Raiane Lima, a top social media influencer, was dumped by her boyfriend, football player Gabriel Jesus, just 8 months after giving birth to the football player’s beautiful daughter. The details of how the couple split is as hazy as the details of how they met, but it is clear that the 22-year-old media influencer with over 450 thousand Instagram flowers followers must care for her baby on her own, relying on earnings from her online advertising of various trending fashion outfits, which has a large fan following. Many fans must have been surprised when Raiane took to her Instagram to announce the breakup in the following words:
“And whoever wants to judge can judge. Anyone who wants to say some bad things can speak.
“Since some like disgrace, I do it myself question of announcing the end of something that almost consumed me.
“Who wants to celebrate too, can celebrate (especially family members).
“After this post, you know that you will never again see me talk about what we went through, or about any subject related to our daughter.
“It wasn’t betrayal, it was just pressure from everyone and everything.
“We got along well, but because of other people’s problems, it always got to us.
“I can’t take it anymore, and I’m not going to force myself into something that’s killing me.”
She followed up the announcement by deleting all of the footballer’s pictures on her feed. When she first announced her relationship with the footballer on Instagram, her fan base exploded, with thousands of girls flocking to her updated pages. Nonetheless, it should serve as a caution to avoid entering into a sexual relationship without the security of a wedding ring.
Things might be different right now if she had waited for her affair with the football star to mature into a full-fledged love of marriage before giving herself up body and soul to him. It is said that once a man has had his fill of sex, he quickly grows tired of the woman and seeks other titillations. She now has a baby and no father as a result of giving herself away so easily. As they say, sex has consequences. Furthermore, if they had been legally married, she would have sued him for child support, with a chance of getting a significant percentage of the $9 million per year he earns from his club, money to care for her child.
Hence, it is extremely unfair that Raiane bears the entire burden of raising his child alone, but that is what she gets for abdicating control over her body and preventing sex from happening until the wedding night. The good news is that she did not consider abortion, which I am sure many people would have done because it would have been just as wrong. Things will hopefully get better for her in the future; however, it is clear that having sex before marriage in relationships frequently results in a situation in which the woman loses.
McKenzie and Jeff when they were young and going was good
The recent news that McKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, is divorcing her second husband in two years should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with previous research on divorce, which confirms the disruptive effects it has on victims, particularly women and children. McKenzie appears to be the innocent party in her 25-year marriage to Jeff Bezos, the father of her four children when Jeff’s obsession with another woman became public. Indeed, Jeff Bezos announced the divorce in a tweet in January 2019, following the public revelation of his adulterous relationship with a married woman, Lauran Sanchez.
Though McKenzie received a large portion of Bezos’ billion (approximately USD37 billion) in divorce settlements, it pales in comparison to what she lost: a family trust built over 25 years, shattered; betrayal by the father of her four children; the security of a familiar life all gone up in smoke, and the feeling of having to start life almost all over again, and launch out in search of love when her beauty and youth have already been spent. Some may argue that having the option of dating other men is part of the excitement of being single again, but that is not the case. Those who claim this are incorrect. There is a special joy in having a trusted confidant who has accompanied you on your journey. McKenzie and Jeff built Amazon from the ground up, and what a journey it must have been, with so many shared memories spanning decades, so many shared adventures, so many dangers overcome together, and so many bullets dodged. All of this is gone.
Hence, divorce hurts women more than men because they age faster, are more vulnerable, and lose their fertility at a younger age. Despite variations, research confirms that a significant number of women lose their ability to bear children (menopause) between the ages of 47 and 54. A man, on the other hand, is very capable of bearing children even at the age of 70 and above; in fact, the world’s oldest new dad, who is from India, fathered a child at the age of 96, according to Livescience.com (https://www.livescience.com/24196-male-fertility-limit.html). Furthermore, divorce, according to Reynolds (2017), is harmful to children’s well-being; it is unjust to wives, who need their husbands’ protection rather than being dismissed when their good looks begin to deteriorate (Reynolds 2017). That is why, according to St. Thomas, divorce is unnatural because it places the woman on an unequal footing with the man who, after having enjoyed her youth, is able to cast her out when her youth is failing.
Furthermore, divorce is also wrong because it puts both couples on guard as every temporary union does and hence, both couples may not be able to give themselves completely to each other without reserves, but rather deliberately hold back, keeping something back in case the marriage fails. Hence, the Catholic Church insists that marriage is for life and that the bonds are irrevocable, and that it is not a union based on the satisfaction of the two adults’ passions, but rather, based on justice, which includes keeping promises made for better or for worse. “The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits one to be true even if I cease to be in love,” wrote C.S. Lewis.
