"This whole agenda of socialism has sold a Utopian idea that the State is there for the people...."

"Before the war breaks out again, food will be scarce and expensive. There will be little work for the workers, and fathers will hear their children crying for food. There will be earthquakes and signs in the sun. Toward the end, darkness will cover the earth.

When everyone believes that peace is assured, when everyone least expects it, the great happening will begin. Revolution will break out in Italy almost at the same time as in France. For some time the Church will be without a Pope." - The Ecstatic of Tours, 19th century.

Our Lady told Fr. Stephano Gobbi on November 15, 1990, at Malvern Pennsylvania: "I announce to you that the hour of the great trial is on the point of arriving. The great trial has arrived for your country. How many times, as a concerned and sorrowing mother, have I endeavored to urge my children to follow the path of conversion and of return to the Lord. I have not been listened to. You have continued to walk along the way of rejection of God, and of His law of love. Sins of impurity have become ever more widespread, and immorality has spread like a sea which has submerged all things. Homosexuality, a sin of impurity which is against nature, has been justified; recourse to the means of preventing life have become commonplace, while abortions - these killings of innocent children, that cry for vengeance before the face of God - have spread and are performed in every part of your homeland.The moment of divine justice and of great mercy has now arrived.


You will know the hour of weakness and of poverty; the hour of suffering and defeat; the purifying hour of the great chastisement. The great trial has arrived for your Church. How great is your responsibility, O Pastors of the Holy Church of God! You continue along the path of division from the Pope and of the rejection of his Magisterium; indeed, in a hidden way, there is in preparation a true schism which could soon become open and proclaimed...And then, there will remain only a small faithful remnant, over which I will keep watch in the garden of my Immaculate Heart.

The great trial has arrived for all humanity. The chastisement, predicted by me at Fatima and contained in that part of the secret which has not yet been revealed, is about to take place. The great moment of divine justice and of mercy has come upon the world."

This prophecy is now being fulfilled (see here). And no economic "bailout" will save the day. Only prayer and penance, mortification and a sacramental life. But these are not considered "fashionable" today. And so our sin-soaked society, which is morally, spiritually and intellectually bankrupt, looks for secular answers to what is essentially a spiritual problem.

Demonizing Christianity on Facebook

By Kirsten Anderson Image


Writing for LifeSiteNews, Kirsten Anderson reports that, "The head of a Christian ministry that succeeded in having an anti-Christian hate page removed from Facebook last year is taking action once again after discovering the page has been reinstated.

Cary Bogue, CEO of Project Wildfire and owner of the 'Catholics & Protestants United Against Christian Discrimination' Facebook page, objects to a page called 'Virgin Mary Should’ve Aborted,' (WARNING: obscene content) which depicts as its cover image the unborn Jesus as an abortion victim wearing a crown of thorns, while the Virgin Mary smokes a marijuana cigar with a satisfied smirk. The page’s profile image is similarly offensive, featuring a cartoon image of the Virgin looking down at her swollen belly and muttering an expletive.

The page’s description reads, 'People have rights, ideas do not. No beliefs are above criticism. Organized religion is AIDS and we desperately need a cure.'

Bogue argues the page violates Facebook’s Community Standards, which state: 'While we encourage you to challenge ideas, institutions, events, and practices, we do not permit individuals or groups to attack others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition.'

'If this is not the exact definition of hate speech directed at a religion, I am not sure what is,' Bogue said. 'We all know Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is an avowed atheist, pro-abortion and a strong advocate for the LGBT, but that does not excuse him from continuing to allow this page to remain. It also does not excuse the apparent lack of integrity and bias this shows. I challenge him or anyone at Facebook to explain to the Christians across America how this isn’t hate speech directed against Christianity.'

Last summer, Bogue succeeded in having the offensive page temporarily taken down after a Tweetfest featuring the hashtag '#StopFBAntiChristianBias.' A concurrent petition drive urging Facebook to remove the page garnered more than 20,000 signatures.

When the women who run the page immediately put up a second page, 'Virgin Mary STILL Should Have Aborted,' Bogue urged Facebook to remove that one, too.

Facebook did remove the spin-off page and notified Bogue by e-mail. But within two days, the page owners successfully appealed the ban, and the original page was back up and running – unbeknownst to Bogue.

'When I first got the e-mail I thought they had reconsidered on the original page,' said Bogue. 'While it had about 2,300 fans it has a much smaller impact than Virgin Mary Should’ve Aborted (VMSA). There is no logic in Facebook removing one without the other. A quick perusal of the page makes that obvious.'

Most of what is posted on the VMSA page cannot be reprinted here due to its obscenity, but the posts mainly fall into one of three categories: anti-Christian, pro-abortion, or pro-LGBT. None of those sentiments are exactly uncommon among Facebook’s 1.3 billion users, but it is the sheer virulence of the posts that would seem to violate Facebook’s Community Standards. The page’s administrators wear their hatred for religious people on their sleeve, often calling them 'religtards' or 'God-botherers,' but more frequently referring to them with obscene euphemisms for genitalia and immoral sex acts.

