From Sputnik News:
"Pope Francis and the Roman Catholic clergy failed to take action to sanction Rev. Nicola Corradi, the 82-year old priest arrested in late November on charges of sexually abusing deaf children, despite knowing of Carradi’s alleged exploits, according to an Argentine prosecutor.
At least 24 students of the Antonio Provolo Institute for the hearing impaired, in the Mendoza province of Argentina, sent the Pope a letter in 2014 naming Corradi as a rapist, but the Pope only acknowledged the letter this year, the Belfast Telegraph reported. Prosecutors in the case expect more victims to come forward and have argued that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was told about the allegations.
Carradi had been reassigned from his post in Italy to Pope Francis’ native country of Argentina, where students say they were subjected to sexual abuse. "They always said it was a game: 'Let’s go play, let’s go play' and they would take us to the girls’ bathroom," one student told AP.
Four employees working at the institute, including 55 year-old priest Horacio Corbacho, were taken into custody along with Carradi. Police discovered $34,000 in Carradi’s apartment at the time of arrest.
The victims’ families claim that Vatican leaders knew about Carradi’s abuses as early as 2009. At the time, Carradi was publicly accused of assaulting students at the Provolo Institute in Italy.
On multiple occasions Pope Francis spoke of the Roman Catholic Church’s "zero tolerance" policy, but critics point out the Pope’s failure to sanction Carradi and his henchmen is abysmally inconsistent with the policy."
Inconsistent to say the least. Francis has said that Bishops who fail to act in such cases should be removed.
And this past October, he preached that, "Hypocrisy is an internal division. We say one thing and we do another. It’s a kind of spiritual schizophrenia. In addition, hypocrisy is a dissembler: they seem good and polite but they have a dagger behind their backs, right? Look at Herod: terrified inside but how politely he received the Magi! And then when he was bidding them farewell, he told them: ‘Go on your way and then come back and tell me where this child can be found so that I can go and worship him!’ To kill him! He’s a two-faced hypocrite, a pretender. Jesus when speaking to the doctors of the law, said: these say this and don’t do it:’ this is another type of hypocrisy. It is an existential nominalism: those who believe that by saying the things that everything is done. No. Things must be done not just said. And a hypocrite is a nominalist who believes that by saying it, everything is done. In addition, the hypocrite is unable to accuse him or herself: they never find a stain on themselves, they accuse others.Think about the splinter and the log right? And it’s in this way that we can describe that leaven which is hypocrisy.”
Things must be done, not just said.
Indeed.
Friday, December 30, 2016
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Father Zuhlsdorf: I doubt Francis will respond to the five dubia; in other words, he is like a limb beginning to rot
In a Blog post which may be found here, Father John Zuhlsdorf of WDTPRS asserts that Francis probably will not respond to the five dubia over Amoris Laetitia.
In her own day, St. Catherine of Sienna found much corruption within the Holy Church. Homosexuality and many other deeply rooted problems were found among the clergy and Our Lord spoke to this Doctor of the Church about these problems (pride, loss of sacred identity, loss of faith, worldliness, and sensuality). These conversations were laid out in St. Catherine's book entitled "Dialogue," and most especially in that portion of the book labelled "The Mystical Body of Holy Church."
While St. Catherine cautions her readers not to engage in blanket condemnations aimed at the clergy in general (using scandals as an excuse to denigrate priests in general), and refers to such people as "irreverent persecutors" of the clergy, still, she was told by Our Lord that those who will not receive correction and those who will not give it are like the limbs of a body beginning to rot.
In our sacharrin society, medicinal rebuke is often mistaken for a "lack of charity" when in actuality such constructive criticism aids in healing. In his excellent work entitled "Liberalism is a sin," Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany writes:
"If the propagation of good and the necessity of combating evil require the employment of terms somewhat harsh against error and its supporters, this usage is certainly not against charity. This is a corollary or consequence of the principle we have just demonstrated. We must render evil odious and detestable. We cannot attain this result without pointing out the dangers of evil, without showing how and why it is odious, detestable and contemptible. Christian oratory of all ages has ever employed the most vigorous and emphatic rhetoric in the arsenal of human speech against impiety. In the writings of the great athletes of Christianity the usage of irony, imprecation, execration and of the most crushing epithets is continual. Hence the only law is the opportunity and the truth.
But there is another justification for such an usage. Popular propagation and apologetics cannot preserve elegant and constrained academic forms. In order to convince the people we must speak to their heart and their imagination which can only be touched by ardent, brilliant, and impassioned language. To be impassioned is not to be reprehensible----when our heat is the holy ardor of truth.
The supposed violence of modern Ultramontane journalism not only falls short of Liberal journalism, but is amply justified by every page of the works of our great Catholic polemicists of other epochs. This is easily verified. St. John the Baptist calls the Pharisees "race of vipers," Jesus Christ, our Divine Savior, hurls at them the epithets "hypocrites, whitened sepulchers, a perverse and adulterous generation" without thinking for this reason that He sullies the sanctity of His benevolent speech. St. Paul criticizes the schismatic Cretins as "always liars, evil beasts, slothful bellies." The same apostle calls Elymas the magician a "seducer, full of guile and deceit, child of the Devil, enemy of all justice."
If we open the Fathers we find the same vigorous castigation of heresy and heretics. St. Jerome arguing against Vigilantius casts in his face his former occupation of saloonkeeper: "From your infancy," he says to him, "you have learned other things than theology and betaken yourself to other pursuits. To verify at the same time the value of your money accounts and the value of Scriptural texts, to sample wines and grasp the meaning of the prophets and apostles are certainly not occupations which the same man can accomplish with credit." On another occasion attacking the same Vigilantius, who denied the excellence of virginity and of fasting, St. Jerome, with his usual sprightliness, asks him if he spoke thus "in order not to diminish the receipts of his saloon?" Heavens! What an outcry would be raised if one of our Ultramontane controversialists were to write against a Liberal critic or heretic of our own day in this fashion!
What shall we say of St. John Chrysostom? His famous invective against Eutropius is not comparable, in its personal and aggressive character, to the cruel invectives of Cicero against Catiline and against Verres! The gentle St. Bernard did not honey his words when he attacked the enemies of the faith. Addressing Arnold of Brescia, the great Liberal agitator of his times, he calls him in all his letters "seducer, vase of injuries, scorpion, cruel wolf."
The pacific St. Thomas of Acquinas forgets the calm of his cold syllogisms when he hurls his violent apostrophe against William of St. Amour and his disciples: "Enemies of God," he cries out, "ministers of the Devil, members of antiChrist, ignorami, perverts, reprobates!" Never did the illustrious Louis Veuillot speak so boldly. The seraphic St. Bonaventure, so full of sweetness, overwhelms his adversary Gerard with such epithets as "impudent, calumniator, spirit of malice, impious, shameless, ignorant, impostor, malefactor, perfidious, ingrate!" Did St. Francis de Sales, so delicately exquisite and tender, ever purr softly over the heretics of his age and country? He pardoned their injuries, heaped benefits on them even to the point of saving the lives of those who sought to take his, but with the enemies of the faith he preserved neither moderation nor consideration. Asked by a Catholic, who desired to know if it were permissible to speak evil of a heretic who propagated false doctrines, he replied: "Yes, you can, on the condition that you adhere to the exact truth, to what you know of his bad conduct, presenting that which is doubtful as doubtful according to the degree of doubt which you may have in this regard." In his Introduction to a Devout Life, that precious and popular work, he expresses himself again: "If the declared enemies of God and of the Church ought to be blamed and censured with all possible vigor, charity obliges us to cry 'wolf' when the wolf slips into the midst of the flock, and in every way and place we may meet him."
Fraternal correction is key to our spiritual growth. In the words of
Monsignor Charles Pope, in a meditation last year:
The gospel from Sunday (John 15:1-8) presents us with an important meditation on the difference between love and kindness. Perhaps some further reflections from this gospel are in order today.
There is an unfortunate tendency in our times to reduce love to kindness. Kindness is an aspect of love, but so is rebuke. It is an immature notion of love that reduces it merely to affirming, or that refers to proper correction as a form of “hate.”
We saw in yesterday’s gospel that proper care involves the Lord “pruning” us so that we bear more fruit. But in soft times like these, many would not consider pruning, which is painful, to be proper care. Any reasonable, mature, balanced assessment yields the truth that pruning is necessary and is part of proper care.
Though I am less familiar with grape vines, I know my roses. And while I feed and water them, treat their common diseases, and pull the weeds that seek to choke them, I also prune them—sometimes quite severely. At this time of year, my fall pruning vindicates itself as proper care—the first rosebuds and the luxuriant foliage are in glorious evidence! Through the year I will continue all my care, including pruning, cutting away diseased branches, and shaping the plants. Who of you will question me for what I do to my beautiful roses?
It is no less the case with us that the Lord must prune us. And who would question the Lord for this necessary work? Yet many in our times do question Him and His Body, the Church, for doing just this.
First of all, He does this by proclaiming His Word: You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you (Jn 15:3). In this proclamation is a kind of pruning of the intellect; our worldly thinking and priorities are pruned away by the truth of God’s wisdom and His Word, which is like a scalpel or pruning hook.
Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart. No creature is concealed from him, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account (Heb 4:12-13).
The Word of God prunes away our error by shining the light of truth on our foolishness and worldliness; it exposes our sinfulness and silly preoccupations. It lays bare our inordinate self-esteem and all the sinful drives that flow from it: pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. A steady diet of God’s Word prunes and purifies our mind, reordering it gradually.
Yet for many of us, the Word of God alone (while sufficient in itself) is not enough due to our stubbornness and tendency to rationalize our bad behavior and “stinking thinking.” Too easily we call good or “no big deal” what God calls sin and surround ourselves with teachers and “experts” who tell us what our itching ears want to hear (cf 2 Tim 4:3).
And thus further pruning is needed. Such further pruning can be accomplished in two ways: active and passive purification. Active purifications are things that we undertake ourselves such as fasting or other mortifications. These help to prune away what stunts healthy growth and the fruits of righteousness.
But honestly, none of us will ever really do enough active purification to accomplish what is really needed—not even close. Consider an analogy I have used before: could you perform an appendectomy on yourself? Of course not! First, you could not really see enough to be able do it properly. Second, you would never be able to inflict that much pain on yourself. Such things must be accomplished for us by others.
Therefore, since active purifications are not enough to prune us properly, we must also accept passive purifications. Passive purifications are those things that God does or allows in order to prune us. And frankly some of them are quite painful: serious losses or setbacks, struggles with our health, difficulties in marriage or other vocations, the death of loved ones, the end of relationships, humiliating occurrences, accidents, and so forth. Other passive purifications are less painful, involving minor irritations, disappointments, or discomforts.
And when these occur we cry out in pain. Pruning hurts. But it may well be just what we need. The honest truth is that we human beings are so gifted, talented, and capable that if we didn’t have a few things to keep us humble, we’d be so proud we’d just go to Hell.
So God prunes. And whether we like to admit it or not, it is a form of care. We need these passive purifications; we need the pruning that keeps us bearing the fruit of holiness and righteousness.
In soft times like these, when the application of limits or the use of the word “no” is deemed “unloving” or “hateful,” we who would be Christians and light to the world must become clearer ourselves about the need for pruning. Even in the Church there is a hesitancy to speak of this need or of anything considered “negative” or “challenging.” To all this we can only reply that it is necessary at times for the surgeon to wield the scalpel, the vinedresser to apply the pruning sheers, the Lord to use passive purifications. It is hard and painful at times, but there is no other way given our stubborn and sin-prone souls.
There is also a communal dimension to this that was mentioned in yesterday’s gospel: He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit (Jn 15:2). This is not the pruning of a single branch; it is the cutting away of any branches that do not bear fruit and thus sap energy from the others.
In these highly individualistic times it is harder for people to grasp the common good and why it is sometimes necessary for the Lord to wholly remove from His Body (the Church) those who refuse to bear fruit. But the common good really is the answer.
And now back to my roses: one of my rose bushes tends to go wild. In the last two years it has become gnarly, losing its shape. Its roses have lost their wedged-tulip shape and are becoming small and rounded. I have taken to pruning it severely in the hopes of saving it. So far this has yielded limited success. This year, if it does not respond and return from the wild side, I will have to remove it. This is not only due to my preferences; I am concerned that the other bushes will cross-pollinate with it and also lose their dignity and form. One wild rose bush tends to exert its influence on others. Who of you will question me for what I do to protect my roses?
And who of us should protest against God for what He does to keep His vine strong and Heaven pure?
Pruning is needed both to help us bear fruit and to save us. It falls to us, like a faithful remnant, to recover this notion and teach it without apology or embarrassment. God knows what He is doing. He knows what makes for good disciples and perfect souls. It is hard, though, and it’s OK to ask God to be gentle with us. But in the end, may God never do anything less than is necessary to prepare heavenly glories for us.
In her own day, St. Catherine of Sienna found much corruption within the Holy Church. Homosexuality and many other deeply rooted problems were found among the clergy and Our Lord spoke to this Doctor of the Church about these problems (pride, loss of sacred identity, loss of faith, worldliness, and sensuality). These conversations were laid out in St. Catherine's book entitled "Dialogue," and most especially in that portion of the book labelled "The Mystical Body of Holy Church."
While St. Catherine cautions her readers not to engage in blanket condemnations aimed at the clergy in general (using scandals as an excuse to denigrate priests in general), and refers to such people as "irreverent persecutors" of the clergy, still, she was told by Our Lord that those who will not receive correction and those who will not give it are like the limbs of a body beginning to rot.
In our sacharrin society, medicinal rebuke is often mistaken for a "lack of charity" when in actuality such constructive criticism aids in healing. In his excellent work entitled "Liberalism is a sin," Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany writes:
"If the propagation of good and the necessity of combating evil require the employment of terms somewhat harsh against error and its supporters, this usage is certainly not against charity. This is a corollary or consequence of the principle we have just demonstrated. We must render evil odious and detestable. We cannot attain this result without pointing out the dangers of evil, without showing how and why it is odious, detestable and contemptible. Christian oratory of all ages has ever employed the most vigorous and emphatic rhetoric in the arsenal of human speech against impiety. In the writings of the great athletes of Christianity the usage of irony, imprecation, execration and of the most crushing epithets is continual. Hence the only law is the opportunity and the truth.
But there is another justification for such an usage. Popular propagation and apologetics cannot preserve elegant and constrained academic forms. In order to convince the people we must speak to their heart and their imagination which can only be touched by ardent, brilliant, and impassioned language. To be impassioned is not to be reprehensible----when our heat is the holy ardor of truth.
The supposed violence of modern Ultramontane journalism not only falls short of Liberal journalism, but is amply justified by every page of the works of our great Catholic polemicists of other epochs. This is easily verified. St. John the Baptist calls the Pharisees "race of vipers," Jesus Christ, our Divine Savior, hurls at them the epithets "hypocrites, whitened sepulchers, a perverse and adulterous generation" without thinking for this reason that He sullies the sanctity of His benevolent speech. St. Paul criticizes the schismatic Cretins as "always liars, evil beasts, slothful bellies." The same apostle calls Elymas the magician a "seducer, full of guile and deceit, child of the Devil, enemy of all justice."