Hence, if this is understood, there would be less emphasis on being in love, which has resulted in so much divorce and broken marriages, and when people realize that they are no longer in love. Jeff Bezos abandoned his wife of 25 years because he was no longer in love with her but with another woman, it demonstrates that human passions are fickle and nothing lasting can be built on them. “The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ’s words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism—for that is what the words “one flesh” mean,” writes C.S Lewis. Marriage is not for personal fulfillment, writes Seth Smith in his article “Marriage isn’t for you,: You marry to make someone else happy, not to make yourself happy. More importantly, you’re marrying for a family, not for yourself. Not just for the sake of the in-laws and all that nonsense, but also for the sake of your future children. in addition, C.S Lewis argues that there are several sound reasons to remain married even if love is gone: to provide a home for their children, to protect the woman (who has probably sacrificed or damaged her beauty by bearing children from being dropped whenever the man is tired of her.
In conclusion, we could argue that McKenzie’s second divorce, which occurred less than a year after her first, proves that her separation from Jeff, her husband of 25 years, was detrimental to her, as studies show it is to women due to the greater sense of loss and insecurity women experience after a divorce due to the earlier aging and loss of fertility that affects them compared to men.
Reynolds, Philip L. “St. Thomas Aquinas.” Christianity and Family Law: An Introduction, edited by John Witte, Jr and Gary S. Hauk, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017, pp. 161–178. Law and Christianity.
Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf play a daughter and mother who clash and connect in Lady Bird.
Today being mother’s day, I would like to dedicate a piece not just to mothers but especially to any mother who is experiencing the searing pain of being a failure in their children’s eye
This was the case of young, Christine (Saoirse Ronan) in the movie Lady Bird (2017), her desires for parties, boys and prom lead to frequent clash with her poor mother. She selfishly wished for another mother, someone richer, more beautiful or elegant and even made up stories of being born in palatial house for her friends at school hoping they never find out. She was also ashamed of her unemployed father and wouldn’t let him drop her off at her school gates so her friends wouldn’t to get to know him or see their battered car. However, in trying to correct her daughter, her mother often gave in to resentment and anger and the recrimination and bickering escalated to such extent that, one day, to her mother’s horror, Christine leaped out of a moving car they were driving in.
It is a wonderful film and I would recommend it any parent who desires to understand the myriads social pressures bearing down on minds of the young girls and perhaps learn how to listen for the unspoken words and never ever lose their temper. It is important to know that children in their teens are in a delicate place full of insecurities, hormonal desires and unformed ambition that needs proper channeling, and that they just don’t know how to deal with it and knowing who to trust at this point in life can save them a lot of pains, and by avoiding arguments and shouting parent can help them grow out of their shame and discomfort and overcome peer pressure much more quickly. Furthermore, an important part of parenting is correcting children when they step out of line, nevertheless, when corrections must be made, it I best done without bitterness and rancor that only serves to escalate tensions. As we all know, it has never been easy to raise children, but it is exponentially more difficult in our time with the corruptive influence of social media transferring negative norms difficult to shield children from but if parents are strong and hope in the God, things will work out in the end, no matter how long it takes. For some it might take years, many broken hearts, abortions, and even drug addiction, nevertheless, if parents remain strong and steadfast in their love, it will work out in the end, as it did for Christine who in the discovers that the boyfriend she adores is a homosexual, and another who took her virginity cares nothing for her and that she is just one more among many he sleeps around with, she finally discerns that all that glitters isn’t gold, and that true gold in life is to love and to be loved in return and after one Saturday night of binge drinking and ending up in a hospital, she realizes that she is killing herself and returns to her senses and goes repentant to Church and begins to reciprocate her mother’s love.
Years ago, at a communication seminar in Lagos, the speaker talked about the “Self Fulfilling Prophesy” (SFP) as one of the causes of break between friends, business partnership, and family.
According to the encyclopedia Britannica, SFP is a process through which an originally false expectation leads to its own confirmation. In a self-fulfilling prophecy, an individual’s expectations about another person or entity eventually result in the other person or entity acting in ways that confirm the expectations (encyclopedia Britannica).
The video above uses a simple anecdote to explain SFP: if two people go to the same party, one expecting to have a nice time, the other expecting to have a nasty time, most times, their expectations come true, because each will behave in according to his expectations thus fulfilling the prophesy. Thus, the one that expects to have fun would act excited, smiling, and meeting people. People, in turn, will smile back and engage with him, and as a result, he will have a nice time. The other one expecting lousy experiences will be curt, restrained, and uptight. He will avoid making eye contact, people would avoid him, and he end up having a bad time thus fulfilling his own prophesy!