Explaining why she started the VMSA page in a recent post, one of the page’s administrators wrote, 'Nothing tickled me more than the squirming image of a right-wing conservative receiving the notification ‘Virgin Mary Should've Aborted likes your post!’ I relished this [discomfort] and it made me realize that these kind of extreme religious interactions will only be available in this time period, for a few more years. This is the age of technology and science, and one day religion will be a scarcity; a laughable stain on our past.'

As Bogue renewed the effort to have the page shut down, the administrators taunted him, writing, 'Sorry, dudebro, but we were unpublished before, but Facebook backed us. We came back harder than before, and look at us now.'

But Bogue, who says he has received death threats and had Facebook pages put up attacking him and his family by fans of VMSA, is undaunted.

'I expect lots of nasty personal attacks and pages to be put up,' he said. 'But I am a servant of Christ. So bring it on!'

'"Remember the word that I said to you, the servant is not greater than his Lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you,'" he added, quoting John 15:20.

Bogue is calling on Facebook users who are offended by VMSA’s content to report it to the company as hate speech....
Bogue filed a police report, as well, on Tuesday with the Milwaukee County Sheriff, saying a car followed his wife in and out of traffic, snapping pictures of her. 'I found it concerning when one of the VMSA admins denied it and in the denial stated she lived exactly 1,414 miles from me,” he told LifeSiteNews. “She obviously knew exactly where I live.'"

Just a couple of years ago, students at Clark University's "Freethought Society" were demonizing Christian belief and practice.  Because I have posted two photos over the years of aborted babies, I was referred to as a "delusional nutter."  See here: http://lasalettejourney.blogspot.com/2012/01/is-clark-university-really-committed-to.html

Facebook warned me to cease posting photos of aborted babies.  But this forum, owned by an avowed atheist, routinely tolerates (and perhaps even encourages) those who oppose religious belief and who engage in what the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel labelled the "techniques of degradation."


In his work of critical importance entitled "Man Against Mass Society," Marcel explains, "I understand by 'techniques of degradation' a whole body of methods deliberately put into operation in order to attack and destroy in human persons belonging to some definite class or other their self-respect, and in order to transform them little by little into mere human waste products, conscious of themselves as such, and in the end forced to despair of themselves, not merely at an intellectual level, but in the very depths of their souls.." (p. 42).

Through the fanatical employment of such techniques, radical homosexual activists hope to smash down their opponents, to categorize them as mentally ill (suffering from a "phobia"), as hate-filled "bigots" who cling to "worn out arguments" based upon an "archaic morality" which is rooted in Divine Revelation and Natural Law, as superstitious and backward people who need to be re-educated in order to fit into the new Culture of Sodomy.

Marcel writes, "Having abandoned the behaviour of a thinking being, he [the fanatic of any stripe who seeks to impose rather than propose] has lost even the feeblest notion of what a thinking being, outside himself, could be. It is understandable therefore that he should make every effort to deny in advance the rights and qualifications of those whom he wishes to eliminate; and that he should regard all means to this end as fair. We are back here again at the techniques of degradation.." (p. 149).

In the New Order, those who oppose abortion and homosexuality on moral grounds must be degraded. They must be placed in a ghetto. Just as the National Socialists employed the techniques of degradation in their propaganda war against the Jewish People, portraying them as rats emerging from a sewer, as subhuman people who stood in the way of a new republic and a more glorious era, so too radical homosexual activists and Culture of Death ideologues seek to demonize any and all moral opposition toward homosexuality and abortion and will use any and all means to achieve that end.

The Darkness Spreads: Pope's niece says her uncle will change outdated Church

Sign

It was Pope Benedict XVI who warned that, "..attacks on the Pope and the Church do not come only from outside, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from sins that exist in the Church.  This has always been known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way..."

The Man of Sin is drawing near.  I will be dealing with this subject next week.

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and charitable dialogue based on truth

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, addressing the March for Marriage yesterday, said that: "In our Catholic faith tradition, young people around the age of junior high school or high school receive the sacrament of Confirmation, normally administered by the bishop. At a Confirmation ceremony I celebrated recently in a large, Hispanic parish, two of the young people shared some reflections on what their Confirmation meant to them. They said that their Confirmation gave them the grace to go forth and 'build a civilization of truth and love.'

 I could not have said it better myself! And that, my friends, is why we are here. Both are necessary, both, together, if we wish to have a flourishing society: truth and love. This is the legacy we have received from our ancestors in faith. To my fellow believers in Jesus Christ I would call our attention to those first generations of Christians in the city of Rome, who were so often scapegoated by the powerful pagan Roman government. But when a plague would strike the city and the well-to-do fled to the hills for safety until the plague subsided, it was the Christians who stayed behind to care for the sick, at great risk to their own health and very lives. And not just the Christian sick: all the sick, regardless of religion, of how they lived their lives, or even what they thought of the Christians themselves.