If we open the Fathers we find the same vigorous castigation of heresy and heretics. St. Jerome arguing against Vigilantius casts in his face his former occupation of saloonkeeper: "From your infancy," he says to him, "you have learned other things than theology and betaken yourself to other pursuits. To verify at the same time the value of your money accounts and the value of Scriptural texts, to sample wines and grasp the meaning of the prophets and apostles are certainly not occupations which the same man can accomplish with credit." On another occasion attacking the same Vigilantius, who denied the excellence of virginity and of fasting, St. Jerome, with his usual sprightliness, asks him if he spoke thus "in order not to diminish the receipts of his saloon?" Heavens! What an outcry would be raised if one of our Ultramontane controversialists were to write against a Liberal critic or heretic of our own day in this fashion!
What shall we say of St. John Chrysostom? His famous invective against Eutropius is not comparable, in its personal and aggressive character, to the cruel invectives of Cicero against Catiline and against Verres! The gentle St. Bernard did not honey his words when he attacked the enemies of the faith. Addressing Arnold of Brescia, the great Liberal agitator of his times, he calls him in all his letters "seducer, vase of injuries, scorpion, cruel wolf."
The pacific St. Thomas of Acquinas forgets the calm of his cold syllogisms when he hurls his violent apostrophe against William of St. Amour and his disciples: "Enemies of God," he cries out, "ministers of the Devil, members of antiChrist, ignorami, perverts, reprobates!" Never did the illustrious Louis Veuillot speak so boldly. The seraphic St. Bonaventure, so full of sweetness, overwhelms his adversary Gerard with such epithets as "impudent, calumniator, spirit of malice, impious, shameless, ignorant, impostor, malefactor, perfidious, ingrate!" Did St. Francis de Sales, so delicately exquisite and tender, ever purr softly over the heretics of his age and country? He pardoned their injuries, heaped benefits on them even to the point of saving the lives of those who sought to take his, but with the enemies of the faith he preserved neither moderation nor consideration. Asked by a Catholic, who desired to know if it were permissible to speak evil of a heretic who propagated false doctrines, he replied: "Yes, you can, on the condition that you adhere to the exact truth, to what you know of his bad conduct, presenting that which is doubtful as doubtful according to the degree of doubt which you may have in this regard." In his Introduction to a Devout Life, that precious and popular work, he expresses himself again: "If the declared enemies of God and of the Church ought to be blamed and censured with all possible vigor, charity obliges us to cry 'wolf' when the wolf slips into the midst of the flock, and in every way and place we may meet him."
Fraternal correction is key to our spiritual growth. In the words of
Monsignor Charles Pope, in a meditation last year:
The gospel from Sunday (John 15:1-8) presents us with an important meditation on the difference between love and kindness. Perhaps some further reflections from this gospel are in order today.
There is an unfortunate tendency in our times to reduce love to kindness. Kindness is an aspect of love, but so is rebuke. It is an immature notion of love that reduces it merely to affirming, or that refers to proper correction as a form of “hate.”
We saw in yesterday’s gospel that proper care involves the Lord “pruning” us so that we bear more fruit. But in soft times like these, many would not consider pruning, which is painful, to be proper care. Any reasonable, mature, balanced assessment yields the truth that pruning is necessary and is part of proper care.
Though I am less familiar with grape vines, I know my roses. And while I feed and water them, treat their common diseases, and pull the weeds that seek to choke them, I also prune them—sometimes quite severely. At this time of year, my fall pruning vindicates itself as proper care—the first rosebuds and the luxuriant foliage are in glorious evidence! Through the year I will continue all my care, including pruning, cutting away diseased branches, and shaping the plants. Who of you will question me for what I do to my beautiful roses?
It is no less the case with us that the Lord must prune us. And who would question the Lord for this necessary work? Yet many in our times do question Him and His Body, the Church, for doing just this.
First of all, He does this by proclaiming His Word: You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you (Jn 15:3). In this proclamation is a kind of pruning of the intellect; our worldly thinking and priorities are pruned away by the truth of God’s wisdom and His Word, which is like a scalpel or pruning hook.
Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart. No creature is concealed from him, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account (Heb 4:12-13).
The Word of God prunes away our error by shining the light of truth on our foolishness and worldliness; it exposes our sinfulness and silly preoccupations. It lays bare our inordinate self-esteem and all the sinful drives that flow from it: pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. A steady diet of God’s Word prunes and purifies our mind, reordering it gradually.
Yet for many of us, the Word of God alone (while sufficient in itself) is not enough due to our stubbornness and tendency to rationalize our bad behavior and “stinking thinking.” Too easily we call good or “no big deal” what God calls sin and surround ourselves with teachers and “experts” who tell us what our itching ears want to hear (cf 2 Tim 4:3).
And thus further pruning is needed. Such further pruning can be accomplished in two ways: active and passive purification. Active purifications are things that we undertake ourselves such as fasting or other mortifications. These help to prune away what stunts healthy growth and the fruits of righteousness.
But honestly, none of us will ever really do enough active purification to accomplish what is really needed—not even close. Consider an analogy I have used before: could you perform an appendectomy on yourself? Of course not! First, you could not really see enough to be able do it properly. Second, you would never be able to inflict that much pain on yourself. Such things must be accomplished for us by others.
Therefore, since active purifications are not enough to prune us properly, we must also accept passive purifications. Passive purifications are those things that God does or allows in order to prune us. And frankly some of them are quite painful: serious losses or setbacks, struggles with our health, difficulties in marriage or other vocations, the death of loved ones, the end of relationships, humiliating occurrences, accidents, and so forth. Other passive purifications are less painful, involving minor irritations, disappointments, or discomforts.
And when these occur we cry out in pain. Pruning hurts. But it may well be just what we need. The honest truth is that we human beings are so gifted, talented, and capable that if we didn’t have a few things to keep us humble, we’d be so proud we’d just go to Hell.
So God prunes. And whether we like to admit it or not, it is a form of care. We need these passive purifications; we need the pruning that keeps us bearing the fruit of holiness and righteousness.
In soft times like these, when the application of limits or the use of the word “no” is deemed “unloving” or “hateful,” we who would be Christians and light to the world must become clearer ourselves about the need for pruning. Even in the Church there is a hesitancy to speak of this need or of anything considered “negative” or “challenging.” To all this we can only reply that it is necessary at times for the surgeon to wield the scalpel, the vinedresser to apply the pruning sheers, the Lord to use passive purifications. It is hard and painful at times, but there is no other way given our stubborn and sin-prone souls.
There is also a communal dimension to this that was mentioned in yesterday’s gospel: He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit (Jn 15:2). This is not the pruning of a single branch; it is the cutting away of any branches that do not bear fruit and thus sap energy from the others.
In these highly individualistic times it is harder for people to grasp the common good and why it is sometimes necessary for the Lord to wholly remove from His Body (the Church) those who refuse to bear fruit. But the common good really is the answer.
And now back to my roses: one of my rose bushes tends to go wild. In the last two years it has become gnarly, losing its shape. Its roses have lost their wedged-tulip shape and are becoming small and rounded. I have taken to pruning it severely in the hopes of saving it. So far this has yielded limited success. This year, if it does not respond and return from the wild side, I will have to remove it. This is not only due to my preferences; I am concerned that the other bushes will cross-pollinate with it and also lose their dignity and form. One wild rose bush tends to exert its influence on others. Who of you will question me for what I do to protect my roses?
And who of us should protest against God for what He does to keep His vine strong and Heaven pure?
Pruning is needed both to help us bear fruit and to save us. It falls to us, like a faithful remnant, to recover this notion and teach it without apology or embarrassment. God knows what He is doing. He knows what makes for good disciples and perfect souls. It is hard, though, and it’s OK to ask God to be gentle with us. But in the end, may God never do anything less than is necessary to prepare heavenly glories for us.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
Francis engages in anti-American propaganda...
America, as this CNN article notes, is the most generous nation in the history of the world. This nation gives more in monetary and other aid such as good and medicine than any other.
In addition, as the article notes, "Generations of Americans have sacrificed their lives to fight and die for freedom around the world."
But for Francis, driven by an anti-Capitalist and Socialist agenda, the United States has become "blind and insensitive" toward others. See here.
This from a man who celebrated Holy Mass under the image of the Socialist psychopath Che Guevara, see here and who welcomes the sociopathic Raul Castro to the Vatican, see here.
On fire to build man's world.
Malachi Martin, in his book “The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church,” says that, “Those who..know the history of Liberation Theology..may point out that Gutierrez’s work [Father Gustavo Gutierrez, author of A Theology of Liberation] was inspired by a 1968 Conference of Latin American bishops at Medellin, near Bogota, in Colombia, where the delegates highlighted the plight of the poor, and the needy to remedy their awful conditions…
Essentially, Liberation Theology is the answer to that summons to the Church codified so many years before by Maritain – to identify itself with the revolutionary hopes of the masses. The difference, perhaps, insofar as there is one, is that while Maritain adopted a theology of history built on a misapprehension of Marxist philosophy, Liberation Theologians adopted a theology of politics built on Soviet tactics. In essence, the propagators of Liberation Theology took the current of theological thought developed in Europe and applied it to the very concrete situations in Latin America. Suddenly, theological and philosophical theory became the pragmatic proposals and actual programs for changing the face of all social and political institutions in Latin America….
Liberation Theology turned its back on the entire scope of Scholastic Theology, including what was sound in Maritain. It did not base its reasoning on papal teaching, or on the ancient theological tradition of the Church, or on the Decrees of the Church’s Ecumenical Councils. In fact, Liberation Theology refused to start where Councils and Popes had always started: with God as Supreme Being, as Creator, as Redeemer, as Founder of the Church, as the One Who had placed among men a Vicar who was called the Pope, as Ultimate Rewarder of the Good and Punisher of the Evil. Rather, Liberation Theology’s basic presumption was ‘the people,’ sometimes indeed ‘the people of God.’ ‘The people’ were the source of spiritual revelation and religious authority. What mattered in theology was how ‘the people’ fared here and now, in the social, political, and economic realities of the evolving material world. The ‘experience of the people was the womb of theology,’ was the consecrated phrase.
At one stroke, therefore, Liberation Theology unburdened prepared and restless minds from an entire panoply of ancient concepts, dogmas, and mental processes governed by the fixed rules of Thomistic reasoning, and from the directives of the authoritative voice of Rome…Liberation Theology was no theology in the Roman Catholic sense of the word. It was not primarily about God, about God’s law, about God’s redemption, about God’s promises. Liberation Theology was interested in God as revealed today through the oppressed people. In God for himself, practically speaking, no genuine Liberation Theology was interested.
The second promise of Liberation Theology was even more exciting than freedom from Rome’s theology..” (The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church, pp. 308-309).
Under the banner of “liberation,” many in the Church’s hierarchy began to enlist the Church’s resources to advance the Marxist plan of revolution. Having abandoned the Church’s supernatural mission – building the Kingdom of God, these confused clerics began to turn exclusively toward a new goal: that of building a new world centered on man, a City of Man.
Fr. Martin explains how the Jesuits succumbed to this apostasy: “Classical Jesuitism, based on the spiritual teaching of Ignatius, saw the Jesuit mission in very clear outline. There was a perpetual state of war on earth between Christ and Lucifer. Those who fought on Christ’s side, the truly choice fighters, served the Roman Pontiff diligently, were at his complete disposal, were ‘Pope’s Men.’ The ‘Kingdom’ being fought over was the Heaven of God’s glory. The enemy, the archenemy, the only enemy, was Lucifer. The weapons Jesuits used were supernatural: the Sacraments, preaching, writing, suffering. The objective was spiritual, supernatural, and otherworldly. It was simply this: that as many individuals as possible would die in a state of supernatural grace and friendship with their Savior so that they would spend eternity with God, their Creator…
The renewed Jesuit mission debased this Ignatian ideal of the Jesuits. The ‘Kingdom’ being fought over was the ‘Kingdom’ everyone fights over and always has: material well-being. The enemy was now economic, political, and social: the secular system called democratic and economic capitalism. The objective was material: to uproot poverty and injustice, which were caused by capitalism, and the betterment of the millions who suffered want and injustice from that capitalism. The weapons to be used now were those of social agitation, labor relations, sociopolitical movements, government offices…” (The Jesuits, p. 478).
In this light, we can better understand Pope Francis' speech before Congress. The Pope called on Americans to open themselves to the world and not to see things in terms of good and evil, the righteous and unrighteous. This, of course, is unscriptural. (See 2 Corinthians 6: 14, 15 and Ephesians 5: 11 for example).
As Fr. Vincent Miceli, S.J., explained in his essay on Call to Action entitled “Detroit: A Call to Revolution in the Church”: “The following are some of the demands the Church simply cannot fulfill for such is not her mission: 1. Wipe out poverty, ignorance, prejudice and war. 2. Democratize the whole world. 3. Stop the sale of arms everywhere. 4. Back the E.R.A. as a constitutional amendment. Like her Saviour, the Church will not turn stones into bread, thereby becoming the Mother of Socialism or a millennium of this world..’
"..the 'theologies of liberation', which reserve credit for restoring to a place of honor the great texts of the prophets and of the Gospel in defense of the poor, go on to a disastrous confusion between the 'poor' of the Scripture and the 'proletariat' of Marx. In this way they pervert the Christian meaning of the poor, and they transform the fight for the rights of the poor into a class fight within the ideological perspective of the class struggle. For them the 'Church of the poor' signifies the Church of the class which has become aware of the requirements of the revolutionary struggle as a step toward liberation and which celebrates this liberation in its liturgy." (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Instruction on Certain Aspects of the 'Theology of Liberation,'" No. 10).
The supernatural faith of Catholicism is being watered down for the sake of a new humanitarian religion. Dialogue is key for this new religion which has abandoned the notion that we must, "Let love be without dissimulation. Hating that which is evil, cleaving to that which is good." (Romans 12: 29).
In addition, as the article notes, "Generations of Americans have sacrificed their lives to fight and die for freedom around the world."
But for Francis, driven by an anti-Capitalist and Socialist agenda, the United States has become "blind and insensitive" toward others. See here.
This from a man who celebrated Holy Mass under the image of the Socialist psychopath Che Guevara, see here and who welcomes the sociopathic Raul Castro to the Vatican, see here.
On fire to build man's world.