After the seminar, I was incredulous. I didn’t want to believe want to believe that I suffered from SFP; however, I began observing myself to see if it was true.
I must confess that only in very few occasions, this theory was accurate. Many times, at the office, if I “apriori” decided something was not going to work out, it won’t! Later if I checked backwards why it hadn’t worked, I would discover that I had acted in such a way to discourage it.
I have long stopped wondering why I do not get along with some colleagues at the office and why, if a friend told me that someone I have never met was selfish bum, and if I eventually meet that person, I came to the same conclusion. This by the way is why calumny (bad mouthing people behind their back) is sinful because destroying the good name of another increases the chance that SFP would kick in when other people meet them.
What the speaker did not tell us at the seminar though was how to overcome SFP, because I could not. I kept trying to stop doing it without success. It was instinctive. I could observe the tone of my voice changing due to SFP but can’t do anything about it. The more I tried to change the worse it seemed to be getting.
Thanks to a holy priest, I got to know that it’s was part of the “human condition” or what spiritual writers call our “wounded nature” Wounded by original sin”
“We can’t remove it or change it,” he said,” You can only struggle against it, and that struggle is your victory. It has not compromised you. This is why we pray, my friend, this is why we examine our conscience frequently, go to confession and receive the sacraments of Eucharist, because somehow God’s grace has more weight than our weakness and tips our scale towards goodness .
The corruption of the best is said to be the worst. This is evident in the case of Miley Cyrus, a once adorable chastely dressed girl who attended church on a regular basis and wore a purity ring as a child. She became a teen idol with millions of fans when she was 11 because of her role in the Disney Channel television series Hannah Montana. She went from success to success, winning Golden Globes and being named the fourth best-selling female artist in 2009. Millions of copies of her Hannah Montana soundtrack were sold. She had her first taste of success when she performed for Queen Elizabeth II and other members of the British Royal Family at the Royal Variety Performance in Blackpool, Lancashire. Unfortunately, things went south in 2010. Her film “The Last Song,” based on Nicholas Sparks’ novel, performed poorly, and her studio album that same year was a commercial flop. She fired her old manager and hired a new one who advised her to take a wrecking ball to her decent girl image, blaming her string of failures on her unsexy image. She took the advice and evolved from a wholesome woman to the highly sexualized woman we see today. She told her transformation story in a video interview in 2014. “It was always there.” Miley is boring, boring, boring, she said, revealing the unrelenting peer pressure that modern celebrities face. She didn’t need much convincing; she enjoyed being a celebrity, and if going bare will keep her there, so be it!
Against her mother’s advice, she abandoned her proper attire in favor of naked profanity. Her 2013 album “Wrecking Ball” featured a naked girl swinging on a wrecking ball. It received over nineteen million views on its first day of release and became the first single to top the US Hot 100 chart, selling over two million copies. Fame and power–honey she had once tasted and loved–returned in torrents to her tongue. She is now estimated to be worth around $200 million. In the same video, her mother stated that while she does not agree with everything Miley does, “we must understand that we are dealing with a 21 yro girl, and this is what 21 yr olds do, Miley is just doing hers in front of the world.” However, private matters should be kept private. True, parents should give their adult children the freedom to live their lives, but they should never abandon their responsibility to correct them when they make mistakes, especially if they result from peer pressure.
Public nakedness is inappropriate because it can elicit either extreme revulsion or extreme attraction; the same parts of the body that attract sexually are also repulsive during excretion. That is why decent people prefer to be naked only in private and in front of people they trust. Exposed private parts can arouse lust or derision in strangers. Lust is the more dangerous of the two. Lust is a craving force that can lead to criminal acts such as rape and murder. When abused, sex has a devastating effect on society. “Someone who abuses sex may easily populate a whole village,” writes C.S Lewis.
It is therefore common sense to control and moderate this power through appropriate attire. Dressing modestly means living charitably with others because it is charity to avoid arousing lust or revulsion in others. Unfortunately, the modern entertainment industry is only concerned with making money. If they want money, power, and fame, today’s showbiz stars must dance naked in front of a camera crew. It is an echo of the ancient serpentine offer, “I will give thee all the kingdoms of the world.” If you kneel and worship me.” Although Jesus declined the offer, many celebrities are eagerly accepting it.
