"For generations now, we have denied the food of revealed truth to our
children; and we have permitted the moral polluters to dump their garbage
into our culture with abandon. Why then, are we surprised that ours
has become a stunted and sick society?" - Patrick J. Buchanan
The times are growing very dark. Everywhere signs are emerging which point to the appearance of the Man of Sin. A Brazilian heavy metal band is announcing the Age of Antichrist (see here). We have a Pontiff who preaches a "live and let live" philosophy (see here) which is nothing less than a counterfeit charity.
As Joseph Pronechen explains here, "Live and let live. Be nice. Be nonjudgmental. We must be more tolerant. So the sayings go.
'America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance,' wrote Servant of God Archbishop Fulton Sheen in his prophetic 1931 essay 'A Plea for Intolerance....It is not. It is suffering from tolerance: tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broad-minded.'
But shouldn’t we be tolerant? Isn’t that charitable?
'Real love involves real hatred,' countered Archbishop Sheen. 'Whoever has lost the power of moral indignation and the urge to drive the buyers and sellers from the temples has also lost a living, fervent love of truth. Charity, then, is not a mild philosophy of live and let live.'
Adds Father Andrew Apostoli of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, EWTN host and vice postulator of Archbishop Sheen’s cause, 'You can’t tolerate evil teachings and distortions of values against God’s laws and natural law to be accepted by society.'
It’s a daily challenge for many when confronted with today’s morally bankrupt political correctness masquerading as real tolerance.
True Tolerance
So how is a Catholic to walk the narrow road of true Christian tolerance with genuine love of neighbor and not stumble along the wide road of politically correct tolerance?
First, 'Love is not tolerance,' Archbishop Sheen wrote. 'Christian love bears evil, but it does not tolerate it. It is not broad-minded about sin.'
Then the archbishop made an important distinction. 'Tolerance applies to the erring, intolerance to the error,' he noted. 'Tolerance does not apply to truth or principles. About these things we must be intolerant.'
We condemn the sin, but not the sinner, as Father Apostoli puts it: “That’s the kind of distinction Bishop Sheen is making. We have to be tolerant toward the person who many be weak, confused, mistaken in good faith or may even be deliberately promoting distortions.”
____________________________________________________________________________
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).
We live in evil times. And at a time when the Church needs sound moral and intellectual guidance, we have a shepherd who appears to subscribe to an Epicurean philosophy.
Strange days. Evil days. The diabolical disorientation grows. The Age of Antichrist nears.
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophy. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
"..there is in preparation a true schism which could soon become open and proclaimed.."
Gary Gutting, who teaches philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, has declared in the New York Times that the faithful "decide the nature and extent of episcopal authority" and what is moral or immoral. He writes, "...haven’t the members of the Catholic Church recognized their bishops as having full and sole authority to determine the teachings of the Church? By no means. There was, perhaps, a time when the vast majority of Catholics accepted the bishops as having an absolute right to define theological and ethical doctrines. Those days, if they ever existed, are long gone. Most Catholics — meaning, to be more precise, people who were raised Catholic or converted as adults and continue to take church teachings and practices seriously — now reserve the right to reject doctrines insisted on by their bishops and to interpret in their own way the doctrines that they do accept. This is above all true in matters of sexual morality, especially birth control, where the majority of Catholics have concluded that the teachings of the bishops do not apply to them. Such “reservations” are an essential constraint on the authority of the bishops.
The bishops and the minority of Catholics who support their full authority have tried to marginalize Catholics who do not accept the bishops as absolute arbiters of doctrine. They speak of 'cafeteria Catholics' or merely 'cultural Catholics,' and imply that the only 'real Catholics' are those who accept their teachings entirely. But this marginalization begs the question I’m raising about the proper source of the judgment that the bishops have divine authority. Since, as I’ve argued, members of the church are themselves this source, it is not for the bishops but for the faithful to decide the nature and extent of episcopal authority. The bishops truly are, as they so often say, 'servants of the servants of the Lord.'
It may be objected that, regardless of what individual Catholics think, the bishops in fact exercise effective control over the church. This is true in many respects, but only to the extent that members of the church accept their authority. Stalin’s alleged query about papal authority ('How many divisions does the Pope have?') expresses more than just cynical realpolitik. The authority of the Catholic bishops is enforceable morally but not militarily or politically. It resides entirely in the fact that people freely accept it." (See here).
In his Encyclical Letter Humanum Genus (on Freemasonry), Pope Leo XIII warned that: "Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring.
