Stephen K. Ray's Blog, page 37

Are we still going to the Holy Land in May?

One of the families registered to go to the Holy Land with us in May wrote and asked if we were still set to go. They are ready, but wanted to know our plans and the situation on the ground at the holy sites. I said, “Yes, we are certainly planning to go.”

I responded to them HERE. The pilgrimage websites for our two May trips are HERE and HERE.

To the right is a picture of one of our two groups in September 2023.

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Development of Doctrine: Relevance and Reality Today – Two Views

Cardinal Newman wrote a tremendous treatise “The Development of Doctrine” which was hugely influential in our conversion to the Catholic Church.

Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM., Cap. wrote an excellent article explaining Newman’s thinking on the authentic development of doctrine. It is a must read entitled “On the Relevance and Reality of the Development of Doctrine Today” published by Catholic World Report.

He asserts that many “progressives” in the Church today see doctrinal development as a break with the doctrine and morals of the past 2,000 years to fit more comfortably with the modern world. There really are no absolutes and what Popes and Councils had infallibly understood and defined in the past need to be set aside for modern realities. What used to be an Oak can now be a Cactus.

Newman would be aghast. Authentic doctrinal develop is not a jettisoning of the absolute truths but a deeper and fuller understanding of truth revealed by Jesus Christ and the apostles. The development is organically the same truth understood in a deeper way. The oak sapling of the first century is still organically an oak 2,000 years later, it has not changed into a cactus or a maple tree.

Modernists today, including many cardinals, bishops and priests want to change the oak into a radically different kind of tree. This is not authentic development of doctrine; rather, it is a radical new doctrine and incompatible with the authentic tradition handed down from the beginning.

If you are on the correct path and take a wrong turn and realize a mile down the road you are heading in the wrong direction, it is not rigid or backward-looking turn around and go back to get on the right track again.

Progressives say, “Keep going! We need a new way.” The right-thinking person says, “It is OK to go back, if it gets us back on the right track.”

Of course, those who hold to the objective, authentic doctrine handed down infallible by the Church are considered rigid, backward-looking.

Well, call me rigid!

Read the whole excellent article here to better understand where we are in the Church today and the big divide between differing interpretations of “the development of doctrine.”

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When “Choice” is NOT choice but coercion

Today Washington DC is filled with people defending the lives of unborn babies AND real choice for women. My grandkids are among the throngs today for the March for Life.

The media wants us to think that every woman walking into an abortion clinic is going in her own, exercising her free choice and making a rational and even courageous decision over her own body.

But in many, if not most cases, this is far from the truth. Women and young girls are often pregnant not because of their own willing choice but from the aggression or strong-arming of a man — including, “If you really love me you will …”

How many girls and young women walk into the abortion clinic at the insistence or threat of a male who doesn’t want to take responsibility, or parents who are ashamed and “force” their daughter into this operation which will altar her life.

Or it is a doctor with white lab coat looking down with “knowing eyes” telling her there might me a problem with the baby, or she is too young to have a baby, or that he highly advises her to terminate the pregnancy (as though it were as simple as taking out this week’s trash).

They claim this is all about CHOICE, but does anyone want to hazard a guess how many of these girls were given no choice at all. Choice in this context is a lie, it is a euphemism, it is a means to manipulate not only the girl but all of society.

The baby never has a choice and usually the girl is denied her choice as well. She is even denied the information about the life within her or the trauma of the butchery that is about to take place.

Here is a website with many testimonials of girls and women who were coerced, forced, compelled, lied to and otherwise denied a real choice.

These Women Felt Pressured To Abort Their Babies – A ThreadRead or listen at: https://catholicvote.org/these-women-felt-pressured-to-abort-their-babies-a-thread/

CV NEWS FEED // Abortion advocates claim that the legal “right” to kill a child is all for protecting a woman’s “choice” or her “autonomy.” Many women, however, don’t feel like abortion was their choice.

Instead, they were so pressured to abort that they felt they had no choice.

