Francis calls upon humanity to unite behind one world religion

 Francis is openly calling upon humanity to unite behind a one-world religion - see here.

As Francis leads so many souls to pantheism and a New humanitarian religion, it would help to reflect upon the words of Father Livio Fanzaga, known as the "radio priest" in Italy, in his book "Wrath of God: The Days of the Antichrist": "Atheism is the religion of the future.  At its root, atheism is always a negation of God and every such negation presupposes His affirmation. Rather than saying 'God does not exist,' a more sophisticated form of atheism will assert that 'Man is God, humanity is God, God is immanent in human history and in the lives of individuals.'  This is a form of religion which has assimilated the characteristics of a true religion.  Adore man and satisfy the religious needs present in every human heart.  Do not renounce the Kingdom of God, construct it, instead, on earth.  Just as the Catholic religion tries to unite all men under a supernatural principle represented in the person of the Vicar of Christ, so too, humanitarianism strives to unite all men and to conciliate all religions.  It seeks to institute universal peace by recognizing the supreme unifying authority of the Antichrist - perfect image of the immanent god in the world,  the man-god.  God did not become man.  The man-God is the savior of the world...Benson [Robert Hugh Benson] had greater foresight [than Feurbach and Marx].  At the turn of the century he clearly perceived that the crisis of faith will not be followed by the growth of atheism but by the rise of a new religion which deifies man...The new religion will have its own ministers of cult, its own rites and ceremonies, and its own books to celebrate those rites.  Churches and abbeys will be transformed into temples of the new religion of humanitarianism and the Mass will be displaced by the celebration of the new rites.  The statue of Christ will disappear and in its place the statue of 'man' will be raised up in the form of 'Apollo,' symbol of corporeal beauty and virility....While churches in which Christ is still adored and Our Lady honored will be empty, those of the new religion will be filled to capacity...Man will go to church to worship himself.  He will incense the altar of his own 'virility' and the statue of 'maternity' and 'continuous life.'  The crisis of faith is the crisis of the supernatural.  Man no longer believes in a God whom he cannot measure or control and who is different from him." (pp. 119-120).

Is there any real doubt that this new humanitarian religion is now rising?  The way of the new religion of the man-God is being prepared by agnostics, atheists, apostates, lovers of this world who have embraced hedonism and materialism and who have nothing but contempt for the true Church, her ministers, sacraments, devotions [especially those to Our Lady] and the lowly faithful who have consecrated themselves to the Immaculata.

As Catholics, we pray - in the Nicene Creed -  "We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven.."

All orthodox Christians believe that Jesus is the only Son of God and that, "There is no salvation in anyone else, for there is no other name in the whole world given to men by which we are to be saved." (Acts 4: 12).

But the world is being prepared to believe differently.  Many are now willing to abandon the only Son of God for the new religion which will proclaim the divinity of man.  President Obama, while speaking to a group of Christian clergy several years ago at the Easter Prayer Breakfast, referred to Jesus not as the "only Son of God" but as "a son of God."  And he received applause from his audience.

What is this but the spirit of Antichrist?  In 1 John 4: 2-3, we read, "This is how you can recognize God's Spirit: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God, while every spirit that fails to acknowledge him does not belong to God.  Such is the spirit of the antichrist which, as you have heard, is to come; in fact, it is in the world already."

Recommended reading: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 441-445.

Joe Biden calls for one party State and dictatorship

 

Tucker Carlson on Joe Biden's open call for a one party State and dictatorship here.

The English psychiatrist William Sargent explained that, "It is not the mentally ill but ordinary normal people who are most susceptible to 'brainwashing.'" And in her book The Nazis and the Occult, Dusty Sklar notes how, "Hitler's early speeches were so mesmerizing that even people who were repelled by his ideas felt themselves being swept along. The playwright Eugene Ionesco mentions in his autobiography that he received the inspiration for Rhinoceros when he felt himself pulled into the Nazi orbit at a mass rally and had to struggle to keep from developing 'rhinoceritis.' We 'catch' ideas, too, because we want to be like others, particularly when we want not to be our despised selves. If we're satisfied, we don't need to conform, but if we're not, we imitate people whom we admire for having greater judgment, taste, or good fortune than we do....Through conformity, the person who feels inferior is in no danger of being exposed. He's indistinguishable from the others. No one can single him out and examine his unique being. Conformity, in turn, sets him up to be further canceled out as an individual, to have no life apart from his collective purpose. This gives a movement tremendous power over the individual. Even intelligent people are not immune from the desire to conform. Heinrich Hildebrandt, a schoolteacher who was anxious to hide his liberal past, joined the Nazi party, and to his own disgust, found himself 'proud to be wearing the insignia. It showed I belonged, and the pleasure of belonging, so soon after feeling excluded, isolated, is very great...I belonged to the new nobility..'" (The Nazis and the Occult, pp. 157, 158).

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.

Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once commented on the way that oppression can subtly arise in our midst: "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."

The choice is ours. But perhaps not for much longer.  Will we choose freedom and the good ot become victims of the darkness. 

Francis calls pro-abortion Biden "a good Catholic"

 As noted here:

"President Biden said he was told Friday by Pope Francis that he is a 'good Catholic' who should continue to receive Communion, even as some conservative U.S. Catholic leaders argue he should be denied the sacrament for his stance on abortion."

What more proof does one need that Francis is an anti-pope, a pretender to the Chair of Peter? A Masonic Manchurian Candidate in the Vatican?

