It's time to prepare

 

For many years,  I've been warning of the economic chastisement which is coming upon the world in general and the United States in particular.   See here and here.

The time to prepare for this societal collapse is now.  See here.

Famine and war as chastisements for abandoning the Lord.  Here.

World economic collapse is coming in preparation for the Man of Sin

Michael Snyder writes:


Mainstream news outlets are already starting to use the phrase "economic collapse" to describe what is going on in some areas of our world right now.

For many Americans this may seem a bit strange, but the truth is that the worldwide economic slowdown that began during the second half of last year is starting to get a lot worse.

In this article, we are going to examine evidence of this from South America, Europe, Asia and North America. Once we are done, it should be obvious that there is absolutely no reason to be optimistic about the direction of the global economy right now. The warnings of so many prominent experts are now becoming a reality, and what we have witnessed so far are just the early chapters of a crushing economic crisis that will affect every man, woman and child in the entire world.

Let's start with Brazil. It has the seventh largest economy on the entire planet, and it is already enduring its worst recession in 25 years. In fact, at the end of last year, Goldman Sachs said that what was going on down there was actually a "depression."

But now the crisis in Brazil has escalated significantly.

I want to share with you an excerpt from a recent article titled "Brazil: Economic collapse worse than feared." I know, that title sounds like it comes directly from The Economic Collapse Blog, but I didn't write it.

It actually comes from CNN.

Amid political chaos, Brazil's economic collapse is worse than its government once believed.
In the midst of rising calls to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's central bank announced Thursday that it now expects the country's economy to shrink 3.5% this year.
That's worse than the central bank's previous estimate for a 1.9% contraction. The darker forecast matches what the International Monetary Fund projected for Brazil — Latin America's largest country — and what many independent economists have suspected.

It is one thing for Michael Snyder to tell you that Brazil is in the midst of "economic collapse," but it is another thing entirely for CNN to say it.

And of course, I have been warning about the crisis down in Brazil for quite some time now. For much more on this, please see my previous article, titled "The Economic Collapse of South America Is Well Underway."

Meanwhile, things are actually much worse in Venezuela than they are in Brazil. Food and basic supplies are in short supply, the inflation rate has hit 720 percent, and crime is completely out of control.

The following is from an article in the Independent called "Venezuela is on the brink of complete economic collapse":

The only question now is whether Venezuela's government or economy will completely collapse first.
The key word there is "completely." Both are well into their death throes. Indeed, Venezuela's ruling party just lost congressional elections that gave the opposition a veto-proof majority, and it's hard to see that getting any better for them any time soon — or ever.
Incumbents, after all, don't tend to do too well when, according to the International Monetary Fund, their economy shrinks 10 percent one year, an additional 6 percent the next, and inflation explodes to 720 percent. It's no wonder, then, that markets expect Venezuela to default on its debt in the very near future. The country is basically bankrupt.

Once again, we see a very respected mainstream publication using the phrase "economic collapse" to describe what is happening in South America.

You can find some stunning video of the "economic Armageddon" that is taking place in Venezuela right here. I would encourage you to watch that video, because what is happening down there will eventually be happening here.

Meanwhile, over in Europe, the collapse of the Italian banking system has entered a disturbing new chapter. Italy's finance minister has called a meeting in Rome for Monday that will be focusing on a "last resort" bailout plan for the troubled banks.

Finance minister Pier Carlo Padoan has called a meeting in Rome on Monday with executives from Italy's largest financial institutions to agree final details of a "last resort" bailout plan.
Yet on the eve of that gathering, concerns remain as to whether the plan will be sufficient to ringfence the weakest of Italy's large banks, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, from contagion, according to people involved in the talks.
Italian bank shares have lost almost half their value so far this year amid investor worries over a €360bn pile of non-performing loans — equivalent to about a fifth of GDP. Lenders' profitability has been hit by a crippling three-year recession.

As Italy descends into financial chaos, the rest of the continent better be paying attention.
Do you remember how hard it was for the rest of Europe to rescue Greece?
Well, Greece has the 44th largest economy on the planet.
Italy has the eighth.

It would be hard to overstate the seriousness of what is going on over in Europe, and it is not just Italy we are talking about. All over the continent, major banks are in deep trouble, and the chairman of France's second largest retail bank recently told reporters that "I am much more worried than I was in 2009."

