California usurps parental rights with regard to education of their children: Will the Vatican address this act of violence and homosexualist terrorism?

California Catholic reports:

"California has become the first state in the union to mandate the use of LGBT-inclusive textbooks in elementary schools and have given parents no way to opt out. The choice has been made for them. It’s the law.

That law requires a “fair, accurate, inclusive, and respectful” treatment of homosexual, bisexual, transgender, and lesbian Americans despite the historical insignificance...."


The Pontifical Council for the Family, in its document entitled The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality, had this to say:

"Today parents should be attentive to ways in which an immoral education can be passed on to their children through various methods promoted by groups with positions and interests contrary to Christian morality. It would be impossible to indicate all unacceptable methods. Here are presented only some of the more widely diffused methods that threaten the rights of parents and the moral life of their children.

In the first place, parents must reject secularized and anti-natalist sex education, which puts God at the margin of life and regards the birth of a child as a threat. This sex education is spread by large organizations and international associations that promote abortion, sterilization and contraception. These organizations want to impose a false lifestyle against the truth of human sexuality. Working at national or state levels, these organizations try to arouse the fear of the "threat of over-population" among children and young people to promote the contraceptive mentality, that is, the "anti- life" mentality. They spread false ideas about the "reproductive health" and "sexual and reproductive rights" of young people. Furthermore, some antinatalist organizations maintain those clinics which, violating the rights of parents, provide abortion and contraception for young people, thus promoting promiscuity and consequently an increase in teenage pregnancies...

As we look towards the year 2000, how can we fail to think of the young? What is being held up to them? A society of ?things' and not of ?persons'. The right to do as they will from their earliest years, without any constraint, provided it is ?safe'. The unreserved gift of self, mastery of one's instincts, the sense of responsibility — these are notions considered as belonging to another age." (Nos. 135, 136).

California's decision represents an act of violence against the child's right to live his or her own sexuality in conformity with Christian principles: "Since each child or young person must be able to live his or her own sexuality in conformity with Christian principles, and hence be able to exercise the virtue of chastity, no educator — not even parents — can interfere with this right to chastity (cf. Matthew 18: 4-7)." (The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality, No. 118).

The decision of California also represents an attack on parental rights. Vatican II teaches us that, in raising children, the responsibility of parents is primary: "Since parents have given life to their children, they have a very grave duty to educate them, and so are to be recognized as their primary and principal educators" (GE, No. 3). 

And Pope John Paul II, explaining the conciliar teaching more fully in Familiaris consortio No. 36, says that: "The right and duty of parents to give education is essential, since it is connected with the transmission of human life; it is original and primary with regard to the educational role of others, on account of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between parents and children; and it is irreplaceable and inalienable, and therefore incapable of being entirely delegated to others or usurped by others."

Canon Law is also very clear on this matter. Canon 793, 1., states that: "Parents as well as those who take their place are obliged and enjoy the right to educate their offspring; Catholic parents also have the duty and the right to select those means and institutions through which they can provide more suitably for the Catholic education of the children according to local circumstances" and Canon 1136 says that: "Parents have the most serious duty and the primary right to do all in their power to see to the physical, social, cultural, moral and religious upbringing of their children."

This inalienable right of parents has been recognized by the United States Supreme Court. In 1922, the State of Oregon attempted to enact legislation that would have forced all children to attend the public schools within that state. But the Supreme Court overturned that decision and established that "The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations."

Increasingly, the rights of Christian children and their parents are coming under attack. Why? No one has ever put it more eloquently than Randy Engel:

"Is it any wonder that the state must wage war against the family? For the state requires not individuals who dream, and think, and pray, but rather what has come to be called 'the mass man' - rootless, unaffirmed, a reactor - a mere reed blowing in the wind - a thing to be manipulated, to be used, to be disposed of, but never, never, to be loved, for the giant has no heart. And since the modern state has no heart, that which men previously have done out of love, must now be done out of fear, and hatred, and brute force." (The Family Under Siege, The Wanderer, March 6, 1980).

This is a satanic war against the family. The state wants to impose immoral sex education and to usurp parental rights. The state wants to educate children for the Reign of Antichrist, the Moloch State where vices will be turned into gods and perversion will be celebrated as a sort of ersatz sacrament in the unholy church of the Man of Sin.

Will the Vatican, under Francis, speak out?

Francis?

Nearly half of all Americans believe liberal media outlets manufacture fake news to discredit President Trump

The Washington Times is reporting that:

"Nearly half of all Americans believe media outlets fabricate negative stories about President Trump, according to a new survey.

Forty-four percent of respondents in the 2017 Poynter Media Trust Survey say the media invent 'fake news' to make the president look bad."

Vatican II, in its Decree on the Means of Social Communication (Inter Mirifica) had this to say:

"A special responsibility for the proper use of the means of social communication rests on journalists, writers, actors, designers, producers, exhibitors, distributors, operators, sellers, critics - all those, in a word, who are involved in the making and transmission of communications in any way whatever. It is clear that a very great responsibility rests on all of these people in today's world: they have power to direct mankind along a good path or an evil path by the information they impart and the pressure they exert.

It will be for them to regulate economic, political and artistic values in a way that will not conflict with the common good. To achieve this result more surely, they will do well to form professional organizations capable of imposing on their members-if necessary by a formal pledge to observe a moral code-a respect for the moral law in the problems they encounter and in their activities."

Most of the so-called "mainstream media" is informed by a radical leftist ideology.  Those who produce these media are more often than not guided not by objectivity but by a desire to manipulate public opinion through propaganda, which degrades both propagandist and the intended audience.

Related reading here.

Scripture Scholar Rosie O'Donnell to Paul Ryan: "U will go straight to hell."

Fox News reports:

"Rosie O’Donnell had a not-so-warm Christmas wish for House Speaker Paul Ryan: go to hell.

The fierce opponent of President Trump and the newly-passed GOP tax plan lashed out at Ryan on Twitter.

'paul ryan – don’t talk about Jesus after what u just did to our nation – u will go straight to hell,' O’Donnell wrote Monday."

O'Donnell should be more concerned over her own destiny.  The "comedienne" is a lesbian who claims to be married to another woman.  

St. Bernardine of Siena, the great Franciscan preacher of the Fifteenth century, offered a psychological analysis of the sodomite, who suffers a loss of virility because of this vice.

He also warned that those who live their life practicing this vice will suffer greater torments in Hell:


"No sin has greater power over the soul than the one of cursed sodomy, which was always detested by all those who lived according to God's law. ...

Such passion for untenable practices borders on madness. This vice disturbs the intellect, unbalances an elevated and generous state of soul, drags lofty thoughts down to base ones, makes men pusillanimous and irascible, obstinate and hardened, servilely soft and incapable of anything.

Furthermore, the will, agitated by the insatiable drive for pleasure, no longer follows reason but rather the tumult of the passions. ...

One who lives practicing the vice of sodomy will suffer more pain in Hell than anyone else, because this the worst sin that exists."

St. Bernardine of Siena, Predica 39 in Le Prediche Volgari, Milan: Rizzoli, 1936, pp. 869-71,

Father Shaun O'Connor of Saint Mary's Church in Orange, Massachusetts: A priest who understands the message of 1 Corinthians 12

In his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici, Pope John Paul II wrote that, "Through their participation in the prophetic mission of Christ, 'who proclaimed the kingdom of his Father by the testimony of his life and by the power of his word,' the lay faithful are given the ability and responsibility to accept the Gospel in faith and to proclaim it in word and deed, without hesitating to courageously denounce evil." (No. 14).

And yet, how often do the lay faithful encounter opposition from other members of the laity as well as priests and religious when they strive to fulfill their prophetic mission and to "courageously denounce evil." Why is this? Largely because, "To understand properly the lay faithful's position in the Church in a complete, adequate and specific manner it is necessary to come to a deeper theological understanding of their secular character in light of God's plan of salvation and in the context of the mystery of the Church" (Christifideles Laici, No. 15).