Pope Saint John Paul II spoke authoritatively for the Catholic tradition when he defined that "direct abortion always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being" and that "no circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever" can ever make it licit (EV 62). He echoed the Second Vatican Council which had declared: "All offences against life itself, such as abortion... are criminal. They poison civilization, and they debase the perpetrators even more than the victims... Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes." (GS 27, 51)

Joseph Biden supports this crime against life.  Isn't it interesting that for Francis, the partisan, President Trump was "Non-Christiano" for wanting to build a wall, but Joe Biden,  the anti-life zealot who also promotes sodomy, is a "good Catholic "?

Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew: Holy Cross College's resident clown

Crux Now is reporting that:

"A Massachusetts bishop has called the notions of a New Testament scholar in his diocese “highly offensive and blasphemous,” and has called on his Jesuit college to ask him to publicly disavow his writings on the sexuality of Jesus.

Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew, the chair of New Testament Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, has published articles claiming Jesus was a 'drag king' and said the relationship between the Father and Son was homosexual and masochistic in nature.

In one article, Liew said the centurion who approaches Jesus to heal his servant was actually speaking about his lover and described the relationship as 'pederastic.' Liew said the biblical author affirmed the relationship, adding this 'may also be consistent with Matthew’s affirmation of many sexual dissidents in her Gospel.'

Bishop Robert J. McManus of Worchester said he was 'deeply troubled and concerned' that someone who authored such things holds an endowed chair at the Catholic institution.

After the professor’s controversial writings - published a decade ago - were highlighted in a March 26 article in The Fenwick Review, an independent opinion journal based at the College of the Holy Cross, an online petition calling for Liew’s ouster gained over 10,000 signatures."

Sign this petition here.

Pope Saint John Paul II, in his Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae, had this to say:

§ 3. "In ways appropriate to the different academic disciplines, all Catholic teachers are to be faithful to, and all other teachers are to respect, Catholic doctrine and morals in their research and teaching. In particular, Catholic theologians, aware that they fulfil a mandate received from the Church, are to be faithful to the Magisterium of the Church as the authentic interpreter of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition."

If one is to be faithful to Christ and His Church, one cannot assert that what the Magisterium teaches is false and that the faithful may reject Magisterial teaching and replace it with their own opinions or those of theologians. In his encyclical letter Veritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II explains that, "Dissent, in the form of carefully orchestrated protests and polemics carried on in the media, is opposed to ecclesial communion and to a correct understanding of the hierarchical constitution of the People of God." (No. 113).

When a Catholic dissents from Church teaching, he is not in living communion with the mind of Christ, which is made known to us through His Church's Magisterium. Such a person is not, therefore, in a proper condition to receive the sacraments. Pope John Paul II has stated this clearly: "It is sometimes claimed that dissent from the Magisterium is compatible with being a 'good Catholic' and poses no obstacle to the reception of the sacraments. This is a grave error." (Address to the U.S. Bishops, Los Angeles, September 16, 1987). See also Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1395).

Some erroneously hold that, "No school that regulates ideas can justly call itself a university."


The late Fr. Vincent P. Miceli, who was a classically-educated Jesuit scholar and a brilliant philosopher, would have disagreed. For he explained that, "The trouble with this understanding of academic freedom is that it takes for granted as a truth what is a falsity, indeed a complete illusion, namely, that academic freedom is absolutely immune from any reasonable bounds, limitations or restrictions. No human freedom is absolutely immune to restriction. Freedom is no longer freedom when it is reduced to being the unhindered pursuit of one’s whims and desires. This is especially true of freedom exercised in the field of philosophy where conflict with the authentic and infallible teachings of the Church is foreseeable. A true understanding of academic freedom, therefore, is in order so as to distinguish it clearly from academic license.

Academic freedom derives from the rational nature of man. It is rooted in the intellectual activity of man whereby he is called to a dominion and stewardship of the universe through a conquest of truth. Positively, then, academic freedom is a generous guarantee to the unimpeded access to the evidence of truth in any given science. Thus, academic freedom is always bounded by the canons and axiomatic truths of each discipline of learning. Thus, again positively, academic freedom is both purposive and responsible. It has its own built-in rules; its requirements are conditioned by pre-defined directions towards the truth of its particular science. The moral right to academic freedom arises from the inviolability of the proper action necessary to its scientific achievements of truth, founded on man’s connatural inner dynamism of the human intelligence’s hunger for truth. Negatively, academic freedom means at the very least the immunity from unreasonable restrictions, both from within and from outside the academic community, of the right to communicate the results of one’s researches through lectures and publications, and the right to be immune from unreasonable restriction in the pursuit of the teaching profession.

We are now in the position to ask, ‘How is academic freedom violated?’ Scholars, scientists and philosophers hold that whenever one of their members ventures consciously and freely to teach as truths doctrines that contradict the clearly established dogmas or unconditional truths of their disciplines, then such a member of the university is abusing his academic freedom, putting it at the service of stupidities or known falsehoods instead of using it to advance the horizons of truth. Now every science has its dogmas, theology, philosophy and all the natural sciences. Dogmas are not only the ultimate answers to some fundamental questions; they also prompt further questioning and research, leading thus to enlarged, more profound truth....a Catholic university that allows professors and lecturers to attack the authentic teachings of the Church, whether they are infallibly defined or not, is not faithful to the best canons of scholarship, nor to the Church or its own students who have a right in justice to receive the divinely revealed truths in their pristine purity." (The Antichrist, pp. 166-167).