Malachi Martin, in his book “The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church,” says that, “Those who..know the history of Liberation Theology..may point out that Gutierrez’s work [Father Gustavo Gutierrez, author of A Theology of Liberation] was inspired by a 1968 Conference of Latin American bishops at Medellin, near Bogota, in Colombia, where the delegates highlighted the plight of the poor, and the needy to remedy their awful conditions…
Essentially, Liberation Theology is the answer to that summons to the Church codified so many years before by Maritain – to identify itself with the revolutionary hopes of the masses. The difference, perhaps, insofar as there is one, is that while Maritain adopted a theology of history built on a misapprehension of Marxist philosophy, Liberation Theologians adopted a theology of politics built on Soviet tactics. In essence, the propagators of Liberation Theology took the current of theological thought developed in Europe and applied it to the very concrete situations in Latin America. Suddenly, theological and philosophical theory became the pragmatic proposals and actual programs for changing the face of all social and political institutions in Latin America….
Liberation Theology turned its back on the entire scope of Scholastic Theology, including what was sound in Maritain. It did not base its reasoning on papal teaching, or on the ancient theological tradition of the Church, or on the Decrees of the Church’s Ecumenical Councils. In fact, Liberation Theology refused to start where Councils and Popes had always started: with God as Supreme Being, as Creator, as Redeemer, as Founder of the Church, as the One Who had placed among men a Vicar who was called the Pope, as Ultimate Rewarder of the Good and Punisher of the Evil. Rather, Liberation Theology’s basic presumption was ‘the people,’ sometimes indeed ‘the people of God.’ ‘The people’ were the source of spiritual revelation and religious authority. What mattered in theology was how ‘the people’ fared here and now, in the social, political, and economic realities of the evolving material world. The ‘experience of the people was the womb of theology,’ was the consecrated phrase.
At one stroke, therefore, Liberation Theology unburdened prepared and restless minds from an entire panoply of ancient concepts, dogmas, and mental processes governed by the fixed rules of Thomistic reasoning, and from the directives of the authoritative voice of Rome…Liberation Theology was no theology in the Roman Catholic sense of the word. It was not primarily about God, about God’s law, about God’s redemption, about God’s promises. Liberation Theology was interested in God as revealed today through the oppressed people. In God for himself, practically speaking, no genuine Liberation Theology was interested.
The second promise of Liberation Theology was even more exciting than freedom from Rome’s theology..” (The Jesuits: The Society of Jesus and the Betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church, pp. 308-309).
Under the banner of “liberation,” many in the Church’s hierarchy began to enlist the Church’s resources to advance the Marxist plan of revolution. Having abandoned the Church’s supernatural mission – building the Kingdom of God, these confused clerics began to turn exclusively toward a new goal: that of building a new world centered on man, a City of Man.
Fr. Martin explains how the Jesuits succumbed to this apostasy: “Classical Jesuitism, based on the spiritual teaching of Ignatius, saw the Jesuit mission in very clear outline. There was a perpetual state of war on earth between Christ and Lucifer. Those who fought on Christ’s side, the truly choice fighters, served the Roman Pontiff diligently, were at his complete disposal, were ‘Pope’s Men.’ The ‘Kingdom’ being fought over was the Heaven of God’s glory. The enemy, the archenemy, the only enemy, was Lucifer. The weapons Jesuits used were supernatural: the Sacraments, preaching, writing, suffering. The objective was spiritual, supernatural, and otherworldly. It was simply this: that as many individuals as possible would die in a state of supernatural grace and friendship with their Savior so that they would spend eternity with God, their Creator…
The renewed Jesuit mission debased this Ignatian ideal of the Jesuits. The ‘Kingdom’ being fought over was the ‘Kingdom’ everyone fights over and always has: material well-being. The enemy was now economic, political, and social: the secular system called democratic and economic capitalism. The objective was material: to uproot poverty and injustice, which were caused by capitalism, and the betterment of the millions who suffered want and injustice from that capitalism. The weapons to be used now were those of social agitation, labor relations, sociopolitical movements, government offices…” (The Jesuits, p. 478).
In this light, we can better understand Pope Francis' speech before Congress. The Pope called on Americans to open themselves to the world and not to see things in terms of good and evil, the righteous and unrighteous. This, of course, is unscriptural. (See 2 Corinthians 6: 14, 15 and Ephesians 5: 11 for example).
As Fr. Vincent Miceli, S.J., explained in his essay on Call to Action entitled “Detroit: A Call to Revolution in the Church”: “The following are some of the demands the Church simply cannot fulfill for such is not her mission: 1. Wipe out poverty, ignorance, prejudice and war. 2. Democratize the whole world. 3. Stop the sale of arms everywhere. 4. Back the E.R.A. as a constitutional amendment. Like her Saviour, the Church will not turn stones into bread, thereby becoming the Mother of Socialism or a millennium of this world..’
"..the 'theologies of liberation', which reserve credit for restoring to a place of honor the great texts of the prophets and of the Gospel in defense of the poor, go on to a disastrous confusion between the 'poor' of the Scripture and the 'proletariat' of Marx. In this way they pervert the Christian meaning of the poor, and they transform the fight for the rights of the poor into a class fight within the ideological perspective of the class struggle. For them the 'Church of the poor' signifies the Church of the class which has become aware of the requirements of the revolutionary struggle as a step toward liberation and which celebrates this liberation in its liturgy." (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Instruction on Certain Aspects of the 'Theology of Liberation,'" No. 10).
The supernatural faith of Catholicism is being watered down for the sake of a new humanitarian religion. Dialogue is key for this new religion which has abandoned the notion that we must, "Let love be without dissimulation. Hating that which is evil, cleaving to that which is good." (Romans 12: 29).
Wednesday, December 07, 2016
Francis and religion-free religion...
Gloria TV reports:
“We already knew that Francis Bergoglio generally doesn’t much like the religious part of religion” – writes the journalist Hilary White on her blog. She adds: “More and more people are waking up to the self-evident fact that Bergoglio simply isn’t a Catholic, and that he wants to place himself as the head of an entirely new religion-free religion.”
Father Linus Clovis makes the point that,“Obedience is owed to the pope, but the pope owes obedience to the word and the apostolic tradition. We have to obey the pope, but the pope himself must obey the written word. He must obey the tradition. He must respond to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Obedience is owed to the pope, but it is the duty of the pope to give the character of possibility to this obedience. The pope has to facilitate our obeying him, by himself being obedient to the Word of God. Pope Felix III told us, ‘an error that is not resisted is approved. A truth that is not defended is suppressed.’ So we have an obligation to resist error, and we must do everything that we can to promote the truth.” Father Clovis made this remark in response to the crisis in the Church and the role of Pope Francis in this crisis. See here.
"The apostasy of the city of Rome from the vicar of Christ and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts very new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians of greatest repute. First Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Biegas, Suarrez, Bellarmine and Bosius that Rome shall apostatize from the Faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ and return to its ancient paganism. ...Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible; hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early Church.”- Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See, 1861, London: Burns and Lambert, pp. 88-90)
Cardinal Manning delivered a series of lectures in 1861 under the title “The Present Crises of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy” in which Manning he foresaw a future crises in the Roman Catholic Church initiated by a false ecumenism and progressivist theology that many orthodox Catholics have loathed following the Second Vatican Council. Manning believed that this progressivist current would undermine the authority of the Church and ultimately result in a departure from the true faith by the nations together with the displacement of the true pope by a false prophet, thus ushering in the Antichrist and global apostasy. Manning also believed secret societies like the Freemasons were part of this conspiracy. “The secret societies have long ago undermined and honeycombed the Christian society of Europe, and are at this moment struggling onward towards Rome, the center of all Christian order in the world,”he wrote. But when he looked at the prophecy in Revelation 18 concerning the end-time destruction of Mystery Babylon, Manning saw it was the hand of God in judgment of worldwide apostasy emanating from Rome:
"We read in the Book Apocalypse, of the city of Rome, that she said in the pride of her heart, “I sit as a queen, and am no widow, and sorrow I shall not see. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day: death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be burned with fire, because God is strong who shall judge her.” Some of the greatest writers of the Church tell us that…the great City of Seven Hills…the city of Rome will probably become apostate…and that Rome will again be punished, for he will depart from it; and the judgment of God will fall…"
Manning explained how many of Catholicism’s greatest theologians agreed with this point of view:
"The apostasy of the city of Rome…and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts so new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians, of greatest repute. First, Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Viegas, Suarez, Bellarmine, and Bosius, that Rome shall apostatize from the faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ, and return to its ancient paganism. Malvenda’s words are:
'But Rome itself in the last times of the world will return to its ancient idolatry, power, and imperial greatness. It will cast out its Pontiff, altogether apostatize from the Christian faith, terribly persecute the Church, shed the blood of martyrs more cruelly than ever, and will recover its former state of abundant wealth, or even greater than it had under its first rulers.'
Lessius says: 'In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be destroyed, as we see openly from the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse;' and again: 'The woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which hath kingdom over the kings of the earth, in which is signified Rome in its impiety, such as it was in the time of St. John, and shall be again at the end of the world.'
And Bellarmine: 'In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be desolated and burnt, as we learn from the sixteenth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Apocalypse.' On which words the Jesuit Erbermann comments as follows: 'We all confess with Bellarmine that the Roman people, a little before the end of the world, will return to paganism, and drive out the Roman Pontiff.'
Viegas, on the eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse says: 'Rome, in the last age of the world, after it has apostatized from the faith, will attain great power and splendor of wealth, and its sway will be widely spread throughout the world, and flourish greatly. Living in luxury and the abundance of all things, it will worship idols, and be steeped in all kinds of superstition, and will pay honor to false gods. And because of the vast effusion of the blood of martyrs which was shed under the emperors, God will most severely and justly avenge them, and it shall be utterly destroyed, and burned by a most terrible and afflicting conflagration.'"
It was Saint John Bosco who prophesied, "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."
Can you not see the emerging signs? How do we find the Church today? The Mystical Body of the Crucified One - the Holy Catholic Church - is climbing Calvary, carrying a heavy cross. She is experiencing the hour of abandonment and betrayal. Her body is being tormented by the scourges of sin which strike at it and by numerous sacrileges which open up deep wounds in it. A Catholic priest in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts openly calls her "evil" just as the Pharisees suggested Our Lord was evil and demon possessed (Matthew 11:18; 12: 24). And his parishioners applaud.
Indeed, Our Lady told Father Gobbi,"The hour of Calvary has arrived for the Church, called to offer herself in holocaust and to be immolated on the cross of her bloody martyrdom. The hour of Calvary has arrived for this poor humanity, which is already beginning to live the painful hours of its chastisement..' (Rome, May 1, 1994).
But too many are proud. Their eyes blinded by sin and egoism. Like the Pharisees before them, they are incapable of reading the signs of the times because their spiritual eyes are closed. They cannot hear the Spirit because their ears are closed. They cannot feel the promptings of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus because their hearts are closed. Such people cannot endure sound teaching but have itching ears and will continue to accumulate teachers who suit their own likings, teachers who will cater to their lusts by providing them with myths (2 Timothy 4: 3, 4).
And still so many of our shepherds remain silent like mute dogs. They have not begged God to end these scourges. They have not wept between the vestibule and the altar. They have not taken up the shield of faith to protect their flocks. Their judgment will be all the more severe, for God expects more from His ministers (Luke 12: 48).
“We already knew that Francis Bergoglio generally doesn’t much like the religious part of religion” – writes the journalist Hilary White on her blog. She adds: “More and more people are waking up to the self-evident fact that Bergoglio simply isn’t a Catholic, and that he wants to place himself as the head of an entirely new religion-free religion.”
Father Linus Clovis makes the point that,“Obedience is owed to the pope, but the pope owes obedience to the word and the apostolic tradition. We have to obey the pope, but the pope himself must obey the written word. He must obey the tradition. He must respond to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Obedience is owed to the pope, but it is the duty of the pope to give the character of possibility to this obedience. The pope has to facilitate our obeying him, by himself being obedient to the Word of God. Pope Felix III told us, ‘an error that is not resisted is approved. A truth that is not defended is suppressed.’ So we have an obligation to resist error, and we must do everything that we can to promote the truth.” Father Clovis made this remark in response to the crisis in the Church and the role of Pope Francis in this crisis. See here.
"The apostasy of the city of Rome from the vicar of Christ and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts very new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians of greatest repute. First Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Biegas, Suarrez, Bellarmine and Bosius that Rome shall apostatize from the Faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ and return to its ancient paganism. ...Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible; hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early Church.”- Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See, 1861, London: Burns and Lambert, pp. 88-90)
Cardinal Manning delivered a series of lectures in 1861 under the title “The Present Crises of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy” in which Manning he foresaw a future crises in the Roman Catholic Church initiated by a false ecumenism and progressivist theology that many orthodox Catholics have loathed following the Second Vatican Council. Manning believed that this progressivist current would undermine the authority of the Church and ultimately result in a departure from the true faith by the nations together with the displacement of the true pope by a false prophet, thus ushering in the Antichrist and global apostasy. Manning also believed secret societies like the Freemasons were part of this conspiracy. “The secret societies have long ago undermined and honeycombed the Christian society of Europe, and are at this moment struggling onward towards Rome, the center of all Christian order in the world,”he wrote. But when he looked at the prophecy in Revelation 18 concerning the end-time destruction of Mystery Babylon, Manning saw it was the hand of God in judgment of worldwide apostasy emanating from Rome:
"We read in the Book Apocalypse, of the city of Rome, that she said in the pride of her heart, “I sit as a queen, and am no widow, and sorrow I shall not see. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day: death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be burned with fire, because God is strong who shall judge her.” Some of the greatest writers of the Church tell us that…the great City of Seven Hills…the city of Rome will probably become apostate…and that Rome will again be punished, for he will depart from it; and the judgment of God will fall…"
Manning explained how many of Catholicism’s greatest theologians agreed with this point of view:
"The apostasy of the city of Rome…and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts so new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians, of greatest repute. First, Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Viegas, Suarez, Bellarmine, and Bosius, that Rome shall apostatize from the faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ, and return to its ancient paganism. Malvenda’s words are:
'But Rome itself in the last times of the world will return to its ancient idolatry, power, and imperial greatness. It will cast out its Pontiff, altogether apostatize from the Christian faith, terribly persecute the Church, shed the blood of martyrs more cruelly than ever, and will recover its former state of abundant wealth, or even greater than it had under its first rulers.'
Lessius says: 'In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be destroyed, as we see openly from the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse;' and again: 'The woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which hath kingdom over the kings of the earth, in which is signified Rome in its impiety, such as it was in the time of St. John, and shall be again at the end of the world.'
And Bellarmine: 'In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be desolated and burnt, as we learn from the sixteenth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Apocalypse.' On which words the Jesuit Erbermann comments as follows: 'We all confess with Bellarmine that the Roman people, a little before the end of the world, will return to paganism, and drive out the Roman Pontiff.'
Viegas, on the eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse says: 'Rome, in the last age of the world, after it has apostatized from the faith, will attain great power and splendor of wealth, and its sway will be widely spread throughout the world, and flourish greatly. Living in luxury and the abundance of all things, it will worship idols, and be steeped in all kinds of superstition, and will pay honor to false gods. And because of the vast effusion of the blood of martyrs which was shed under the emperors, God will most severely and justly avenge them, and it shall be utterly destroyed, and burned by a most terrible and afflicting conflagration.'"