Pope John Paul II explains that, "..all the members of the Church are sharers in this secular dimension but in different ways. In particular the sharing of the lay faithful has its own manner or realization and function, which, according to the Council, is 'properly and particularly' theirs. Such manner is designated with the expression 'secular character.' In fact the Council, in describing the lay faithful's situation in the secular world, points to it above all, as the place in which they receive their call from God.." (Christifideles Laici, No. 15).

We read in 1 Corinthians 12 that, "As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit...there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I do not need you.'" (1 Cor 12: 12, 13; 20, 21).

And yet, this is precisely what so many of the lay faithful encounter as they strive to fulfill their prophetic mission and to act as salt and light upon the secular world. Too often, the lay faithful are looked upon by certain priests and religious as "second-class citizens" within the Church. Then again, some parishes - anxious to maintain a status quo - will only permit a select few to participate in the life of the parish. 

But such an attitude is not holy. It is devilish. It is demonic: "..have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil designs" (James 2: 4). And again, "For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every foul practice." (James 3: 16).

Let us all strive to remember that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not our "private preserve." Let's leave behind all pride, selfish ambition, envy and jealousy. And when we come across another who has been graced with particular gifts which we may not possess ourselves, let's give thanks to the Holy Spirit who distributes His gifts as He pleases and to whom He wants.

Father Shaun O'Connor, the new pastor of Saint Mary's Church in Orange, Massachusetts, apparently understands this.  The parish bulletin this weekend reads, "Early in the New Year, Fr. Shaun wants to work with parish members to establish a committee to plan and implement a calendar of parish dinners and other events; and a committee to reach out to inactive members and to others in our area who might be interested in learning about the Catholic Faith.  If you'd be interested in either of these groups, please talk with Fr. Shaun after Mass or drop us an email to the office or leave a phone message."

This is a positive development.  At least it has the potential of being such.  In the past, I attempted to volunteer at Saint Mary's Church but was turned down because of my fidelity to the Magisterial teaching of the Church and because I'm not part of the small private "clique" of individuals who have been deemed "acceptable" by the status quo and have been relegated to "second-class" status.

Pray for Father Shaun's endeavour to be a success.  I don't expect to be included in parish ministry myself.  I'm not unrealistic.  But it looks as if the demonic attitude which asserts, "I do not need you"* may be on its way out.




*  See here.

Related reading here.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.


He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!

Is the UK about to proclaim belief in Christ's divinity a "hate crime"?

Jews News reports:

'British Government refuses to say whether proclaiming divinity of Christ is a hate crime,' Catholic Herald, December 14, 2017:

The British government has refused to say whether telling people about the Christian faith could be a hate crime.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch, a UKIP peer, says when he raised a question on the issue on the House of Lords, the government failed to state clearly whether Christians cannot be prosecuted just for stating their beliefs.

"I said to the government ‘Will they confirm unequivocally that a Christian who says that Jesus is the only son of the one true God cannot be arrested for hate crime or any other offence, however much it may offend a Muslim or anyone of any other religion?’”

In response to the question, government whip Baroness Vere of Norbiton said: “My Lords, I am not going to comment on that last question from the noble Lord.” She added that the legal definition of “hate crime” has been the same for the past 10 years.

Speaking to Premier Christian Radio, Lord Pearson said the refusal to comment was “pretty unique” and “makes one very worried”.

He said the current definition of “hate crime”, which relies on whether the victim feels offended, was “stupid” and called for the law to be clarified."

Today, a growing army of lost souls - the children of Belial - are feverishly preparing a world which will be ready and eager to accept the reign of Antichrist, a rule which will be thoroughly saturated with witchcraft and occultism, a demon-state where daily libations of human bodies and blood will be offered in satanic worship to placate the Man-God and his master Satan.  Under the banner of a political and militarily organized atheism, this army of secular and occult humanists are uniting to deny the true God and His plan for humanity.

Only those who remain faithful to prayer will persevere to the end.  This explains why so many who once professed the Christian faith have now abandoned the faith altogether or remain in the Church only in a bodily manner (see Lumen Gentium, No. 14).

Father Livio Fanzaga reminds us that, "Prayer is another fundamental weapon for the great battle of the end times. When man will glorify himself and proclaim the Antichrist as God made man, the supernatural principle will be preserved only by those who cling to the divine presence in prayer.  These will 'experience' God, His existence, lordship, power and glory.  In the time of Antichrist, the power of suggestion will cloud reason.  Only those who intimately experience the supernatural in prayer will have the strength to acknowledge God's existence, despite the apparent evidence to the contrary...in an era marked by the seduction of the heart, of a general obscuring of the mind, and of the folly of reason, only those who have had a strong experience of God in prayer will preserve the faith.  In that supernatural experience the faith will be conserved and you will conform to it.  If you look to the sun and see the light, even if man denies the existence of the sun, what can you say?  Having seen the sun you will not vacillate in the faith.  You will be a rock in the waves of the sea." (Wrath of God: The Days of the Antichrist, pp. 149, 150).

Romano Guardini, in his classic work entitled The Lord, warns us that the Antichrist's arguments, "will be so impressive, supported by means of such tremendous power - violent and diplomatic, material and intellectual - that to reject them will result in almost insurmountable scandal, and everyone whose eyes are not opened by grace will be lost." (p. 513).

We pray because we love the Lord Jesus and desire to have an intimate relationship with Him.  Our prayer is rooted in love.  And this love will preserve us from the Man of Sin (even if we lose our bodies to martyrdom).  This is the love that has made the martyrs, virgins, apostles and all the saints.  St. Paul assures us that because of this love, "Neither death, nor life, nor angels...nor things present, nor things to come, nor might...nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus Our Lord." (Romans 8: 35).

Sister Lucia Caram wants to dethrone Our Lady...

As Father William Saunders notes here:

"We as Catholics firmly believe that Mary is 'ever virgin.' The Catechism of the Catholic Church asserts, 'The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary's real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man.'

This statement reflects a more precise dogmatic statement issued at the First Lateran Council: 'If anyone does not, according to the holy Fathers, confess truly and properly that holy Mary, ever virgin and immaculate, is Mother of God, since in this latter age she conceived in true reality without human seed from the Holy Spirit, God the Word Himself, who before the ages was begotten of God the Father, and gave birth to Him without injury, her virginity remaining equally inviolate after the birth, let him be condemned.'"

Sister Lucia Caram does not embrace this teaching.  This sham Catholic has said that, "Mary likely had sex with husband Joseph – much like any 'normal couple' would."

Father Bernard Kunkel, who died in 1969 and who was the pastor of St. Cecilia's in Bartelso, Illinois, waged an almost impossible fight for purity and modesty. Even then the customary clothing was indecent. Here are some some of the things he wrote in  1969 issues of Divine Love magazine and in an issue of the 1957 Marylike Crusader:

"One of the strange phenomena of history is the fact that the Devil has succeeded so well in keeping concealed the existence of the corrupting Body of Satan, with its long-range program for the destruction of the Church. Catholics just do not seem to be aware that, as soon as Christ instituted His Church---His Mystical Body---the Devil likewise organized his anti-church, his corrupting body. St. Augustine, St. John, St. Paul and other Saints have referred to it, as well as Pope Leo XIII and other Church leaders. The corrupting body of Satan still exists in our time and is very well organized in its efforts to use the modem fashions, filthy literature, indecent movies, pagan TV shows, drugs, drink, etc. to break down morality among Catholics in order eventually to destroy the Church and Christianity. Its most effective weapon was to be corruption from within.

"Since the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Satan has been able to use the weapon of impurity very effectively In the 16th century he used as his tools the founders of the two Parent-Protestant religions in Germany and England, Martin Luther and King Henry VIII. The first founder entered a sacrilegious marriage, the second an adulterous one. Our Mother Most Chaste being dethroned from their hearts, there was no other logical course for them, than to exile Her from their man-made churches and from the hearts of their millions of followers. But the devil could not hope to corrupt completely Christ's Mystical Body, the Catholic Church, unless he could first succeed in dethroning Mary, the Mother Most Chaste, from the hearts of Catholics. 