Recently X user @Prolife_Sam posted seven instances of real women experiencing bullying or coercion by pro-choice family members, doctors, and peers. They reveal some common reasons mothers feel forced to kill the life inside them.  …”

Watch many testimonials of girls bullied and strong-armed into abortions HERE

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Fourteen years later, Grandkids again at March for Life – the tradition continues

Proud of my son Jesse and his wife Anna who have instilled in their 8 children a very pro-life philosophy and they put their “money where their mouth is”.

Fourteen years ago someone took a picture of them at the March for Life with their oldest four children at the time — with Baby Bella Rose Ray just born. This was taken fourteen years ago in 2010.

Today these same 4 grandkids are in again Washington DC carrying out their passion for the Catholic faith and the Pro-life cause. In fact Bella, who is now 14 years old, paid her own expenses to fly down on her own. Here older siblings are flying in from Ave Maria University in Florida.

Some of our other children and grandchildren have also frequented the March for Life over the years as they were able. Love these kids!!

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My grandson Joshua Ray is 21 years old and student at Ave...

My grandson Joshua Ray is 21 years old and student at Ave Maria University in Florida working toward a degree in law to defend religious freedom and the traditions of our Founding Fathers.

He is also a concert pianist and Catholic apologist. I am unbelievably proud of him.

If you get the time to read this whole article he just had published in the Freeman News-Letter, please give it a “like” to help him get more things published.

Integralism: The End of Government?Coerced virtue is no virtue at all.  JOSHUA RAY  JAN 14, 2024

“JESUS FOR PRESIDENT.” These words emblazoned on a yard sign during the 2016 election cycle still stick in my mind to this day, and for good reason. Jocular nature aside, the endorsement is a poignant commentary on the relationship between politics and religion as it exists in the mind of the common man.

Taken most directly, the sign is a plea for help, a call for a divine solution to the political ailments of our nation, which most of the country rightly understand to be moral in nature. But oftentimes, the proposed cure is truly worse than the disease.

As Dr. James M. Patterson, Chair of Politics at Ave Maria University, cogently asserts, “It is important for those who stand for ordered liberty and constitutional government to stay vigilant against dangerous ideologies on the right as well as on the left and not assume that they will simply burn themselves out.” Integralism is one such ideology that must be guarded against, made especially dangerous since it poses as a principled political solution that logically follows from the truth of Catholicism.

Given the burgeoning rise in integralist sympathy, especially among “many young conservatives [who] are unsettled by the status quo and want a definitive answer to the many setbacks they experience in public life,” Patterson’s warning is more relevant than ever before. As he says in a 2023 article titled The Promise and Peril of Freedom Conservatism, “it is tempting to think that the years since the rise of Donald J. Trump, Catholic integralism, Christian nationalism, and National Conservatism are merely an interruption of the old fusionist place defining the American Right.” Transient or not, effective political discourse now requires the consequences of integralism to be discussed and its flaws exposed.

Most of us know intuitively that politics and religion are linked in some way or another. The popularly dubbed “culture wars” are just the latest example of man’s collective understanding that where there is moral conflict, political conflict necessarily follows. From the death of Socrates onward, the prevailing philosophical understanding of politics has involved the inculcation and enforcement of some moral order with a corollary view of man’s ultimate good.

In recent years, this traditional philosophical groundwork has crystallized in a compelling new way with the emergence of Catholic integralism. This is a school of thought which, generally speaking, holds that the ideal political arrangement is decidedly theocratic in nature—a confessional state ordered around the moral truths of Catholicism. It does so on the basis that “political rule must order man to his final goal”, which, in the mind of Catholics, is logically synonymous with the attainment of salvation via the Church. …

The whole article can be read HERE.