Many Catholic institutions have devaluated the faith and have become enslaved to a narrow (and conceptually flawed) notion of academic freedom. And why have these institutions sold out to secularism? Again, Fr. Miceli, S.J., explains: "Gradually, over the years the essential purpose of the Catholic university has been radically changed. Lusting after secular academic excellence, huge student bodies, expensive science complexes, notoriety, publicity, political clout and financial power, the leaders of Catholic universities somehow lost sight of the unearthly purpose and spirit of the Catholic university. Thus, in today’s Catholic university, intellectualism is preferred to Catholicism; scientism to faith, relativism to truth, immanentism to transcendence, subjectivism to reality, situationism to moral integrity and anarchism to authority. The essential purpose of the Catholic university has de facto been changed, despite the lip service that is still paid to the original Catholic ideal. Conduct flows from convictions and when the conduct is consistently depraved [Such as allowing controversial plays like the Vagina Monologues, my note] it is because the convictions have been corrupted. For example, Judas, forerunner of the Antichrist, had radically changed his deepest convictions about the person and mission of Christ before he sold his Lord for thirty pieces of silver. No virtuosity at contorted rationalization can mask the massive turning away from the Catholic ideal that has taken place in the Catholic universities of the United States. The light and love of the world have made tragic advances against the light and love of Christ." (The Antichrist, p. 161).

Professor Tat-siong Benny Liew is a clown offering not the fine wheat of Catholic truth but rather asinine opinions which were hatched in a warped mind.

Sign the petition to have this fool removed from his teaching position at Holy Cross.

Christine Horner calls on Francis to embrace pride in the liturgy

Christine Horner writes:

"Dear Pope Francis,

Every single day before communion, millions of Christians verbally declare one of the most destructive phrases in human history. On Sunday, it’s tens of millions if not a half billion of the over one billion Catholic Christians worldwide—and not without repercussions.

In the Bible, a Centurion soldier relates, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof...” (Matthew 8:8) before recounting the inner workings of the blindness of patriarchal hierarchies and slavery that exists to this day.

Applying religious context, what’s important for Christians to note is that the soldier uttered the phrase pre-salvation. An unsaved (ignorant) man sharing his feelings and a religion demanding a billion saved Christians repeat the phrase daily post-salvation are entirely two different matters.

Dialogue and constructs that perpetuate “I am not worthy” are the root of all evil behavior. It is divisiveness personified. By believing we are not worthy, we open the door for the mistreatment of ourselves and the mistreatment of others as we seek to assuage the psychological pain the false belief imparts..."

Enough insanity.

As this article explains:

In his apostolic exhortation, “Verbum Domini” (“The Word of the Lord”) Pope Benedict XVI advocates for a much more aggressive biblical formation in the Church, even recommending diocesan-level programs of study for the laity.

In connection with the subject of catechesis, the pope says: “A knowledge of biblical personages, events, and well-known sayings should thus be encouraged; this can also be promoted by the judicious memorization of some passages which are particularly expressive of the Christian mysteries.”

This emphasis on knowledge of the Scriptures is reflected in the liturgical renewal fostered by Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. The new English translation of the Mass is part of a concerted liturgical pastoring by both these popes and in many elements is very strictly biblical.

That is the case of the change of the prayer of the assembly directly before communion. The priest holds up the host (and maybe the chalice with it) and says: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.” There are a few notable changes, although these are stylistic and not theological.

The double “behold” reflects the two times the Latin says, “Ecce.” The word used to translate “Beati” has been changed in the new version. Formerly, this word was rendered as “happy.”

This reflects the ways in which the word “beatus” can be translated from Latin to English. The Latin itself is in turn a translation of a Greek word, “makarios” that includes ideas like “blessed,” “happy,” and “fortunate”. It is easy to see that true blessedness means happiness and is also good fortune. A comparison of the translations of the Beatitudes reveals the different nuances of the single Greek word.


The blessedness of being invited to the supper of the Lamb calls forth a response from the faithful, which the priest must also recite, “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”

This is based on the prayer of the centurion from Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10. It is certainly worth our while to go to the Scripture to understand the words we repeat and apply to ourselves. The Church invites the centurion to Mass with us each time we celebrate the Eucharist.

He is invisibly present to us because our memory makes him so. Although we don’t see the plumes of his helmet we hear him speak in our own voices, as we repeat his words. We want to have his humble attitude of faith in Jesus and we seek to imitate it.

Why is the memory of this Roman officer so important that the Church should makes his words echo around the globe each day? We do not even know his name, just some details of his life. He was a compassionate man, concerned about his servant. The word in Greek is “doulos,” which is also translated “boy,” even though it is important to note that this is not his son but his slave, a usage of the time. The centurion also was respected by the Jewish community and his leaders were grateful to him. He had built the synagogue, St. Luke tells us. When he heard about Jesus, he assumed that the prophet could heal his servant.

We know also that the Roman official was a no-nonsense sort of guy. He respect for the Jewish religion must mean he considered its God the true one. And he had no pretenses about his own worthiness. The prophet did not need to come to his house. He was asking a favor but he knew in his heart that the mere presence of Jesus would be another undeserved blessing.

The few words the centurion speaks and his plain but clear military example about authority bespeak a wonderful sincerity and a lack of pride, something usually rare among troops occupying a foreign land. In fact, St. Luke says that the centurion didn’t even feel worthy to speak to Jesus personally. Instead he sent the Jewish leaders to him, and then some “friends” with messages.