"Our Blessed Mother, in all Her apparitions, is fully covered. At Fatima in 1917 she appeared in a world that was beginning to cut sleeves and necklines and to curtail skirts. Shouldn't she, the model for girls also in the 20th century, show some signs of following the modern trend? True, as Heavenly Queen, she is attired in queenly robes. Even so, she could do a little cutting on the sleeves, neckline and skirt. Why so determined to cling to the traditional standards? Why doesn't she give the modern girl a break, and give some sign that she approves a little cutting here and there?

"The answer is, because she does not approve of the modern trend of uncovering those parts of the body as the chest, upper arms, shoulders, and the thighs. She disapproves. In fact, she came down from Heaven to earth to warn against this disrobing trend. Listen to what she revealed to little ten year old Jacinta of Fatima, while Jacinta lay dying in a hospital in Lisbon, Portugal in 1920: 'Certain fashions will be introduced which will offend Our Divine Lord very much. Those who serve God ought not to follow these fashions. The Church has no fashions. Our Lord is always the same.' And she also revealed to Jacinta that 'the sins that lead most souls to hell are the sins of the flesh.'

"The devil seeks, therefore, to destroy that veneration which the faithful have always paid to Mary's chaste and virginal Body through which Christ entered this world. For centuries he has sought to find a way to remove Mary as their perfect model of chastity and modesty. Only then could he hope to bring about that mass corruption which might lead Catholics to his 'world religion'---the impure worship of the body and unrestrained sex gratification. 

"This is apparently what Satan attempted through his agents, the powers of corruption, during the French Revolution. For, on Dec. 10, 1793 an angry mob rushed into the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, seized the statue of the Blessed Virgin on the altar, and dashed it to the floor. Hatred against the Mother of God? Quite evidently. But their hatred was directed chiefly against the Virgin with modest attire, the model of purity and modesty. This is clear from their subsequent action of enthroning on the altar in Mary's place a nude woman, the Goddess of Reason.' To this day Paris remains the capital of the semi-nude fashion world.

"But why should women be the first victim of the Devil's plot? Because women have a much more delicate sense of modesty, and that is exactly why the devil strives first to destroy this feminine sense of modesty which makes womanhood the guardian of chastity in the world.

"Even with the success of the French Revolution, the demon of lust was too cunning to reveal immediately his full program of moral destruction to be carried out by his human agents. To escape detection, he must develop it gradually. Had the entire program been unfolded at once, Christian women would have risen up in open rebellion."

And there you have it.  Demoniacs such as Sister Lucia Caram have always sought to dethrone Our Lady, Perpetually a Virgin.  These sons and daughters of Hell, having abandoned the Church's Dogma (and in many cases their own commitment toward celibacy), are most anxious to replace the Immaculata with the "Goddess of Reason."

The Spirit of lust becomes for these children of the demon the new "normal."

Consecrated virginity becomes, in their sick minds, something "abnormal."

I would post this at my parish's Facebook Page (Saint Mary's in Orange, Massachusetts), but my posts defending the Church's perennial teaching have been deemed "too controversial" and I have been blocked by a small clique of progressives.

No doubt these bright lights would embrace Sister Caram and her views, much as they embraced Father Jose Antonio Bermudez and his promotion of CCHD which provides monies for pro-abortion, pro-sodomite groups.*


*  See here.

Proud Rome, effeminate Rome

Barnhardt notes:

"Frank Walker over at Canon212 had a top headline a couple of days ago with a picture of the Blessed Virgin in the Vatican Nativity scene asking a question that several other people had emailed to me – Why does the Blessed Virgin look like a man?  I didn’t think too much about it, chocking it up to a poorly executed sculpture, despite the fact that their is clear homoerotica present in the rest of the Nativity scene.

I WAS WRONG.

It turns out that the whole Vatican Nativity scene was made in the Sanctuary of Montevirgine, and Benedictine monastery outside of Naples.  English reportage on that HERE.  Thanks to the eagle-eyed reader in Argentina who alerted me to this and provided the deep links below.

The Sanctuary of Montevirgine has long been notoriously and blasphemously claimed as a mascot and meeting place for sodomites and transvestites.  Here is an Italian newspaper piece from February of ARSH 2017 describing this.  The headline reads: 'Gay Outrage: Our Lady Also Siezed: It Happens In Italy, Where and How'.

A false story was started by sodomites that two sodomite men, after being caught, convicted and condemned to death by exposure for their sickening capital crimes by being tied to a tree, were miraculously saved by the Virgin of Montevirgine, whereupon the two sodomites… wait for it… promptly celebrated by sodomizing each other because their “love” had been ratified by the Queen of Heaven, or something.

Blasphemy of the sickest and most demonic sort.  This blasphemy spread, and now the Sanctuary of Montevirgine is used by Italian sodomites as a mascot for gay pride marches and drag queen conventions.  The biggest gay pride march at the Shrine of Montevigine, happens, even more blasphemously, on February 2, the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin.

So the Vatican Nativity scene was made at the Shrine of the so-called 'Gay Madonna', and there is an image of the Icon of the Madonna of Montevirgine in the Vatican Nativity scene itself – a CLEAR SIGNAL to the sex perverts that the scene is a bow to them.

So, to all the people who remarked that the figure of the Blessed Virgin in the Vatican Nativity scene looks really, really masculine, almost like a man in drag, I think you have been vindicated."

Is anyone really surprised by this?  See here and here.

St. John Bosco, in prophecy, warned that the time would come when the Devil would sow discord among those closest to the Holy Father and what the Holy Father must do:

"Now Heaven's voice is addressed to the Shepherd of shepherds. You are now in conference with your advisors. The enemy of the good does not stand idle one moment. He studies and practices all his arts against you. He will sow discord among your consultors; he will raise up enemies amongst my children. The powers of the world will belch forth fire, and they would that the words be suffocated in the throats of the custodians of my law. That will not happen, they will do no harm but to themselves. You must hurry. If you cannot untie the knots, cut them. If you find yourself hard pressed, do not give up but continue until the head of the hydra of error is cut off. This stroke will make the world and Hell beneath it tremble, but the world will be safe and all the good will rejoice. Keep your consultors always with you, even if only two. Wherever you go, continue and bring to an end the work entrusted to you. The days fly by, your years will reach the destined number; but the great Queen will ever be your help, as in times past, so in the future She will always be the exceeding great fortress of the Church. [Here St. Bosco refers to the Immaculata].


He continues:

"Ah, but you, Italy, land of blessings! Who has steeped you in desolation! Blame not your enemies, but rather your friends. Can you not hear your children asking for the bread of faith and finding only those who smash it to pieces? What shall I do? I shall strike the shepherds, I shall disperse the flock, until those sitting on the throne of Moses search for good pastures and the flock listens attentively and is fed.

Of the flock and over the shepherds My hand will weigh heavy. Famine, pestilence, and war will be such that mothers will have to cry on account of the blood of their sons and of their martyrs dead in a hostile country.

And to you, Rome, what will happen! Ungrateful Rome, effeminate Rome, proud Rome! You have reached such a height that you search no further. You admire nothing else in your Sovereign except luxury, forgetting that you and your glory stands upon Golgotha. Now he is old, defenseless, and despoiled; and yet at his word, the word of one who was in bondage, the whole world trembles.

Rome! To you I will come four times.

The first time, I shall strike your lands and the inhabitants thereof.

The second time, I shall bring the massacre and the slaughter even to your very walls. And will you not yet open your eyes?

I shall come a third time and I shall beat down to the ground your defenses and the defenders, and at the command of the Father, the reign of terror, of dreadful fear, and of desolation shall enter into your city.