What refers to domestic life in the teaching of the naturalists is almost all contained in the following declarations: that marriage belongs to the genus of commercial contracts, which can rightly be revoked by the will of those who made them, and that the civil rulers of the State have power over the matrimonial bond; that in the education of youth nothing is to be taught in the matter of religion as of certain and fixed opinion; and each one must be left at liberty to follow, when he comes of age, whatever he may prefer. To these things the Freemasons fully assent; and not only assent, but have long endeavoured to make them into a law and institution. For in many countries, and those nominally Catholic, it is enacted that no marriages shall be considered lawful except those contracted by the civil rite; in other places the law permits divorce; and in others every effort is used to make it lawful as soon as may be. Thus, the time is quickly coming when marriages will be turned into another kind of contract-that is into changeable and uncertain unions which fancy may join together, and which the same when changed may disunite....With the greatest unanimity the sect of the Freemasons also endeavours to take to itself the education of youth. They think that they can easily mold to their opinions that soft and pliant age, and bend it whither they will; and that nothing can be more fitted than this to enable them to bring up the youth of the State after their own plan. Therefore, in the education and instruction of children they allow no share, either of teaching or of discipline, to the ministers of the Church; and in many places they have procured that the education of youth shall be exclusively in the hands of laymen, and that nothing which treats of the most important and most holy duties of men to God shall be introduced into the instructions on morals.
What, therefore, sect of the Freemasons is, and what course it pursues, appears sufficiently from the summary We have briefly given. Their chief dogmas are so greatly and manifestly at variance with reason that nothing can be more perverse. To wish to destroy the religion and the Church which God Himself has established, and whose perpetuity He insures by His protection, and to bring back after a lapse of eighteen centuries the manners and customs of the pagans, is signal folly and audacious impiety. Neither is it less horrible nor more tolerable that they should repudiate the benefits which Jesus Christ so mercifully obtained, not only for individuals, but also for the family and for civil society, benefits which, even according to the judgment and testimony of enemies of Christianity, are very great. In this insane and wicked endeavor we may almost see the implacable hatred and spirit of revenge with which Satan himself is inflamed against Jesus Christ.
So also the studious endeavour of the Freemasons to destroy the chief foundations of justice and honesty, and to co-operate with those who would wish, as if they were mere animals, to do what they please, tends only to the ignominious and disgraceful ruin of the human race. The evil, too, is increased by the dangers which threaten both domestic and civil society. As We have elsewhere shown, in marriage, according to the belief of almost every nation, there is something sacred and religious; and the law of God has determined that marriages shall not be dissolved. If they are deprived of their sacred character, and made dissoluble, trouble and confusion in the family will be the result, the wife being deprived of her dignity and the children left without protection as to their interests and well being.
To have in public matters no care for religion, and in the arrangement and administration of civil affairs to have no more regard for God than if He did not exist, is a rashness unknown to the very pagans; for in their heart and soul the notion of a divinity and the need of public religion were so firmly fixed that they would have thought it easier to have city without foundation than a city without God. Human society, indeed for which by nature we are formed, has been constituted by God the Author of nature; and from Him, as from their principle and source, flow in all their strength and permanence the countless benefits with which society abounds. As we are each of us admonished by the very voice of nature to worship God in piety and holiness, as the Giver unto us of life and of all that is good therein, so also and for the same reason, nations and States are bound to worship Him; and therefore it is clear that those who would absolve society from all religious duty act not only unjustly but also with ignorance and folly."
Most people today have become so desensitized that they are incapable of seeing just how far this masonic agenda has advanced. The movement to eradicate Christianity is accelerating. Masonry, if it is to prepare the way for the Man of Sin, must concentrate its attacks on the one institution which stands in its way: the Holy Roman Catholic Church. After more than two thousand years of Christian history, the charge levelled against Christians by the pagan historian Tacitus is being revived: The Christians are the enemies of the human race. (Annals, XV, 44).
The new humanitarian religion of Antichrist must institute its own cult, ministers and temples which will be filled with its own faithful who have replaced the hope for Heaven with the idols of humanity, fertility, maternity and virility as surely as the Greco-Romans worshiped the statues of Venus and Apollo. Already we are witnessing an increasing hatred for the Crucifix. As Romano Guardini warned so long ago: "One day the Antichrist will come: a human being who introduces an order of things in which rebellion against God will attain its ultimate power. He will be filled with enlightenment and strength. The ultimate aim of all aims will be to prove that existence witout Christ is possible - nay rather, that Christ is the enemy of existence, which can be fully realized only when all Christian values have been destroyed. His 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. Then it will be clear what the Christian essence really is: that which stems not from the world, but from the heart of God; victory of grace over the world; redemption of the world, for her true essence is not to be found in herself, but in God, from whom she has received it. When God becomes all in all, the world will finally burst into flower."