It was Saint John Bosco who prophesied, "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."
Can you not see the emerging signs? How do we find the Church today? The Mystical Body of the Crucified One - the Holy Catholic Church - is climbing Calvary, carrying a heavy cross. She is experiencing the hour of abandonment and betrayal. Her body is being tormented by the scourges of sin which strike at it and by numerous sacrileges which open up deep wounds in it. A Catholic priest in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts openly calls her "evil" just as the Pharisees suggested Our Lord was evil and demon possessed (Matthew 11:18; 12: 24). And his parishioners applaud.
Indeed, Our Lady told Father Gobbi,"The hour of Calvary has arrived for the Church, called to offer herself in holocaust and to be immolated on the cross of her bloody martyrdom. The hour of Calvary has arrived for this poor humanity, which is already beginning to live the painful hours of its chastisement..' (Rome, May 1, 1994).
But too many are proud. Their eyes blinded by sin and egoism. Like the Pharisees before them, they are incapable of reading the signs of the times because their spiritual eyes are closed. They cannot hear the Spirit because their ears are closed. They cannot feel the promptings of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus because their hearts are closed. Such people cannot endure sound teaching but have itching ears and will continue to accumulate teachers who suit their own likings, teachers who will cater to their lusts by providing them with myths (2 Timothy 4: 3, 4).
And still so many of our shepherds remain silent like mute dogs. They have not begged God to end these scourges. They have not wept between the vestibule and the altar. They have not taken up the shield of faith to protect their flocks. Their judgment will be all the more severe, for God expects more from His ministers (Luke 12: 48).
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Kolvenbach was of the opinion that Jorge Bergoglio, Francis, is a sociopath...
Gloria TV reports:
"Last Saturday, Father Peter Hans Kolvenbach died in Beirut, Lebanon. He was the Superior General of the Jesuits from 1983 to 2008. Kolvenbach allegedly wrote to the Vatican recommending that Jorge Mario Bergoglio not be made archbishop of Buenos Aires because he was emotionally unstable and temperamentally unreliable. John Paul II promoted him anyway, believing that liberal Jesuits were unduly prejudiced against Bergoglio because he had been unsympathetic to Liberation Theology.
Bad Relationship: As the Argentinean provincial of the Jesuits, Bergoglio did not form as warm a relationship with the superior general, Peter Hans Kolvenbach, as he had with his predecessor, Pedro Arrupe. Kolvenbach even intervened to unseat Bergoglio and spurned him on his trip to Argentina in 1988. Bergoglio was exiled to Cordoba and his followers sent abroad."
I addressed the Kolvenbach report here. Kolvenbach was of the opinion that Bergoglio is a sociopath. See here.
One of the most revealing traits of the sociopath is that he or she doesn't care at all what others think. Ever. See here.
Profile of the sociopath here
Note this item:
Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they re not genuine, neither are their promises.
"Last Saturday, Father Peter Hans Kolvenbach died in Beirut, Lebanon. He was the Superior General of the Jesuits from 1983 to 2008. Kolvenbach allegedly wrote to the Vatican recommending that Jorge Mario Bergoglio not be made archbishop of Buenos Aires because he was emotionally unstable and temperamentally unreliable. John Paul II promoted him anyway, believing that liberal Jesuits were unduly prejudiced against Bergoglio because he had been unsympathetic to Liberation Theology.
Bad Relationship: As the Argentinean provincial of the Jesuits, Bergoglio did not form as warm a relationship with the superior general, Peter Hans Kolvenbach, as he had with his predecessor, Pedro Arrupe. Kolvenbach even intervened to unseat Bergoglio and spurned him on his trip to Argentina in 1988. Bergoglio was exiled to Cordoba and his followers sent abroad."
I addressed the Kolvenbach report here. Kolvenbach was of the opinion that Bergoglio is a sociopath. See here.
One of the most revealing traits of the sociopath is that he or she doesn't care at all what others think. Ever. See here.
Profile of the sociopath here
Note this item:
Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they re not genuine, neither are their promises.
Sunday, November 27, 2016
The Cult of Softness and its fruit: Hatred of masculinity
Over at The Wanderer, we read:
"Terry Mattingly writes a blog site called On Religion (tmatt.net). His column on October 18 is worth your time. It is titled, “Why So Many Men Think Church Is for Women.” Mattingly is not a Catholic, but he explores a phenomenon many Roman Catholics have noted in recent decades, but hesitate to discuss in public for fear of insulting the many good women active in the Church.
What phenomenon? Well, I know there are admirable exceptions that many readers of this column may point to, but isn’t it true that you don’t find many young men who play sports, work on cars, and hunt and fish, active in our parishes any longer? That is my experience, at any rate, where altar servers tend to be girls, as are members of parish youth groups. I can’t read the minds of the young men who shy away from Catholic parish life, but I think it safe to say that they now see it as…well, soft, too overtly pious, not a “guy-thing.” The priest sex scandals have increased this perception..."
Addicted to homosexuality and effeminism, the Cult of Softness has a deep and abiding hatred of real men and anything even remotely resembling masculinity. I've addressed this truth often at this Blog.
In the New Church, which will accept the Man of Sin, the Cult of Softness will be the New dogma. Already there is preparation on so very many levels.
The Latin Vulgate (see the Douay-Rheims Bible) indicates that the effeminate will not inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:10). But the New American Bible, which is used by the USCCB, omits the word effeminate:
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (Latin Vulgate):
Verse 9: "Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: Neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers:
an nescitis quia iniqui regnum Dei non possidebunt nolite errare neque fornicarii neque idolis servientes neque adulteri
Verse 10: Nor the effeminate nor liers with mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor railers nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of God.
neque molles neque masculorum concubitores neque fures neque avari neque ebriosi neque maledici neque rapaces regnum Dei possidebunt."
1Corinthians 6: 9-10 (New American Bible) posted online by the USCCB:
Verse 9: "Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor sodomites
Verse 10: nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God."
Why do you think this is so? The Latin Vulgate, which we have obtained from the great St. Jerome, is the most precise translation of the Sacred Scriptures available. There are many other problems with recent translations of the Scriptures. But my focus here is on this passage. Why has the word "effeminate" been dropped from 1 Corinthians 6?
Dr. Leon Podles writes, "Walter Ong, having been formed in a masculine, Jesuit, clerical milieu does not seem to be aware of how feminized Christianity had become even before the 1960s, but he saw a rapid shift in the Catholic Church in the 1960s toward even greater feminization...The contrasts of Christianity, grace and sin, life and death, have been toned down with a considerable loss of emotional power. Without this power, the popular appeal of the liturgy has declined (even with a more accessible language) and church attendance has plummeted...Even the change from Latin to the vernacular was also a symptom of feminization, according to Ong. Latin had been a means of maintaining a Latin culture in the Roman Catholic clergy. A language restricted to men is common; it is a sign of masculine separation from the feminine world. After it became a learned language, Latin was learned almost exclusively by men. The system of education that used Latin and centered around Latin literature was centered around contest and disputation and was confined almost entirely to men. The disappearance of Latin was part of the demasculinization of the clergy.." (The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, pp. 133-135).
So crippled by radical feminism and effeminate clergy, the Church often finds herself incapable of either giving or receiving fraternal correction. The Cotton-Candy "Church of Nice" (not the Church founded by Christ Jesus to deliver hard truths and thereby save souls), is the Church of "Who am I to judge?", the Church of empty, bland New Age homilies- Chicken Soup for the Chicken Catholic. Because I had the audacity to stand up to several women at a parish in Baldwinville, Massachusetts who were disrespecting Our Eucharistic Lord by talking loudly and laughing before the tabernacle as people attempted to prepare for Holy Mass, I was told by the priest that I am a "large man" who is scary and that I would be "ostracized." See here.
This is a favorite tactic of liberals to silence authentic men who are not sissified and who actually possess backbone.
The Cult of Softness permeates the entire Church. It is passive aggressive and desires total control of everything it comes into contact with.
But it cannot fight head on or on solid ground. That is its weakness. And it is there we must take the fight.
It was Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke who correctly noted, "I think there has been a great confusion with regard to the specific vocation of men in marriage and of men in general in the Church during the past 50 years or so. It’s due to a number of factors, but the radical feminism which has assaulted the Church and society since the 1960s has left men very marginalized.
Unfortunately, the radical feminist movement strongly influenced the Church, leading the Church to constantly address women’s issues at the expense of addressing critical issues important to men; the importance of the father, whether in the union of marriage or not; the importance of a father to children; the importance of fatherhood for priests; the critical impact of a manly character; the emphasis on the particular gifts that God gives to men for the good of the whole society.
The goodness and importance of men became very obscured, and for all practical purposes, were not emphasized at all. This is despite the fact that it was a long tradition in the Church, especially through the devotion of St. Joseph, to stress the manly character of the man who sacrifices his life for the sake of the home, who prepares with chivalry to defend his wife and his children and who works to provide the livelihood for the family. So much of this tradition of heralding the heroic nature of manhood has been lost in the Church today.
All of those virtuous characteristics of the male sex are very important for a child to observe as they grow up and mature. The healthy relationship with the father helps the child to prepare to move from the intimate love of the mother, building a discipline so that the child can avoid excessive self‑love. This ensures that the child is able to identify himself or herself properly as a person in relationship with others; this is critical for both boys and girls.
A child’s relationship with their father is key to a child’s self‑identification, which takes places when we are growing up. We need that very close and affirming relationship with the mother, but at the same time, it is the relationship with the father, which is of its nature more distant but not less loving, which disciplines our lives. It teaches a child to lead a selfless life, ready to embrace whatever sacrifices are necessary to be true to God and to one another.
I recall in the mid-1970’s, young men telling me that they were, in a certain way, frightened by marriage because of the radicalizing and self-focused attitudes of women that were emerging at that time. These young men were concerned that entering a marriage would simply not work because of a constant and insistent demanding of rights for women. These divisions between women and men have gotten worse since then.
Everyone understands that women have and can be abused by men. Men who abuse women are not true men, but false men who have violated their own manly character by being abusive to women.
The crisis between man and woman has been made much worse by a complete collapse of catechesis in the Church. Young men grew up without proper instruction with regard to their faith and to the knowledge of their vocation. Young men were not being taught that they are made in the image of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These young men were not taught to know all those virtues that are necessary in order to be a man and to fulfill the particular gifts of being male.
Making things worse, there was a very fluffy, superficial kind of catechetical approach to the question of human sexuality and the nature of the marital relationship.
At the same time, in society, there came an explosion of pornography, which is particularly corrosive for men because it terribly distorts the whole reality of human sexuality. It leads men and women to view their human sexuality apart from a relationship between a man and woman in marriage.
In truth, the gift of sexual attraction is directed toward marriage, and any kind of sexual union belongs properly only within marriage. But the whole world of pornography corrupts young people into believing that their sexual capacity is for their own entertainment and pleasure, and becomes a consuming lust, which is one of the seven capital sins.
The gift of human sexuality is turned into a means of self‑gratification often at the expense of another person, whether in heterosexual relations or in homosexual relations. A man who has not been formed with a proper identity as a man and as a father figure will ultimately become very unhappy. These poorly formed men become addicted to pornography, sexual promiscuity, alcohol, drugs, and the whole gamut of addictions..."
"Terry Mattingly writes a blog site called On Religion (tmatt.net). His column on October 18 is worth your time. It is titled, “Why So Many Men Think Church Is for Women.” Mattingly is not a Catholic, but he explores a phenomenon many Roman Catholics have noted in recent decades, but hesitate to discuss in public for fear of insulting the many good women active in the Church.
What phenomenon? Well, I know there are admirable exceptions that many readers of this column may point to, but isn’t it true that you don’t find many young men who play sports, work on cars, and hunt and fish, active in our parishes any longer? That is my experience, at any rate, where altar servers tend to be girls, as are members of parish youth groups. I can’t read the minds of the young men who shy away from Catholic parish life, but I think it safe to say that they now see it as…well, soft, too overtly pious, not a “guy-thing.” The priest sex scandals have increased this perception..."
Addicted to homosexuality and effeminism, the Cult of Softness has a deep and abiding hatred of real men and anything even remotely resembling masculinity. I've addressed this truth often at this Blog.
In the New Church, which will accept the Man of Sin, the Cult of Softness will be the New dogma. Already there is preparation on so very many levels.
The Latin Vulgate (see the Douay-Rheims Bible) indicates that the effeminate will not inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:10). But the New American Bible, which is used by the USCCB, omits the word effeminate:
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 (Latin Vulgate):
Verse 9: "Know you not that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err: Neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers:
an nescitis quia iniqui regnum Dei non possidebunt nolite errare neque fornicarii neque idolis servientes neque adulteri
Verse 10: Nor the effeminate nor liers with mankind nor thieves nor covetous nor drunkards nor railers nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of God.
neque molles neque masculorum concubitores neque fures neque avari neque ebriosi neque maledici neque rapaces regnum Dei possidebunt."
1Corinthians 6: 9-10 (New American Bible) posted online by the USCCB:
Verse 9: "Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor sodomites
Verse 10: nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God."
Why do you think this is so? The Latin Vulgate, which we have obtained from the great St. Jerome, is the most precise translation of the Sacred Scriptures available. There are many other problems with recent translations of the Scriptures. But my focus here is on this passage. Why has the word "effeminate" been dropped from 1 Corinthians 6?
Dr. Leon Podles writes, "Walter Ong, having been formed in a masculine, Jesuit, clerical milieu does not seem to be aware of how feminized Christianity had become even before the 1960s, but he saw a rapid shift in the Catholic Church in the 1960s toward even greater feminization...The contrasts of Christianity, grace and sin, life and death, have been toned down with a considerable loss of emotional power. Without this power, the popular appeal of the liturgy has declined (even with a more accessible language) and church attendance has plummeted...Even the change from Latin to the vernacular was also a symptom of feminization, according to Ong. Latin had been a means of maintaining a Latin culture in the Roman Catholic clergy. A language restricted to men is common; it is a sign of masculine separation from the feminine world. After it became a learned language, Latin was learned almost exclusively by men. The system of education that used Latin and centered around Latin literature was centered around contest and disputation and was confined almost entirely to men. The disappearance of Latin was part of the demasculinization of the clergy.." (The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity, pp. 133-135).
So crippled by radical feminism and effeminate clergy, the Church often finds herself incapable of either giving or receiving fraternal correction. The Cotton-Candy "Church of Nice" (not the Church founded by Christ Jesus to deliver hard truths and thereby save souls), is the Church of "Who am I to judge?", the Church of empty, bland New Age homilies- Chicken Soup for the Chicken Catholic. Because I had the audacity to stand up to several women at a parish in Baldwinville, Massachusetts who were disrespecting Our Eucharistic Lord by talking loudly and laughing before the tabernacle as people attempted to prepare for Holy Mass, I was told by the priest that I am a "large man" who is scary and that I would be "ostracized." See here.