But My wise men have now fled and My law is even now trampled underfoot. Therefore I will make a fourth visit. Woe to you if My law shall still be considered as empty words. There will be deceit and falsehood among both the learned and the ignorant. Your blood and that of your children will wash away your stains upon God's law. War, pestilence and famine are the rods to scourge men's pride and wickedness. O wealthy men, where is your glory now, your estates, your palaces? They are the rubble on the highways and byways.

And your priests, why have you not run to 'cry between the vestibule and the Altar,' begging God to end these scourges? Why have you not, with the shield of faith, gone upon the housetops, into the homes, along the highways and byways, into every accessible corner to carry the seed of My word? Know you that this is the terrible two-edged sword that cuts down My enemies and breaks the Anger of God and of men?"

Effeminate Rome.  What an indictment. But this prophecy points to our own time.

The Spirit of Lawlessness is upon us..

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

Signs:

Vienna -
"Whizz-kid", "Basti Fantasti" and "Messiah" are just some of the monikers given to Austrian conservative Sebastian Kurz, set to become the world's youngest leader at just 31.

His People's Party (OeVP), revamped by Kurz as a more hardline "movement", agreed late on Friday a coalition deal with the far-right that will see him sworn in as chancellor next week."

Pope Benedict XVI warned, before stepping aside for Francis, that we are entering a profound period of testing. Indeed we are.  Pray for the Church.  Now is the time of diabolical disorientation.

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

Now the spirit of lawlessness is covering the earth.  Now is the time of testing

Francis: Change the Catechism, which Pope Saint John Paul II called "a sure norm," because I prefer my own understanding

Lifesite News is reporting that:

"Pope Francis may have begun a new phase in his pontificate: doctrinal change, a priest and former philosophy professor has written.

Italian Fr. Giovanni Scalese, the local Ordinary for Afghanistan, wrote a post titled 'Fase B' (Phase B) on his blog 'Antiquo robore,' arguing that Pope Francis laid out his new plan for doctrinal evolution in the Church in a recent speech.

The October 11 speech to the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, in which Pope Francis presented his views on the death penalty, has a 'programmatic' character, Scalese said. It represents a 'turning point.' By concentrating on the details of Francis’s speeches, Scalese argued, some might miss the bigger picture of what the Pope is doing.

In his speech, the Pope challenged previous Catholic teaching by calling the death penalty 'contrary to the Gospel.' He said he would like the Catechism of the Catholic Church to change according to a 'new understanding of Christian truth,' saying that only a 'partial vision can think of ‘the deposit of faith’ as something static.'"

Change the Catechism of the Catholic Church according to a "new understanding of Christian truth"?

The First Vatican Council:

"For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles."

In his Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum, Pope John Paul II said that, "The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which I approved 25 June last and the publication of which I today order by virtue of my Apostolic Authority, is a statement of the Church's faith and of Catholic doctrine, attested to or illumined by Sacred Scripture, Apostolic Tradition and the Church's Magisterium. I declare it to be a valid and legitimate instrument for ecclesial communion and a sure norm for teaching the faith. May it serve the renewal to which the Holy Spirit ceaselessly calls the Church of God, the Body of Christ, on her pilgrimage to the undiminished light of the kingdom!"

A sure norm for teaching the faith!  But Francis believes himself wiser than all those who worked on this Catechism. And just who was that?

Again, Pope (Saint) John Paul II:

"It can be said that this catechism is the result of the collaboration of the whole Episcopate of the Catholic Church, who generously accepted my invitation to share responsibility for an enterprise which directly concerns the life of the Church. This response elicits in me a deep feeling of joy, because the harmony of so many voices truly expresses what could be called the symphony of the faith. The achievement of this catechism thus reflects the collegial nature of the Episcopate: it testifies to the Church's catholicity."

We are witnessing a pontiff who forgets that we stand on the shoulders of giants.  A man who believes it is the Church which must change and that this is so because he is "wiser" than all previous Popes, Saints, Doctors and Fathers of the Church - as well as the entire Episcopate combined.

A regular font of humility!

Cure of Ars prophecy: "One day Our Lady of La Salette will lead the world"

One day Our Lady of La Salette will lead the world...

"One day Our Lady of La Salette will lead the world."

-Holy Curé of Ars, St. Jean-Baptiste Marie Vianney



"We judge that the Apparition of the Blessed Virgin to two cowherds, on the 19th of September, 1846, on a mountain of the chain of the Alps, situated in the parish of La Salette, in the arch-presbytery of Corps, bears within itself all the characteristics of truth, and the faithful have grounds for believing it indubitable and certain."

"We believe that this fact acquires a new degree of certitude from the immense and spontaneous concourse of the faithful on the place of the Apparition, as well as from the multitude of prodigies which have been the consequence of the said event, a very great number of which it is impossible to call in doubt without violating the rules of human testimony."

"Wherefore, to testify our lively gratitude to God and to the glorious Virgin Mary, we authorize the Cultus of Our Lady of La Salette. We permit it to be preached, and that practical and moral conclusions may be drawn from this great event."

"In fine, as the principal end of the Apparition is to recall Christians to the fulfillment of their religious duties, to frequent the divine worship, His Church, to a horror of blasphemy, and to the sanctification of the Sunday, we conjure you, our very dear brethren, with a view of your heavenly, and even of your earthly interests, to enter seriously into your selves to do penance for your sins, and especially for those against the second and third commandments of God. We conjure you, our well-beloved brethren, be docile under the voice of Mary who calls you to penance, and who, on the part of Her Son, threatens you with spiritual and temporal evils, if remaining insensible to Her Maternal admonition, you harden your heart."


[Signed]

"PHILIBERT, Bishop of Grenoble."


Most of us are aware that sin destroys our relationship with God and that it also undermines our relationships with family members, friends and others with whom we come into contact. Reconciliation refers to that precise effect of Christ's redemption of the human race by His sacrificial death on the Cross which restores our relationship with God and breaks down the barriers of sin which prevent us from engaging in authentic relationships with others.

In the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "Conversion is accomplished in daily life by gestures of reconciliation, concern for the poor, the exercise and defense of justice and right, by the admission of faults to one's brethren, fraternal correction, revision of life, examination of conscience, spiritual direction, acceptance of suffering, endurance of persecution for the sake of righteousness. Taking up one's cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance." (1435).

In other words, our transformation in Christ, our daily conversion, is made manifest by such gestures of reconciliation by which we demonstrate our commitment toward the theological virtue of charity "by which we love God above all things for his own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God" (CCC, 1822). We are told in Sacred Scripture that a faith without works is dead (James 2:14-19). An authentic reconciliation, therefore, will show itself in a charity which embraces both God and neighbor.

As Jean Jaouen so eloquently puts it, "..Christian compassion cannot be a cerebral, fleshless reality. It is completely impossible for one who loves people coldly to dissociate eternal salvation from the temporal well-being of a human person. A person is a whole. Time is eternity already begun yet still not completely visible. The conflict will be resolved if Christian apostles learn to live with their people while remaining present to the Lady who, with her Son, weeps over both the death of souls and the death of little children. 'Lady of heaven, empress of earth.' Through the Virgin Mediator and Queen, apostles will find a balance between the demands of heaven and those of earth." (Jean Jaouen, m.s., "A Grace Called La Salette: a story for the world," pp. 327-328, grassroots publishing international, Enfield, New Hampshire, English edition 1991).

Anthony Esolen: Leave the Lord's Prayer alone...

Anthony Esolen, over at First Things, writes:

"Pope Francis has caused another round of cheering and dismay by calling for a “better translation” of the words of the Lord’s Prayer. Specifically, he says that the line familiar to us English speakers as “lead us not into temptation” should be rendered as “let us not fall into temptation,” because a loving Father does not subject His children to evil. We may cite here, in apparent support of that statement, the words of St. James: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one; but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire” (Jas. 1:13–14). It was not God who tempted Job, but Satan. It was not God who tempted David with the sight of Bathsheba bathing in her garden, but David himself, whose desire gave birth to the sins of adultery and murder. All Christians, I suppose, will agree.