And there is very good reason for concern. On Sunday, we learned that a major "bail-in" had just been announced for one of Austria's most prominent banks. The following comes from Zero Hedge:

And then today, following a decision by the Austrian Banking Regulator, the Finanzmarktaufsicht or Financial Market Authority, Austria officially became the first European country to use a new law under the framework imposed by Bank the European Recovery and Resolution Directive to share losses of a failed bank with senior creditors as it slashed the value of debt owed by Heta Asset Resolution AG.
The highlights from the announcement:
Today, the Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) in its function as the resolution authority pursuant to the Bank Recovery and Resolution Act (BaSAG – Bundesgesetz über die Sanierung und Abwicklung von Banken) has issued the key features for the further steps for the resolution of HETA ASSET RESOLUTION AG. The most significant measures are:

• a 100% bail-in for all subordinated liabilities,
• a 53.98% bail-in, resulting in a 46.02% quota, for all eligible preferential liabilities,
• the cancellation of all interest payments from 01.03.2015, when HETA was placed into resolution pursuant to BaSAG,
• as well as a harmonisation of the maturities of all eligible liabilities to 31.12.2023.

According to the current resolution plan for HETA, the wind-down process should be concluded by 2020, although the repayment of all claims as well as the legally binding conclusion of all currently outstanding legal disputes will realistically only be concluded by the end of 2023. Only at that point will it be possible to finally distribute the assets and to liquidate the company.

The dominoes are starting to fall in Europe, and I would expect even bigger announcements in the weeks and months to come.
Over in Asia, economic chaos is beginning to prevail as well.
In China, the stock market is already down more than 40 percent from the peak, Chinese exports were down 25.4 percent on a year over year basis in February, and Chinese economic numbers overall have not been this poor since the depths of the last global recession.
At the same time, the Japanese economy is really struggling right now. As I wrote about the other day, Japanese GDP has shrunk for two out of the last three quarters, we just saw Japanese industrial production experience the biggest one month decline that we have witnessed since the tsunami of 2011, and business sentiment has fallen to a three-year low. The Nikkei has dropped by about 5,000 points from where it was last summer, and some analysts believe that Japanese markets "are being destroyed" due to massive intervention by the Bank of Japan.
Here in the United States, we haven't been hit quite as hard as the rest of the world just yet, but there are lots of very disturbing warning signs all around us.
At the end of last week, we learned that it is being projected that U.S. GDP will have grown by just 0.1 or 0.2 percent during the first quarter of 2016. And on Monday corporate earnings reporting season begins, and it is expected to be a very, very bad one. The following comes from Business Insider:

We are about to get confirmation that earnings growth for America's biggest companies was negative in the first quarter, compared to the same period a year ago.
When aluminum giant Alcoa releases its results on Monday, it will mark the unofficial start of the heaviest reporting season for S&P 500 companies.
The final scoreboard is expected to show a 9.1% earnings drop for the quarter, according to FactSet senior earnings analyst John Butters.

If these projections turn out to be accurate, it will be the fourth quarter in a row of earnings declines. This is something that we never see outside of a recession.
And for a whole bunch more numbers which indicate that the U.S. economy is in very serious trouble, please see my previous article titled "19 Facts That Prove Things in America Are Worse Than They Were 6 Months Ago."
Of course I am just another voice in the crowd when it comes to predicting that the U.S. economy is headed for rough times. For example, just check out what Societe Generale economist Albert Edwards is saying.

A tidal wave is coming to the US economy, according to Albert Edwards, and when it crashes it's going to throw the economy into recession. ...
The profit recession facing American corporations is going to lead to a collapse in corporate credit.
"Despite risk assets enjoying a few weeks in the sun our fail-safe recession indicator has stopped flashing amber and turned to red."

He continued:

Whole economy profits never normally fall this deeply without a recession unfolding. And with the US corporate sector up to its eyes in debt, the one asset class to be avoided — even more so than the ridiculously overvalued equity market — is US corporate debt. The economy will surely be swept away by a tidal wave of corporate default.

As you can see, it isn't just one nation or one region of the world that we need to be concerned about.
Economic chaos is erupting literally all over the planet, and global leaders are starting to panic.
Unfortunately, they have had seven years to try to fix things since the last global recession, and they didn't get the job done. Anyone who believes that by some miracle they will be able to pull us out of the fire this time and that everything will somehow be OK is simply engaged in wishful thinking.