Yet, as the Bible says, “the canal cannot see God.” Miley regularly wears devil horns on stage and continues to devolve into vicious license, and things are quickly going dark for her. She is incapable of a faithful lifelong love because she is a sex slave and selfish. After only 8 months of marriage, she left her husband, Liam Hemsworth, for a lesbian. She is now a fervent supporter of every sexual outcast. She is bent on sexualizing her teen followers, and she is a strong supporter of abortion and infanticide. She recently posted a picture on Instagram of her serpent tongue on an abortion cake. Her addicted fans adore her and, like puppets, imitate her excesses to their own detriment. Miley Cyrus performs a pornographic dance atop the chaste grave. On the other hand, Hanna Montana and her unscrupulous collaborators should be aware that what they are doing has a huge and devastating cost. According to researcher Patrick Fagan Ph.D., internet pornography is killing families and is the cause of half of the divorces, with over 40 million addicts in the United States alone. Porn addiction is linked to rape and other sex crimes, just as drug addiction has a strong tendency to violence to satisfy cravings. According to FBI statistics, pornography can be found at 80 percent of violent sex crime scenes or in the homes of the perpetrators.” A large proportion of Miley’s 44 million Facebook followers are teen boys who struggle in school due to problems with problem-solving, reasoning, and comprehension abilities, all of which are required for academic success. These are real costs that ordinary people, parents, mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, must bear. They would be wise to monitor the type of social media content their children consume in order to protect their homes and children from these disruptive influences. However, it is important to remember that Jesus did not come to save the righteous but sinners. The corrupted can be purified to shine brighter than diamonds through more energetic supernatural means of prayer and fasting. Let us not abandon this soul to her wantonness due to a lack of prayer and fasting.
They say that real men protect women. The terrifying video of a man who used his own body to shield his girlfriend from the shooter in the recent shooting at Dayton Ohio has gone viral. Camryn Crowder, 24, jumped on top of his girlfriend, Brittany Dungey to shield her from flying bullets when a gunman killed nine people, including his sister, and injured 26, in less than one minute on Sunday, 4th August 2019
CCTV footage showed Crowder using his body to shield Brittany as bullet flew.
The couple was walking through the Oregon District around 1am when they heard gunshots ring out. Brittany took off running and Crowder instinctively pushed her to the ground and pulled her body under him and army crawled towards the curb, checked that the coast was clear, then both ran away from the scene
“I turn my head and I see some guy pointing a
gun,” Crowder said, adding he pushed his girlfriend to the ground “to make sure
she didn’t get hit.”
Many of the comments on the dailymail.co.uk
where the story was reported are calling on the couple to get properly married.
They
have been living together unmarried for a while and Brittany recently gave
birth to a baby girl for Crowder. After
what happened, she should be rest assured that he is a real man ready to
protect her and marry him.
Brittany pregnant with Crowder’s baby
Studies show that marriage confers a lot of
benefit such as happiness and stability to a relationship.
Married couples are generally healthier and
live longer lives than their single peers, they are also more economically
stable and earn much more than the unmarried counterparts, and typically, the
economic capacity of a married couple’s household exceeds that of a
single-parent household by nearly three times the amount in income.
Also
research show that children do better in a stable home with a married mother
and father, and are more likely to attend college, are physically and
emotionally healthier than their peers raised in non-married families and are
significantly less likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug
abuse, and thoughts of suicide. Read more about the benefits of marriage here
Whatever they decide going forward, Crowder has restored people’s faith that real men still exist. He has been praised as real hero and rightly so, for believe it or not or not, this old notion that real men protect women, is fast disappearing everywhere.
Enjoy Pictures of the joining of Chinedu Udunukwe and Odera Iyizoba together in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony at St Charles Borromeo Catholic Church, 1004 Estate on Saturday 13th of July 2019. Wishing the couple a life of Holy Wedlock filled with God. Enjoy!
As fire consumes a forest, as flames set a mountain ablaze, so does yearning devour a heart for a friend, a true friend. Judges and audience shed rivers of tears as 20 yr old Josh Daniel sang for his best friend who died at 18 at the 2015 X Factor audition.
The song was Labrinth’s “Jealous” and when Simon Crowell, one of the judges, asked him why he picked the song, he said that it meant a lot to him for a different reason and a shadows fleeted briefly across his handsome face as he paused to recollect himself before saying, “I lost my best friend a couple of years ago, and I interpret the lyrics in a completely different way. The lyrics say that I am jealous that you are happy without me, and I kind of see it in the sense that I am jealous that he moved on to a better place (Heaven) without me.”
As Josh began singing, the air trembled with emotions and his pain, like an arrow, pieced hearts, and tears ran like river down the faces of all as though they felt the searing wound in his heart, wounds that the past years hadn’t heal. His death shattered his heart but this song put it together again, he died, yet lives in his heart, and alone on that stage, he was with him as he sang for him.