And yet, and yet: The words of Jesus are clear. The original Greek is not ambiguous. There is no variant hiding in the shelves. We cannot go from an active verb, subjunctive mood, aorist tense, second person singular, with a clear direct object, to a wholly different verb—“do not allow”—completed by an infinitive that is nowhere in the text—“to fall”—without shifting from translation to theological exegesis. The task of the translator, though he should be informed by the theological, cultural, and linguistic context of the time, is to render what the words mean, literally, even (perhaps especially) when those words sound foreign to our ears.

Here someone will shout, “But sometimes the meanings are not literal.” I agree. Sometimes the primary meaning is figurative; but that is still a linguistic judgment, and not theological exegesis. Even so, we are far more likely to paint for our readers a broad range of figurative meaning by keeping close to the literal field wherein that meaning takes root and flourishes, than by dispensing with the literal, and losing it and much of the figurative to boot. Hence translations that suppress the word “seed” (as in “Abraham's seed”), or “fruit” (as in “be fruitful, and multiply,” or Jesus’s parable of the vineyard owner who sent his servants to gather the “fruit” of his land), replacing these words with “offspring” and “produce,” are not only pallid English. They make it impossible for us to hear the figurative resonances of these words as Jesus and his fellow Jews heard them, across all of Scripture. They distance us—who are already farther off than is healthy—from what Chesterton has called “the warmth and wonder of created things,” of fruit, and seed, and the marital act that sows the seed.

Someone else will say that language changes over time, and that is why we need revisions. Perhaps; but the ancient Greek has not changed, and English in this regard has not changed. “Lead us not into temptation” means “do not lead us into temptation,” and that is that. We might revise and render “temptation” as “testing” or “trial”: “Do not lead us to the test,” but that would still fall under the pope’s disapproval.

No, I believe that the Greek means what it means, and what it means is accurately rendered as “lead us not into temptation,” exactly the same in Matthew as it is in Luke.

Then someone objects, and says that the Greek is just a translation of the Lord’s Aramaic, so that we, by guesswork, can efface the Greek and replace it with a supposititious original. There are three problems here. First, the Greek is the text we have, and it is canonical. Second, there is no reason to suppose that Greek-speaking Jews did not pray the prayer exactly as the Greek-speaking Saint Luke records it, which in this line is identical to Matthew’s. Third, if we consider a Semitic substrate it becomes more likely, not less, that the Greek me eisenenkeis hemas eis peirasmon is an exact rendering of what would be a verse of psalmic poetry, as I believe all of the Lord’s Prayer is. We would have A + B + C, where A is the negative, B is a causative verb (in Hebrew, “lead” = “to cause to go,” as in Psalm 23) with affixes for second-person singular subject and third-person plural object, and C is “into-temptation.” Such a verse or half-verse would be familiar to every one of Jesus's listeners, and they would have expected it to be completed by a second half. And so it is, in another A + B + C: “but + free-us + from-evil,” each element in correspondence with its partner in the previous half. No, I’m afraid that all attempts to justify an alteration on linguistic grounds fail. But what about the theology?

Let us be careful here. Jesus himself, in Gethsemane, instructed his apostles to pray “lest they be put to the test,” echoing his own words in the Lord’s Prayer. It is not a prayer that they should not fall into temptation, much less that they should not yield to temptation. It is parallel instead with Jesus’s prayer in the garden, that he might be spared the cup that he was about to drink. Jesus knows our weakness, and knows that trials will come. He knows that, as James says, “blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him” (1:12). But we are weak. We are not yet heroes. We are hardly soldiers at all. So we confess our weakness.

We pray, then, that God will spare us that test—even as we know that tests will come. Jesus himself says it. Satan has demanded Peter, to sift him like wheat, says Jesus, “but I have prayed for you, that your faith might not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22:31). We are not heroes, we are poor and unprofitable servants, yet we are called to say, with St. Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 3:7). And a Father might very well allow His grown sons and daughters to stand the test, that they might show their strength—His strength in them!—and triumph over the Slanderer.

The words of Jesus, as words, are clear. Their implications are profound. They are hard for us to fathom. They strike us as strange. That is as it should be. Let them stand."

As I said in a previous post, "Rather than engaging in some sort of Quixotic battle against imaginary dragons, perhaps Francis could make better use of his time by clearing up doctrinal confusion which he has sown through Amoris Laetitia or by addressing the homosexual problem in the priesthood?"

In any case, Francis is simply wrong*. And no amount of smoke and mirrors rhetoric will ever change that fact.

* See here

Related reading here.

Note: I tried twice to post these scholarly reputations of the alleged need to revise the Lord's Prayer on Spirit Daily's Facebook Page.  Twice that were removed.

Doug Jones engages in hypocrisy...he's really in favor of victimizing women and children...

Doug Jones, who loves to attack Roy Moore over still unproven allegations that he sexually accosted underage females, is radically pro-abortion and fully supportive of the ultimate form of physical abuse against women.  See here.

Abortion, as this compendium makes clear, "contrary to popular opinion, doesn't help women but hurts
them severely and/or kills them."

As Frederica Mathewes-Green has said:
"Truly supporting women's rights must involve telling the truth about
abortion and working for it to cease."

Francis de la Mancha: Tilting at Windmills

In an EWTN post which may be found here, Father John Echert notes that:


"The RSV records the Lord’s Prayer as follows:

6:9 Pray then like this: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 6:10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. 6:11 Give us this day our daily bread; 6:12 And forgive us our debts, As we also have forgiven our debtors; 6:13 And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil.

The Greek text is accurately rendered by the RSV, "Lead us not into temptation" with God understood as the subject. However, we should not understand this to mean that God actively tempts us to sin but that He allows us to undergo testing, including at the hands of the Tempter. In fact, this is precisely what happened to the Son of God who was driven or led by the Spirit into the wilderness, wherein He was tempted by Satan. As we read in the Gospel of St. Mark:

1:12 The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 1:13 And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him.

The Father knew that the Son would successfully face down these temptations and in the process, in His humanity, grow stronger by testing and obedience. The same is true for us; God does not allow us to be tested or tempted beyond what we can endure and He allows it only for the greater good that it may occasion, if we remain faithful.

St. Augustine comments upon the Lord’s Prayer and makes a distinction between being tempted and being led into temptation. He understands being led into temptation as meaning temptations which we are not able to resist and so we are asking that we may not, deserted by His aid, either consent or yield to any such temptation. But as to being tempted or tested, he notes that without temptation none can be approved and so we do not seek to avoid all temptations which we may successfully face with God’s grace. By these temptations, one is approved and made stronger in the process. Or, as one author correctly notes, 'He who refuses the combat renounces the crown.' Of course, God knows each of us personally and so for one who sincerely prays 'and lead us not into temptation' will not be abandoned by God to a test to which one would succumb."

Which makes it problematic that Francis would assert that, the current language of the Our Father prayer "is not a good translation."

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church, would disagree.  For this giant of Catholic thought, in his Summa, says:

"We are directed to beatitude accidentally by the removal of obstacles. Now there are three obstacles to our attainment of beatitude. First, there is sin, which directly excludes a man from the kingdom, according to 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 'Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, etc., shall possess the kingdom of God'; and to this refer the words, 'Forgive us our trespasses.'

Secondly, there is temptation which hinders us from keeping God's will, and to this we refer when we say: 'And lead us not into temptation,' whereby we do not ask not to be tempted, but not to be conquered by temptation, which is to be led into temptation. 

Thirdly, there is the present penal state which is a kind of obstacle to a sufficiency of life, and to this we refer in the words, 'Deliver us from evil.'"