The historian Eusebius noted about the Christians of his time, 'All day long some of them tended to the dying and to their burial, countless numbers with no one to care for them. Others gathered together from all parts of the city a multitude of those withered from famine and distributed bread to them all.' Likewise, the Emperor Julian complained to one of his pagan priests, '[They] support not only their poor, but ours as well.'

It is this kind of love and compassion in the service of truth, especially the truth of the human person, that has marked the lives of the holy ones of our own faith tradition and others as well: hospitals, orphanages, schools, outreach to the poor and destitute – giving without concern for getting anything in return, seeing in each human being, especially in the poor and destitute, a priceless child beloved by God, whom God calls to turn away from sin and toward Him, so that they might be saved. In1839 Jeanne Jugan met one such priceless child of God, a blind old crippled woman whom nobody cared for. That night, Jeanne carried the woman home to her apartment, and put her to sleep in her own bed. From this profound encounter was born the Little Sisters of the Poor, who even today are loving, caring for and providing homes for thousands of elderly who deserve dignity as well as care. These are the very nuns who now face the possibility of being shut out of spreading the love of Jesus to the needy because of their refusal to comply with a healthcare mandate that violates their moral convictions, convictions which stand on the truth of basic human dignity.

Let us, then, take our cue from the best our predecessors in faith have inspired, and not humanity’s frequent failings and sins. Like them, we now in our own time need to proclaim and live the truth with charity and compassion as it applies to us today: the truth of a united family based on the union of the children’s father and mother in marriage as the foundational good of society. Every child comes from a man and a woman, and has a right, a natural human right, to know and be known by, to love and be loved by, their own mother and father. This is the great public good that marriage is oriented towards and protects.

The question is then: does society need an institution that unites children to the mothers and fathers who bring them into the world, or doesn’t it? If it does, that institution is marriage – nothing else provides this basic good to children. Yes, this is a foundational truth, and one to which we must witness by lives lived in conformity to it, and which we must proclaim with love. Love for those millions of loving single mothers and fathers who struggle to pick up the pieces of their lives and succeed in creating loving homes for their children – they need and deserve our love, affirmation and support. Love for the husband struggling with fidelity, for the woman who feels abandoned and pressured into abortion, for the teenager struggling to believe in the heroic vision of love that makes sense of chastity, for the single person who cannot find a mate, for the childless couple trying to cope with infertility, for the wife who finds herself nursing a sick husband in her marriage bed, for the young person trying to navigate through sexual identity issues and may feel alienated from the Church because of it, maybe even because of the sort of treatment received from those who profess to be believers. To all of you, I say: know that you are a child of God, that you are called to heroic love and that with God’s help you can do it, that we love you and want to support you in living your God-given call. And let us not forget: we must also proclaim this truth especially with love for those who disagree with us on this issue, and most of all, for those who are hostile toward us. We must be careful, though, not to paint our opponents on this issue with broad strokes. There is a tendency in our culture to do this to groups of people the powerful don’t know and think they don’t like. We must not do that. We must recognize that there are people on the other side of this debate who are of good will and are sincerely trying to promote what they think is right and fair. It is misdirected good will. But even those from whom we suffer retribution – and I know some of you have suffered in very serious ways because of your stand for marriage – still, we must love them. That is what our ancestors in faith did, and we must, too. Yes, it is easy to become resentful when you are relentlessly and unfairly painted as a bigot and are punished for publicly standing by the basic truth of marriage as a foundational societal good; it is tempting to respond in kind. Don’t.

For those of us who are Catholic, we just heard our Master command us in the gospel proclaimed at Mass the day before yesterday: 'love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you' (Mt 5:44). We must not allow the angry rhetoric to co-opt us into a culture of hate. Yes, we must show love toward all of these and more. Love is the answer. But love in the truth. The truth is that every child comes from a mother and a father, and to deliberately deprive a child of knowing and being loved by his or her mother and father is an outright injustice. That is our very nature, and no law can change it. Those with temporal power over us might choose to change the definition of marriage in the law even against all that we have accomplished through very generous participation in the democratic process, but our nature does not change. If the law does not correspond to our nature, such that there is a conflict between the law and nature, guess which will prevail? And people will figure it out. We can take heart from what we see happening now in the pro-life movement. Back in the early 1970’s, just before the Court issued its infamous Roe vs. Wade ruling, public support for abortion was growing rapidly. And as with marriage redefinition today, a generation gap opened up in the polls, leading many to predict that opposition to abortion would literally die off. That was the future; before long, it would not even be an issue. Instead, something unexpected happened. A relatively small band of faithful believers held the line on the sanctity of human life in the womb, and today, two generations later, the pro-life movement is flourishing like never before. We now have the most pro-life generation of young adults since the infamous Roe decision. People have figured out that it is a human life that is within the mother’s womb, and that abortion, yes, really does harm women; they’ve figured out that it’s good to cherish that human life and surround the mother with love and support so a truly happy choice can be made, the choice for life. People, too, will figure out that a child comes from a father and a mother, and it’s good for the child to be connected to his or her father and mother. These truths may seem obvious to us, but they aren’t to everyone while in the heat of controversy. They will figure out this truth about marriage, though, because it, too, is in our nature, and it is a key to individual and societal flourishing. All we have to do is look around and see that our society is broken and hurting in so many ways; there is so much work to do to fix it and bring healing.

