Eucharist! Do we come to the Eucharist with passion and devotion in our hearts knowing Who it is we are receiving? Do we strive to receive our Lord worthily in the Eucharist by following the teachings of Our Lord’s Church?

We live in a world today that is filled with lax Catholics. Only 36 percent of Catholics here in the United States attend Mass regularly, and many Catholics who attend church still do not follow Church teachings… Ireland, which is supposed to be a Catholic nation, has just voted for same sex marriage. A nation of Catholics has voted for a law that is against God’s laws.

Now, since two days ago, we have same sex marriage here in the United States as law of the land. Now that same sex marriage is part of the United States Constitution, this decision of our courts will test the faith of every Catholic at some point in the not distant future because the devil wants to destroy marriage. As Pope Francis taught while serving as Archbishop in Argentina: "Same-sex marriage is not simply a political struggle, but it is an attempt to destroy God’s plan. It is a move of the ‘father of lies’ who seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God."

My brothers and sisters, today’s Gospel calls us to be on fire for our faith! Our Lord wants us to be desperate for Him. He wants us to be passionate for His truth!

We are living in a critical times right now… both in our Church and in our world. For the devil is in full force striving to deceive souls! God does not want lax Catholics. In fact, in the Book of Revelation our Lord says that we must be either hot or cold in our faith. But if we are lukewarm He will spit us out His mouth (Rev. 3:16).

As Catholics we have a choice to live our lives for Christ through His Church and His teachings or to live for the world which is passing away.

As you know Pope Francis just came out with an encyclical on the environment where he reminds us of the desperate need to take care of the earth because the earth itself is “crying out” for justice. Yes, God wants us to take care of the earth. But what is most important is the salvation of souls.

Ultimately, this earth is being renewed both spiritually and physically. This world of sin is passing away, and God will make a new earth for those who are found worthy. This is why Our Lord Jesus has come into our world. He has come to save us from a world that is perishing. This is why our Lord commissioned His disciples to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins!

If we want to know what taking place in the future of the world we live in today, all we need to do is look in the Book of Revelation.

Or we simply listen to the words of Jesus Himself who said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away."
What we await is a new heaven and a new earth where there will be no disregard for the earth. There will be no more war. No ISIS. No terrorism. No abortion. No pornography. No adultery. No ‘so called’ same sex ‘marriage.’ No crooked politicians… No violence. No pain…None of this stuff! For the meek and humble shall inherit the earth.

The only thing that is going to save our souls from the death of this world is conversion of

heart. The only person who is going to bring healing to our souls is Our Lord Jesus Christ. But we must come to Him. We must be desperate for Him. We must beg Him for healing. When we come to Him with a humble and contrite heart, He is always there to help us.

Did you enjoy this sermon? There are more!  Climb Aboard the Ark of Our Salvation!