The discrepancy between the two Gospel accounts is interesting, although not irreconcilable. St. Matthew has the official speak directly to Jesus, St. Luke through intermediaries. This could be because the official did not speak the same language as Jesus.

There are disputes about whether Jesus spoke Greek, which the centurion would probably speak along with Latin. I think he did because he grew up in Galilee, but I also think it a good bet that his circle of disciples did not necessarily speak it, or at least were not fluent in the language.

St. Luke’s detail might be just a case of stricter accuracy. What the centurion said he did so through others. But the variation also has a thematic function because it underscores the interior disposition of the Roman soldier. He was so humble, so convinced of his unworthiness, that he did not speak directly to Jesus but sent messengers.

His humility and his faith elicited the praise of the Son of God Himself. “I assure you I have not found such faith in Israel,” Jesus said (Matt. 8.10).

This statement represents an invitation by Jesus to his Jewish listeners to a humble trust in imitation of the pagan foreigner. It is the wisdom of the Church that we recall this anonymous centurion of Capernaum before we receive the Lord because we need his awareness of the surpassing greatness of Jesus Christ.

The Son of God comes to us and offers us intimacy, a personal communion with him. We need at least to recognize the disproportion of God’s mercy. His love is certainly not congruent to our unworthiness.

That is why there is a poetic justice to the humility of reciting the centurion’s prayer before partaking of the bread from heaven. We receive the Lord not into our homes but into our hearts in communion. We beg the healing not of a servant boy but of our very selves.

It is as a recognition of the tremendous gift of God’s love that we use the words from the Scripture. The ineffable generosity of God beggars our vocabulary. The metaphor of coming under our roof is inexact, in fact a terrific understatement, but it is right to clothe our thoughts with the prayer of another because otherwise we would be speechless.

The Lord himself used the metaphor of a house when he spoke of communion with his disciples. “Here I stand, knocking at the door. If anyone hears me calling and opens the door, I will enter his house and have supper with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20).

This could have been said in other language, without the imagery of someone opening up a door for a guest, but the Lord chose to speak poetically. When we say “under my roof” we can recall these words of Jesus about coming into a house to dine and thus our words will have a double scriptural resonance.

Let us recall the quote from “Verbum Domini” with which I began this reflection: “A knowledge of biblical personages, events, and well-known sayings should thus be encouraged; this can also be promoted by the judicious memorization of some passages which are particularly expressive of the Christian mysteries.”

As I said in a previous post, "Our culture - and this includes large segments of the Church - has succumbed to satanic pride. As the sexual abuse crisis explodes throughout the Church, as errors cripple the Mystical Body of Christ, as the Culture of Sodomy continues to metastasize like a cancer, officials in the Church hold committee meetings and form panels and conduct studies. All in the vain hope of solving these problems themselves. Pride. What then is the solution? It is right before our eyes. But it is so simple the proud of this world are not capable of seeing it:

Satan,

proud-winged!

Bold and brazen,

Crushed by

Simple

Sandalled Maiden!


It was Saint Louis de Montfort who explained that, "Mary must become as terrible as an army in battle array to the devil and his followers, especially in these latter times. For Satan, knowing that he has little time - even less now than ever - to destroy souls, intensifies his efforts and his onslaughts every day. He will not hesitate to stir up savage persecutions and set treacherous snares for Mary's faithful servants and children whom he finds more difficult to overcome than others.

It is chiefly in reference to these last wicked persecutions of the devil, daily increasing until the advent of the reign of anti- Christ, that we should understand that first and well-known prophecy and curse of God uttered against the serpent in the garden of paradise. It is opportune to explain it here for the glory of the Blessed Virgin, the salvation of her children and the confusion of the devil. "I will place enmities between you and the woman, between your race and her race; she will crush your head and you will lie in wait for her heel" (Gen. 3:15).

God has established only one enmity - but it is an irreconcilable one - which will last and even go on increasing to the end of time. That enmity is between Mary, his worthy Mother, and the devil, between the children and the servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and followers of Lucifer.

Thus the most fearful enemy that God has set up against the devil is Mary, his holy Mother. From the time of the earthly paradise, although she existed then only in his mind, he gave her such a hatred for his accursed enemy, such ingenuity in exposing the wickedness of the ancient serpent and such power to defeat, overthrow and crush this proud rebel, that Satan fears her not only more than angels and men but in a certain sense more than God himself. This does not mean that the anger, hatred and power of God are not infinitely greater than the Blessed Virgin's, since her attributes are limited. It simply means that Satan, being so proud, suffers infinitely more in being vanquished and punished by a lowly and humble servant of God, for her humility humiliates him more than the power of God. Moreover, God has given Mary such great power over the evil spirits that, as they have often been forced unwillingly to admit through the lips of possessed persons, they fear one of her pleadings for a soul more than the prayers of all the saints, and one of her threats more than all their other torments.

What Lucifer lost by pride Mary won by humility. What Eve ruined and lost by disobedience Mary saved by obedience. By obeying the serpent, Eve ruined her children as well as herself and delivered them up to him. Mary by her perfect fidelity to God saved her children with herself and consecrated them to his divine majesty.