As Father William Saunders has noted, "..we must understand this petition in its context. The preceding petition asks our heavenly Father to forgive us our sins as we forgive others — a very positive petition imploring an outpouring of God's healing grace. The petition in question must also be viewed positively: it asks the Father not to lead us into temptation, but not in the sense of God putting us into temptation. St. James reminds us, "No one who is tempted is free to say, 'I am being tempted by God.' Surely God, who is beyond the grasp of evil, tempts no one" (Jas 1:13). Our Lord would never set us up for a fall to sin.

Rather, as the Catechism indicates, the petition means more "do not allow us to enter into temptation" or "do not let us yield to temptation" (No. 2846). 

Rather than engaging in some sort of Quixotic battle against imaginary dragons, perhaps Francis could make better use of his time by clearing up doctrinal confusion which he has sown through Amoris Laetitia or by addressing the homosexual problem in the priesthood?

Francis: Propagator of the Cult of Softness...

Father Ray Blake writes:

"Finished that book, 'The Dictator Pope', a few days ago. There was very little that was new in it but it is shocking when scandals are brought together in a catalogue of vice. This is certainly not a book I would recommend most people reading, especially those who are easily shocked.

It portrays a picture of an arbitrary self-seeking princeling with few virtues and practically every vice. For those who hear confessions regularly it gives an insight into the cup which is clean on the outside but full of corruption on the inside.

It gives an insight into the contemporary Church, certainly into the psychology of many of its leading clergy and perhaps into the heresy of Mercy. In the abuse crisis so many of our leaders like Cardinal Daneels, who comes in for much criticism, not only defended abusers, telling their victim they needed to repent but they simply pretended there was no problem. Maybe they were not as bad as Cardinal Maradiaga who chairs Francis' Council of Nine, he dismissed the whole matter as a construction of the 'Jewish media'.

A false, heretical understanding of Mercy reduces God to being tolerant of everything, to the point where sin disappears and black becomes white, the foolish are regarded as wise, the corrupt become virtuous. A tolerant God means mankind has no need of Redemption or Salvation, the whole Christological drama becomes unnecessary and humanity has no need of a moral compass, because whatever is done, so long as it doesn't undermine the Enlightenment virtues, is fine.

An excess of Mercy has a tendency to remove any critical faculty. God becomes the watchmaker who having finished his work, sets it in place to run by itself, he is not as scripture portrays him concerned by our every action, nor is he the one who will come to judge between sheep and goats, and certainly not the one who is concerned about our personal integrity, our truth telling, our sexual or financial morality and our craving for power. It works well for a dictator, in that any criticism or expression of doubts or any questioning about this new god (the god of theological speculation, rather than God revealed by Jesus Christ in scripture and Tradition) becomes a sign of sickness, rigidity, even heresy but worst of all of the unforgivable sins of divisiveness and disloyalty.

What I find so shocking in this book, which hardly reveals any new secrets, just adds a few details, is that such corruption as it reveals causes dis-ease in so few. Indeed, those who do raise concerns are hussled to the margins and vilified. Colonna gives us insight into a court that seems to be hotbed of neurotic revenge, nepotism, financial corruption, homosexual practice and where surveillance and gossip are rife and where image is all. A quote from the book, a priest said, "It is not who or what you know, it is now about what you know about who you know", he was talking about a culture of blackmail.
Why is it tolerated? Why is it so easily accepted? Why do so few denounce it?

Perhaps it is that Catholicism in particular has seen so many changes in recent years that there are so few points of stability from which bearings can be taken. Even the Gospels, the actual revealed words of Jesus are pushed to the background and replaced by 'the sublime theology' of some German Cardinal. The author makes the point that what has been lost in the last few years is Jesus's 'Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no',

Being anxious that some fragment of the Lord's body might be lost or desecrated should be important to priests, nowadays being deeply concerned that a word, a comma of Lord's being lost should be a deep, deep concern of every Christian because where sin and vice abounds Christ cannot be tolerated

But then many bishops and religious superiors simply turned a blind eye to sexual abuse and abusers....."

ABC News reported earlier this year that, "Pope Francis has quietly reduced sanctions against a handful of pedophile priests, applying his vision of a merciful church even to its worst offenders in ways that survivors of abuse and the pope's own advisers question.

One case has come back to haunt him: An Italian priest who received the pope's clemency was later convicted by an Italian criminal court for his sex crimes against children as young as 12. The Rev. Mauro Inzoli is now facing a second church trial after new evidence emerged against him, The Associated Press has learned.


The Inzoli case is one of several in which Francis overruled the advice of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and reduced a sentence that called for the priest to be defrocked, two canon lawyers and a church official told AP. Instead, the priests were sentenced to penalties including a lifetime of penance and prayer and removal from public ministry.

In some cases, the priests or their high-ranking friends appealed to Francis for clemency by citing the pope's own words about mercy in their petitions, the church official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the proceedings are confidential.

"With all this emphasis on mercy ... he is creating the environment for such initiatives," the church official said, adding that clemency petitions were rarely granted by Pope Benedict XVI, who launched a tough crackdown during his 2005-2013 papacy and defrocked some 800 priests who raped and molested children.

At the same time, Francis also ordered three longtime staffers at the congregation dismissed, two of whom worked for the discipline section that handles sex abuse cases, the lawyers and church official said..."

Contrast the attitude of Francis with that of St. Basil of Cesarea (322-379AD). He instructed that the cleric or monk caught making sexual advances (kissing) or otherwise sexually molesting young boys or men was to be whipped in public, deprived of his tonsure (head shaven), bound in chains and imprisoned for six months, after which he was to be contained in a separate cell and ordered to undergo severe penances and prayer vigils to expedite his sins under the watchful eye of an elder spiritual brother. His diet was that of water and barley bread - the fodder of animals.

Outside his cell, while engaged in manual labor and moving about the monastery, the pederast monk was to be always monitored by two fellow monks to insure that he never again had any contact with young men or boys.

Clearly Francis, his mind corrupted by false notions of "compassion" and "mercy," has more regard for sexual predators than their innocent victims and those who seek to discipline the predators.

While it is true that everything must be done to help sinners, this cannot include helping them to sin or to remain in sin. Because of human frailty, every sinner deserves both pity and compassion. However, vice and sin must be excluded from this compassion. This because sin can never be the proper object of compassion. (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 30, a.1, ad 1).

It is a false compassion which supplies the sinner with the means to remain attached to sin. Such 'compassion' provides an assistance (whether material or moral) which actually enables the sinner to remain firmly attached to his evil ways. By contrast, true compassion leads the sinner away from vice and back to virtue. As Thomas Aquinas explains: "We love sinners out of charity, not so as to will what they will, or to rejoice in what gives them joy, but so as to make them will what we will, and rejoice in what rejoices us. Hence it is written: 'They shall be turned to thee, and thou shalt not be turned to them.'" (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 25, a.6, ad 4, citing Jeremiah 15:19).

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us that the sentiment of compassion only becomes a virtue when it is guided by reason, since "it is essential to human virtue that the movements of the soul should be regulated by reason." (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 30, c.3). Without such regulation, compassion is merely a passion. A false compassion is a compassion not regulated and tempered by reason and is, therefore, a potentially dangerous inclination. This because it is subject to favoring not only that which is good but also that which is evil (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 30, a.1, ad 3).

An authentic compassion always stems from charity. True compassion is an effect of charity (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 30, a.3, ad 3). But it must be remembered that the object of this virtue is God, whose love extends to His creatures. (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 25, a.3). Therefore, the virtue of compassion seeks to bring God to the one who suffers so that he may thereby participate in the infinite love of God. As St. Augustine explains: "'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' Now, you love yourself suitably when you love God better than yourself. What, then, you aim at in yourself you must aim at in your neighbor, namely, that he may love God with a perfect affection." (St. Augustine, Of the Morals of the Catholic Church, No. 49,

Weakening or watering-down moral norms is not an act of charity.  It is an act of counterfeit charity, an act of spiritual violence.

It seems that Francis is committed toward re-victimizing those who have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of predator priests and is not truly concerned with showing an authentic compassion and mercy toward convicted pederasts.