Michael T. Snyder is the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and author of The Beginning of the End.


Signs are emerging.  The Ecstatic of Tours told us that: "Before the war breaks out again, food will be scarce and expensive*. There will be little work for the workers, and fathers will hear their children crying for food. There will be earthquakes and signs in the sun. Toward the end, darkness will cover the earth. When everyone believes that peace is assured, when everyone least expects it, the great happening will begin. Revolution will break out in Italy almost at the same time as in France. For some time the Church will be without a Pope."

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


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

The great trial has arrived for all humanity. The chastisement, predicted by me at Fatima and contained in that part of the secret which has not yet been revealed, is about to take place. The great moment of divine justice and of mercy has come upon the world."
We are being prepared for the Reign of Antichrist. The Rev. P. Huchede, in his work entitled "History of Antichrist," explains the religious preparation, both intellectual and moral, for the Reign of Antichrist which will arrive after economic collapse:


"But how shall he deprive the world of Christianity and have himself adored as God? Alas, it is only too true that the minds and hearts of men are admirably disposed for revolution and consequently ready to accept and bear the cruel yoke of such a tyrant. Revolution as the word itself implies means a subversion, but a subversion of all that is true, good, beautiful, and grand in the universe. It is the subversion of religion, representing its dogmas as myths and its moral teachings as tyranical. It is the subversion of authority. Licentiousness under the name of liberty becomes the order of the day; each one is invested with the right to govern himself. It is the subversion of reason: and do we not find leading minds in some of the most enlightened nations denying the principle of contradiction and maintaining the absolute identity of all beings? Revolution is therefore essentially destructive, and it becomes cosmopolitan by the action of secret societies scattered throughout the world. Is it not true to say that the 'mystery of iniquity' is prepared in secret revolutionary dens? But it does not suffice to destroy; it is absolutely necessary to build up again. The world cannot subsist long in a vacuum. It must have a religion; it must have a philosophy; it must have an authority. Revolution will furnish all these. Instead of the reasonable and supernatural religion of Jesus Christ, Revolution will preach Pantheism. The God-humanity will impart the theurgic spirit and thus lead men to adore the demon as the author of universal emancipation...What frightful immorality must follow in the train of this shameless prostitution of religion! Never has the threefold concupiscence made greater ravage among mankind. And this is the religion sought and hoped for as the cherished boon of the aspirations of our modern free thinkers. To our Christian philosophy, the honor of humanity's revolution will substitute a babel of extravagant and absurd ideas. Instead of a mild and efficient authority consecrated alike by Church and state, despotism* and anarchy will rise up and contend for the shreds of religious liberty and human policy...if the state of perversion continue for a while longer, he [Antichrist] will find the world prepared to receive and serve him." (Rev. P. Huchede, History of Antichrist, pp. 13-14, Tan Books).

Is there really any doubt that we are now on the verge of a One World Government which will be eventually led by the Son of Perdition? Men are ready to worship and adore the demon. Those whose names are not written in the Book of Life, that is, who are not consecrated to the Immaculata.  But first we must have economic collapse.

At his Blog, Mark Mallett writes, "world bodies such, as the International Monetary Fund, who are increasingly warning that America’s foundations are beginning to crumble under its enormous debt. I have written before that Revolution is coming. But it will only come when the social order has been sufficiently destabilized, and then, the opportunity for a new political order is possible. That destabilization is coming hard and fast, it seems, as unemployment and poverty in the U.S. rises and the possibility for social chaos, such as we see breaking out in other third world countries, becomes less remote. Far from a speculation, several popes have been warning for decades that such a revolution has been the intention all along of secret societies working parallel to governments...With the collapse of the United States, the door will be open for a new super-power—or super-world government—to assert a mode of governance that does not place the intrinsic freedom and dignity of the human person at its center, but instead profitability, efficiency, ecology, the environment, and technology as its primary goal."