God has established not just one enmity but "enmities", and not only between Mary and Satan but between her race and his race. That is, God has put enmities, antipathies and hatreds between the true children and servants of the Blessed Virgin and the children and slaves of the devil. They have no love and no sympathy for each other. The children of Belial, the slaves of Satan, the friends of the world, - for they are all one and the same - have always persecuted and will persecute more than ever in the future those who belong to the Blessed Virgin, just as Cain of old persecuted his brother Abel, and Esau his brother Jacob. These are the types of the wicked and of the just. But the humble Mary will always triumph over Satan, the proud one, and so great will be her victory that she will crush his head, the very seat of his pride. She will unmask his serpent's cunning and expose his wicked plots. She will scatter to the winds his devilish plans and to the end of time will keep her faithful servants safe from his cruel claws.

But Mary's power over the evil spirits will especially shine forth in the latter times, when Satan will lie in wait for her heel, that is, for her humble servants and her poor children whom she will rouse to fight against him. In the eyes of the world they will be little and poor and, like the heel, lowly in the eyes of all, down-trodden and crushed as is the heel by the other parts of the body. But in compensation for this they will be rich in God's graces, which will be abundantly bestowed on them by Mary. They will be great and exalted before God in holiness. They will be superior to all creatures by their great zeal and so strongly will they be supported by divine assistance that, in union with Mary, they will crush the head of Satan with their heel, that is, their humility, and bring victory to Jesus Christ." (True Devotion to Mary, 50-54).

Pope John XXIII looked forward to a New Pentecost and Pope John Paul II spoke of a new Civilization of Love. And we shall have these. Even if they do not occur in the manner most people expect. In many places a cleansing, a purification is needed in individual temples before the Holy Spirit will enter with His Bride. We read in the Gospel of Matthew how, "Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all those engaged in selling and buying there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. And he said to them, 'It is written: My house shall be a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves.'" (21: 12, 13).

And what is our soul but His temple? Have we made His house a house of prayer? Or have we succumbed to lust, materialism and pride and made His house a den of thieves who have no place there? We have to become Marian. We have to become Mary-like before Christ is reborn again in our modern world through the power of the Holy Spirit.

There will indeed be a New Pentecost in the hearts of men and a Civilization of Love which will endure forever. But only after the Church has been purified through Calvary:

"Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 675).

Satan's goal is to make a physical and spiritual wreckage of all God's creation. To accomplish this, he enlists men through the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and pride of life. And isn't this what we've witnessed even in the Church? Priests - ministers of the Living God - who have become so arrogant, so puffed up with pride, that they came to view even innocent children as objects to be used for their own sexual gratification and a laity which has also [for the most part] lost the sense of sin and no longer feels a need to confess and live a truly sacramental life.

Pride has brought the Church to her present state. We must become more Mary-like. We don't need more committee meetings, panels, studies, seminars and countless "experts" - men and women with a string of letters after their names but lacking wisdom - to bring us back to sanity. They are not up to the task. If a blind man lead another blind man, both end up in a ditch.

We need holy men and women who are on fire for the Lord Jesus and who recognize their poverty, their smallness. What we need is children of Mary - the same children (despised by this proud world) whom Saint Louis de Montfort says, "..will become, in Mary's powerful hands, like sharp arrows, with which she will transfix her enemies." (True Devotion, No. 56), It is such prayer-warriors who "..will be like thunder-clouds flying through the air at the slightest breath of the Holy Spirit. Attached to nothing, surprised at nothing, troubled at nothing, they will shower down the rain of God's word and of eternal life. They will thunder against sin, they will storm against the world, they will strike down the devil and his followers and for life and for death, they will pierce through and through with the two-edged sword of God's word all those against whom they are sent by almighty God." (True Devotion, No. 57).

This isn't a time for hand-wringing. Neither is it a time to look to so-called "experts," intellectual frauds who rely on their own intelligence. Fools. Now is the time to have recourse to Mary. The victory has been promised to the simple sandalled maiden. This is something the proud cannot understand or accept. Our Lady will crush the Devil's head - the seat of his intellect - and she will accomplish this without an academic degree or countless meetings. She will accomplish what the proud cannot. And she will do this through her children, her heel, those little souls consecrated to her."

And so, remembering the words of the Cure of Ars St. Jean Vianney (the Patron Saint of parish priests): "Humility is to the various virtues what the chain is to the Rosary; take away the chain and the beads are scattered, remove humility and all virtues vanish," we pray:

O Lord,
all our powers of body and spirit,
every gift both natural and supernatural,
outward and inward,
comes as a blessing from You
and reveals Your goodness,
generosity, and love,
for You have given us all that is good.
You know what is best to give each one;
and since it is clear
to You what each one's merits are,
it is for You and not for us to decide
why one has less and another more.
And so, O Lord God,
I can even consider it a great blessing
if I do not have much to bring me
praise and glory from man;
for when one does not have much,
he can look at his poverty and worthlessness,
and far from being burdened and sorrowful and dejected,
he can feel comforted and glad,
for it is the poor and humble
and despised in the eyes of the world
that You have chosen,
O god, to be familiar members
of Your household.

Pope Benedict XVI calls for educating young people in the true meaning of justice and peace

Vatican City, Jan 13, 2012 (CNA/EWTN News).

In a bid to end violence against Christians and other religions, Pope Benedict XVI used a Jan. 13 speech to Italian police to call for educating young people in the true meaning of justice and peace.


“Even the past year, unfortunately, was marked by violence and intolerance,” he said in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on Jan 13.

“Frequently, in different parts of the world, the object of reprisals and attacks were Christians, who paid with their lives for their adherence to Christ and to the Church.”