Recall the anger Francis demonstrated and the  tough words he had for a rowdy crowd when their shoving caused him to fall in Mexico.  He was angry because he perceived his safety was in jeopardy.  What a shame he lacks the same concern for the safety of innocent children.

But then, the dictator advanced the Cult of Softness.

Francis, not known for "wisdom and prudence," calls for Jerusalem "status quo."

Already dark forces are raging against President Trump for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital.  See here.

But Francis is opposed.  As reported here:

"Pope Francis spoke in support of the 'status quo' in Jerusalem on Wednesday, calling for 'wisdom and prudence' in order to avoid conflict.


The Roman Catholic leader's comments came after President Donald Trump announced plans for the U.S. to support the relocation of the Israeli capital to Jerusalem -- and for the U.S. Embassy to be relocated there as well.

The pope said he was 'profoundly concerned' about recent developments regarding Jerusalem, which he called a 'special vocation for peace' and a sacred place for Christians, Jews and Muslims.

He appealed to all sides to respect 'the status quo of the city' as according to the United Nations resolutions."

But Francis isn't known for his "wisdom and prudence."  Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish People:

“The oldest and holiest Jewish cemetery on Mount of Olives is in East Jerusalem, (3,000 years old) as is the Western Wall, so to call new Jewish suburbs in East Jerusalem, settlements, is absurd, and designed to undermine Jewish legitimacy there.” -- Mervyn Bufton

• “[Jerusalem is the] "unified capital of Israel and the capital of the Jewish people, and sovereignty over it is indisputable.” -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

•“We are joyful and honored to commence the construction of our new neighborhood which strengthens the Jewish presence in united Jerusalem and stresses the fact that Jerusalem is the home of every Jew in Israel and throughout the world.” -- Rabbi Dani Isaac

• “The Land of Israel without Jerusalem is merely 'Palestine.' Down the generations the Jews have been saying not 'Next year in the Land of Israel' but 'Next year in Jerusalem'... One can create Tel-Aviv out of Jaffa but one cannot create a second Jerusalem. Zion lies within the walls, not outside them.” -- Menachem Mendel Ussishkin

•“After 2,000 years of sacrifice for the dream of returning to Jerusalem, we cannot allow it to be taken away.” -- Irving Moskowitz

•“All countries of the world should understand that attempts to endanger Jerusalem’s unity and Israel’s sovereignty in it, will be rejected immediately.” -- MK Ofir Akunis

•“It’s a noise of construction, not of destruction, thank God. And it will always be like this. Development in Jerusalem, it’s a good thing. Not to the studio but for other things.” -- Benny Elon

•“The Jewish people are in Jerusalem, not as settlers or invaders, but as of right. These rights are clearly spelt out in International Law and should be respected by the international community.” -- Jacques Gauthier

•“A non-broken series of treaties and resolutions, as laid out by the San Remo Resolution, the League of Nations and the United Nations, gives the Jewish People title to the city of Jerusalem.” -- Hillel Fendel

•“You ought to let the Jews have Jerusalem; it was they who made it famous.” -- Winston Churchill

•“Jerusalem was the focal point for the historical connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.” -- Dore Gold

Jerusalem belongs to Israel.  This is historical and legal fact.  See here.

Anyone who says otherwise is opposing God's Holy Word.

The church of heresy, schism and scandal is going to make itself voluntarily the slave of the beast and the dragon which have conquered it

No serious Catholic can ignore the heterodoxy of Francis.  See here.

Church Militant is confirming that Pope Francis has officially approved the interpretation of Amoris Laetitia that opens Holy Communion to the divorced and civilly remarried in some instances, directly contradicting Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law, arguably making this interpretation binding on the consciences of the faithful.

In a Papal Rescript granted on June 5, 2017 ex Audientia Sanctissimi to the Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, and just now released by the Vatican in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the Holy Father has raised to the level of “authentic Magisterium” both the private letter he wrote on September 5, 2016 to Bp. Sergio Alfredo Fenoy, the Delegate of the Buenos Aires Pastoral Region of the Bishops’ Conference of Argentina, and the Criterios Basicos para la aplicación del capitulo VIII de Amoris laetitia (“Basic Criteria for the Application of Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia“), issued on the same day by the bishops of the Buenos Aires Pastoral Region.

Some are arguing that Pope Francis is using a “back door” in order to raise to the level of official teaching what his defenders had been describing as merely new “pastoral” discipline.Tweet

The directives of the Buenos Aires bishops caused controversy last year because it interpreted the pope’s apostolic exhortation to allow Holy Communion in certain cases to those in invalid unions who deliberately engage in sexual relations. In the Pope’s September 5 letter to the bishops, he praised their interpretation.

“The document is very good and completely explains the meaning of Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia,” he said, adding, “There are no other interpretations.”

According to experts whom Church Militant has consulted, the importance of the official decision of the Pope to elevate the referenced documents to the level of “authentic Magisterium” and order their publication in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis (the official register of the Holy See, a compendium of decrees, encyclicals, appointments and other official acts of the Holy See) cannot be underestimated. The issuance of the decision through Rescript form puts to rest any more discussion regarding the official and precise interpretation to be given by the episcopal hierarchy and faithful to Amoris Laetitia.

Church Militant’s unofficial English translation of the Rescript published in Latin states:

The Supreme Pontiff decrees that the two Documents that precede [this Rescript] are to be made known by publication on the Vatican website and in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, as authentic Magisterium. From the Vatican Palace, on the 5th day of June in the year 2017. (emphasis added)

Pietro Cardinal Parolin
Secretary of State

The terms of art, “authentic Magisterium,” are especially referenced in canon 752 of the Code of Canon Law:

While the assent of faith is not required, a religious submission of intellect and will is to be given to any doctrine which either the Supreme Pontiff or the College of Bishops, exercising their authentic magisterium, declare upon a matter of faith or morals, even though they do not intend to proclaim that doctrine by definitive act. Christ’s faithful are therefore to ensure that they avoid whatever does not accord with that doctrine. (Code of Canon Law Annotated, 2nd ed. Midwest Theological Forum: Woodridge, 2004, p. 586) (emphasis added)

The use by the Supreme Pontiff of the terms “authentic Magisterium” has been qualified as “very troubling” by one expert whom Church Militant consulted regarding this breaking development, because such usage is primarily employed in strictly categorizing doctrines pertaining to faith or morals, not merely ecclesiastical discipline. Consequently, some are arguing that Pope Francis is using a “back door” in order to raise to the level of official teaching what his defenders had been describing as merely new “pastoral” discipline meant to “accompany” divorced and civilly remarried faithful in their “discernment” as to whether they can receive Holy Communion despite living more uxorio (as husband and wife).

_____________________________

It was Frere Francois de Marie des Anges, in his important work entitled "Fatima: Tragedy and Triumph," who warned that:

"The Apocalypse teaches us that the "false prophet" will act exteriorly as exercising authority in the name of God and in His service, whereas he will be in reality in the service of the Beast.  Our Father Superior comments:

The church of heresy, schism and scandal is going to make itself voluntarily the slave of the beast and the dragon which have conquered it

In order to bend souls and not only bodies under his domination and obtain their adoration, the political power instigated a religious power completely to his service, and thus the lamb is going to become the vehicle of error. , the spiritual animator of the empire of Satan.  He will use fire from Heaven, which is the Word of God, anathema, to disarm its enemies and conquer Christians.  Then the lamb will condemn what is holy and consecrate what is of the evil one.  Here we are at the most extreme point of the triumph of impiety, at the hour of the most complete victory of the mystery of iniquity....'" (Fatima: Tragedy and Triumph, p. 285).

Cardinal Raymond Burke: The End Times may have arrived...

Lifesite News reports:

"Confusion and error in the Catholic Church regarding its fundamental teaching on marriage and family are so serious that the End Times may have come upon us, Cardinal Raymond Burke said in a new interview.