This is a favorite tactic of liberals to silence authentic men who are not sissified and who actually possess backbone.
The Cult of Softness permeates the entire Church. It is passive aggressive and desires total control of everything it comes into contact with.
But it cannot fight head on or on solid ground. That is its weakness. And it is there we must take the fight.
It was Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke who correctly noted, "I think there has been a great confusion with regard to the specific vocation of men in marriage and of men in general in the Church during the past 50 years or so. It’s due to a number of factors, but the radical feminism which has assaulted the Church and society since the 1960s has left men very marginalized.
Unfortunately, the radical feminist movement strongly influenced the Church, leading the Church to constantly address women’s issues at the expense of addressing critical issues important to men; the importance of the father, whether in the union of marriage or not; the importance of a father to children; the importance of fatherhood for priests; the critical impact of a manly character; the emphasis on the particular gifts that God gives to men for the good of the whole society.
The goodness and importance of men became very obscured, and for all practical purposes, were not emphasized at all. This is despite the fact that it was a long tradition in the Church, especially through the devotion of St. Joseph, to stress the manly character of the man who sacrifices his life for the sake of the home, who prepares with chivalry to defend his wife and his children and who works to provide the livelihood for the family. So much of this tradition of heralding the heroic nature of manhood has been lost in the Church today.
All of those virtuous characteristics of the male sex are very important for a child to observe as they grow up and mature. The healthy relationship with the father helps the child to prepare to move from the intimate love of the mother, building a discipline so that the child can avoid excessive self‑love. This ensures that the child is able to identify himself or herself properly as a person in relationship with others; this is critical for both boys and girls.
A child’s relationship with their father is key to a child’s self‑identification, which takes places when we are growing up. We need that very close and affirming relationship with the mother, but at the same time, it is the relationship with the father, which is of its nature more distant but not less loving, which disciplines our lives. It teaches a child to lead a selfless life, ready to embrace whatever sacrifices are necessary to be true to God and to one another.
I recall in the mid-1970’s, young men telling me that they were, in a certain way, frightened by marriage because of the radicalizing and self-focused attitudes of women that were emerging at that time. These young men were concerned that entering a marriage would simply not work because of a constant and insistent demanding of rights for women. These divisions between women and men have gotten worse since then.
Everyone understands that women have and can be abused by men. Men who abuse women are not true men, but false men who have violated their own manly character by being abusive to women.
The crisis between man and woman has been made much worse by a complete collapse of catechesis in the Church. Young men grew up without proper instruction with regard to their faith and to the knowledge of their vocation. Young men were not being taught that they are made in the image of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These young men were not taught to know all those virtues that are necessary in order to be a man and to fulfill the particular gifts of being male.
Making things worse, there was a very fluffy, superficial kind of catechetical approach to the question of human sexuality and the nature of the marital relationship.
At the same time, in society, there came an explosion of pornography, which is particularly corrosive for men because it terribly distorts the whole reality of human sexuality. It leads men and women to view their human sexuality apart from a relationship between a man and woman in marriage.
In truth, the gift of sexual attraction is directed toward marriage, and any kind of sexual union belongs properly only within marriage. But the whole world of pornography corrupts young people into believing that their sexual capacity is for their own entertainment and pleasure, and becomes a consuming lust, which is one of the seven capital sins.
The gift of human sexuality is turned into a means of self‑gratification often at the expense of another person, whether in heterosexual relations or in homosexual relations. A man who has not been formed with a proper identity as a man and as a father figure will ultimately become very unhappy. These poorly formed men become addicted to pornography, sexual promiscuity, alcohol, drugs, and the whole gamut of addictions..."
Friday, November 25, 2016
The False Prophet advances an intellectual swindle to prepare men for the demon...
Life Site News reports:
"Pope Francis has praised the 1960s German moral theologian Bernard Häring, one of the most prominent dissenters from Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, for his new morality which the pope said helped 'moral theology to flourish.'
'I think Bernard Häring was the first to start looking for a new way to help moral theology to flourish again,' he said in comments, published today by La Civiltà Cattolica, that were given during a dialogue with the Jesuit order which was gathered for its 36th general Congregation on October 24, 2016 in Rome.
Pope Francis gave his comments while answering a question about a morality he has often spoken about based on 'discernment.'
'Discernment is the key element: the capacity for discernment. I note the absence of discernment in the formation of priests. We run the risk of getting used to 'white or black,' to that which is legal. We are rather closed, in general, to discernment. One thing is clear: today, in a certain number of seminaries, a rigidity that is far from a discernment of situations has been introduced. And that is dangerous, because it can lead us to a conception of morality that has a casuistic sense,' he said."
In his book "Apologetics: A Philosophic Defense and Explanation of the Catholic Religion," Monsignor Paul J. Glenn, Ph.D, S.T.D., writes, "Let Catholic apologists..not surrender the cause of Christ...by a milk-and-water philosophy of tolerance. Tolerance is for external conduct; it is not for the mind; the mind cannot tolerate error for an instant." (p. 278). And this because error and truth are not "equally good." In other words, we must always strive to tolerate people [including those who disagree with us; and our worst enemies], but we cannot tolerate error. Differing opinions are not equally valid.
And in his important work "The New Tower of Babel," Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand explains that, "Although the dethronement of truth manifests itself in the most drastic and radical way in Nazism and Bolshevism, unfortunately many symptoms of this spiritual disease are also to be found in democratic countries. For example, in discussions we sometimes hear the following argument: 'Why should your opinion be more valid than mine? We are equal and have the same rights. It is undemocratic to pretend that your opinion is preferable.' This attitude is extremely significant because it reveals the complete absence of the notion of truth, the tacit elimination of truth as the determining norm for the value of an opinion....The immanent theme of every opinion is truth; the only thing that matters here is whether or not it is in conformity with reality..This brings us to another slogan disclosing the dethronement of truth. It is the often repeated statement 'It is true for me, but it may not be true for you.' The truth of a proposition is essentially objective; a truth which as such would be valid for one person only is a contradiction in terms. A proposition is true or false, but it can never be true for one person and false for another. The statement that a certain action is morally good may be true or false; but if it is true, it can never be false for any other person.." (pp. 56-58).
Some might be tempted to believe that the rejection of error and falsehood [ and here, again, we are speaking of ideas not persons] is something "negative" and even cult-like. But such is simply not the case. Again, Dr. Hildebrand explains: "Perhaps never before has there been as much intellectual fraud as there is today. In the mass media - and even in discussions on university campuses - this intellectual fraud appears chiefly as the manipulation of slogans designed to bluff the hearer or reader, and prevent him from thinking clearly. For a typical example, let us consider how the terms positive and negative are now most often used to discredit the refutation of pernicious errors and to give credit to the most shallow speculations. The intellectual swindlers who play such an important role in public discussions will often denominate as 'positive' propositions and attitudes they favor. They thereby seek to forestall questions of truth and value by enveloping their prejudices in a vague suggestion of 'creativity,' 'originality,' 'openness,' 'unaggressiveness.' This is the device of the cuttlefish. The moment one tries to grasp it, it emits a murky substance to confuse and deceive.
In reality, the popular slogan usages of positive and negative is a distortion of the genuine meanings of the terms. In proper usage they can refer to existence and nonexistence or to value and disvalue. They can refer to desirability and undesirability, or to answers to questions and demands, or to results of tests and inquiries. But when these terms are applied to attitudes of mind or to theses - by way of suggesting an evaluation - an intellectual fraud is committed; for they are then being used to evoke vague associations that distract from the question that alone matters - namely: Is this attitude objectively called for? Or: Is this thesis true?...It is the nature of truth to exclude every contradiction of itself. Thus, the rejection of errors and falsehoods can never be separated from the affirmation of truth. The one implies the other...
To give the impression that affirmations are 'positive' and denials 'negative' is to misrepresent completely the nature of judgments and propositions. This abuse of the language transforms the terms positive and negative into deceptive slogans and thus amounts to an intellectual swindle..." (The Charitable Anathema, pp. 45-47).
This is the intellectual swindle of the Masonic False Prophet in Rome, who accuses faithful Catholics of "rigidity" and of seeing only "black and white" rather than right and wrong; this to prepare men to worship the man-god (John 5:43).
Background on Bernard Haring here.
"Pope Francis has praised the 1960s German moral theologian Bernard Häring, one of the most prominent dissenters from Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, for his new morality which the pope said helped 'moral theology to flourish.'
'I think Bernard Häring was the first to start looking for a new way to help moral theology to flourish again,' he said in comments, published today by La Civiltà Cattolica, that were given during a dialogue with the Jesuit order which was gathered for its 36th general Congregation on October 24, 2016 in Rome.
Pope Francis gave his comments while answering a question about a morality he has often spoken about based on 'discernment.'
'Discernment is the key element: the capacity for discernment. I note the absence of discernment in the formation of priests. We run the risk of getting used to 'white or black,' to that which is legal. We are rather closed, in general, to discernment. One thing is clear: today, in a certain number of seminaries, a rigidity that is far from a discernment of situations has been introduced. And that is dangerous, because it can lead us to a conception of morality that has a casuistic sense,' he said."
In his book "Apologetics: A Philosophic Defense and Explanation of the Catholic Religion," Monsignor Paul J. Glenn, Ph.D, S.T.D., writes, "Let Catholic apologists..not surrender the cause of Christ...by a milk-and-water philosophy of tolerance. Tolerance is for external conduct; it is not for the mind; the mind cannot tolerate error for an instant." (p. 278). And this because error and truth are not "equally good." In other words, we must always strive to tolerate people [including those who disagree with us; and our worst enemies], but we cannot tolerate error. Differing opinions are not equally valid.
And in his important work "The New Tower of Babel," Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand explains that, "Although the dethronement of truth manifests itself in the most drastic and radical way in Nazism and Bolshevism, unfortunately many symptoms of this spiritual disease are also to be found in democratic countries. For example, in discussions we sometimes hear the following argument: 'Why should your opinion be more valid than mine? We are equal and have the same rights. It is undemocratic to pretend that your opinion is preferable.' This attitude is extremely significant because it reveals the complete absence of the notion of truth, the tacit elimination of truth as the determining norm for the value of an opinion....The immanent theme of every opinion is truth; the only thing that matters here is whether or not it is in conformity with reality..This brings us to another slogan disclosing the dethronement of truth. It is the often repeated statement 'It is true for me, but it may not be true for you.' The truth of a proposition is essentially objective; a truth which as such would be valid for one person only is a contradiction in terms. A proposition is true or false, but it can never be true for one person and false for another. The statement that a certain action is morally good may be true or false; but if it is true, it can never be false for any other person.." (pp. 56-58).
Some might be tempted to believe that the rejection of error and falsehood [ and here, again, we are speaking of ideas not persons] is something "negative" and even cult-like. But such is simply not the case. Again, Dr. Hildebrand explains: "Perhaps never before has there been as much intellectual fraud as there is today. In the mass media - and even in discussions on university campuses - this intellectual fraud appears chiefly as the manipulation of slogans designed to bluff the hearer or reader, and prevent him from thinking clearly. For a typical example, let us consider how the terms positive and negative are now most often used to discredit the refutation of pernicious errors and to give credit to the most shallow speculations. The intellectual swindlers who play such an important role in public discussions will often denominate as 'positive' propositions and attitudes they favor. They thereby seek to forestall questions of truth and value by enveloping their prejudices in a vague suggestion of 'creativity,' 'originality,' 'openness,' 'unaggressiveness.' This is the device of the cuttlefish. The moment one tries to grasp it, it emits a murky substance to confuse and deceive.
In reality, the popular slogan usages of positive and negative is a distortion of the genuine meanings of the terms. In proper usage they can refer to existence and nonexistence or to value and disvalue. They can refer to desirability and undesirability, or to answers to questions and demands, or to results of tests and inquiries. But when these terms are applied to attitudes of mind or to theses - by way of suggesting an evaluation - an intellectual fraud is committed; for they are then being used to evoke vague associations that distract from the question that alone matters - namely: Is this attitude objectively called for? Or: Is this thesis true?...It is the nature of truth to exclude every contradiction of itself. Thus, the rejection of errors and falsehoods can never be separated from the affirmation of truth. The one implies the other...
To give the impression that affirmations are 'positive' and denials 'negative' is to misrepresent completely the nature of judgments and propositions. This abuse of the language transforms the terms positive and negative into deceptive slogans and thus amounts to an intellectual swindle..." (The Charitable Anathema, pp. 45-47).
This is the intellectual swindle of the Masonic False Prophet in Rome, who accuses faithful Catholics of "rigidity" and of seeing only "black and white" rather than right and wrong; this to prepare men to worship the man-god (John 5:43).
Background on Bernard Haring here.
Monday, November 21, 2016
Francis extends power of priests to absolve abortion
CNN is reporting:
"Pope Francis has extended the powers of Catholic priests to forgive abortions, making the announcement in an apostolic letter released Monday.
It continues a special dispensation granted last year for the duration of the Year of Mercy, which finished Sunday.
'I wish to restate as firmly as I can that abortion is a grave sin, since it puts an end to an innocent life. In the same way, however, I can and must state that there is no sin that God's mercy cannot reach and wipe away when it finds a repentant heart seeking to be reconciled with the Father,' the letter states."
From EWTN: Abortion and excommunication
"Pope Francis has extended the powers of Catholic priests to forgive abortions, making the announcement in an apostolic letter released Monday.
It continues a special dispensation granted last year for the duration of the Year of Mercy, which finished Sunday.
'I wish to restate as firmly as I can that abortion is a grave sin, since it puts an end to an innocent life. In the same way, however, I can and must state that there is no sin that God's mercy cannot reach and wipe away when it finds a repentant heart seeking to be reconciled with the Father,' the letter states."
From EWTN: Abortion and excommunication
Friday, November 18, 2016
Francis, the lover of dialogue...but not really
Vox Cantoris reports:
"In an interview with Raymond Arroyo on EWTN's The World Over, Edward Pentin stated that his sources have confirmed with him that 'Pope Francis not happy at all,' with the letter of the four Cardinals on the matter of heretical clauses and sacrilegious actions in Amoris Laetitia. Pentin continued that he, the Pope, is 'boiling with rage.' He had been 'given two months,' to respond to the four, and has refused."
Boiling with rage. Because his Brothers in the Episcopate have initiated a dialogue which he finds to be inconvenient.
This is the same man who said:
“Dialogue is born from an attitude of respect for the other person, from a conviction that the other person has something good to say. It assumes that there is room in the heart for the person’s point of view, opinion, and proposal. To dialogue entails a cordial reception, not a prior condemnation. In order to dialogue, it is necessary to know how to lower the defenses, open the doors of the house, and offer human warmth.” On Heaven and Earth,
Sudamericana, 2011
Human warmth. Not boiling rage. But then, this is the same Pharisee who exhorts us to practice patience with others even as he throws screaming fits.