When he finished the hall erupted, a standing prolonged ovation. As silence returned, a speechless female judge who wasn’t ugly at all tried to say something but faltered and with tears streaking down her face said, “Wow! That was the most captivated I have been in the whole audition, and I believed every word you said and …I kind of want to hug you.”
Josh readily accepted and she gave him a bear hug before a cheering audience. The video has been seen by more than 200million people and it is still breaking hearts.
No one will choose to live if he has no friends says Aristotle.
True friendship is something probably unknown to many people. Who wouldn’t want to have such a friend? We all crave it, we all desire it, yet the harsh truth is that it isn’t easy to get.
Finding a true friend is harder than finding blue diamond in the dump heap of today’s ephemeral social-media friends. A true friend loves another, not because of what he can provide, but because of who he is. He helps the other to develop, to go further, to become good.
A true friend differs from a pleasure friend as silver differs from tin foil. Pleasure friendship ends when pleasure ends, but true friends are forever. Pleasure is perhaps the weakest of all glues that hold people together, and if that is all there is, it prevents true friendship. Little wonder sex friendships don’t last, they often crash on the jagged rock of selfishness, shattering in a million pieces leaving nothing but bitter memories. Josh and his friend shared a clean fulfilled-love that transcended death. Sex had nothing to do with it; it would have brought misery.
They might have fought, or driven each other crazy at times, yet their love was true and unbreakable. They might have faced and conquered dragons, or gambled and lost their last buck, yet all they had they shared.
We can all have true friends but only a few since it takes time and a lot of work to build such friendships. Is a great Cathedral built in a day? Is a great song written in one sitting? Yet with constant work, day by day, the Cathedral will stand, and the song will delight million in generations to come.
Here is a list for girls of sixteen behaviors enough to end a relationship- or, at the very least, place serious doubt in your heart about continuing the relationship.
School boy and girl
You’ve had to tell him more than once to stop.
You feel the need to “fix” him.
He looks at pornography.
He hits you, pushes you, or does anything to frighten you.
He has a drinking or drug problem.
He doesn’t care if you lie to your family.
He leads you away from God.
He puts you down- even if he then says he’s “just kidding.”
He cheats on you.
He lies to you.
He flirts with other girls.
He uses guilt to get you to do what he wants.
He resents time you spend with your friends and family.
He behaves badly and then blames it on other people or on things that happen to him.
He can’t stand on his own two feet without you; he emotionally unable to function by himself.
You can’t stay with him and remain pure.”
From Jason & Crystalina Evert and Brian Butler, Theology of the Body for Teens: Student Workbook, p. 170. 2006, Ascension Press.**
Since the 1960s, we have witnessed an incredible liberalization of sexual mores. The ubiquitous use of sex in advertising, movies, television, and fashion—sex as entertainment, sex as economic incentive, sex as substitute for thought, for communication, for edification—has given a green light and public blessing to the unashamed use of sex as a crass commodity of self-gratification. Sexual gratification is often valued more than physical and emotional well-being, and the pursuit of the former has generally led to the neglect of the latter. Glamorized by the media and by celebrities, premarital and extra-marital affairs, together with the emergence of the “hookup culture,” no longer carry the stigma of social or moral opprobrium. Such practices tend to insinuate themselves into our public consciousness with little or no effective opposition.
During this time, we in America have seen myriad examples of plays, films, and TV shows evincing (overtly or covertly) envy and admiration for men and women engaging in adultery or promiscuity. Bernard Slade’s famous play (later adapted into a movie), Same Time Next Year, a story about extra-marital love, ran for years on Broadway. The award-winning movie The Bridges of Madison County (1995), a story about the happiness a lonely farmer’s housewife enjoys with a photographer, won the ASCAP Award for the “Top Box-Office Film” of 1996. The ever-rerunning TV serial (adapted from Candace Bushnell’s novel), Sex and the City, spotlights four professional women in their thirties and their big city sexual escapades as they search for the “perfect orgasm” and “Mr. Right”—in that order.
What lessons are learned from such shows? What do they teach us about self-respect, honoring commitments, and personal boundaries? The four sirens of Sex and the City may be sympathetic and amusing, but their affairs—however kooky or disillusioning—are romanticized and prized. Sex is portrayed as a desirable but short-lived commodity typically spoiled by attempts to transform it into a meaningful relationship. It seems that sex uncoupled from relationships has become the norm for many, and several studies bear this out.
Of course, it is true that many plays, movies, and TV shows often express a nostalgic regret for lost innocence and tarnished integrity. Nevertheless, the focus on casual sex in the entertainment industry and in society in general (also sometimes referred to as “hooking up,” “non-relationship sex,” “recreational sex,” “friends with benefits,” “no-strings-attached relationships,” “one-night stands,” and “sex without dating”) has become obsessive. The existence of this phenomenon alone is likely sufficient to promote the acceptance of adultery and sexual promiscuity—not because it is right, but because it is viewed as “natural,” “normal,” and something everybody does.