Our Lady warned us on November 15, 1990 that, "The great trial has arrived for your Church. Thse errors which have brought people to the loss of the true faith have continued to spread. Many pastors have been neither attentive nor vigilant and have allowed many rapacious wolves, clothed as lambs, to insinuate themselves into the flock in order to bring disorder and destruction. How great is your responsibility, O pastors of the holy Church of God! You continue along the path of division from the Pope and of the rejection of his Magisterium; indeed, in a hidden way, there is in preparation a true schism which could soon become open and proclaimed. And then, there will remain only a small faithful remnant, over which I will keep watch in the garden of my Immaculate Heart." (To Father Gobbi).
The schism Our Lady spoke of is indeed beginning to emerge. A new humanitarian religion and a new Future Church are being constructed. The new religion will be devoid of the supernatural. It will be man-centered. Men will decide for themselves what is moral and immoral. They will build this new Church in their own image and likeness. Those who still adhere to Christ and His teaching will be declared enemies of progress and the new Moloch State.
The bishops and the minority of Catholics who support their full authority have tried to marginalize Catholics who do not accept the bishops as absolute arbiters of doctrine. They speak of 'cafeteria Catholics' or merely 'cultural Catholics,' and imply that the only 'real Catholics' are those who accept their teachings entirely. But this marginalization begs the question I’m raising about the proper source of the judgment that the bishops have divine authority. Since, as I’ve argued, members of the church are themselves this source, it is not for the bishops but for the faithful to decide the nature and extent of episcopal authority. The bishops truly are, as they so often say, 'servants of the servants of the Lord.'
It may be objected that, regardless of what individual Catholics think, the bishops in fact exercise effective control over the church. This is true in many respects, but only to the extent that members of the church accept their authority. Stalin’s alleged query about papal authority ('How many divisions does the Pope have?') expresses more than just cynical realpolitik. The authority of the Catholic bishops is enforceable morally but not militarily or politically. It resides entirely in the fact that people freely accept it." (See here).
In his Encyclical Letter Humanum Genus (on Freemasonry), Pope Leo XIII warned that: "Wickedly, also, but at the same time quite consistently, do those act who do away with the expectation of the joys of heaven, and bring down all happiness to the level of mortality, and, as it were, sink it in the earth. Of what We have said the following fact, astonishing not so much in itself as in its open expression, may serve as a confirmation. For, since generally no one is accustomed to obey crafty and clever men so submissively as those whose soul is weakened and broken down by the domination of the passions, there have been in the sect of the Freemasons some who have plainly determined and proposed that, artfully and of set purpose, the multitude should be satiated with a boundless license of vice, as, when this had been done, it would easily come under their power and authority for any acts of daring.
What refers to domestic life in the teaching of the naturalists is almost all contained in the following declarations: that marriage belongs to the genus of commercial contracts, which can rightly be revoked by the will of those who made them, and that the civil rulers of the State have power over the matrimonial bond; that in the education of youth nothing is to be taught in the matter of religion as of certain and fixed opinion; and each one must be left at liberty to follow, when he comes of age, whatever he may prefer. To these things the Freemasons fully assent; and not only assent, but have long endeavoured to make them into a law and institution. For in many countries, and those nominally Catholic, it is enacted that no marriages shall be considered lawful except those contracted by the civil rite; in other places the law permits divorce; and in others every effort is used to make it lawful as soon as may be. Thus, the time is quickly coming when marriages will be turned into another kind of contract-that is into changeable and uncertain unions which fancy may join together, and which the same when changed may disunite....With the greatest unanimity the sect of the Freemasons also endeavours to take to itself the education of youth. They think that they can easily mold to their opinions that soft and pliant age, and bend it whither they will; and that nothing can be more fitted than this to enable them to bring up the youth of the State after their own plan. Therefore, in the education and instruction of children they allow no share, either of teaching or of discipline, to the ministers of the Church; and in many places they have procured that the education of youth shall be exclusively in the hands of laymen, and that nothing which treats of the most important and most holy duties of men to God shall be introduced into the instructions on morals.
