Cardinal Burke: Bishops and Vatican have failed to defend morality

Cardinal Burke notes how our Bishops and the Vatican have failed to defend morality.  In a recent interview, His Eminence, speaking of the crisis in the Church, Said: “The situation in the Church is very alarming, first of all, because the fundamental truths of faith are undermined, put into question.”

He went on to lament that “there is no strong leadership from Rome that could explain and clarify these matters.”

The time for lying is over.  I have been saying this for years.  Back in 2009, Archbishop Charles Chaput noted that, "40 years of American Catholic complacency and poor formation are bearing exactly the fruit we should have expected...We can't talk about following St. Paul and converting our culture until we sober up and get honest about what we've allowed ourselves to become.  We need to stop lying to each other..." (See here).

The lying must stop.  For this to happen, we need priests and Bishops who fear God more than they do men.  Cowards will not lead us out of the valley of death.  Only shepherds who have the spiritual strength, the Cardinal Gift of Fortitude, to brave the risk of worldly criticism, will be able to lead the American Catholic Church out of the valley of the Culture of Death and back on the road to the Civilization of Love which Pope John Paul II spoke of so often.

Why have so many priests succumbed to fear?  Why is it that their preaching no longer points out sin?  Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange provides us with an answer:


"The reason for this is not difficult to find.  A sermon is the result of the combined effort of all the priest's powers; it reveals his entire person; it is his struggle against the vices of the surrounding world."  In other words, if the preaching is unsound, it is because the priest's spiritual life is unsound.  Fr. Lagrange continues, "Everything in the priest cooperates in his preaching - study, reflection, his powers to compose and revise, the activity of his intellect, his imagination, his memory, his feelings, his voice.  Therefore, when he preaches, the priest stands exposed for all to study; some will be attracted, others will not.  Some will accept what he says, others will simply criticize.  So if the priest approaches his task from the human angle, he will say to himself: 'I cannot afford to lose my reputation; people of weight in the parish who take offense easily must be spared their feelings and not provoked; I must proceed warily so as not to incur criticism.'  In that way Christian eloquence is invaded by a profane eloquence in which the preacher looks after his own interests, not the glory of God or the saving of souls." (The Priest In Union With Christ, p. 156).

I've never been a fan of lying.  And this because Our Lord tells us that the Devil is the Father of all lies (John 8:44),  If it's lying you want, this Blog is not for you.  Forty years of lying has wrought so much damage to the American Catholic Church.  Archbishop Chaput is right, we are merely reaping the fruit of what we've planted.  St. Paul tells us that, "...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.." (Galatians 5: 22).  But what fruit have we witnessed in the American Catholic Church?  The Church has been infected with dry-rot as so many Catholics have succumbed to the works of the flesh.

We need heroic shepherds.  Men who, like Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J., are willing to give their very lives for the Catholic Church and her teaching.

Stephen Hawking: The Prince of Fairy Tales

British scientist Stephen Hawking is at it again.  In an interview with The Guardian, Hawking said, "I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail.  There is no heaven for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."  See here.

Peter Kreeft, professor of philosophy at Boston College, refutes this argument nicely explaining that, "A computer is not reliable if it has been programmed by chance rather than by rational design (e.g., by hailstones falling at random on its keyboard).  The human brain and nervous system are a computer.  They may be much more, but they are not less than a computer.  So the human brain is not reliable if it has been programmed by mere chance..if materialism is true, if the soul is only the brain, if there is no spirit, no human soul and no God, then the brain has been programmed by mere chance.  All the programming our brains have received, through heredity (genetics) and environment (society), is ultimately only unintelligent, undesigned, random chance, brute facts, physical causes, not logical reasons.  Therefore materialism cannot be true.  It refutes itself.  It destroys its own credentials.  If the brain is nothing but blind atoms, we have no reason to trust it when it tells us about anything, including itself and atoms...If materialism is not true, this means there is immaterial reality too.  And that immaterial reality - usually called spirit, or soul - need not be subject to the laws of material reality, including the law of mortality."

Mr. Hawking has made bizarre claims in the past.  He has advanced abiogenesis in a desperate attempt to uphold failed evolutionary theories while warning anyone who will listen that humanity faces a potential threat on its horizon from "aliens" from outer space.

It would appear that Stephen Hawking is eminently qualified to speak on fairy stories.  For he is the Prince of Fairy Tales.

Mr. Marvin Schur didn't fail his country. But his country failed him

A veteran of the Second World War, Mr. Schur deserved better.

Oakland County's deputy chief medical examiner says Schur died a "slow, painful death" from hypothermia.




Meditation: Matthew 25:40.