The Pope made his comments to a gathering of those Italian state police who are charged with patrolling and protecting St. Peter’s Square and the Vatican.

The Pope said that while young people often hear the words “justice” and “peace” being mentioned, not enough is done to explain what the terms really mean.

“Justice,” he explained, “is not a mere human convention.” If it is viewed as such, he added, it can end up being dominated and subverted by the “criteria of utility, profit and material possession.” Pope Benedict said that when justice is corrupted in this way, the value and dignity of people can be “trampled underfoot.”

In reality, justice is a virtue that guides the human will “prompting us to give others what is due to them by reason of their existence and their actions,” he said.

Similarly, “peace” is not merely defined as the “absence of war, or the result of man’s actions to avoid conflict.”

Instead, it is primarily “a gift of God which must be implored with faith, and which has the way to its fulfillment in Jesus.” Therefore, “true peace” must be “constructed day after day with compassion, solidarity, fraternity and collaboration on everyone’s part,” the Pope said.

The Pope’s comments reflected his message earlier this month when he dedicated the Church’s 45th World Day of Peace on New Year’s Day to the education of the young in justice and peace.

He concluded his remarks today by holding up the police officers present as “true promoters of justice and sincere builders of peace,” and commending all present to Mary “the Mother of God, Queen of Peace.”

“To her we entrust this year of 2012, that everyone may live in mutual respect and strive after the common good, in the hope that no act of violence will be committed in the name of God, supreme guarantor of justice and peace.”

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True peace must be constructed day after day with compassion, solidarity, fraternity and collaboration on everyone's part.  And of course, it must be remembered that there is no authentic peace without prayer and a genuine love for truth.  In the words of Pope John XXIII:  "...as long as we are journeying in exile over this earth, our peace and happiness will be imperfect. For such peace is not completely untroubled and serene; it is active, not calm and motionless. In short, this is a peace that is ever at war. It wars with every sort of error, including that which falsely wears the face of truth; it struggles against the enticements of vice, against those enemies of the soul, of whatever description, who can weaken, blemish, or destroy our innocence or Catholic faith." (Ad Petri Cathedram No. 93).

Pope Paul VI, in his Apostolic Exhortation Recurrens Mensis October (The recurrence of the month of October), 1969, said that, "Undoubtedly, peace is the concern of men and a good common to all. As such, it must be the constant care of everyone...Despite much good will, there are many interests in opposition; much selfishness is shown; many antagonisms increase; many rivalries conflict with one another. Who does not see, then, the unflagging action demanded from each and all in order that love may triumph over discord and that peace may be restored to the city of men?"

There is no peace without God. And no peace without prayer. Which is why there is no peace among men. Most men do not pray - even many of those who give lip service to prayer. Pope Paul VI continues, "..peace is also the concern of God. He has placed in our hearts the ardent desire for peace. He urges us to work toward it, each doing his share, and for that purpose He sustains our feeble energies and our vacillating wills. He alone can give us a peaceful soul, and confirm in depth and solidity our efforts for peace. Prayer, by which we ask for the gift of peace, is therefore an irreplaceable contribution to the establishment of peace. It is through Christ, in whom all grace is given us, that we dispose ourselves to welcome the gift of peace. And in that undertaking, how can we do otherwise than to depend lovingly upon the incomparable intercession of Mary, His Mother, of whom the Gospel tells us that she 'found favor with God'?"

A call to false irenicism is not the answer.  Sticking our heads in the sand of denial and pretending "all is well" is not the answer.  Selfishness and self-will, obstacles to authentic peace [and justice], are overcome only through constant prayer. As Pope Benedict XVI explained back in 2009: "Conflict and lack of reconciliation in the world stem from the fact that we are locked into our own interests and opinions, into our own little private world. Selfishness, both individual and collective, makes us prisoners of our interests and our desires that stand against the truth and separate us from one another. Awake, the Gospel tells us. Step outside, so as to enter the great communal truth, the communion of the one God. To awake, then, means to develop a receptivity for God: for the silent promptings with which he chooses to guide us; for the many indications of his presence..." (Christmas homily 2009).

Our youth must be educated in the truth that the Church is a communion of persons with the Living God, brought about by the Lord Jesus in the Holy Spirit. And, as Pope John Paul II teaches in Christifideles Laici, No. 64, "..an awareness of a commonly shared Christian dignity, an ecclesial consciousness brings a sense of belonging to the mystery of the Church as Communion. This is a basic and undeniable aspect of the life and mission of the Church. For one and all, the earnest prayer of Jesus at the Last Supper, 'That all may be one' (Jn 17: 21), ought to become daily a required and undeniable program of life and action." When we understand what is meant by the Church's communion, the words of Pope Benedict XVI make perfect sense: "..In order to remain in unity with the crucified and risen Lord, the practical sign of juridical unity, 'remaining in the teaching of the apostles' is indispensable." (Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion, p. 69, Ignatius Press).

Sadly, not all Catholics understand this.  For some, the "unity of charity" has come to mean little more than a false irenicism. Which is why they castigate those who defend the truth.  But as Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand explains, "False irenicism is motivated by a misconceived charity at the service of a meaningless unity. It places unity above truth. Having severed the essential link between charity and defense of the truth, irenicism is more concerned with reaching a unity with all men than with leading them to Christ and His eternal truth. It ignores the fact that real unity can be reached only in truth. Our Lord’s prayer ‘that they may be one’ implies being one in Him and must not be separated from His words in John: ‘And other sheep I have that are not of this fold. Them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice. And there shall be one fold and one shepherd.’"