This is the same Francis who said, “The question of humility. It pleases me also to use the word ‘meekness,’ which does not mean weakness. A religious leader can be very strong, very firm without exercising aggression. Jesus says that the one who leads must be one who serves. For me, this idea is valid for the religious person of whatever religious confession. Service confers the real
power of religious leadership.” - On Heaven and Earth, Sudamericana, 2011
The words of Jesus, as always, thunder through the ages: "Do as they [the Pharisees] say, not as they do."
"In an interview with Raymond Arroyo on EWTN's The World Over, Edward Pentin stated that his sources have confirmed with him that 'Pope Francis not happy at all,' with the letter of the four Cardinals on the matter of heretical clauses and sacrilegious actions in Amoris Laetitia. Pentin continued that he, the Pope, is 'boiling with rage.' He had been 'given two months,' to respond to the four, and has refused."
Boiling with rage. Because his Brothers in the Episcopate have initiated a dialogue which he finds to be inconvenient.
This is the same man who said:
“Dialogue is born from an attitude of respect for the other person, from a conviction that the other person has something good to say. It assumes that there is room in the heart for the person’s point of view, opinion, and proposal. To dialogue entails a cordial reception, not a prior condemnation. In order to dialogue, it is necessary to know how to lower the defenses, open the doors of the house, and offer human warmth.” On Heaven and Earth,
Sudamericana, 2011
Human warmth. Not boiling rage. But then, this is the same Pharisee who exhorts us to practice patience with others even as he throws screaming fits.
This is the same Francis who said, “The question of humility. It pleases me also to use the word ‘meekness,’ which does not mean weakness. A religious leader can be very strong, very firm without exercising aggression. Jesus says that the one who leads must be one who serves. For me, this idea is valid for the religious person of whatever religious confession. Service confers the real
power of religious leadership.” - On Heaven and Earth, Sudamericana, 2011
The words of Jesus, as always, thunder through the ages: "Do as they [the Pharisees] say, not as they do."
Sunday, November 13, 2016
Father Peter Naranjo: I didn't vote for either candidate, cannot see any difference between the two, and question whether or not Trump is President-Elect
At Women of Grace, we read:
Lifesitenews.com is reporting on a homily given by Father George Rutler, pastor of the Church of St. Michael in New York City in which he refers back to a column he wrote eight years ago. The column was based on a book by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson entitled, The Lord of the World, which was a dystopian novel about the anti-Christ who imposed a new world religion with man as god. His only foe was Christianity, which he thwarted by using “compromised Catholics and compliant priests to persuade timid Catholics.” Benson’s book has been cited by several popes, such as Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis who said he read it several times.
“Since then, that program has been realized in our time, to an extent beyond the warnings of the most dire pessimists,” Father Rutler explains.
“Our federal government has intimidated religious orders and churches, challenging religious freedom. The institution of the family has been re-defined, and sexual identity has been Gnosticized to the point of mocking biology. Assisted suicide is spreading, abortions since 1973 have reached a total equal to the population of Italy, and sexually transmitted diseases are at a record high. Objective journalism has died, justice has been corrupted, racial bitterness ruins cities, entertainment is degraded, knowledge of the liberal arts spirals downwards, and authentically Catholic universities have all but vanished. A weak and confused foreign policy has encouraged aggressor nations and terrorism, while metastasized immigration is destroying remnant western cultures, and genocide is slaughtering Christian populations. The cynical promise of economic prosperity is mocked by the lowest rate of labor participation in forty years, an unprecedented number of people on food stamps and welfare assistance, and the largest disparity in wealth in over a century.”
The picture is indeed grim as we stand now upon yet another precipice – an election offering a choice between two of the most flawed candidates in American history – which has left many Catholics despairing over how to vote.
Father Rutler feels their pain – but not their confusion.
“It is incorrect to say that the coming election poses a choice between two evils. For ethical and aesthetic reasons, there may be some bad in certain candidates, but badness consists in doing bad things. Evil is different: it is the deliberate destruction of truth, virtue and holiness.
“While one may pragmatically vote for a flawed candidate, one may not vote for anyone who advocates and enables unmitigatedly evil acts, and that includes abortion. “In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it’” (Evangelium Vitae, 73).
He goes on to remind that at one party’s convention, the name of God was excluded from its platform and a woman who boasted of having aborted her child was applauded.
“It is a grave sin, requiring sacramental confession and penance, to become an accomplice in objective evil by voting for anyone who encourages it, for that imperils the nation and destroys the soul,” Fr. Rutler says.
He goes on to direct his guidance to the clergy whom he encourages to speak the truth, regardless of how unfashionable it might be, and not to shrink from explaining the Church’s censures.
“Wolves in sheep’s clothing are dangerous, but worse are wolves in shepherd’s clothing. While the evils foreseen eight years ago were realized, worse would come if those affronts to human dignity were endorsed again.”
He then issues a dire warning: “In the most adverse prospect, God forbid, there might not be another free election, and soon Catholics would arrive at shuttered churches and vacant altars. The illusion of indifference cannot long be perpetuated by lame jokes and synthetic laughter at banquets, for there is handwriting on the wall.”
This homily was given prior to the election. This morning, during Holy Mass at Saint Mary's Church in Orange, Massachusetts, Father Peter Naranjo, a liberal ideologue and partisan fanatic, asserted that, as as priest, he didn't feel he could vote for either candidate.
Father Naranjo then implied that it's a question as to whether or not Donald Trump is President-Elect because He won the Electoral-College and not the popular vote. This even though Hillary Clinton has conceded defeat twice - in a call to Trump on the eve of the election and again on Wednesday in a speech.
Father Naranjo finished his asinine "homily" by suggesting that there is much violence because of the election results and asserting that he doesn't feel Trump will make it to the Inauguration and will be assasinated.
Aside from his irresponsible and partisan-fueled commentary, Father Naranjo's words highlight the fact that even within the Church, there are secret enemies of Christ who have no desire to see certain societal evils such as abortion and Same-Sex "marriage" defeated. Nor do they care for the religious freedoms which the Democratic Party has been assaulting for years.
If Father Naranjo were really committed to Catholic moral teaching and religious freedom, he would have voted for Trump.
The fact that he doesn't see any difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump speaks volumes about his character.
And none of its good!
Lifesitenews.com is reporting on a homily given by Father George Rutler, pastor of the Church of St. Michael in New York City in which he refers back to a column he wrote eight years ago. The column was based on a book by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson entitled, The Lord of the World, which was a dystopian novel about the anti-Christ who imposed a new world religion with man as god. His only foe was Christianity, which he thwarted by using “compromised Catholics and compliant priests to persuade timid Catholics.” Benson’s book has been cited by several popes, such as Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis who said he read it several times.
“Since then, that program has been realized in our time, to an extent beyond the warnings of the most dire pessimists,” Father Rutler explains.
“Our federal government has intimidated religious orders and churches, challenging religious freedom. The institution of the family has been re-defined, and sexual identity has been Gnosticized to the point of mocking biology. Assisted suicide is spreading, abortions since 1973 have reached a total equal to the population of Italy, and sexually transmitted diseases are at a record high. Objective journalism has died, justice has been corrupted, racial bitterness ruins cities, entertainment is degraded, knowledge of the liberal arts spirals downwards, and authentically Catholic universities have all but vanished. A weak and confused foreign policy has encouraged aggressor nations and terrorism, while metastasized immigration is destroying remnant western cultures, and genocide is slaughtering Christian populations. The cynical promise of economic prosperity is mocked by the lowest rate of labor participation in forty years, an unprecedented number of people on food stamps and welfare assistance, and the largest disparity in wealth in over a century.”
The picture is indeed grim as we stand now upon yet another precipice – an election offering a choice between two of the most flawed candidates in American history – which has left many Catholics despairing over how to vote.
Father Rutler feels their pain – but not their confusion.
“It is incorrect to say that the coming election poses a choice between two evils. For ethical and aesthetic reasons, there may be some bad in certain candidates, but badness consists in doing bad things. Evil is different: it is the deliberate destruction of truth, virtue and holiness.
“While one may pragmatically vote for a flawed candidate, one may not vote for anyone who advocates and enables unmitigatedly evil acts, and that includes abortion. “In the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to ‘take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it’” (Evangelium Vitae, 73).
He goes on to remind that at one party’s convention, the name of God was excluded from its platform and a woman who boasted of having aborted her child was applauded.
“It is a grave sin, requiring sacramental confession and penance, to become an accomplice in objective evil by voting for anyone who encourages it, for that imperils the nation and destroys the soul,” Fr. Rutler says.
He goes on to direct his guidance to the clergy whom he encourages to speak the truth, regardless of how unfashionable it might be, and not to shrink from explaining the Church’s censures.
“Wolves in sheep’s clothing are dangerous, but worse are wolves in shepherd’s clothing. While the evils foreseen eight years ago were realized, worse would come if those affronts to human dignity were endorsed again.”
He then issues a dire warning: “In the most adverse prospect, God forbid, there might not be another free election, and soon Catholics would arrive at shuttered churches and vacant altars. The illusion of indifference cannot long be perpetuated by lame jokes and synthetic laughter at banquets, for there is handwriting on the wall.”
This homily was given prior to the election. This morning, during Holy Mass at Saint Mary's Church in Orange, Massachusetts, Father Peter Naranjo, a liberal ideologue and partisan fanatic, asserted that, as as priest, he didn't feel he could vote for either candidate.
Father Naranjo then implied that it's a question as to whether or not Donald Trump is President-Elect because He won the Electoral-College and not the popular vote. This even though Hillary Clinton has conceded defeat twice - in a call to Trump on the eve of the election and again on Wednesday in a speech.
Father Naranjo finished his asinine "homily" by suggesting that there is much violence because of the election results and asserting that he doesn't feel Trump will make it to the Inauguration and will be assasinated.
Aside from his irresponsible and partisan-fueled commentary, Father Naranjo's words highlight the fact that even within the Church, there are secret enemies of Christ who have no desire to see certain societal evils such as abortion and Same-Sex "marriage" defeated. Nor do they care for the religious freedoms which the Democratic Party has been assaulting for years.
If Father Naranjo were really committed to Catholic moral teaching and religious freedom, he would have voted for Trump.
The fact that he doesn't see any difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump speaks volumes about his character.
And none of its good!
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Francis' notion of what constitutes charity has been thoroughly refuted...
Francis is at it again, building walls and creating chaos within the Church. This time he's saying: “…This rigidity [the solid Catholic Faith of young traditional Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass] always hides something, insecurity or even something else. Rigidity is defensive. True love is not rigid.”
Wrong. This liberal notion charity has already been thoroughly refuted.
In his classic work Liberalism is a Sin," Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany writes:
"Charity is a supernatural virtue which induces us to love God above all things and our neighbors as ourselves for the love of God. Thus after God, we ought to love our neighbor as ourselves, and this not in any way, but for the love of God and in obedience to His law. And now what is to love? Amare est velle bonum, replies the philosopher: "To love is to wish good to him whom we love." To whom does charity command us to wish good? To our neighbor, that is to say, not to this or that man only but to everyone. What is that good which true love wishes? First of all supernatural good; then goods of the natural order, which are not incompatible with it. All this is included in the phrase "for the love of God."
It follows, therefore, that we can love our neighbor, when displeasing him, when opposing him, when causing him some material injury and even, on certain occasions, when depriving him of life. All is reduced to this in short: Whether in the instance where we displease, oppose or humiliate him, it is or is not for his own good, or for the good of someone whose rights are superior to his, or simply for the greater service of God.
If it is shown, that in displeasing or offending our neighbor, we act for his good, it is evident that we love him even when opposing or crossing him. The physician cauterizing his patient or cutting off his gangrened limb may none the less love him. When we correct the wicked by restraining or by punishing them none the less do we love them. This is charity and perfect charity. It is often necessary to displease or offend one person, not for his own good, but to deliver another from the evil he is inflicting. It is then an obligation of charity to repel the unjust violence of the aggressor; one may inflict as much injury on the aggressor as is necessary for the defense. Such would be the case should one see a highwayman attacking a traveler. In this instance, to kill, wound, or at least take such measures as to render the aggressor impotent, would be an act of true charity.
The good of all good is the divine good, just as God is for all men the neighbor of all neighbors. In consequence the love due to a man inasmuch as he is our neighbor ought always to be subordinated to that which is due to our common Lord. For His love and in His service we must not hesitate to offend men. The degree of our offense towards men can only be measured by the degree of our obligation to him. Charity is primarily the love of God, secondarily the love of our neighbor for God's sake. To sacrifice the first is to abandon the latter. Therefore to offend our neighbor for the love of God is a true act of charity. Not to offend our neighbor for the love of God is a sin.
Modern Liberalism reverses this order. It imposes a false notion of charity; our neighbor first, and, if at all, God afterwards."
This is why he puts the creature before the Creator. This is why he condemns traditional Catholics as "rigid" and "sick," even while showing great respect for active sodomites who demand a change in Church teaching, such as Simon Cazal. See here.
If anyone is sick, it's Francis. See Romans 1: 25.
Wrong. This liberal notion charity has already been thoroughly refuted.
In his classic work Liberalism is a Sin," Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany writes:
"Charity is a supernatural virtue which induces us to love God above all things and our neighbors as ourselves for the love of God. Thus after God, we ought to love our neighbor as ourselves, and this not in any way, but for the love of God and in obedience to His law. And now what is to love? Amare est velle bonum, replies the philosopher: "To love is to wish good to him whom we love." To whom does charity command us to wish good? To our neighbor, that is to say, not to this or that man only but to everyone. What is that good which true love wishes? First of all supernatural good; then goods of the natural order, which are not incompatible with it. All this is included in the phrase "for the love of God."
It follows, therefore, that we can love our neighbor, when displeasing him, when opposing him, when causing him some material injury and even, on certain occasions, when depriving him of life. All is reduced to this in short: Whether in the instance where we displease, oppose or humiliate him, it is or is not for his own good, or for the good of someone whose rights are superior to his, or simply for the greater service of God.
If it is shown, that in displeasing or offending our neighbor, we act for his good, it is evident that we love him even when opposing or crossing him. The physician cauterizing his patient or cutting off his gangrened limb may none the less love him. When we correct the wicked by restraining or by punishing them none the less do we love them. This is charity and perfect charity. It is often necessary to displease or offend one person, not for his own good, but to deliver another from the evil he is inflicting. It is then an obligation of charity to repel the unjust violence of the aggressor; one may inflict as much injury on the aggressor as is necessary for the defense. Such would be the case should one see a highwayman attacking a traveler. In this instance, to kill, wound, or at least take such measures as to render the aggressor impotent, would be an act of true charity.