The hearts of men are growing ever colder.  As multi-millionaires and billionaires accumulate more and more wealth, many cities have witnessed tent cities spring up.  Some estimate the number of unemployed at over 30 million.  Many have given up and many more are well on their way to doing so.  It is an evil time.  A time prophesied some 1,600 years ago by Saint Nilus: "After the year 1900, toward the middle of the 20th century, the people of that time will become unrecognizable. When the time for the Advent of the Antichrist approaches, people's minds will grow cloudy from carnal passions, and dishonor and lawlessness will grow stronger. Then the world will become unrecognizable. People's appearances will change, and it will be impossible to distinguish men from women due to their shamelessness in dress and style of hair. These people will be cruel and will be like wild animals because of the temptations of the Antichrist. There will be no respect for parents and elders, love will disappear, and Christian pastors, bishops, and priests will become vain men, completely failing to distinguish the right-hand way from the left. At that time the morals and traditions of Christians and of the Church will change. People will abandon modesty, and dissipation will reign. Falsehood and greed will attain great proportions, and woe to those who pile up treasures. Lust, adultery, homosexuality, secret deeds and murder will rule in society."

What is this, if not an accurate description of our sin-sick world?

Two priests of the Worcester Diocese: Fr. Leo-Paul LeBlanc and Fr. Andre Gariepy

On November 5, 1977, in a locution to Father Stefano Gobbi, Our Lady, referring to the purification to come (and which we're beginning to live through now), said, "Do not stop to consider the ever thickening darkness, the sin which has been set up as the norm of human action, the suffering which is mounting to its peak and the chastisement which this humanity is preparing with its own hands."

Father Leo-Paul LeBlanc, the pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Winchendon, like many of his contemporaries within the Diocese of Worcester and beyond, disagrees with Our Lady.  In fact, in a homily given during the 9:30 a.m. Mass yesterday, Fr. LeBlanc asserted that it is a "confused theology" which advances the idea that God sends punishments (or chastisements).  God, insisted this proud cleric, "doesn't work that way."

How then does Fr. LeBlanc explain the Flood which destroyed the known world in Noah's time?  How does he explain the five cities of the plain - Sodom and Gomorrah - which were wiped out because of the grave sins [primarily homosexual acts] which were being committed there?  It was the holy angels who told Lot, "We are about to destroy this place, for the outcry reaching the Lord against those in the city is so great that he has sent us to destroy it." (Genesis 19: 13).

Only a foolish man would attempt to "correct" God's Holy Word.  And that Holy Word is most clear, for those who haven't lost their supernatural faith while succumbing to a radical secularism.  We read: "I will punish them for their sin" (Exodus 32: 34); "he does not leave the guilty unpunished" (Exodus 34: 7); "I will punish you for your sins seven times over" (Leviticus 26: 18); "I will choose their punishments" (Isaiah 66: 4); "on the wicked he will rain coals and sulphur" (Psalm 11: 6); "I will punish their sin with the rod" (Psalm 89: 32); "the wicked will not go unpunished" (Proverbs 11: 21); "God knows how to keep the unrighteous under punishment" (2 Peter 2: 9); "the Lord will punish the powers in heaven and the kings on earth" (Isaiah 24: 21); "the Lord is coming to punish the people of the earth for their sins" (Isaiah 26: 21); "the Lord will punish men for all such sins" (1 Thessalonians 4: 6).

God doesn't send punishments?  The Scriptures tells us otherwise.

Father LeBlanc implied in his homily that there is really no difference between mortal and venial sin, asserting that faithful Catholics who view AIDS as a punishment for grave or mortal sin should look at their own sins and not see the disease as resulting from sin.  In doing so, Fr. LeBlanc employed the word "gay" to refer to homosexuals or sodomites, which itself is evidence that he has succumbed - on some level - to radical homosexual agitprop.  To begin with, yes we are all sinners.  But as the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes clear: "Sins are rightly evaluated according to their gravity.  The distinction between mortal and venial sin (which apparently is lost on Fr. LeBlanc), already evident in Scripture, became part of the tradition of the Church.  It is corroborated by human experience...Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God's law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him.  Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends or wounds it." (CCC, 1854, 1855).

Some sins are so vile that they cry to heaven for vengeance.  The Catechism lists among these "the sin of the Sodomites" (See CCC, 1867). 

Having succumbed on some level to homosexual ideology, Fr. LeBlanc rejects the idea that AIDS is a punishment for homosexual acts and a culture which has largely embraced homosexuality.  Saint Paul, however, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says that those who exchange natural relations for unnatural receive "in their own persons the due penalty for their error." (Romans 1: 27). 