But what is the effect of this culture? As hookups increase, traditional dates decrease; “post-hookup, a follow-up date is rarely expected.” And as dating has waned, so too has marriage. Many young adults do not seem to have developed the ability to psychologically and socially settle down. Although young adults are becoming sexually mature at earlier ages, people are marrying later. In many cases, they do not marry at all. Family compositions have changed, and children are frequently born to parents at older ages than in previous generations. Divorce rates have skyrocketed, particularly for those who engage in premarital sex. Studies show “the odds of divorce are lowest with zero or one premarital partner” and “marriages preceded by non-marital fertility have disproportionately high divorce rates.”
These facts provide evidence that the well-known sexual prohibitions of the Bible are not as irrelevant as many seem to think. In fact, a growing number of young people—led by thoughtful college professors and mentors—have come to see the value of both sexual abstention prior to marriage and sexual fidelity during marriage.
Changing the Dating Definition
Boston College professor Dr. Kerry Cronin has helped bring about this reawakening. About twelve years ago, in an effort to counter the common practice of “hooking up,” Professor Cronin created an unconventional assignment in her classroom: she required her students to go on a first date and write a report about the experience.
This assignment was intended to counteract the hookup culture in which the connection of the parties involved is “intended to be purely physical in nature” and where the two individuals shut down “any communication or attachment that might lead to emotional attachment.”
Cronin found that many of her students were clueless about the actual process of dating. Because the hookup culture had become so dominant, “going on a date became a weirdly countercultural thing to do.” Professor Cronin thus concluded that “the social script of dating was really long gone.” So, she created a series of guidelines to teach the students how to ask someone out on a date and what to do during that date. These include asking for a date in person (“texting is the devil. Stop it.”), avoiding physical contact (except possibly an A-frame hug at the date’s conclusion), and forbidding the use of alcohol or drugs on the date. According to Cronin’s rules, the person who asked the other out must pay for the date, and the asker should have a plan for the date rather than asking the other person what to do. The first date should be relatively short and inexpensive. The key assignment was to establish real communication between the two individuals and allow them time to get to know each other.
Her program became so noteworthy that this past April a documentary film featuring Professor Cronin, The Dating Project, was released. The ninety-minute film follows five single people, ages eighteen to forty, as they attempt to navigate their way through the “dating deficit” that has been created by hanging out, hooking up, texting, and using social media. The film presents a sobering picture of what the culture of sexual liberation and free love has done to today’s youth. The film’s message is that hookups objectify the participants and leave both parties empty and unfulfilled. Today’s hookup culture makes it much more difficult to build lasting, emotionally connected relationships. True relationships take time and work, but they can be incredibly fulfilling. They enable us to grow our humanity in genuine self-giving love.
The film’s writer and producer, Megan Harrington, observed that “people are so connected and not connected at the same time. So many young adults are lonely. We all want relationships, but the superficial masks we wear on our social media platforms do not present our true selves.”
Even though Dr. Cronin is a practicing Catholic, her college course and the subsequent movie on dating have resonated with secularists who have come to realize that the “sexual liberation” they bought into has created confusion about stable intimate relationships. This intimacy crisis has effectively disconnected intimate sexual behavior from emotional connection.
Is Sex Spiritual?
Although social trends may change, values—such as disciplining and channeling sexual impulses—are timeless and universal. Today’s social practices do not reinforce the development of these unchanging values. To encourage healthy, committed relationships, we must strive to create social conditions designed to strengthen and encourage robust families. This is an essential and basic principle of the Seven Laws of Noah, a common worldview underlying Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Through her assignments, Professor Cronin is encouraging her students to follow the standards of sexual morality that form the basis of these three Abrahamic faiths.
As John Paul II put it, “Self-control is not needed because the body is evil—the truth is just the opposite. The body should be controlled with honor because it is worthy of honor.” Because our bodies are sacred property created by G-d within which resides His Holy Spirit, we effectively defile the Divine within us when we participate in the hookup culture (or in other sexual proclivities such as pornography or prostitution). A person’s body and soul are not possessions to either abuse, harm, or destroy. Lev. 19:1 commands us to “be holy,” a directive that carries strong ethical and moral implications for humanity as we strive to imitate Him.