The good of all good is the divine good, just as God is for all men the neighbor of all neighbors. In consequence the love due to a man inasmuch as he is our neighbor ought always to be subordinated to that which is due to our common Lord. For His love and in His service we must not hesitate to offend men. The degree of our offense towards men can only be measured by the degree of our obligation to him. Charity is primarily the love of God, secondarily the love of our neighbor for God's sake. To sacrifice the first is to abandon the latter. Therefore to offend our neighbor for the love of God is a true act of charity. Not to offend our neighbor for the love of God is a sin.
Modern Liberalism reverses this order. It imposes a false notion of charity; our neighbor first, and, if at all, God afterwards."
This is why he puts the creature before the Creator. This is why he condemns traditional Catholics as "rigid" and "sick," even while showing great respect for active sodomites who demand a change in Church teaching, such as Simon Cazal. See here.
If anyone is sick, it's Francis. See Romans 1: 25.
Wednesday, November 09, 2016
Now that Trump is President-Elect, Francis wants us to practice "fraternal cooperation"
Time is reporting:
Pope Francis has called for “dialogue, mutual acceptance and fraternal cooperation” the morning after Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. Presidency.
Taking to Twitter on Wednesday for one of his near daily messages to the faithful, the Pontiff implored for the world to share more of god’s “merciful love”:
Pope Francis has called for “dialogue, mutual acceptance and fraternal cooperation” the morning after Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. Presidency.
Taking to Twitter on Wednesday for one of his near daily messages to the faithful, the Pontiff implored for the world to share more of god’s “merciful love”:
Dialogue, mutual acceptance and fraternal cooperation?
What would Francis know of these things? While referring to Trump as being "Non-Christiano," Francis practically campaigned for Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. See here.
Francis has not been a bridge builder or a champion of dialogue. He has created an atmosphere of division and discord within the Church. Francis is an ideologue who sows chaos and hostility. He wouldn't recognize fraternal cooperation if it were stapled to his forehead.
Trump wins! Praise God
Trump wins!
Blessed are you, Lord God:
Blessed are you for ever.
Holy is your name:
Blessed are you for ever.
Great is your mercy for your people:
Blessed are you for ever.
Amen!
Monday, November 07, 2016
Saint Mary's Parish in Orange, Massachusetts: Resorting to violence to resolve conflicts is never the Christian way
In their zeal to promote the Cult of Softness and effeminacy in general, many within the Church advance a distorted notion of Christianity in which anger and violence are always and everywhere an "evil."
For example, at Saint Mary's Parish in Orange, Massachusetts, we read the following in the parish bulletin:
"As we celebrate Veterans Day this week, what should be the Christian attitude in resorting to violence to resolve conflicts? Veterans are rightly honored for their role in defending the country, especially in time of conflict and violence. Yet, resorting to violence as a means of trying to resolve human conflicts is not the Christian way to deal with relationships. Jesus models the image of God in which all are valued and cherished as God's children, no matter who they are or which side they are on..."
Resorting to violence to resolve conflicts is never the Christian way? Really? While Jesus indicated that those who live by the sword will perish by it (Matthew 26:52), He also told His Disciples, as He gave them instructions for the Time of Crisis, "When I sent you forth without a money bag or a sack or sandals, were you in need of anything?" "No, nothing," they replied. He said to them, "But now one who has a money bag should take it, and likewise a sack, and one who does not have a sword should sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in me, namely, ‘He was counted among the wicked’; and indeed what is written about me is coming to fulfillment." Then they said, "Lord, look, there are two swords here.” But he replied, “It is enough!" (Luke 22: 35-38).
One who does not have a sword should buy one. Why? If resorting to violence always falls short of the Christian ideal, why then did Jesus exhort His followers to buy a sword.
The Sacred Scriptures show otherwise. In the wonderful Catholic classic entitled "My Meditation on the Gospel," published by the Confraternity of the Precious Blood, Rev. James E. Sullivan provides us with the following meditation on Christian Fortitude:
"After a few days' stay at Capharnaum, Jesus and Mary and the first five Apostles made the journey to Jerusalem for the Passover. When they entered the Temple, they heard its usual peace broken by a great uproar. Men were shouting and bargaining, oxen and sheep were bleating. Jesus stiffened, His Father's house made into a market place! A fierce, set look came over His features. His hands seized some cords and tied them into a whip. His eyes never left the scene before Him. He walked forward then, arms outstretched. 'Take these things away!' He cried out. His voice was strong, yet trembling with anger. An uneasy fear came over the crowd, as His eyes burned into theirs. They hurried away their oxen and sheep, those in back urging on those in front. The money-changers alone held their ground. Jesus seized the end of their tables and sent them flying end over end. They became panic-stricken then. They grasped what coins they could and ran. Jesus stood alone in the courtyard. Peace settled again over the Temple.
My Lord, how I admire You in ths scene! We are so liable to think that being a Christian means being a weakling and a 'mouse'! How wonderful to see that distorted notion so firmly dispelled by the example of Your magnificent courage! Your Father's house was being desecrated; there was reason for the fighting - so You fought! You didn't care what they thought or what they would say. His glory was primary! Nor did it matter to You that You were alone against them all. Your courage was so great and Your cause so just that the entire crowd fled before You."
Does the cleansing of the Temple represent a failure to live the Christian ideal? Of course not.
One shepherd [and he is that in every sense of the word] who possesses such
a mature faith is The Most Rev. Fabian Bruskewitz, Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska.
His Excellency has been quoted as having said, "No words that are printable, or
even conceivable, are adequate to express my outrage, fury, and depression upon
learning that anyone, much less a priest, would sexually molest any children.
Such a thing is an unspeakable abomination. Upon hearing such things, I must
confess that I am tempted to look for my shotgun and baseball bat, much sooner
that I am tempted to give any consideration to a possible 'sickness' in a
perpetrator. Molestation victims and their families are certainly entitled to
anger. Sometimes their excessive anger and demands, while often becoming
unacceptable and unreasonable, are still understandable to me."
One last thought. The "pastoral team" over at Saint Mary's Parish says that "veterans are rightly honored for their role in defending the country," and yet, I have been treated with nothing less than contempt even though I am a veteran who served this country during wartime. I have been ostracized at Saint Mary's.
We must give more than lip service to honoring veterans. We must put our words into action.
For example, at Saint Mary's Parish in Orange, Massachusetts, we read the following in the parish bulletin:
"As we celebrate Veterans Day this week, what should be the Christian attitude in resorting to violence to resolve conflicts? Veterans are rightly honored for their role in defending the country, especially in time of conflict and violence. Yet, resorting to violence as a means of trying to resolve human conflicts is not the Christian way to deal with relationships. Jesus models the image of God in which all are valued and cherished as God's children, no matter who they are or which side they are on..."
Resorting to violence to resolve conflicts is never the Christian way? Really? While Jesus indicated that those who live by the sword will perish by it (Matthew 26:52), He also told His Disciples, as He gave them instructions for the Time of Crisis, "When I sent you forth without a money bag or a sack or sandals, were you in need of anything?" "No, nothing," they replied. He said to them, "But now one who has a money bag should take it, and likewise a sack, and one who does not have a sword should sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in me, namely, ‘He was counted among the wicked’; and indeed what is written about me is coming to fulfillment." Then they said, "Lord, look, there are two swords here.” But he replied, “It is enough!" (Luke 22: 35-38).
One who does not have a sword should buy one. Why? If resorting to violence always falls short of the Christian ideal, why then did Jesus exhort His followers to buy a sword.
The Sacred Scriptures show otherwise. In the wonderful Catholic classic entitled "My Meditation on the Gospel," published by the Confraternity of the Precious Blood, Rev. James E. Sullivan provides us with the following meditation on Christian Fortitude:
"After a few days' stay at Capharnaum, Jesus and Mary and the first five Apostles made the journey to Jerusalem for the Passover. When they entered the Temple, they heard its usual peace broken by a great uproar. Men were shouting and bargaining, oxen and sheep were bleating. Jesus stiffened, His Father's house made into a market place! A fierce, set look came over His features. His hands seized some cords and tied them into a whip. His eyes never left the scene before Him. He walked forward then, arms outstretched. 'Take these things away!' He cried out. His voice was strong, yet trembling with anger. An uneasy fear came over the crowd, as His eyes burned into theirs. They hurried away their oxen and sheep, those in back urging on those in front. The money-changers alone held their ground. Jesus seized the end of their tables and sent them flying end over end. They became panic-stricken then. They grasped what coins they could and ran. Jesus stood alone in the courtyard. Peace settled again over the Temple.
My Lord, how I admire You in ths scene! We are so liable to think that being a Christian means being a weakling and a 'mouse'! How wonderful to see that distorted notion so firmly dispelled by the example of Your magnificent courage! Your Father's house was being desecrated; there was reason for the fighting - so You fought! You didn't care what they thought or what they would say. His glory was primary! Nor did it matter to You that You were alone against them all. Your courage was so great and Your cause so just that the entire crowd fled before You."
Does the cleansing of the Temple represent a failure to live the Christian ideal? Of course not.
In a previous post at this Blog, I noted how it is possible to "be angry and sin not"
(Ephesians 4: 26), something which liberal Christians do not
understand. Writing for Touchstone Magazine, Dr. Leon J.
Podles explains that, "..many Christians have a false
understanding of the nature and role of anger. It is seen as something negative,
something that a Christian should not feel.
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'
Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.
Emotional Deformation
The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.
Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:
A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.
Just Wrath
Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'
Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..." (Full article here).
The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.
In the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church, those who dealt with the bishops have consistently remarked that the bishops never expressed outrage or righteous anger, even at the most horrendous cases of abuse and sacrilege. Bishops seem to think that anger at sin is un-Christian. Gilbert Kilman, a child psychiatrist, commented, 'What amazes me is the lack of outrage the church feels when its good work is being harmed. So, if there is anything the church needs to know, it needs to know how to be outraged.'
Mark Serrano confronted Bishop Frank Rodimer, asking why he had let his priest-friend Peter Osinski sleep with boys at Rodimer’s beach house while Rodimer was in the next bedroom: 'Where is your moral indignation?' Rodimer’s answer was, 'Then I don’t get it. What do you want?' What Serrano wanted Rodimer to do was to behave like a man with a heart, a heart that is outraged by evil. But Rodimer couldn’t; his inability to feel outrage was a quality that had helped make him a bishop. He would never get into fights, never rock the boat, never 'divide' but only 'unify.' Rodimer could not understand why he should feel deep anger at evil, at the violation of the innocent, at the oppression of the weak.
Emotional Deformation
The emotions that are now suppressed are hatred and anger. Christians think that they ought not to feel these emotions, that it is un-Christian to feel them. They secretly suspect that Jesus was being un-Christian in his attitude to the scribes and Pharisees when he was angry at them, that he was un-Christian when he drove the moneychangers out of the temple or declared that millstones (not vacations in treatment centers) were the way to treat child abusers.
Conrad Baars noticed this emotional deformation in the clergy in the mid-twentieth century. He recognized that there had been distortions in 'traditional' Catholic spirituality. It had become too focused upon individual acts rather than on growth in virtue; it had emphasized sheer naked strength of will. In forgetting that growth in virtue was the goal of the Christian’s moral life, it forgot that the emotions, all emotions, including anger and hate, are part of human nature and must be integrated into a virtuous life.
Baars had been imprisoned by the Nazis. He knew iniquity firsthand and that there was something wrong with those who did not hate it:
A little reflection will make it clear that there is a big difference between the person who knows solely that something is evil and ought to be opposed, and the one who in addition also feels hate for that evil, is angry that it is corrupting or harming his fellow-men, and feels aroused to combat it courageously and vigorously.
Just Wrath
Wrath is a necessary and positive part of human nature: 'Wrath is the strength to attack the repugnant; the power of anger is actually the power of resistance in the soul,' wrote Josef Pieper. The lack of wrath against injustice, he continued, is a deficiency: 'One who does good with passion is more praiseworthy than one who is ‘not entirely’ afire for the good, even to the forces of the sensual realm.'
Aquinas, too, says that 'lack of the passion of anger is also a vice' because a man who truly and forcefully rejects evil will be angry at it. The lack of anger makes the movement of the will against evil 'lacking or weak.' He quotes John Chrysostom: 'He who is not angry, whereas he has cause to be, sins. For unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices, it fosters negligence, and incites not only the wicked but the good to do wrong'..." (Full article here).
The spiritually mature Christian understands that not all anger is unjust. That there is such a thing as just or righteous anger. Such a Christian strives to control anger through prayer and by considering the example of Christ. Let's all pray for those in leadership positions in the Church. That they may come to a mature faith which is able to discern between just and unjust anger.
One last thought. The "pastoral team" over at Saint Mary's Parish says that "veterans are rightly honored for their role in defending the country," and yet, I have been treated with nothing less than contempt even though I am a veteran who served this country during wartime. I have been ostracized at Saint Mary's.
We must give more than lip service to honoring veterans. We must put our words into action.
Sunday, November 06, 2016
Act of Reparation to the Blessed Sacrament
Act of Reparation to the Blessed Sacrament
By St. Louis de Montfort
"Soupirons, gemissons, pleurons amerement"
Let me cry, let me weep bitter tears to God above,
For Jesus is abandoned in his Sacrament of love;
Forgotten and insulted in the dwelling of the Lord,
Derided and rejected where once he was adored.
The mansions of the nobles are all clean and set with care,
Yet the house of God's forgotten, its altars standing bare;
The floor is all broken, the roof lets in the rain,
The crumbling walls are marked with holes and every kind of stain.
The crucifix is broken, the pictures green with damp,
The altar cloths are rotting, no light burns in the lamp,
The missals torn and battered, the brasswork stained with rust,
The things of God are thrown about and scattered in the dust.
The ciborium is tarnished, the chalice turning black,
The monstrance, which is made of tin, is mouldy at the back;
From font right up to sacristy the picture is the same,
Such disorder in the house of God is our reproach and shame.
The pagans in their temples dare not spit upon the floor,
But in our church a crowd of dogs run in and out the door;
They bark and fight continually and fill the place with slime,
But no one cares enough of this to avenge the dreadful crime.
There is just one exception in all this sorry scene:
My Lord and Lady's special pew is always neat and clean;
And standing out in bright new paint upon the dingy wall
Their gaily-colored coat-of-arms looks down upon it all.
Above the Lord's own altar, instead of the Lord's own name,
The banners of his Lordship, a place of honor claim;
Both priest and mule are flaunting the badges of their thrall,
The former at the altar, the latter in his stall.
The houses of the nobles are so crowded and gay,
And fashionable young ladies are courted night and day;
But the Church of God's deserted, unless they condescend
To go to church for one short Mass they think will never end.
Behold the worldly cleric coming in with haughty face
How his lady friends admire him as he bows with courtly grace!