Yes, it is very complex, and many different things need to be done: we need to fix our economy; we especially need to pay a living wage to working class families; we need to fix our broken immigration system; we need to improve our schools, especially those that are failing children from poorer families. Yes, we need to do all this and more. But none of these solutions will have a lasting effect if we do not rebuild a marriage culture, a culture which recognizes and supports the good of intact families, built on the marriage between a man and a woman committed to loving faithfulness to each other and to their children. No justice, no peace, no end to poverty, without a strong culture of marriage and the family. This noble cause is a call to love we cannot abandon, that we will not give up on, and that in the end we know will triumph. So take heart: the truth spoken in love has a power over the human heart. We are here today to March for Marriage, to pick up the torch, and pass on to a new generation the truth about marriage, not just the abstract truth, but the lived reality that makes a difference in children’s lives. So, my friends, we must not give up: the truth will not go away, and we will not go away. Let us take heart from the legacy we have received, let us place our trust in God, and let us go forth to build a civilization of love."

Well said! In his Encyclical Letter Ecclesiam Suam, Pope Paul VI told us that, "The Church must enter into dialogue with the world in which it lives. It has something to say, a message to give, a communication to make." (No. 65).


The Holy Father goes on to say that, "Dialogue, therefore, is a recognized method of the apostolate. It is a way of making spiritual contact. It should however have the following characteristics:

1) Clarity before all else; the dialogue demands that what is said should be intelligible. We can think of it as a kind of thought transfusion. It is an invitation to the exercise and development of the highest spiritual and mental powers a man possesses. This fact alone would suffice to make such dialogue rank among the greatest manifestations of human activity and culture. In order to satisfy this first requirement, all of us who feel the spur of the apostolate should examine closely the kind of speech we use. Is it easy to understand? Can it be grasped by ordinary people? Is it current idiom?

2) Our dialogue must be accompanied by that meekness which Christ bade us learn from Himself: "Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart." It would indeed be a disgrace if our dialogue were marked by arrogance, the use of bared words or offensive bitterness. What gives it its authority is the fact that it affirms the truth, shares with others the gifts of charity, is itself an example of virtue, avoids peremptory language, makes no demands. It is peaceful, has no use for extreme methods, is patient under contradiction and inclines towards generosity.

3) Confidence is also necessary; confidence not only in the power of one's own words, but also in the good will of both parties to the dialogue. Hence dialogue promotes intimacy and friendship on both sides. It unites them in a mutual adherence to the Good, and thus excludes all self-seeking.

4) Finally, the prudence of a teacher who is most careful to make allowances for the psychological and moral circumstances of his hearer, particularly if he is a child, unprepared, suspicious or hostile. The person who speaks is always at pains to learn the sensitivities of his audience, and if reason demands it, he adapts himself and the manner of his presentation to the susceptibilities and the degree of intelligence of his hearers....In a dialogue conducted with this kind of foresight, truth is wedded to charity and understanding to love." (Nos. 81, 82).

As faithful Catholics, we must recognize and embrace these characteristics of authentic dialogue, even when our partners in dialogue refuse to accept these principles. For we will often encounter those who have succumbed to relativism or who do not possess a love of objective truth. For such people, the purpose of dialogue is not to attain truth but rather to achieve personal victory and to triumph at any cost. As Dr. Montague Brown explains in his wonderful book "The One-Minute Philosopher" (Sophia Institute Books): "An argument (emotional, not rational) is a disorderly confrontation based on an unwillingness to learn from one another. Desire for victory takes precedence over love of truth, with the result that agreement becomes impossible....in an argument, I simply want my position to be the right one and you to agree with me. I am, indeed, looking for agreement, but on my terms, not in terms of objective truth." (p. 33). An authentic dialogue (which such people are not really interested in) is, "..an orderly confrontation based on a mutual willingness to learn from one another. It involves the presentation of evidence by each party and then a good-faith attempt of the participants in the discussion to come to agreement...In a discussion [or dialogue], I do not primarily want to disagree: I want to know the truth.." (The One-Minute Philosopher, p. 32).

It was Pope John Paul II, in his Encyclical Letter Ut Unum Sint, No. 36, who said, "There must be charity toward one's partner in dialogue, and humility with regard to the truth which comes to light and which might require a review of assertions and attitudes."

