{"id":1295,"date":"2016-05-18T19:40:41","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T23:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=1295"},"modified":"2016-05-18T19:42:10","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T23:42:10","slug":"birthday-blessings-to-jp-ii-marriage-and-the-liberals-ludicrous-energy-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=1295","title":{"rendered":"Birthday Blessings to JP II, Marriage and the Liberals’ Ludicrous Energy Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JP<\/a>*Today would have been the 96th birthday of Pope Saint John Paul II, who died just shy of his 85 birthday.\u00a0 Very few Popes have reached this venerable age; Pope Leo XIII, the oldest reigning pontiff known to history, reached his 93rd year.\u00a0 I know not how old John Paul\/Karol is in heaven.\u00a0 Not having his body back yet, we may presume, he is now ageless, but enjoying the beatific vision.\u00a0 So happy birthday, in your well-deserved ‘rest’ until, God willing, we all meet merrily in heaven.<\/p>\n

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*The Pope’s birthday falls, providentially, on the memorial of the first Pope to take the name of the beloved disciple, and that not until the early seventh century.\u00a0 After an apparently unsuccessful mission to Constantinople on behalf of the Arian King Theodoric the Goth, Pope John I was cast into prison, where he died of neglect and maltreatment.\u00a0 But, then, how could a Pope petition to allow Catholics to remain Arians?\u00a0 So he died for the faith, a witness to the truth, as was his successor John Paul, albeit in a different way.<\/p>\n

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*I gave a talk last night in Ottawa at Saint Patrick’s Basilica Grotto, on the current Holy Father’s recent Exhortation, Amoris Laetitia<\/em>, and its connection to law and conscience.\u00a0 I will have a summary at some point in the near future. \u00a0But there were many questions, and many are (quite rightly) confused by some of the things the Pope had to say in the now much-commented-upon Chapter 8.\u00a0 Here is the nub:\u00a0 There can be no exceptions to natural law, including adultery, which in one sense may be defined as conjugal relations with anyone not one’s wife.\u00a0 Pope John Paul was very clear in Familiaris Consortio<\/em> that if you are in a non-marital relationship with a significant other, one must live in continence.\u00a0 And the only way to be sure that the ‘significant other’ is your spouse is, quite simply, to get married.\u00a0 If one cannot get married, then one cannot have sex.\u00a0 The conjugal\u00a0act\u00a0is too important, too filled with ramifications for the couple, for the children, for society, to leave it in the realm of private conscience, with or without ‘pastoral guidance’.\u00a0 The only avenue proper for sex is a valid, public, ratified marriage.\u00a0 The Exhortation does not explicitly refute this, but opens a number of doors of ambiguity for the ill-willed to interpret as they may.\u00a0 But more to come.<\/p>\n

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*As providence would have it, as I was leaving Ottawa this afternoon, approaching my car in the church parking lot, I met one of my former students and her husband, getting ready in their own car with their two beautiful boys in the back seat.\u00a0 I say ‘providence’, since this happened to be day of their third anniversary.\u00a0 Sometimes God gives us little favours like that.\u00a0 So a very blessed and joyous anniversary!<\/p>\n

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*I also met a friend of mine, a lawyer who travels much in his business, if memory serves correctly, lobbying for the energy and environment, in good Catholic and good business sense of those terms.\u00a0 Again, providentially, on the day that\u00a0Kathleen Wynne’s Ontario Liberals’ Green Agenda was revealed<\/a>.\u00a0 Amongst the many ludicrosities, they want to wean every household off natural gas by 2030, with all of us heating our homes with ‘green’ electricity.\u00a0 I am not sure how green electricity is (not much, I suspect) but this at the very least will raise heating costs, even at current rates (and they are rising rapidly) by 600%.\u00a0 Yes, more than $3000 per year.\u00a0 I mentioned to my friend that everyone tasked with making any decisions on the energy or the environment should be forced to take a rudimentary course on thermodynamics, the science of heat, energy and their various transformations.\u00a0 It is not easy to get energy out of material, whether it be gas, sunlight, wind or water.\u00a0 The more diffuse, erratic and non-transportable the source of the energy (as in wind and solar), the far, far less efficient, and far, far more expensive, it is.\u00a0 But the Liberals care not.\u00a0 They have their majority; they are on a mission; science, reality, along with the rights and needs of the people, not least those on a limited income, be damned. \u00a0\u00a0Oh, and the debt will continue to balloon, if we don’t reach Greek-Venezuela-level default well before 2030.<\/p>\n

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*But rejoice.\u00a0 Summer is on its way, this weekend proves to post temperatures in the high twenties (Celsius, for any American readers convinced that Canada is always cold and snowy).\u00a0 So enjoy the ‘Victoria Day’ long weekend, in commemoration of the now second<\/i>-longest-reigning monarch, Queen Victoria (63 years, 216 days), who was just passed this past September by her grand-daughter Elizabeth II (64 years, 102 days and counting).\u00a0 Although I have reservations about Elizabeth’s religious views, and the history of the monarchy over my native Scotland and Ireland, she has reigned prudently overall, within the circumscribed limits of her power. \u00a0Long may she reign.<\/p>\n

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Or, for those not monarchically-inclined, you could just call this May 2-4, as we did in high school, for the obvious reasons that connect that number with a certain barley-based beverage, best served cold on a late spring day.\u00a0 One way or the other, enjoy, all in God’s good will.<\/p>\n

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Good Pope John, ora pro nobis<\/em>!<\/p>\n

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*Today would have been the 96th birthday of Pope Saint John Paul II, who died just shy of his 85 birthday.\u00a0 Very few Popes have reached this venerable age; Pope Leo XIII, the oldest reigning pontiff known to history, reached his 93rd year.\u00a0 I know not how old John Paul\/Karol is in heaven.\u00a0 Not having […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,5,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1295"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1299,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1295\/revisions\/1299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}