Whether Fr. LeBlanc cares to acknowledge it or not, God does send chastisements.  In fact, Scripture assures us that He chastises the son he favors.  As Father Albert J. Hebert, S.M., has explained, "The chastisement actually involves a complexity of severe trials and tribulations for the human race: natural disasters of all types like floods and tidal waves, storms, quakes, eruptions, economic disasters, famines, plagues, diseases which will include incurable ones, revolutionary activities, indiscriminate terrorist bombings, civil, racial and religious strife; wars, persecutions...Many of these sufferings will be either from nature or from one's own fellowman.  The demons will urge them on in this mutual self-destruction and there will be much destruction by the demons themselves.  A sort of petic justice and retribution!  Man, along with Satan, makes his own hell, even on earth."

And aren't we beginning to see these things take place?

Also yesterday, Fr. Andre Gariepy, a retired priest of the Worcester Diocese who currently resides in Fitchburg, celebrated Mass for Fr. Joseph Jurgelonis at Saint Martin's Parish in Otter River.  It is most unfortunate that this parish should call upon Fr. Gariepy to fill in for Fr. Jurgelonis while he is away.  For Fr. Gariepy has asserted that, "There are no absolutes, the Ten Commandments are only guidelines."

Only guidelines?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, referring to the Decalogue (The Ten Commandments - see Exodus 20), explains that, "Since they express man's fundamental duties towards God and towards his neighbor, the Ten Commandments reveal, in their primordial content, grave obligations.  They are fundamentally immutable, and they oblige always and everywhere.  No one can dispense from them.  The Ten Commandments are engraved by God in the human heart." (CCC, 2072). 

Fr. Gariepy is opposing the Magisterial teaching of the Church.

Pope John Paul II also emphasizes the immutability of the Ten Commandments while explaining that they are the path to life: "In acknowledging these commandments, Christian hearts and our pastoral charity listen to the call of the One who 'first loved us' (1 Jn 4: 19).  God asks us to be holy as he is holy (cf. Lv 19: 2), to be - in Christ - perfect as he is perfect (cf. Mt 5: 48).  The unwavering demands of that commandment are based upon God's infinitely merciful love (cf. Lk 6: 36), and the purpose of that commandment is to lead us, by the grace of Christ, on the path of that fullness of life proper to the children of God." (Veritatis Splendor, No. 115).

Advocates of the emerging New Age religion, the humanitarian religion of the Antichrist, insist that the Ten Commandments are essentially obsolete (see here) and that Christianity is a barbaric religion which is not fit for modern man.  It must, therefore, be purged of its fundamental dogmas and eventually reinterpreted.  For such people, the religion of the future must be man-centered.  Everything is relative.  Morals are not absolute.  Traditional values are outdated and meaningless and are advanced by ignorant men.  They must be discarded.  A watered-down social gospel (such as that promoted by Deacon Richard Tatro of Saint Martin's parish) is okay, but any serious talk about conversion, heaven and hell is "backward" and "obsolete."

"For the Lord disciplines him who he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives..."

I occasionally receive a comment here at La Salette Journey which accuses me of spreading "doom and gloom" for warning of coming chastisement.  Even many who profess to be Catholic scoff at the idea of God sending (or permitting) chastisements against His people.  Such people argue that, "a loving God would not 'punish' His creation with a chastisement. 

An article entitled "My Redeemer Lives: Tragedy, Disaster, and the Justice of God," which appeared in an edition of The Word Among Us magazine back in 2006, presented this argument. The author of this article, after referring to the multiple disasters in New Orleans and the earthquake and the tsunami which followed it in the Indian Ocean, wrote: "..how should we think about these things? Does Scripture really teach that God punishes us with earthquakes and floods and hurricanes? Does the Church teach that God sits back impassively while we suffer at the cruel hands of Mother Nature? Of course, the answer to both questions is a resounding 'No.'"