John Kelly, Chair of St. Cecilia's "Rainbow Ministry," calls the homosexual inclination "Divinely created" while accusing Rome of "objective disorders."

In a previous post, I noted how Mr. John Kelly, chair of St. Cecilia's "Rainbow Ministry," refuses to consider the Church's authentic teaching regarding homosexual acts and the homosexual inclination and is openly looking for a relationship with another man.  One would think that for these reasons alone Cardinal Sean O'Malley would ban this dissident and homosexual activist from any Catholic ministry within the Boston Archdiocese.

But it gets worse folks. Boy does it get worse.  In a Blog post entitled "Mychal Judge embraced his homosexuality as a gift of God" (Father Mychal Judge was a Franciscan priest and chaplain for the New York Fire Department who lost his life during the World Trade Center attack on 911), Mr. Kelly writes, "Some have asked, Why do we need to know that Fr. Mike was gay? First, because Mychal himself brought it up. He felt it important to share this aspect of himself, to put a human face and name upon the despised label of 'homosexual'. Recall how Christ, when asked, 'Who is my neighbor?,' tells the parable of the Good Samaritan, putting a human face on the Samaritans who were despised by the Jews. To truly understand Mychal Judge, to fully appreciate how God worked through him, we must recognize this truth about him. Mychal’s gayness was a major reason for his deep empathy with others, especially outcasts. He was holy in part because he was gay, not despite the fact.

Second, we should know that Fr. Mike was gay because Rome wants to purge many good, gifted gay seminarians. Mychal Judge and many like him would be barred from the priesthood under this regime. Christ had no problem with Mychal’s orientation, but Rome does.

Third, awareness of Fr. Mychal’s gay identity saves lives, and we are a pro-life Church. 1500 gay and lesbian teenagers commit suicide each year in the U.S., succumbing to intense rejection and internalized shame.

Mychal intervened in at least one family whose teenage son came out to his parents. That story had a happy ending, but thousands of gay kids are still rejected, abused, driven to suicide, and thrown out to the streets by their parents.

Public awareness of Mychal's gay identity continues to save lives by providing greater understanding, fulfilling Christ’s command to “go and do likewise” as the Good Samaritan.

Some have asked, Shouldn't sexual orientation be kept private?

Intimacy is a private matter. But identity and prejudice are public matters affecting the mental, social, physical, and spiritual health of millions of families and individuals.

Those who are embarrassed by this serious, mature discussion wrongly associate guilt and shame with homosexual orientation and relationships. They ought to examine where their visceral reactions really come from. They ought to question Rome’s faulty assumptions and, indeed, Rome’s own 'objective disorders' which more often resemble a severely dysfunctional family than the Body of Christ.

For centuries, Catholics were also taught to fear left-handed people as 'servants of the devil,' and the left-handed were burned at the stake along with faggots and heretics. (The word faggot, literally “burning bundle,” derives from these church burnings of gay men).

Now we know that homosexuality is no more 'disordered' or 'sinful' than left-handedness. Medical and scientific research strongly point to sexual orientation as determined at birth; that it’s nature over nurture for most people. Therefore, homosexual orientation, like left-handedness, is a Divinely created, normal variation within natural law. As such, gay people face the same moral challenges as everyone else.

The truly disordered homosexuals, psychiatrists say, are the ego-dystonic ones -- the self-loathing and dis-integrated, those who don't accept themselves. The most strident homophobes often have unresolved fears and wounds of their own which they project onto others. Christ warned of such projection: “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but not the beam in your own eye?!”

Homophobic guilt, shame, and fear are pathological reactions; they are not of Christ. Christ spreads healing, not pathology -- holiness, not neurosis. Whatever is psychologically unhealthy can never be spiritually holy. (The very words “holy” and “holiness” derive from healthy, happy, and wholeness).


Mychal Judge rejected pathological shame, and embraced his homosexuality as God's will for him.

We are born with our basic sexual orientations. Homosexuality, like left-handedness or red hair, is Divinely created. It is a normal variation in nature, occurring among humans and other species around the world.....Transcending the pathological guilt and shame inflicted upon gay people by prejudice, he [Fr. Judge] embraced his gay quality as a naturally inborn, God-given gift. This also contributed to his recovery from alcoholism. From there, he received and shared grace in extremis..." (Full post here).

The Church's teaching is clear.  It represents the mind of Christ.  And this teaching insists that, "..homosexual acts go against the natural moral law.  Homosexual acts 'close the sexual act to the gift of life.  They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity.  Under no circumstances can they be approved..." (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, No. 4).  This same clear document, after stressing that people with a deviant homosexual inclination should be treated with respect and compassion, cites the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which teaches that such an inclination is "objectively disordered" and that homosexual practices are among the sins "gravely contrary to chastity."

Mr. Kelly not only rejects this teaching entirely, but he insists that it is the Teaching Church which has relied upon "faulty assumptions" and which suffers from "objective disorders."
 
But hey, not to worry folks.  After all, Mr. Kelly works for Father John Unni.  And Fr. Unni has the "full confidence and support" of the Cardinal and the Boston Archdiocese.
 
Sleep well.

"When conscience, this bright lamp of the soul, calls 'evil good and good evil,' it is already on the path to the most alarming corruption and the darkest moral blindness."