This is what Catholics are called to.  And in that regard, Nancy Pelosi has failed miserably.

Nancy Pelosi, in a fit of satanic pride, accuses Bishop of engaging in "venom masquerading as virtue"

Carla Marinucci, writing for SFGate, reports: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi took the lead this week in a high-profile lobbying effort to pressure San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone not to attend the controversial March for Marriage event, which she characterized as "venom masquerading as virtue." Pelosi, who is one of the country's most powerful Catholic politicians, made a passionate appeal to the archbishop in a letter obtained by The Chronicle not to participate in the National Organization for Marriage's June 19 march on the Supreme Court in Washington. Cordileone, who is one of the featured speakers at the event, was a leader in the campaign for Proposition 8, the 2008 California anti-gay-marriage initiative.

"We share our love of the Catholic faith and our city of San Francisco," Pelosi wrote to Cordileone, who, as head of the 560,000-member Archdiocese of San Francisco, has become the Catholic bishops' point man against gay marriage. She urged him to abandon an event in which some of the participants show "disdain and hate towards LGBT persons.

Invoking the words of Pope Francis with regard to gays and lesbians, she wrote, "If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge him?"

The goal of the second annual March for Marriage is to draw thousands of supporters of what they call "traditional marriage" to walk from the U.S Capitol to the Supreme Court. Conservative former presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, as well as Cordileone, are being billed as the star speakers.

The San Francisco Democratic leader is the most influential in a parade of public figures who have come forward to protest the San Francisco archbishop's participation in an event that is also backed by the Family Research Council. Critics have called the organizers "hate groups" that are targeting gays and lesbians.

Last week, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, along with a host of Bay Area religious leaders, sent a joint letter to Cordileone protesting his plans to attend the march.

Some 20,000 people have signed an online petition by Faithful America demanding that the archbishop cancel his appearance.

The event comes at a time when same-sex marriage is increasingly common and polls show that public opinion - once widely opposed - has dramatically shifted in recent years. The most recent Gallup poll shows public support for gay marriage at 55 percent, an all-time high.

Cordileone has nevertheless become a national leader in the religious movement against gay marriage. He heads the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage for the politically powerful U.S. Conference of Bishops and was instrumental in raising $1.5 million to get Prop. 8, which banned same-sex marriage, on the California ballot in 2008.

The measure has since been ruled unconstitutional, allowing same-sex marriages to be performed in California.

But Cordileone has remained outspoken in his opposition to gay marriage, saying, "The ultimate attack of the evil one is the attack on marriage."

Public officials, including Pelosi, have expressed respect for the archbishop's religious views, but have taken particular issue with the organizations sponsoring and participating in the event.

The Family Research Council has been labeled an antigay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. It "blamed gay marriage for the recent shootings at Isla Vista," the Faithful America petition notes.

 In 2011, the president of the National Organization for Marriage wrote that gay marriage would "normalize pedophilia," and the organization has also linked gay marriage with incest.

"We ask that you will reconsider your participation and join us in seeking to promote reconciliation rather than division and hatred," Newsom, Lee and dozens of others wrote in their letter to Cordileone.

Their protest characterized the event as "organized by some of the nation's most virulently anti-LGBT organizations and leaders."

Pelosi, in her letter, told Cordileone, "While we may disagree on the subject of marriage equality, we do agree that every person is a child of God, possessed of the spark of divinity and worthy of respect."

Cordileone has publicly defended next week's March for Marriage as "an important means to promote and defend marriage for the good of our culture, to pray for our federal and state governments, and to stand in solidarity with people of good will."

In a letter defending the event, he said, "This is a critical time for marriage in our country, as marriage amendments are being struck down by federal courts and appeals of these decisions are being made."

Since a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in support of same-sex couples, gay marriage has been declared legal in 19 states and the District of Columbia.

Pelosi is living proof that sin nmakes one stupid.  Having engaged for many years in sinful dissent from the Church's teaching, she an no longer discern the truth which has been recvealed by Jesus Christ and authoritatively interpreted by the Church's Magisterium.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its Instruction entitled "Considerations Regarding Proposals To Give Legal Recognition To Unions Between Homosexual Persons," has this to say in nos. 2-4:

"The Church's teaching on marriage and on the complementarity of the sexes reiterates a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world. Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose. No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of their persons. In this way, they mutually perfect each other, in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives.

The natural truth about marriage was confirmed by the Revelation contained in the biblical accounts of creation, an expression also of the original human wisdom, in which the voice of nature itself is heard. There are three fundamental elements of the Creator's plan for marriage, as narrated in the Book of Genesis.

In the first place, man, the image of God, was created "male and female" (Gen 1:27). Men and women are equal as persons and complementary as male and female. Sexuality is something that pertains to the physical-biological realm and has also been raised to a new level — the personal level — where nature and spirit are united.