What, therefore, sect of the Freemasons is, and what course it pursues, appears sufficiently from the summary We have briefly given. Their chief dogmas are so greatly and manifestly at variance with reason that nothing can be more perverse. To wish to destroy the religion and the Church which God Himself has established, and whose perpetuity He insures by His protection, and to bring back after a lapse of eighteen centuries the manners and customs of the pagans, is signal folly and audacious impiety. Neither is it less horrible nor more tolerable that they should repudiate the benefits which Jesus Christ so mercifully obtained, not only for individuals, but also for the family and for civil society, benefits which, even according to the judgment and testimony of enemies of Christianity, are very great. In this insane and wicked endeavor we may almost see the implacable hatred and spirit of revenge with which Satan himself is inflamed against Jesus Christ.
So also the studious endeavour of the Freemasons to destroy the chief foundations of justice and honesty, and to co-operate with those who would wish, as if they were mere animals, to do what they please, tends only to the ignominious and disgraceful ruin of the human race. The evil, too, is increased by the dangers which threaten both domestic and civil society. As We have elsewhere shown, in marriage, according to the belief of almost every nation, there is something sacred and religious; and the law of God has determined that marriages shall not be dissolved. If they are deprived of their sacred character, and made dissoluble, trouble and confusion in the family will be the result, the wife being deprived of her dignity and the children left without protection as to their interests and well being.
To have in public matters no care for religion, and in the arrangement and administration of civil affairs to have no more regard for God than if He did not exist, is a rashness unknown to the very pagans; for in their heart and soul the notion of a divinity and the need of public religion were so firmly fixed that they would have thought it easier to have city without foundation than a city without God. Human society, indeed for which by nature we are formed, has been constituted by God the Author of nature; and from Him, as from their principle and source, flow in all their strength and permanence the countless benefits with which society abounds. As we are each of us admonished by the very voice of nature to worship God in piety and holiness, as the Giver unto us of life and of all that is good therein, so also and for the same reason, nations and States are bound to worship Him; and therefore it is clear that those who would absolve society from all religious duty act not only unjustly but also with ignorance and folly."
Most people today have become so desensitized that they are incapable of seeing just how far this masonic agenda has advanced. The movement to eradicate Christianity is accelerating. Masonry, if it is to prepare the way for the Man of Sin, must concentrate its attacks on the one institution which stands in its way: the Holy Roman Catholic Church. After more than two thousand years of Christian history, the charge levelled against Christians by the pagan historian Tacitus is being revived: The Christians are the enemies of the human race. (Annals, XV, 44).
The new humanitarian religion of Antichrist must institute its own cult, ministers and temples which will be filled with its own faithful who have replaced the hope for Heaven with the idols of humanity, fertility, maternity and virility as surely as the Greco-Romans worshiped the statues of Venus and Apollo. Already we are witnessing an increasing hatred for the Crucifix. As Romano Guardini warned so long ago: "One day the Antichrist will come: a human being who introduces an order of things in which rebellion against God will attain its ultimate power. He will be filled with enlightenment and strength. The ultimate aim of all aims will be to prove that existence witout Christ is possible - nay rather, that Christ is the enemy of existence, which can be fully realized only when all Christian values have been destroyed. His 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. Then it will be clear what the Christian essence really is: that which stems not from the world, but from the heart of God; victory of grace over the world; redemption of the world, for her true essence is not to be found in herself, but in God, from whom she has received it. When God becomes all in all, the world will finally burst into flower."
Our Lady warned us on November 15, 1990 that, "The great trial has arrived for your Church. Thse errors which have brought people to the loss of the true faith have continued to spread. Many pastors have been neither attentive nor vigilant and have allowed many rapacious wolves, clothed as lambs, to insinuate themselves into the flock in order to bring disorder and destruction. How great is your responsibility, O pastors of the holy Church of God! You continue along the path of division from the Pope and of the rejection of his Magisterium; indeed, in a hidden way, there is in preparation a true schism which could soon become open and proclaimed. And then, there will remain only a small faithful remnant, over which I will keep watch in the garden of my Immaculate Heart." (To Father Gobbi).
The schism Our Lady spoke of is indeed beginning to emerge. A new humanitarian religion and a new Future Church are being constructed. The new religion will be devoid of the supernatural. It will be man-centered. Men will decide for themselves what is moral and immoral. They will build this new Church in their own image and likeness. Those who still adhere to Christ and His teaching will be declared enemies of progress and the new Moloch State.
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