According to a new report from the Guttmacher Institute, only 2 percent of Catholic women, even those who regularly attend Holy Mass, rely on natural family planning. Some 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women have used contraceptive methods condemned by the Church. See here. This is a moral disaster. And it is a disaster which has largely been brought about by the failure of Roman Catholic priests to preach the Word of God as interpreted by the Church's Magisterium.
Contraception is gravely sinful because it contradicts the divinely intended purpose of marital intercourse, which is to foster procreative love. Many priests do not preach the Church's teaching on contraception because they believe this grave moral issue is open to change. But Pope Pius XI has answered these dissidents once and for all:
"Openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition, some recently have judged it possible solemnly to declare another doctrine on this question....The Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the marital union from being defiled by this foul stain, raises her voice in token of divine Ambassadorship and through Our mouth proclaims anew: Any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin." (Casti Conubii, December 31, 1930).
By "grave sin," Pius XI is referring to mortal sin. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains, "Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him." (CCC, 1855). And further, "To choose deliberately - that is, both knowing it and willing it - something gravely contrary to the divine law and to the ultimate end of man is to commit a mortal sin. This destroys in us the charity without which eternal beatitude is impossible. Unrepented, it brings eternal death." (CCC, 1874).
Our Lady told Father Gobbi that many priests have become mute dogs. They are silent when they should be upholding the faith and striving to save souls. And because of this, a strong judgment is coming upon them. Don Bosco was given a prophecy for our time:
"Now Heaven's voice is addressed to the Shepherd of shepherds. You are now in conference with your advisors. The enemy of the good does not stand idle one moment. He studies and practices all his arts against you. He will sow discord among your consultors; he will raise up enemies amongst my children. The powers of the world will belch forth fire, and they would that the words be suffocated in the throats of the custodians of my law. That will not happen, they will do no harm but to themselves. You must hurry. If you cannot untie the knots, cut them. If you find yourself hard pressed, do not give up but continue until the head of the hydra of error is cut off. This stroke will make the world and Hell beneath it tremble, but the world will be safe and all the good will rejoice. Keep your consultors always with you, even if only two. Wherever you go, continue and bring to an end the work entrusted to you. The days fly by, your years will reach the destined number; but the great Queen will ever be your help, as in times past, so in the future She will always be the exceeding great fortress of the Church.
Ah, but you, Italy, land of blessings! Who has steeped you in desolation! Blame not your enemies, but rather your friends. Can you not hear your children asking for the bread of faith and finding only those who smash it to pieces? What shall I do? I shall strike the shepherds, I shall disperse the flock, until those sitting on the throne of Moses search for good pastures and the flock listens attentively and is fed.
Of the flock and over the shepherds My hand will weigh heavy. Famine, pestilence, and war will be such that mothers will have to cry on account of the blood of their sons and of their martyrs dead in a hostile country.
And to you, Rome, what will happen! Ungrateful Rome, effeminate Rome, proud Rome! You have reached such a height that you search no further. You admire nothing else in your Sovereign except luxury, forgetting that you and your glory stands upon Golgotha. Now he is old, defenseless, and despoiled; and yet at his word, the word of one who was in bondage, the whole world trembles.
Rome! To you I will come four times.
The first time, I shall strike your lands and the inhabitants thereof.
The second time, I shall bring the massacre and the slaughter even to your very walls. And will you not yet open your eyes?
I shall come a third time and I shall beat down to the ground your defenses and the defenders, and at the command of the Father, the reign of terror, of dreadful fear, and of desolation shall enter into your city.
But My wise men have now fled and My law is even now trampled underfoot. Therefore I will make a fourth visit. Woe to you if My law shall still be considered as empty words. There will be deceit and falsehood among both the learned and the ignorant. Your blood and that of your children will wash away your stains upon God's law. War, pestilence and famine are the rods to scourge men's pride and wickedness. O wealthy men, where is your glory now, your estates, your palaces? They are the rubble on the highways and byways.
And your priests, why have you not run to "cry between the vestibule and the Altar," begging God to end these scourges? Why have you not, with the shield of faith, gone upon the housetops, into the homes, along the highways and byways, into every accessible corner to carry the seed of My word? Know you that this is the terrible two-edged sword that cuts down My enemies and breaks the Anger of God and of men?"
In our own time, the germ ideas of a one-world religion are already being sowed. And this false humanitarian religion will burst into poisonous flower when enough hearts have grown cold and have abandoned the true religion. As Jane Le Royer explained in prophecy: "When the time of the Antichrist is near, a false religion will appear which will be opposed to the unity of God and His Church. This will cause the greatest schism the world has ever known." That false religion is even now falling into place. A false religion where sin will be celebrated.