And of course, when you pose those questions, the answer is definitely a "resounding no." But perhaps those are the wrong questions? What does Sacred Scripture really teach us about chastisement? Does chastisement really represent merely a "punishment"? Or is it something else entirely? We can best examine this issue through the analogy of parents who actually love their children and who wish what is best for them. Such parents will employ both the carrot and the stick to encourage their children to do the right thing. When the carrot isn't working, parents will very often turn to the stick because of their love for their children. Does not Sacred Scripture teach us that, "He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes (diligently)" (Proverbs 13: 24).

And in Hebrews 12: 6-12, we read: "For the Lord disciplines him who he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time at their pleasure, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant; later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed."

We see how earthly parents discipline and chastise us for our own good, what makes us believe that things would be any different in God's relationship with all of His children? Are we prepared to accept what God's Holy Word has to say on this matter or do we believe ourselves to be "wiser" than that inspired Word?


A chastisement is coming. Why? Father Albert Hebert, S.M., explains: "Sin and evil is the one enemy of mankind. It spearheads the columns of all the other evils it brings with it. It brings destruction and death, and a terrible eternal death for the unrepentant, those who flaunt their pride and their resistance in the face of a Loving and Merciful God, those who are a continuous scandal to others. They forget that God's Justice must be infinite too, and that sooner or later it must be exercised to preserve His honor and integrity, to save the innocent, to confirm the good and to justify the martyrs."  See here.

The Sewer of Hell...

Most of you are aware of what Vice-President Joseph Biden, a Catholic, said to President Obama after the Senate Health-Care bill was passed. This sad situation is addressed here.

Most priests today will no doubt remain silent on this issue. But the Patron Saint of Parish Priests did not. This is what he had to say about such language.

St. Jean Vianney:

THE SEWER OF HELL

"There is yet another form of wrongdoing which is all the more deplorable in that it is more common, and that is licentious talk. There is nothing more abominable, my dear brethren, nothing more horrible than such talk. Indeed, my children, what could be more out of keeping with the holiness of our religion than impure language? It outrages God, it scandalises our neighbour. To put it even more clearly, loose talk releases all the passions. Very often it requires only one immodest or unseemly word to start a thousand evil thoughts, a thousand shameful desires, perhaps even to cause a fall into an infinite number of other sins and to bring to innocent souls evil of which they had been happily ignorant.

Can the Christian really afford to occupy his mind with such horrible images, a Christian who is the temple of the Holy Ghost, a Christian who has been sanctified by contact with the most adorable Body and precious Blood of Jesus Christ? Oh, Lord, if we had but some small idea of what we do when we commit sin! If our Lord has taught us that we may judge the tree by its fruit, you may judge after listening to the talk of certain people what must be the corruption of their hearts; and yet such corruption is very commonly encountered.

What sort of conversation do you hear among young people?

Is there anything in their mouths but this kind of loose talk?

Go -- I dare to say it with St. John Chrysostom -- go into these cabarets, into these haunts of impurity! What does the conversation turn upon, even among elderly people? Are they not trying to make a name for themselves by seeing who can be the most outrageous? Their mouths are like some sewer that Hell makes use of to spew its filth and its impurities over the earth and drag souls down to its depths. What are these bad Christians -- or rather these envoys from the nether regions -- doing?

Instead of singing the praises of God, their songs are shameful and hideous; they are songs which ought to make a Christian die of horror. Oh, great God, who would not tremble at the thought of what God's judgment of all this will be! If, as Jesus Christ Himself tells us, not a single idle word will be unpunished, alas! What will be the punishment for these licentious conversations, these indecent topics, these shameful and horrible images, which make the hair stand on end? If you would imagine how blind these poor unhappy people are, just listen to them talking after this fashion: "I had no bad intention," they will tell you, "it was just for a laugh; these things are only trifles, little stupid things, that mean nothing at all."

Is that so, my dear brethren? A sin so horrible in God's eyes that sacrilege alone surpasses it in evil! This is a trifle to you?

No, it is your hearts which are destroyed and corrupted! No! No! No one can afford to laugh or joke about something from which we should fly in horror, as we would from some pursuing beast which wanted to devour us. Besides, my dear brethren, what a crime it is to like something which God wants us to detest with all our hearts! You may tell me that you had no bad intentions, but tell me this, too, miserable and wretched tool of Hell, what about those who are listening to you -- do they have less bad thoughts and criminal desires after they have heard you? Will your harmless intention stay the workings of their imaginations and their hearts? Be honest and tell me that you are, in fact, the cause of the loss and eternal damnation of their souls! How many souls are hurled into Hell because of this sin?