Marriage is instituted by the Creator as a form of life in which a communion of persons is realized involving the use of the sexual faculty. "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh" (Gen 2:24).

Third, God has willed to give the union of man and woman a special participation in his work of creation. Thus, he blessed the man and the woman with the words "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen 1:28). Therefore, in the Creator's plan, sexual complementarity and fruitfulness belong to the very nature of marriage.

Furthermore, the marital union of man and woman has been elevated by Christ to the dignity of a sacrament. The Church teaches that Christian marriage is an efficacious sign of the covenant between Christ and the Church (cf. Eph 5:32). This Christian meaning of marriage, far from diminishing the profoundly human value of the marital union between man and woman, confirms and strengthens it (cf. Mt 19:3-12; Mk 10:6-9).

There are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family. Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law. Homosexual acts "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."

And in an Instruction entitled "Some Considerations Concerning The Response To Legislative Proposals On The Non-Discrimination Of Homosexual Persons," issued on July 22, 1992, the CDF had this to say: "'Sexual orientation' does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc. in respect to non-discrimination. Unlike these, homosexual orientation is an objective disorder and evokes moral concern." (No. 10). And again: "Including 'homosexual orientation' among the considerations on the basis of which it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead to regarding homosexuality as a positive source of human rights, for example, in respect to so-called affirmative action or preferential treatment in hiring practices. This is all the more deleterious since there is no right to homosexuality which therefore should not form the basis for judicial claims. The passage from the recognition of homosexuality as a factor on which basis it is illegal to discriminate can easily lead, if not automatically, to the legislative protection and promotion of homosexuality. A person's homosexuality would be invoked in opposition to alleged discrimination, and thus the exercise of rights would be defended precisely via the affirmation of the homosexual condition instead of in terms of a violation of basic human rights." (No. 13).

 

 

Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Catholic Church is being tempted by New Paganism

As reported here, Hillary White, writing for LifeSiteNews, notes how Bishop Athanasius Schneider is warning that the Catholic Church is facing a new paganism which is seducing many Catholics including clergy.  She writes, "The Catholic Church is living through a 'great crisis' of belief and practice, facing a 'new paganism' comparable to the first centuries of the Church, and in which many priests and bishops are actively collaborating, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, auxiliary bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan, said in an interview during a trip to the UK.

The bishop said the crisis has particularly manifested itself in the erosion of belief in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, which he says has a 'causal connection' to the denial of the Church’s teachings on sex and marriage.
'This is the deepest evil,' says Schneider, 'man, or the clergy, putting themselves in the centre when they are celebrating liturgy and when they change the revealed truth of God, for instance, concerning the Sixth Commandment and human sexuality.'

The bishop’s interview was conducted by Sarah Atkinson and published June 6 in the Catholic Herald. Atkinson is also editor of Mass of Ages, the magazine published by the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, which published the full transcript.

'We are living in an un-Christian society, in a new paganism,' Schneider told Atkinson. 'The temptation today for the clergy is to adapt to the new world to the new paganism, to be collaborationists. We are in a similar situation to the first centuries, when the majority of the society was pagan, and Christianity was discriminated against.'

He warned that Christians will likely be faced again with the choice of apostasy, offered to those in the early Church, to pinch 'one grain of incense into a fire in front of the statue of the emperor.' This ultimatum may even be supported from within the Church.

It seems possible that Catholics who remain faithful 'may, for a time, be persecuted or discriminated even on behalf of those who [have] power in the exterior structures of the Church,' he said."

It's nice that Bishop Schneider has recognized how dire things are.  Readers of this Blog know that I have been warning of this for two decades.  Better late than never I suppose.

As we move toward one world government*, the new humanitarian religion will become more and more aggressive. Catholicism, its greatest enemy, must be overcome at all cost**. To this end, ecclesiastical masonry (see here and here) has inflitrated the Church.

Through one of the characters in his book The Lord of the World, Robert Hugh Benson describes this humanitarian religion which is to overcome the Catholic Church: "Humanitarianism...is becoming an actual religion itself, though anti-supernatural. It is a Pantheism. Pantheism deifies all nature, God is the world, but naturally, man above all is God since he is the highest expression of nature. It is a religion devoid of the 'super' natural, because since God is nature itself, there is no longer a distinction between Creator and creature. The creature is God and hence arbitrator of his own destiny and establishes the moral law for himself. Nature, and man is its highest expression, has all the divine attributes. Humanitarianism is a religion devoid of the supernatural. It is developing a ritual under Freemasonry; it has a creed, 'God is man'; and the rest. It has, therefore, a real food of a sort to offer religious cravings: it idealizes, and yet makes no demands upon the spiritual faculties. Then, they have the use of all the churches except ours, and of all the Cathedrals; and they are beginning at last to encourage sentiment. Then they may display their symbols and we may not..."