Unmoored from a committed and loving marital relationship, the unchecked sex drive harms both the individual and the society in which he or she lives. The Noahide Code teaches us that both our bodies and our souls are entrusted to us by G-d and are Divine property. This perspective reinforces the Biblical concept that we are made in the “image of G-d,” thereby giving moral context to the psychological matrix of the human personality that involves a complex interrelationship of body, mind, and soul.
Arthur Goldberg is Co-Director of the American based Jewish Institute for Global Awareness (JIFGA), former Co-Director of JONAH, Inc. JIFGA sponsors http://www.fundingmorality.com, a crowd-funding site for those committed to Biblical values. He has authored Light in the Closet: Tora… READ MORE
The 55yrs old billionaire and owner of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, is divorcing his wife of 25yrs and mother of his 3 sons and an adopted daughter from China.
He is now in a relationship with a twice divorced woman and mother of 3, 49yrs old Lauren Sanchez, whom he met through her husband. Sanchez herself is ditching her husband of many years for Jeff and his billions.
Social media is abuzz and experts are speculating breathlessly about how the billions will be split (137billion), and who gets what. Tabloids are spewing steamy headlines to make the most from the sordid affair. Yet, they skip the hard questions: what about the children?
Studies show that children are significantly affected by the parents’ divorce. The upheaval in their lives a serious and demands they be protected by the state.
Adult children of divorce are more likely than children raised in intact families to be fearful of intimacy, according to Judith Wallerstein. They are especially fearful of commitment, often remaining on the brink of marriage in cohabitation arrangements. Their thinking: “I don’t want to happen to me what happened to my parents.” If they do marry, they tend to fear and avoid having children. Their thinking: “I wouldn’t want to inflict on my kids what my parents inflicted on me.”
Most of them never saw their parents’ divorce coming. They remember that, as children, when they were enjoying themselves, their parents one day called them together and said, “We have something to tell you…” Now, as adults, when they are supposed to be enjoying themselves, they are waiting anxiously for the other shoe to drop.
By every measure of flourishing known to social science, children of divorce do noticeably poorer than children raised in intact families: higher incidence of school drop-out, drug use, sexual acting out and teen pregnancy, need for the mental health profession and for anti-depressants.
In a better world, the outcry and condemnation of this brazen disregard for the children’s welfare would have carried across the globe. As always the Catholic Church remains the sole voice of sanity in a deranged world, proclaiming boldly that divorce is immoral…because it introduces disorder into the family and into society. This disorder brings grave harm to the deserted spouse, to children traumatized by the separation of their parents and often torn between them, and because of its contagious effect which makes it truly a plague on society (CCC 2385).
One you-tuber commented, “Marriage is for suckers cucks and simps” and another wrote, “I’m not getting married until this freakshow stops!” While many scoff at women, calling them names like, witch, suckers and the likes. It is clear confirmation of the damage divorce does to the fabric of society and the psych of the youths.
In a world gone insane walking the cliff edge, marital vows are not worth the paper they are written on; promises are no longer meant to be kept; dishonor is honorable; serial polygamy is fashion. Truly, the words from W.B Yeats’ poem, the ‘Second Coming’ are prophetic for our world today, ‘Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold’. A sad prophesy of the future of our world, cut adrift from sense and reason, drifting aimlessly in uncharted waters of moral and marital relativism. Yet many call it progress.
But as St Josemaria, the founder of Opus Dei said, “I want you to think about how evil has prospered. All over this field of God, which is the world – Christ’s inheritance – there are weeds. Not just a few weeds: vast quantities of them! I want you to be aware of this, so that you may never be deceived by the myth of constant, irreversible progress. Understand what I mean: progress, when it is properly directed, is good, and God wants it. However, there is a kind of progress that blinds all sorts of people, who fail to see that in some areas mankind sometimes goes backwards and loses ground previously gained
Those who don’t believe that money doesn’t make you happy often hiss, “Let me have it and find out for myself,” when told about it. Perhaps this story of a man who had millions but lost health and family will convince the most virulent skeptic that there are things much more important than money. According to the dailymail.co.uk, Richard Mason, a multimillionaire and the founder of money market, a multi-million dollar company went for a medical check to discover the cause of his recurring ill health. He didn’t bargain for what he got. The doctor told him he had cystic fibrosis, a disease inherited from birth, and incurable. But worse, he told him that people who suffer from this ailment do not have children.
The millionaire shot back: ‘You must have got the diagnosis wrong because I’ve got three sons.’
The doctor looked at the nurse, as if to say, “How do we deal with this?” and turning to him said, “In this hospital, we manage 2000 men with your condition and none has children -well except for one who later discovered that his wife cheated on him.”
The doctors then advised Richard to speak with his wife.