When the foundation of the moral law is questioned within the Church, the cardinal said, 'then the whole order of human life and the order of the Church itself are endangered.'

'So there is a feeling that in today’s world that is based on secularism with a completely anthropocentric approach,' Cardinal Burke continued, 'by which we think we can create our own meaning of life and meaning of the family and so on, the Church itself seems to be confused.'

'In that sense, one may have the feeling that the Church gives the appearance of being unwilling to obey the mandates of Our Lord,' he stated. 'Then perhaps we have arrived at the End Times.'

Cardinal Burke confirmed in an interview with Catholic Herald contributing editor Paolo Gambi published today that 'very serious questions' remain regarding the dubia submitted to Pope Francis last year on his exhortation Amoris Laetitia.

But he persisted in that the specifics of how to proceed on a formal correction of the pope have yet to be determined.


Cardinal Burke has been long known for his defense of Church orthodoxy, and many regard his resoluteness to that end in the face of seemingly political demotions and derision as an example of courage and fidelity to the faith.

Burke further confirmed in the Catholic Herald interview that although he remains cardinal patron for the Order of Malta, he currently has no function within the Order and thus receives no communication from either the organization itself or from Pope Francis.

He reaffirmed in the interview as well that priests are free to celebrate the Extraordinary Form of the Mass since Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, saying that both the Ordinary Form and the Extraordinary Form of the liturgy are considered normal in the Church.

Gambi asked the cardinal to expound on recent comments he made about the present time being 'realistically apocalyptic' due to 'confusion, division and error' within the Church coming from 'shepherds' even at the highest levels.

Cardinal Burke explained that allowing access to sacraments for individuals living in sinful unions is 'a violation of the truth' for both the indissolubility of marriage and the sanctity of the Eucharist.

'In the present moment, there is confusion and error about the most fundamental teachings of the Church,' said Cardinal Burke, 'for example with regard to marriage and the family. For instance, the idea that people who are living in an irregular union could receive the sacraments is a violation of the truth with regard both to the indissolubility of marriage and to the sanctity of the Eucharist.'

Citing St. Paul, he said 'we eat our condemnation' if we receive the Eucharist in an unworthy way.

'Now the confusion in the Church is going even further than that,' Burke added, 'because there is today confusion as to whether there are acts which are intrinsically evil and this, of course, is the foundation of the moral law,' imperiling the order of the Church and human life.

Asked his thoughts on Italian Episcopal Conference Secretary-general Bishop Nunzio Galantino’s recent claim that the Protestant Reformation was an 'event of the Holy Spirit,' Cardinal Burke responded, 'Well, I don’t see how you can say that the division of the Church was an act of the Holy Spirit. It simply does not make sense.'

He also dismissed talk of a common Eucharistic celebration with Lutherans as 'not possible' because of the differences on the doctrine of transubstantiation.


'For Catholics to engage in some kind of ecumenical Eucharist would be abandoning the Catholic Faith,' stated Cardinal Burke. 'This is a profoundly false ecumenism which would do grave harm to the Faith and to souls.'

His response to Gambi asking what his first act would be if elected pope was that 'the first thing any pope should do is simply to make the profession of faith together with the whole Church, as Vicar of Christ on Earth.'

'Most popes did that,' Cardinal Burke added, offering Pope St Pius X’s encyclical E Supremi as example.

'Also Pope St John Paul II’s Redemptor Hominis is a sort of profession of faith,' the cardinal noted, 'calling to mind again that the Church is the Body of Christ, the Church belongs to Christ and that we are all obedient in his service.'"

On June 11, 1988, Our Lady told Father Gobbi, "Satan, my Adversary, with snares and by means of his subtle seduction, has succeeded in spreading errors everywhere, under the form of new and more updated interpretations of the truth, and he has led many to choose with full knowledge - and to live in - sin, in the deceiving conviction that this is no longer an evil, and even that it is a value and a good. The times of the general confusion and of the greatest agitation of spirits has come. Confusion has entered into the souls and the lives of many of my children. This great apostasy is spreading more and more, even through the interior of the Catholic Church. Errors are being taught and spread about, while the fundamental truths of the faith, which the authentic Magisterium of the Church has always taught and energetically defended against any heretical deviation whatsoever, are being denied with impunity....In these times, in the Catholic Church, there will remain a little remnant who will be faithful to Christ, to the Gospel, and to its entire truth. The little remnant will form a little flock, all guarded in the depths of my Immaculate Heart. This little flock will be made up of those bishops, priests, religious and faithful who will remain strongly united to the Pope, all gathered together in the cenacle of my Immaculate Heart, in an act of unceasing prayer, of continual immolation, of total offering to prepare the painful way for the second and glorious coming of my Son Jesus..."

The Sons of Hell, the Children of Belial as St. Louis de Montfort refers to them, are spreading their errors everywhere. The confusion of our own time has become general. And this too was prophesied by the great Jesuit priest Father Nectou, who said that before the triumph of the Church, "The confusion will be so general that mankind will not be able to aright, as if God had entirely withheld His providence from mankind, and during the worst crisis the best thing that can be done will be to remain where God has placed us, and persevere in fervent prayer."

Signs are multiplying everywhere. Today, all across society, people are committing grievous sins and even blasphemously calling these sins virtue. Sin is justified. It is even celebrated. Active homosexuals and lesbians have the audacity to call their perverse practices "love" (practices for which God destroyed the five cities of the plain: Sodom and Gomorrah) and agitate for - demand - the legal status of marriage. As a girl in the Ukraine is reported as hearing from the Blessed Mother: "The present times are worse than at the time of Noah. Then the world was scourged by a deluge of water; now the world is going to be scourged by a deluge of fire." (Firs apparition to Anna at Seredne, December 20, 1954).

Our sin-sick world, puffed up with satanic pride, has become too blind to see its own miserable state. Today our great cities have become new Sodom and Gomorrahs. And at a time when so many confused people look to their priests for moral and spiritual guidance, often they receive chaff instead of wheat.

Pray the Holy Rosary to the Immaculata every day.  Consecrate yourself daily. Confess your sins regularly.  The Devil, through ecclesiastical masonry, has entered within the highest ranks of the Church.

The artificial vocations crisis and Francis the "Merciful"...

Writing on the continued vocations crisis, Father John Zuhlsdorf correctly notes:

"The crisis of priestly vocations is largely artificial.   It has, in some cases, been manufactured.

Tradition is the counter-measure to the crisis.  It works where it is tried.

Also, we need to pray explicitly for vocations and keep the sound of that prayer ringing constantly in the ears of parents and their sons.  Again, I propose that every parish adopt the following prayer, to be prayed while kneeling by the entire congregation at every Sunday Mass immediately after the Gospel..."

Readers of this Blog know that I've been addressing the vocations crisis for years.  My own vocation was sabotaged by the La Salette Missionaries because I oppose the ordination of women to the priesthood.  See here.

Although I have had extensive psychological testing and screening for the United States military (as part of my security clearance for military intelligence) and have received glowing reports which indicate that I am free of any pathologies - including a homosexual inclination, when I contacted the Worcester Diocese (twice) to express my interest in discerning a priestly vocation, I received no response whatsoever.

Meanwhile, the Diocese of Worcester has ordained homosexual men to the priesthood.  For example, a psychological evaluation in 1977 prior to the ordination of Fr. Jean Paul Gagnon  indicated that the candidate had possible "sex role identification" problems. See here.

When I left a comment on Francis' Facebook page detailing my struggle to pursue a vocation to the priesthood, I received no response whatsoever.  And yet, Francis found the time to personally meet with a homosexual activist who claims to be married to another man - Simon Cazal.  See here.

But then, as a pesky orthodox Catholic who actually believes everything contained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no doubt the "merciful" Francis seems me too "rigid" and not open to change.

That's okay though.  I'd rather be a faithful member of the Common Priesthood of the Faithful than Francis' idea of a priest.

For what does it profit a man...you know the rest!

But not to worry folks, all is well.  See here.