The new humanitarian religion, which is anti-supernatural, must absorb Christianity as it prepares for the entrance of the Man of Sin. Catholics who maintain a devotion to the Holy Eucharist and Our Lady must be first ostracized and later eliminated as incompatible with the New Order. On March 11, 1995, Our Lady told Fr. Gobbi that, "In the Church, the great apostasy, which will spread throughout the whole world, will be brought to its completion; the schism will take place through a general alienation from the Gospel and from the true faith. There will enter into the Church the man of iniquity, who opposes himself to Christ, and who will bring into her interior the abomination of desolation, thus bringing to fulfillment the horrible sacrilege, of which the Prophet Daniel has spoken."

* Russia is calling for a "new world reserve currency" which will be necessary for this one-world government. See here. The stage is set for the entrance of the Man of Sin, the Antichrist. There are increasing calls for a watered-down ecumenical church based on humanitarian principles. Which is exactly what Prime Minister Gordon Brown is calling for. The Catholic Church will have to be dismantled. Man must be deified: "Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.

** Alice Bailey, who co-founded the Lucis Trust (dedicated to Lucifer, see here), had this to say about a New Age of Aquarius - which she insisted must inevitably replace the Piscean or Christian Age:

"They [New Agers who belong to the Aquarian Age] will be characterized by the freedom to think as they choose which they will allow their adherents; they will refuse to emphasize any particular teacher, Bible, or organization as the sole repository of truth, but will accord an equal recognition to all groups who seek to present knowledge of God as it can be gained through science, religion, art or philosophy...They will be inclusive, not exclusive; they will emphasize principles not personalities [such as Christ, my note], service not selfish pursuits, and by the broadness of their vision and the trueness of their perspective, they will lead humanity towards a consummation of universal recognized unity..." (Source text here).

As the Reign of Antichrist approaches, the faithful Remnant will be subjected to increasing persecution which will intensify until it erupts into full-blown violence.  And some of our clergy will be among the modern-day Judases, betraying Christ and brother and sister!  See here.

President Barack Obama: Working toward a satanic New World Order

There can be little doubt about President Barack Obama's attitude toward what he deems "ordinary people."  See here

Those of us who have been concerned over attempts to portray Barack Obama as some sort of secular Messiah have been ridiculed by liberal pundits in the mainstream media, whose knowledge of Sacred Scripture is usually superficial at best, and have been dismissed as being nothing more than uneducated "fundamentalists" who dress in military khaki and who spend most of the day in a dark basement loading ammunition with one hand while holding a Bible in the other.

But the Church warns against any form of secular messianism: "The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatalogical judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the 'intrinsically perverse' political form of a secular messianism." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 676).

Our Lord Jesus has told us that many would come as "false christs" so as to deceive. These are forerunners to the Antichrist: "Then if anyone says to you: 'Behold, here is the Christ!' or, 'Here!' do not believe. For false christs and false prophets will arise, and they will give great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if it were possible, even the elect." (Matthew 24: 23,24).

Hermann Rauschning, who eventually defected from the Nazi Party, recalled a conversation in which Hitler told Bernhard Forster, Nietzsche's brother-in-law, that he: "..would not reveal his unique mission until later. He permitted glimpses of it only to a few. When the time came, however, Hitler would bring the world a new religion...The blessed consciousness of eternal life in union with the great universal life, and in membership with of an immortal people - that was the message he would impart to the world when the time came..."

Likewise, President Obama has asserted that he is "king of the world" and that he will "change the world." Indeed, he has claimed that his election represents, "...the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

The English psychiatrist William Sargent explained that, "It is not the mentally ill but ordinary normal people who are most susceptible to 'brainwashing.'" And in her book The Nazis and the Occult, Dusty Sklar notes how, "Hitler's early speeches were so mesmerizing that even people who were repelled by his ideas felt themselves being swept along. The playwright Eugene Ionesco mentions in his autobiography that he received the inspiration for Rhinoceros when he felt himself pulled into the Nazi orbit at a mass rally and had to struggle to keep from developing 'rhinoceritis.' We 'catch' ideas, too, because we want to be like others, particularly when we want not to be our despised selves. If we're satisfied, we don't need to conform, but if we're not, we imitate people whom we admire for having greater judgment, taste, or good fortune than we do....Through conformity, the person who feels inferior is in no danger of being exposed. He's indistinguishable from the others. No one can single him out and examine his unique being. Conformity, in turn, sets him up to be further canceled out as an individual, to have no life apart from his collective purpose. This gives a movement tremendous power over the individual. Even intelligent people are not immune from the desire to conform. Heinrich Hildebrandt, a schoolteacher who was anxious to hide his liberal past, joined the Nazi party, and to his own disgust, found himself 'proud to be wearing the insignia. It showed I belonged, and the pleasure of belonging, so soon after feeling excluded, isolated, is very great...I belonged to the new nobility..'" (The Nazis and the Occult, pp. 157, 158).