Anxious and heart thumping, Richard texted Kate, his ex-wife and mother of his 3 sons, aged 23, 19 and 18. They had divorced 10 yrs earlier and though he had remarried, at 54, he hadn’t bothered to have any more children.
“Hi Kate, I have just been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, and can you believe, the doctor says that I am infertile from birth, please put me out of my misery and tell me they are wrong and our boys are my children.”
The reply wasn’t long in coming
“Hi Richard, I’m deeply sorry to hear about your diagnosis, but no matter what they say, the boys are your children.”
Still, suspicious Richard confided in his first son who called his Mom and she confessed to having affairs throughout her marriage, in hotels whenever she was on overnight business trips for the bank where she worked. She however flat out refused to name the father of the child.
Kate, Richard’s ex-wife admitted to adulterous affairs thought out her marriage to Richard but refuses to name the man
Left with a tons of money in his bank, bereft of everything worthwhile in life, family, his children and worst, the knowledge of having lived 21 yrs in a marriage that was a fraud. Richard recently admitted he had frequent thoughts of suicide. Life had lost all meaning.
The adulterous wife must have been desperate for children and sensing her husband’s shortcomings decided to try elsewhere. Richard may have been a negligent husband, hard as flint, an old miser who loves money above all. Furthermore, Richard divorced his adulterous wife even before he knew her to be one, love for his children notwithstanding.
Whatever be the case, we may be sure that in all the articles written about this disappointing union, no one talked about the couple’s relationship with God. I strongly suspect that, like in most western marriages, God didn’t play a very big role in this family. And I believe that vertical relationships helps horizontal relationship as many spiritual writers often contend. Vertical relationship with God helps our horizontal relationship with one another. And without the fear of God, man becomes squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old savage, secret and self contained, incapable of giving himself to another in sacrificial love. Hence the appalling divorce statics of western marriages, (about 50% percent of married couples in the United States divorce. The divorce rate for subsequent marriages is even higher, Luxembourg: 87%, Spain: 65%). I think this due to their hurling God out of their marriages, feet first.
The story is long, complicated, and heart breaking and gets quite out of breath by the time it gets to the murky fights over alimony and Richard’s desperate efforts to discover the identity of the man who slept with his wife for in this unfortunate marriage betrayal runs deep ( you can read the full article here). I will cut all that and by a short route bring us to my take: common necessaries and common comforts of life satisfied, money does not necessarily make us happier.
I was recently caught by an article on aletia.org titled, “Do you know that Mary and Jesus shared an organ? “
Intrigued, I began reading.
Yes, Mary and Jesus literally share an organ! The PLACENTA!
Have you ever thought about the placenta — what it meant to Jesus and Mary, and what it means to us? asks Anna O’Neil, the author.
Quick refresher, if you’re foggy on what a placenta is and does: It’s the organ that connects an unborn baby with his mother. The baby’s umbilical cord attaches to the placenta, and the mother’s body sends oxygen and nutrients through it to the baby. It also filters waste out of the baby’s blood, regulates the temperature of his environment, and produces the hormones that make the pregnancy possible.
Here’s the best part, though the placenta is an organ that the mother and baby build together. We can’t say the mother’s placenta belongs to her in the same way that her womb is hers; the placenta belongs to mother and child both. Part of it is built by her body, and part by the baby’s body, but it’s one single organ — with both of their DNA.
So Mary didn’t only carry Jesus in her womb during those months leading up to Christmas day. She and he were actually attached — by a human organ that belonged to them both.
Later, when Jesus was preaching, somebody calls out to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed!” Luke tells us that Jesus answered: “On the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.”
Here is a God who wants to be so close to us that he became man — not just showing up out of the blue as an adult, but growing inside of his mother’s womb, sharing an organ with her, letting their two bodies be so intimately united — and now he says to us that those who hear the word of God and observe it can be united with him like his own, immaculate mother was.
We’re not immaculate, but that’s not the point. Jesus wants to share his life with us. We talk like he just wants proximity. He wants more. We talk about bringing Jesus into our life, making room for him in the inn, remembering him through the season, and all of that is good. But Jesus wants to be closer.
Jesus started his human life as every life starts, burrowed into the lining of his mother’s uterus. As he grew, their bodies worked together, God’s body and her immaculate one, building the placenta that attached them until he was ready to be born.
Some of us are mothers, and we remember sharing our body with our children. But all of us have mothers, and even though we don’t remember it, we began our lives connected to them in the most intimate way imaginable. If you’ve ever doubted that Jesus truly wants to be with you, remember that the unity in which your own life began is only a shadow of the unity that Jesus is hoping to have with you.
Authors-choice: Hope & Revival 