Related reading here.
9 comments:
Priests who do not preach the hard truths are striving to accommodate to the world, to the spirit of the new religion which will embrace all religious belief except orthodox Christianity. Here in Gardner (as in Athol which you've documented), Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish and Our Lady of the Holy Rosary will be celebrating interfaith gatherings with Unitarians who reject Christ's divinity and promote abortion, homosexuality, lesbianism and transgenderism.
A New Age religion for a New Age.
I am at a loss as to what to do about the problems in my parish. The two major issues are liturgical abuse and poor preaching. These feed into the other problems of unworthy Communions and various other sins which are never spoken of by priests. In my diocese, it really is a case of the blind leading the blind. The crisis is one of faith.
It is Martin. I think we're almost beyond the point of being able to reach souls. The time of mercy is coming to an end and the time of chastisement is approaching very quickly now. Some might even argue that we have entered that time. The earthquake in Japan, the one in Indonesia, Katrina, the floods and tornados in the Midwest United States, the earthquakes across China...the events are speeding up now.
Paul, you need to address how the Church has turned to accept homosexuals on catholicscomehome.org:
Are homosexuals welcome in the Catholic Church?
Some men and women who struggle with same-sex attractions wonder if there's any hope for them to be welcomed in or back to the Church. The answer to that question is an unambiguous “yes.”
Truly the end is close at hand.
Only eight went into the Ark in Noah days, Lat and his two daughter were save from Sodom and Gomorrah, many are chosen but few are save, the truth is as Jesus Said " Can He find faith on His return", but we have to pray first that we ourselves will not lose faith and thus lose our soul, only then a long the way through the narrow road, we can help other, can we first offered ourselves like the little children of Fatima to accepted suffering for the conversion of sinners, or are we too comfortable in our life, thus only worry about the wrong done in the world, as GK Chesterton, said, when asked what is wrong in this world? he reply " I AM"
Anonymous, you need to stop being dishonest. The Catholic Church has always welcomed homosexual PERSONS. But she insists that homosexual ACTS are gravely sinful. Homosexual persons are called to chastity.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2357, says that, "Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.' They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved."
The Church welcomes sinners without justifying their sin.
Nemo dat quod non habet. Hence the need for daily prayer and the regular examination of conscience.
Paul,
In the past the Church welcomed the homosexuals under strict conditions of repentance.
I remember the instructions that Pius V gave to handle the cases of homosexual clerics were extremely harsh. There were no wishy washy words of "love".
They were sent in a remote monastery and locked forever in a life of penitence and prayer, if they had the chance to escape the secular power which had the right to claim them for public execution.
The Church was indeed much more strict in the past. One has only to read St. Peter Damian's Book of Gomorrah to see this. And, as I explained in a previous post:
It is a false compassion which supplies the sinner with the means to remain attached to sin. Such 'compassion' provides an assistance (whether material or moral) which actually enables the sinner to remain firmly attached to his evil ways. By contrast, true compassion leads the sinner away from vice and back to virtue. As Thomas Aquinas explains:
"We love sinners out of charity, not so as to will what they will, or to rejoice in what gives them joy, but so as to make them will what we will, and rejoice in what rejoices us. Hence it is written: 'They shall be turned to thee, and thou shalt not be turned to them.'" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 25, a.6, ad 4, citing Jeremiah 15:19).
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us that the sentiment of compassion only becomes a virtue when it is guided by reason, since "it is essential to human virtue that the movements of the soul should be regulated by reason." (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 30, c.3). Without such regulation, compassion is merely a passion. A false compassion is a compassion not regulated and tempered by reason and is, therefore, a potentially dangerous inclination. This because it is subject to favoring not only that which is good but also that which is evil (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 30, a.1, ad 3).
An authentic compassion always stems from charity. True compassion is an effect of charity (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 30, a.3, ad 3). But it must be remembered that the object of this virtue is God, whose love extends to His creatures. (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 25, a.3). Therefore, the virtue of compassion seeks to bring God to the one who suffers so that he may thereby participate in the infinite love of God. As St. Augustine explains:
"'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' Now, you love yourself suitably when you love God better than yourself. What, then, you aim at in yourself you must aim at in your neighbor, namely, that he may love God with a perfect affection." (St. Augustine, Of the Morals of the Catholic Church, No. 49,
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