It was Tacitus who proclaimed, "O man, how prompt to slavery."  And waiting in the wings is a Lawless One who will rule over such men.  The Christian message will not be tolerated.  He will strive to stamp it out altogether.  He will seek to eradicate any expression of Christian thought or prayer.  He will outlaw the Holy Mass.  And then he will demand worship of himself.

It is my belief that Barack Obama is one of many preparing the way for such a man.  For Obama, the "ordinary people" cannot govern themselves.  They must be controlled.  They must be propagandized.  They must be forced into acceptance of a New Order and its new humanitarian religion.

Taliban thankful to Obama for prisoner exchange

                                    

                                                                                         

Writing for Newser, Rob Quinn notes that:  " The Taliban were just as confused by Bowe Bergdahl as the Afghan villagers who first encountered him after he allegedly wandered off his base, two former commanders say. Fighters rushed to capture Bergdahl after villagers informed them of his presence, and he was found walking alone, acting strangely, and cursing his fellow Americans, one commander tells NBC. He said "he wasn’t happy with his countrymen, but he didn’t intend to convert to Islam" or become a jihadi, the commander says. Both say that they at first believed it was some kind of trick, and they wondered how and why he had left the base alone—which he may have done more than once. They say he described his departure as a 'personal issue.'

                                                               

A commander who left the Taliban in 2010 says that Bergdahl didn't convert to Islam. 'Think he had deserted his army with a mission and wanted to accept Islam, but our people didn’t trust him,' he says. 'That shattered his belief.' Taliban sources say Bergdahl was taken to a 'safe location' after his capture, and was later moved around sites in Pakistan. A commander still with the Taliban, meanwhile, says the exchange of Bergdahl for five Taliban leaders gives the movement legitimacy and has boosted morale among the hundreds of fighters under his command. The prisoner exchange 'shows we are able to deal directly with the Americans and also successfully,' he tells Reuters."

Meanwhile, There are forces in this country and around the world which want to combine Christianity and Islam into a global religion which would be called "Chrislam."  Still others seek to blend many different religions into a syncretistic one-world religion with truth being sacrificed in the name of a false irenicism.

Those who have the courage to warn others about the dangers inherent within Islam can expect to be ostracized and increasingly relegated to the margins of society.

The recent deluge of earthquakes in California and a prophetic warning which I received in 2012....

In an article which may be found here, the Los Angeles Times reports:

"After a relatively quiet period of seismic activity in the Los Angeles area,

the last five months have been marked by five earthquakes larger than 4.0. That hasn't occurred since 1994, the year of the destructive Northridge earthquake that produced 53 such temblors.

Over the next two decades, there were some years that passed without a single quake 4.0 or greater.
Earthquake experts said 2014 is clearly a year of increased seismic activity, but they said it's hard to know whether the recent string of quakes suggests that a larger one is on the way. 'Probably this will be it, and there won't be any more 4s. But the chance we will have a bigger earthquake this year is more than if we hadn't had this cluster,' U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones said. 'Every earthquake makes another earthquake more likely.'"

Back in November of 2012, I wrote the following:


The Didache, also known as The Teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles, tells us that, "There are two Ways: a Way of Life and a Way of Death, and the difference between these two Ways is great.  The Way of Life is this: Thou shalt love first the Lord thy Creator, and secondly thy neighbor as thyself; and thou shalt do nothing to any man that thou wouldst not wish to be done to thyself...Commit no murder, adultery, sodomy, fornication, or theft.  Practise no magic, sorcery, abortion, or infanticide..."

Once again, a majority of Americans (including sadly a large number of those who are so morally blind that they still consider themselves to be Catholic or Christian) have voted for a president who fully embraces the Culture of Death promoting abortion through all nine months of pregnancy up to and including what is known as "partial-birth abortion" - which is really infanticide.  A president who has also embraced the Cult of Softness with its agenda to promote sodomy and to re-define marriage.  A president who is committed toward attacking the religious freedom of the Catholic Church with his contraceptive mandate.

Americans have voted for self-destruction.  It was Abraham Lincoln, in a speech given on January 27, 1837, who forewarned: "At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide."

The spirit of Antichrist is rising everywhere.  A new television program entitled "666 Park Avenue" is currently enjoying popularity.  Last week, I stood in line at the bank behind a young man sporting a baseball cap which read 666.  Just this morning a car with a Rhode Island license plate passed me on Route 2 from Athol to Gardner, Massachusetts.  The number?  6664RI!

Last night, around 11 PM, I was awakened with the knowledge that Mitt Romney had lost the election (I didn't follow the results at all).  And I was given a Word of Knowledge:  America has opted for sin and the Way of Death.  As a result, severe chastisements are coming upon this sin-sick nation.  California will soon be stricken with massive earthquakes and the weather is about to turn even more violent* than anyone is prepared for.

Remain in the faith my friends.  Pray every day to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  Destruction is coming upon this nation which has forsaken God.


*  And hasn't it?  See here