In his Encyclical Leter Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), Pope John Paul II reminds us that, "The eclipse of the sense of God and of man inevitably leads to a practical materialism, which breeds individualism, utilitarianism and hedonism. Here too we see the permanent validity of the words of the Apostle: 'And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and to improper conduct' (Rom 1:28). The values of being are replaced by those of having. The only goal which counts is the pursuit of one's own material well-being. The so-called 'quality of life' is interpreted primarily or exclusively as economic efficiency, inordinate consumerism, physical beauty and pleasure, to the neglect of the more profound dimensions-interpersonal, spiritual and religious-of existence.


In such a context suffering, an inescapable burden of human existence but also a factor of possible personal growth, is 'censored', rejected as useless, indeed opposed as an evil, always and in every way to be avoided. When it cannot be avoided and the prospect of even some future well-being vanishes, then life appears to have lost all meaning and the temptation grows in man to claim the right to suppress it.

Within this same cultural climate, the body is no longer perceived as a properly personal reality, a sign and place of relations with others, with God and with the world. It is reduced to pure materiality: it is simply a complex of organs, functions and energies to be used according to the sole criteria of pleasure and efficiency. Consequently, sexuality too is depersonalized and exploited: from being the sign, place and language of love, that is, of the gift of self and acceptance of another, in all the other's richness as a person, it increasingly becomes the occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts. Thus the original import of human sexuality is distorted and falsified, and the two meanings, unitive and procreative, inherent in the very nature of the conjugal act, are artificially separated..." (No. 23).

Proponents of absolute sexual permissiveness and the Culture of Sodomy are most anxious to paint a sexual morality in accordance with the Natural Law and the moral teaching of the Catholic Church as "harmful" and even "dangerous."  The Church and pro-family individuals and groups must be demonized as being backward, as being unbalanced freaks who are comparable to Nazis or racists.  As "ignorant and irrelevant." See here.

Should this surprise us?  It is the inevitable result of embracing a theology from Hell.  Because so many today follow the doctrines of demons, "A large part of contemporary society looks sadly like that humanity which Paul describes in his Letter to the Romans. It is composed 'of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth' (1:18): having denied God and believing that they can build the earthly city without him, 'they became futile in their thinking' so that 'their senseless minds were darkened' (1:21); 'claiming to be wise, they became fools' (1:22), carrying out works deserving of death, and 'they not only do them but approve those who practise them' (1:32). When conscience, this bright lamp of the soul (cf. Mt 6:22-23), calls 'evil good and good evil' (Is 5:20), it is already on the path to the most alarming corruption and the darkest moral blindness." (Evangelium Vitae, No. 24).


And so it can be seen that we are already on the path toward the most alarming corruption and the darkest moral blindness.  The path we are on leads directly to the City of Satan and the Reign of Antichrist. Inflated in their rebellion against the God-Man, the Sons of Satan, those committed toward the atheistic program of attacking the Church from without and undermining it from within in preparation for the Man-God, will continue to intensify their persecution of craftiness and subversion until it reaches its culmination in an explosion of hate-filled rage which will bear much blood and death.

How blind our sin-sick society has become.  Recently, officials of the Archdiocese of Boston accused Catholics faithful to the Magisterium of "harming the community."  But the same officials do not accuse Governor Deval Patrick, or any of those who have promoted Barbara Lenk's nomination to the Massachusetts SJC, of harming the community or the Common Good.

Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick calls Christian soldiers "bigots."

The Washington Times is reporting that Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, the Army's deputy chief of staff in charge of personnel matters who spoke about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" before several hundred troops at the European Command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, said: "Unfortunately, we have a minority of service members who are still racists and bigoted and you will never be able to get rid of all of them...But these people opposing this new policy will need to get with the program, and if they can't, they need to get out. No matter how much training and education of those in opposition, you're always going to have those that oppose this on moral and religious grounds just like you still have racists today." Full article here.

Ironically, General Bostick's commentary reveals that he is guilty of the very charge which he levels against Christians who oppose homosexuality. In Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert H. Bork writes, "Moral objection to homosexual practices is not the same thing as animus, unless all disapprovals based on morality are to be disallowed as mere animus. Modern liberalism tends to classify all moral distinctions it does not accept as hateful and invalid. Moral views about sexual practices are particularly suspect.." (p. 113).

As I said in a previous post: "..the same radical homosexual activists who continually cry for more "tolerance" are anything but tolerant. This is a spiritual war. The homosexual movement is not a civil rights movement. It is an attempt at moral revolution. An attempt to change people's view of homosexuality.

Writing in the Chicago Free Press, even homosexual activist Paul Varnell admitted this. He wrote, "The fundamental controverted issue about homosexuality is not discrimination, hate crimes or domestic partnerships, but the morality of homosexuality. Even if gays obtain non-discrimination laws, hate crimes law and domestic partnership benefits, those can do little to counter the underlying moral condemnation which will continue to fester beneath the law and generate hostility, fuel hate crimes, support conversion therapies, encourage gay youth suicide and inhibit the full social acceptance that is our goal. On the other hand, if we convince people that homosexuality is fully moral, then all their inclination to discriminate, engage in gay-bashing or oppose gay marriage disappears. Gay youths and adults could readily accept themselves. So the gay movement, whether we acknowledge it or not, is not a civil rights movement, not even a sexual liberation movement, but a moral revolution aimed at changing people's view of homosexuality." (Paul Varnell, "Defending Our Morality," Chicago Free Press, Aug 16, 2000, See here).

Related reading here.