He bobs a genuflection, then seeks whom he should greet;
He strolls about and chatters as though walking in the street
Still worse, he has a snuff-box, which he opens with a jest,
And delicately takes a pinch, then passes around the rest
Puffed up with self-importance and with his graceful ways,
He squirms about and poses, making faces as he prays
Alas, it's often happened, the way to church he's trod
To pay reverence to Venus, to a goddess not to God;
Every thought and aspiration, every word and loving glance
Are but homage to a creature, a prayer to find romance
Behold upon the other side a sorry scene is played,
A shameless hussy sitting in all her fine brocade;
In her dainty little slippers and head-dress trimmed with lace,
Come simply to parade herself within the holy place
This empty-headed madam, with an impudence unknown,
Up to the very altar ostentatiously is shown,
And poses on a bench in front, so to be seen by all,
To captivate the eyes of men and hold their hearts in thrall
To think this devil's agent, while her knee to Jesus bends,
Must rob him of his glory and lead astray his friends!
The splendor of her finery the thought of Jesus harms,
Forgotten is the altar in the presence of her charms.
And if the time seems tedious, she always has her fan,
Her dog and gloves, to pass the time, and often her young man;
She'll read a bit, and roll her eyes, and fix her hat with care,
Then look around the chapel to see who's watching her
O strike them, God almighty, strike this ungrateful lot!
At least let them respect thee, if they will love thee not
Too long hast thou been patient; thy justice let them see;
Let fear replace that insolence with which they now mock thee
Thy glory has been ravished, dishonored is thy name,
Such sinners against thy majesty must bow their heads in shame
And yet restrain thy anger, at least a while I pray;
The greatness of their wickedness with greater good repay
Forgive them, dearest Jesus, for they know not what they do;
Remember thy great Passion, and have mercy on us too
And if we are unable to atone for all our guilt,
Accept our feeble homage, and treat us as thou wilt
We confess before thy altar that we are sinners still;
Thou canst punish us or spare us according to thy will
But remember thy great mercy and the tears that we have shed,
And hear our cries for pardon, for our hearts are full of dread.
Our Eucharistic Lord waits for you. He waits alone in an empty Church. Outside the world and all its noise appears attractive. But this world and everything in it is passing away. It is, as C.S. Lewis said, a "shadowland."
Approach the Light. Pray before the Eucharist and be filled. For your heart will never be filled until you give it totally to Him Who has created and redeemed you.
Do not look to Church officials to lead you. Many of them are devils. It was revealed to Sister Lucia of the Fatima apparition that: “Satan rules even in the highest positions and determines the direction of things. He will succeed in worming his way even into the highest summits of the Church…But this will be a time of great trials for the Church. Cardinals will oppose cardinals. Bishops will oppose bishops. Satan will walk in their ranks. In Rome, there will be great changes. What is rotten will fall and what will fall will never rise again. Darkness will envelope the Church and the world will be thrown into a panic.”
This quote was taken from a German periodical published in 1963 entitled Neues Europa, and received unofficial approbation in the 1960’s by several Church officials who had read the original Third Secret which was hand written by Sister Lucia. Among those who read the original was the respected Cardinal Ottovani. The new and “official” version put out by the Vatican in 2006 has been demonstrated to be a fabrication.
Consecrate yourself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Make your home an ark. The Chastisement, which has been delayed through much prayer and reparation, fast approaches. This as our culture disintegrates.
Pray, hope and don't worry.
By St. Louis de Montfort
"Soupirons, gemissons, pleurons amerement"
Let me cry, let me weep bitter tears to God above,
For Jesus is abandoned in his Sacrament of love;
Forgotten and insulted in the dwelling of the Lord,
Derided and rejected where once he was adored.
The mansions of the nobles are all clean and set with care,
Yet the house of God's forgotten, its altars standing bare;
The floor is all broken, the roof lets in the rain,
The crumbling walls are marked with holes and every kind of stain.
The crucifix is broken, the pictures green with damp,
The altar cloths are rotting, no light burns in the lamp,
The missals torn and battered, the brasswork stained with rust,
The things of God are thrown about and scattered in the dust.
The ciborium is tarnished, the chalice turning black,
The monstrance, which is made of tin, is mouldy at the back;
From font right up to sacristy the picture is the same,
Such disorder in the house of God is our reproach and shame.
The pagans in their temples dare not spit upon the floor,
But in our church a crowd of dogs run in and out the door;
They bark and fight continually and fill the place with slime,
But no one cares enough of this to avenge the dreadful crime.
There is just one exception in all this sorry scene:
My Lord and Lady's special pew is always neat and clean;
And standing out in bright new paint upon the dingy wall
Their gaily-colored coat-of-arms looks down upon it all.
Above the Lord's own altar, instead of the Lord's own name,
The banners of his Lordship, a place of honor claim;
Both priest and mule are flaunting the badges of their thrall,
The former at the altar, the latter in his stall.
The houses of the nobles are so crowded and gay,
And fashionable young ladies are courted night and day;
But the Church of God's deserted, unless they condescend
To go to church for one short Mass they think will never end.
Behold the worldly cleric coming in with haughty face
How his lady friends admire him as he bows with courtly grace!
He bobs a genuflection, then seeks whom he should greet;
He strolls about and chatters as though walking in the street
Still worse, he has a snuff-box, which he opens with a jest,
And delicately takes a pinch, then passes around the rest
Puffed up with self-importance and with his graceful ways,
He squirms about and poses, making faces as he prays
Alas, it's often happened, the way to church he's trod
To pay reverence to Venus, to a goddess not to God;
Every thought and aspiration, every word and loving glance
Are but homage to a creature, a prayer to find romance
Behold upon the other side a sorry scene is played,
A shameless hussy sitting in all her fine brocade;
In her dainty little slippers and head-dress trimmed with lace,
Come simply to parade herself within the holy place
This empty-headed madam, with an impudence unknown,
Up to the very altar ostentatiously is shown,
And poses on a bench in front, so to be seen by all,
To captivate the eyes of men and hold their hearts in thrall
To think this devil's agent, while her knee to Jesus bends,
Must rob him of his glory and lead astray his friends!
The splendor of her finery the thought of Jesus harms,
Forgotten is the altar in the presence of her charms.
And if the time seems tedious, she always has her fan,
Her dog and gloves, to pass the time, and often her young man;
She'll read a bit, and roll her eyes, and fix her hat with care,
Then look around the chapel to see who's watching her
O strike them, God almighty, strike this ungrateful lot!
At least let them respect thee, if they will love thee not
Too long hast thou been patient; thy justice let them see;
Let fear replace that insolence with which they now mock thee
Thy glory has been ravished, dishonored is thy name,
Such sinners against thy majesty must bow their heads in shame
And yet restrain thy anger, at least a while I pray;
The greatness of their wickedness with greater good repay
Forgive them, dearest Jesus, for they know not what they do;
Remember thy great Passion, and have mercy on us too
And if we are unable to atone for all our guilt,
Accept our feeble homage, and treat us as thou wilt
We confess before thy altar that we are sinners still;
Thou canst punish us or spare us according to thy will
But remember thy great mercy and the tears that we have shed,
And hear our cries for pardon, for our hearts are full of dread.
Our Eucharistic Lord waits for you. He waits alone in an empty Church. Outside the world and all its noise appears attractive. But this world and everything in it is passing away. It is, as C.S. Lewis said, a "shadowland."
Approach the Light. Pray before the Eucharist and be filled. For your heart will never be filled until you give it totally to Him Who has created and redeemed you.
Do not look to Church officials to lead you. Many of them are devils. It was revealed to Sister Lucia of the Fatima apparition that: “Satan rules even in the highest positions and determines the direction of things. He will succeed in worming his way even into the highest summits of the Church…But this will be a time of great trials for the Church. Cardinals will oppose cardinals. Bishops will oppose bishops. Satan will walk in their ranks. In Rome, there will be great changes. What is rotten will fall and what will fall will never rise again. Darkness will envelope the Church and the world will be thrown into a panic.”
This quote was taken from a German periodical published in 1963 entitled Neues Europa, and received unofficial approbation in the 1960’s by several Church officials who had read the original Third Secret which was hand written by Sister Lucia. Among those who read the original was the respected Cardinal Ottovani. The new and “official” version put out by the Vatican in 2006 has been demonstrated to be a fabrication.
Consecrate yourself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Make your home an ark. The Chastisement, which has been delayed through much prayer and reparation, fast approaches. This as our culture disintegrates.
Pray, hope and don't worry.
Tuesday, November 01, 2016
In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be desolated and burn...
I believe a chastisement is approaching Rome. An article here warns of this.
"The apostasy of the city of Rome from the vicar of Christ and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts very new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians of greatest repute. First Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Biegas, Suarrez, Bellarmine and Bosius that Rome shall apostatize from the Faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ and return to its ancient paganism. ...Then the Church shall be scattered, driven into the wilderness, and shall be for a time, as it was in the beginning, invisible; hidden in catacombs, in dens, in mountains, in lurking places; for a time it shall be swept, as it were from the face of the earth. Such is the universal testimony of the Fathers of the early Church.”- Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, The Present Crisis of the Holy See, 1861, London: Burns and Lambert, pp. 88-90)
Cardinal Manning delivered a series of lectures in 1861 under the title “The Present Crises of the Holy See Tested by Prophecy” in which Manning he foresaw a future crises in the Roman Catholic Church initiated by a false ecumenism and progressivist theology that many orthodox Catholics have loathed following the Second Vatican Council. Manning believed that this progressivist current would undermine the authority of the Church and ultimately result in a departure from the true faith by the nations together with the displacement of the true pope by a false prophet, thus ushering in the Antichrist and global apostasy. Manning also believed secret societies like the Freemasons were part of this conspiracy. “The secret societies have long ago undermined and honeycombed the Christian society of Europe, and are at this moment struggling onward towards Rome, the center of all Christian order in the world,”he wrote. But when he looked at the prophecy in Revelation 18 concerning the end-time destruction of Mystery Babylon, Manning saw it was the hand of God in judgment of worldwide apostasy emanating from Rome:
"We read in the Book Apocalypse, of the city of Rome, that she said in the pride of her heart, “I sit as a queen, and am no widow, and sorrow I shall not see. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day: death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be burned with fire, because God is strong who shall judge her.” Some of the greatest writers of the Church tell us that…the great City of Seven Hills…the city of Rome will probably become apostate…and that Rome will again be punished, for he will depart from it; and the judgment of God will fall…"
Manning explained how many of Catholicism’s
greatest theologians agreed with this point of view:
And Bellarmine: 'In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be desolated and burnt, as we learn from the sixteenth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Apocalypse.' On which words the Jesuit Erbermann comments as follows: 'We all confess with Bellarmine that the Roman people, a little before the end of the world, will return to paganism, and drive out the Roman Pontiff.'"The apostasy of the city of Rome…and its destruction by Antichrist may be thoughts so new to many Catholics, that I think it well to recite the text of theologians, of greatest repute. First, Malvenda, who writes expressly on the subject, states as the opinion of Ribera, Gaspar Melus, Viegas, Suarez, Bellarmine, and Bosius, that Rome shall apostatize from the faith, drive away the Vicar of Christ, and return to its ancient paganism. Malvenda’s words are:'But Rome itself in the last times of the world will return to its ancient idolatry, power, and imperial greatness. It will cast out its Pontiff, altogether apostatize from the Christian faith, terribly persecute the Church, shed the blood of martyrs more cruelly than ever, and will recover its former state of abundant wealth, or even greater than it had under its first rulers.'Lessius says: 'In the time of Antichrist, Rome shall be destroyed, as we see openly from the thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse;' and again: 'The woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which hath kingdom over the kings of the earth, in which is signified Rome in its impiety, such as it was in the time of St. John, and shall be again at the end of the world.'
Viegas, on the eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse says: 'Rome, in the last age of the world, after it has apostatized from the faith, will attain great power and splendor of wealth, and its sway will be widely spread throughout the world, and flourish greatly. Living in luxury and the abundance of all things, it will worship idols, and be steeped in all kinds of superstition, and will pay honor to false gods. And because of the vast effusion of the blood of martyrs which was shed under the emperors, God will most severely and justly avenge them, and it shall be utterly destroyed, and burned by a most terrible and afflicting conflagration.'"
It was
Saint John Bosco who prophesied, "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."
Can you not see the emerging signs? How do we find the Church today? The Mystical Body of the Crucified One - the Holy Catholic Church - is climbing Calvary, carrying a heavy cross. She is experiencing the hour of abandonment and betrayal. Her body is being tormented by the scourges of sin which strike at it and by numerous sacrileges which open up deep wounds in it. A Catholic priest in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts openly calls her "evil" just as the Pharisees suggested Our Lord was evil and demon possessed (Matthew 11:18; 12: 24). And his parishioners applaud.
Indeed, Our Lady told Father Gobbi,"The hour of Calvary has arrived for the Church, called to offer herself in holocaust and to be immolated on the cross of her bloody martyrdom. The hour of Calvary has arrived for this poor humanity, which is already beginning to live the painful hours of its chastisement..' (Rome, May 1, 1994).
But too many are proud. Their eyes blinded by sin and egoism. Like the Pharisees before them, they are incapable of reading the signs of the times because their spiritual eyes are closed. They cannot hear the Spirit because their ears are closed. They cannot feel the promptings of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus because their hearts are closed. Such people cannot endure sound teaching but have itching ears and will continue to accumulate teachers who suit their own likings, teachers who will cater to their lusts by providing them with myths (2 Timothy 4: 3, 4).
And still so many of our shepherds remain silent like mute dogs. They have not begged God to end these scourges. They have not wept between the vestibule and the altar. They have not taken up the shield of faith to protect their flocks. Their judgment will be all the more severe, for God expects more from His ministers (Luke 12: 48).
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."
Can you not see the emerging signs? How do we find the Church today? The Mystical Body of the Crucified One - the Holy Catholic Church - is climbing Calvary, carrying a heavy cross. She is experiencing the hour of abandonment and betrayal. Her body is being tormented by the scourges of sin which strike at it and by numerous sacrileges which open up deep wounds in it. A Catholic priest in East Longmeadow, Massachusetts openly calls her "evil" just as the Pharisees suggested Our Lord was evil and demon possessed (Matthew 11:18; 12: 24). And his parishioners applaud.
Indeed, Our Lady told Father Gobbi,"The hour of Calvary has arrived for the Church, called to offer herself in holocaust and to be immolated on the cross of her bloody martyrdom. The hour of Calvary has arrived for this poor humanity, which is already beginning to live the painful hours of its chastisement..' (Rome, May 1, 1994).
But too many are proud. Their eyes blinded by sin and egoism. Like the Pharisees before them, they are incapable of reading the signs of the times because their spiritual eyes are closed. They cannot hear the Spirit because their ears are closed. They cannot feel the promptings of the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus because their hearts are closed. Such people cannot endure sound teaching but have itching ears and will continue to accumulate teachers who suit their own likings, teachers who will cater to their lusts by providing them with myths (2 Timothy 4: 3, 4).
And still so many of our shepherds remain silent like mute dogs. They have not begged God to end these scourges. They have not wept between the vestibule and the altar. They have not taken up the shield of faith to protect their flocks. Their judgment will be all the more severe, for God expects more from His ministers (Luke 12: 48).
Watch and pray!
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