The Holy Ghost tells us that this ugly sin of impurity has covered the whole surface of the earth.

I will say no more now on this subject, my children. I will return to it in an instruction when I shall do my best to depict it for you again with even more horror."



Meditation: Matthew 12: 34.

Quotations without comment

"..look, I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old...I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby." (Senator Barack Obama). For more read here.

"Man's life comes from God; it is his gift, his image and imprint, a sharing in his breath of life. God therefore is the sole Lord of this life: man cannot do with it as he wills. God himself makes this clear to Noah after the Flood: "For your own lifeblood, too, I will demand an accounting ... and from man in regard to his fellow man I will demand an accounting for human life" (Gen 9:5). The biblical text is concerned to emphasize how the sacredness of life has its foundation in God and in his creative activity: "For God made man in his own image" (Gen 9:6).

Human life and death are thus in the hands of God, in his power: "In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind", exclaims Job (12:10). "The Lord brings to death and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up" (1 Sam 2:6). He alone can say: "It is I who bring both death and life" (Dt 32:39).

But God does not exercise this power in an arbitrary and threatening way, but rather as part of his care and loving concern for his creatures. If it is true that human life is in the hands of God, it is no less true that these are loving hands, like those of a mother who accepts, nurtures and takes care of her child: "I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child quieted at its mother's breast; like a child that is quieted is my soul" (Ps 131:2; cf. Is 49:15; 66:12-13; Hos 11:4). Thus Israel does not see in the history of peoples and in the destiny of individuals the outcome of mere chance or of blind fate, but rather the results of a loving plan by which God brings together all the possibilities of life and opposes the powers of death arising from sin: "God did not make death, and he does not delight in the death of the living. For he created all things that they might exist" (Wis 1:13-14).

The sacredness of life gives rise to its inviolability, written from the beginning in man's heart, in his conscience. The question: "What have you done?" (Gen 4:10), which God addresses to Cain after he has killed his brother Abel, interprets the experience of every person: in the depths of his conscience, man is always reminded of the inviolability of life-his own life and that of others-as something which does not belong to him, because it is the property and gift of God the Creator and Father.

The commandment regarding the inviolability of human life reverberates at the heart of the "ten words" in the covenant of Sinai (cf. Ex 34:28). In the first place that commandment prohibits murder: "You shall not kill" (Ex 20:13); "do not slay the innocent and righteous" (Ex 23:7). But, as is brought out in Israel's later legislation, it also prohibits all personal injury inflicted on another (cf. Ex 21:12-27). Of course we must recognize that in the Old Testament this sense of the value of life, though already quite marked, does not yet reach the refinement found in the Sermon on the Mount. This is apparent in some aspects of the current penal legislation, which provided for severe forms of corporal punishment and even the death penalty. But the overall message, which the New Testament will bring to perfection, is a forceful appeal for respect for the inviolability of physical life and the integrity of the person. It culminates in the positive commandment which obliges us to be responsible for our neighbour as for ourselves: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself" (Lev 19:18).

The commandment "You shall not kill", included and more fully expressed in the positive command of love for one's neighbour, is reaffirmed in all its force by the Lord Jesus. To the rich young man who asks him: "Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?", Jesus replies: "If you would enter life, keep the commandments" (Mt 19:16,17). And he quotes, as the first of these: "You shall not kill" (Mt 19:18). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus demands from his disciples a righteousness which surpasses that of the Scribes and Pharisees, also with regard to respect for life: "You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ?You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment'. But I say to you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment" (Mt 5:21-22).

By his words and actions Jesus further unveils the positive requirements of the commandment regarding the inviolability of life. These requirements were already present in the Old Testament, where legislation dealt with protecting and defending life when it was weak and threatened: in the case of foreigners, widows, orphans, the sick and the poor in general, including children in the womb (cf. Ex 21:22; 22:20-26). With Jesus these positive requirements assume new force and urgency, and are revealed in all their breadth and depth: they range from caring for the life of one's brother (whether a blood brother, someone belonging to the same people, or a foreigner living in the land of Israel) to showing concern for the stranger, even to the point of loving one's enemy." (Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life) Nos. 39-41).

Related reading: here and here.