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Join us in St. Augustine Florida where Catholicism first came to America

JOIN STEVE RAY ON A PILGRIMAGE TO ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDAApril 22 – 25, join Janet and Steve Ray with chaplain Fr. James Conlon on a pilgrimage to the birthplace of Catholicism in the United States – St. Augustine!-The Catholics arrived 50 years before the Pilgrims!-Along with Mass each day, you’ll also visit various sites in this historic city including: Mass along the shore where the Spanish arrived Our Lady of La Leche – the first Marian Shrine in the United States! Steve’s talk “The 12 Unknown Sorrows of Mary” The Fountain of Youth Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine Trolley car tour of the Old City and Catholic sites Great hotels, meals and more!St. Augustine, Florida.  Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine , Plaza de la Constitucion and partial view of Henry Flager College at Old Town in Florida’s Historic Coast.

 

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Biblical References for each Mystery of the Rosary – informative and a fun challenge

Now that our family has grown and moved out — and we travel a lot, we sold our “family-raising house” two years ago and remodeled a cozy little “retirement house” just for the two of us.

One room we call the “Rosary Room” which has beautiful paintings of the Rosary on the wall — with distinctly Jewish images. Each evening we retire to this room to pray the Rosary.

Since the Rosary is very biblical — a meditation on the life of Jesus, Mary and the Gospel — we decided to cite the Scripture passage as we begin each Mystery.

Here are the passages that I chose, emphasizing the Gospel of Luke. I hope you and your family can also add this practice to your daily Rosary and challenge the kids to shout out the Scripture passage before each Mystery.

JOYFUL (Monday and Saturday)

1st Annunciation Luke 1:26-38
2nd Visitation Luke 1:39-45
3rd Nativity Luke 2:1-21
4th Presentation Luke 2:22-38
5th Finding Jesus Luke 2:41

LUMINOUS (Thursday)

1st Baptism Luke 3:21-22
2nd Cana John 2:1-11
3rd Proclamation Matt 5—7
4th Transfiguration Luke 9:28-36
5th Eucharist Luke 22:14-23

SORROWFUL (Tuesday and Friday)

1st Gethsemane Luke 22:39-46
2nd Scourging John 19:1
3rd Crown of Thorns John 19:2
4th Carries Cross John 19:17
5th Jesus dies John 19:17-37

GLORIOUS (Wednesday and Sunday)

1st Resurrection John 20:1-10
2nd Ascension Acts 1:9
3rd Pentecost Acts 2:1-4
4th Assumption CCC 966
5th Coronation 1 Kings 2:19; Rev 12:1

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Courageous Honest Bishop on the blessing of gay couples

It is worth the time to listen to this Bishop from Africa as he discusses the new document from Rome concerning the blessing of homosexual  couples.

The bishop clearly lays it all out for his people who are scandalized.

All the bishops of Africa in a united document have rejected the statement from Rome.

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Check out “Lourdes & Fatima” and St. Augustine Florida this April

With Israel being closed for a while, we have added four exciting new pilgrimages for 2024. Check out these two in this April — one domestic and one in Europe.

St. Augustine Florida where Catholicism first arrived in America in 1565 — fifty years before the Protestant Pilgrims arrived! First parish, first parish Mass, first Marian Shrine in America. Learn our fascinating Catholic history.

We will renew baptismal vows in the first American baptismal font brought over from Spain.

Click on the brochure below to visit our interactive map, see the brochure and itinerary and watch the video of our last trip to St. Augustine.

Our second new trip in April is to Fatima, Santiago di Compostela, Loyola, Lourdes and more. We will travel through the lovely and quaint countrysides of Portugal, Spain and France.

We will celebrate Mass at the most sacred sites including the Miracle of the Sun in Fatima and the Grotto in Lourdes. We will join the evening processions at each Marian site. And there is a whole lot in between.

Click on the brochure below to visit our interactive map, see the brochure and itinerary and to watch the video of our last trip to Lourdes and Fatima.

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Baptism of Grandbaby No. 20

Baptism of our grand-baby No. 20, Hannah Marie Regan, at Our Lady of Good Council Catholic Church in Plymouth Michigan. Fourth child of my daughter Emily and her most excellent husband, Sean Regan.

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