Children: A blessing or a punishment?

How we answer that question indicates much about ourselves. Having had the privilege of working with developmentally-disabled children and adults for years, I believe with all my heart that every human being is created by God and is a unique treasure placed here for a purpose.

Senator Obama apparently sees things differently. In his own words, "..look, I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old..I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby." See here. Children as a punishment which should be avoided by murdering them? One has to wonder whose "values" the Senator intends to pass down to his children. Attila the Hun's?

Speaking on her husband, Michelle Obama is quoted as having said that, "He'll protect a woman's freedom of choice, because government should have no say in whether or when a woman embraces the sacred responsibility of parenthood." Read here. Has Mrs. Obama never heard of adoption? When has anyone suggested that government should force women to accept the sacred responsibility of parenthood? But does one have to kill an innocent human being to avoid the sacred responsibility of parenthood? Protecting innocent human life is also a sacred responsibility. Do we have to violate one sacred responsibility to avoid the other? Is this what the Democrats mean when they say that Senators Obama and Biden represent "change we can believe in"?

By way of contrast, Governor Sarah Palin (if she weren't already married I'd be at her doorstep with a fistful of roses), who has confirmed that her baby Trig Paxson has Down syndrome, is quoted as having said that, "Trig is beautiful and already adored by us..We knew through early testing he would face special challenges, and we feel privileged that God would entrust us with this gift and allow us unspeakable joy as he entered our lives...We have faith that every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place. We are truly blessed." Read the full article here.

Are children a blessing or a punishment? It all depends upon your world view doesn't it? For some, children are viewed (when they are deemed "inconvenient") as a "punishment." For others, "every baby is created for good purpose and has potential to make this world a better place." For some, a baby with Down syndrome is a blessing.

Since Michelle Obama has invoked the word responsibility with regard to the question of abortion, let's examine what Pope John Paul II had to say in his book Love and Responsibility some years ago:

"A person is the kind of good which does not admit of use and cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the means to an end...A person is a good toward which the only proper and adequate attitude is love." (Love and Responsibility, translated by H.T. Willetts, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1981).

A person is a good toward which the only proper and adequate attitude is love. This is why those of us who are authentically pro-life will not vote for Senator Obama. We view children not as a "punishment" but with the "only proper and adequate attitude" which is love.

Related reading: Hurt.

Senator Obama: children as a punishment?

Children Are A Gift From God
by Sandra Tolson

God sent me three packages
That needed special care
"Take care of these tiny gifts
For they are very rare."
"Watch over them with all your love
And let them feel your touch
Take care of their every need
For you are needed very much."
"These gifts will grow up very fast
As you soon will see
Love them with all your heart
And let them be what they will be."
"When these gifts have fully grown
Look at Heaven up above
Know they exist because of God
And all his precious love."

In his Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II reminded us that:

"The first and fundamental structure for "human ecology" is the family, in which man receives his first formative ideas about truth and goodness, and learns what it means to love and to be loved, and thus what it actually means to be a person. Here we mean the family founded on marriage, in which the mutual gift of self by husband and wife creates an environment in which children can be born and develop their potentialities, become aware of their dignity and prepare to face their unique and individual destiny. But it often happens that people are discouraged from creating the proper conditions for human reproduction and are led to consider themselves and their lives as a series of sensations to be experienced rather than as a work to be accomplished.

The result is a lack of freedom, which causes a person to reject a commitment to enter into a stable relationship with another person and to bring children into the world, or which leads people to consider children as one of the many "things" which an individual can have or not have, according to taste, and which compete with other possibilities.

It is necessary to go back to seeing the family as the sanctuary of life. The family is indeed sacred: it is the place in which life — the gift of God — can be properly welcomed and protected against the many attacks to which it is exposed, and can develop in accordance with what constitutes authentic human growth. In the face of the so-called culture of death, the family is the heart of the culture of life." (CA, No. 39).

Does Senator Obama view the family as the sanctuary of life? It would seem that he does not. Let's all pray that the Senator will come to view each and every child (born and unborn) as a gift from God and not as some sort of curse or "punishment." A child is not a "thing" which may be disposed of because he or she is deemed "inconvenient" or "intrusive."

Wisdom from Dr. Peter Kreeft:

http://catholiccitizens.org/press/contentview.asp?c=45693