Pray and watch

 

Cardinal Gerhard Müller not satisfied with Vatican denial that Francis denies Jesus' divinity

As reported here:

Cardinal Gerhard Müller criticised the Vatican’s denial on October 9th of Francis reported statement that “Jesus was not God”.

“And they adored the beast, saying, who is like to the beast? And who shall be able to fight with him?” (Revelation 13:4).

As Rev. P. Huchede explains in his book History of Antichrist, “All vile parasites of fortune, astonished at the rapidity with which Antichrist achieves his conquests and also at the unlimited sway of his power, deceived by his prodigies, will prostrate themselves before him and adore him as their god. As soon as he believes himself master of the bodies and souls of all peoples, he will decree and proclaim his divinity and establish a new religion. According to the Apostle, he will lift himself up above all that is called God or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God showing himself as if he were God (2 Thessalonians 2:4). He will command all peoples to place his statue in the public places to be worshipped, the image of the beast whose wound was healed (Revelation 13: 13-15)…..Then he shall think himself able to change times and laws – religious, political, and sacred – by which the world had been governed up to his advent (Daniel 7: 25)…None but adorers of this new god can enjoy the possession of riches or honors. This god shall increase their glory and shall give them power over many and shall divide the land for nothing (Revelation 13: 7)….Those who will refuse to obey his impious orders shall be the object of a terrible and universal persecution….No language can give an adequate idea of the atrocity and effects of this frightful persecution. “I beheld and lo that horn made war against the saints, and prevailed over them” (Daniel 7: 21). The beast shall make war against the saints and shall overcome them and kill them (Revelation 11: 7). And he “shall crush the saints of the Most High” (Daniel 7: 25). And he will put to death all those who will not adore the image of the beast (Revelation 13: 15). Then the truth shall be oppressed. The Church shall see her children apostatize in vast numbers, and in the agony of her heart-rending grief, she will cry out in the words of her divine spouse, ‘My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Mark 15: 34). Then by order of the tyrant the continual sacrifice shall be abolished (Daniel 9: 27). The holy sacrifice of the Mass shall no longer be offered up publicly on the altars. The Church shall be devastated; the sacred vessels desecrated; the priests shall be scattered and separated from their flocks and put to death….The Church has taken up her abode in the catacombs.” (History of Antichrist, pp. 23-26, Tan Books).

In order for the new religion of humanitarianism to succeed, all dissenting voices will have to be either converted, silenced or removed. The Reign of Antichrist, which will be presented as an age of “love and harmony” will have to be brutally violent in order to achieve world unity. There are already many voices which have called or are calling for such a “global purge” or “cleansing action.” Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, in the July-August 1995 edition of Foreign Affairs, said that, “We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money.” Likewise, David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative at the United Nations, has said, “Lucifer comes to give us the final Luciferic initiation…that many people now and in the days ahead, will be facing – for it is an initiation into the New Age…No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian initiation.” Benjamin Crème, another prominent New Age “prophet,” on page 128 of “Maitreya’s mission,” insists that those who refuse to join in this World Initiation will find themselves in the minority and will have to “withdraw from this life.” Creme exhorts his followers to, “Be not afraid, therefore, when the ‘men of cloth’ raise their voices against the Great Lord, naming Him anti-Christ and arch-deceiver, for they know little of the laws which underlie their faiths and act and speak from ignorance and fear.” (April, 1997).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains the significance of Jesus' holy name: "Jesus means in Hebrew: 'God saves.' At the annunciation, the angel Gabriel gave him the name Jesus as his proper name, which expresses both his identity and his mission. Since God alone can forgive sins, it is God who, in Jesus his eternal Son made man, 'will save his people from their sins'. In Jesus, God recapitulates all of his history of salvation on behalf of men." (CCC, 430).  And again: "The name 'Jesus' signifies that the very name of God is present in the person of his Son, made man for the universal and definitive redemption from sins. It is the divine name that alone brings salvation, and henceforth all can invoke his name, for Jesus united himself to all men through his Incarnation, so that 'there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.'" (CCC, 432).

The Catechism continues: "Jesus' Resurrection glorifies the name of the Savior God, for from that time on it is the name of Jesus that fully manifests the supreme power of the 'name which is above every name'. The evil spirits fear his name; in his name his disciples perform miracles, for the Father grants all they ask in this name." (CCC, 434).

So important is the holy name of Jesus that Father Paul O'Sullivan writes, "God in His immense goodness gives to each of us an all-powerful word with which we can do wonders for Him, for ourselves and for the world.  That word is 'Jesus.'..."'Jesus' signifies 'God-made-man,' the Incarnation.  When the Son of God became man, He was called 'Jesus,' so that when we say, 'Jesus,' we offer Him His own Divine Son Himself; we offer Him the great Mystery of the Incarnation.  Jesus IS the Incarnation!" (The Wonders of the Holy Name, p. 32).

Saint Paul exhorts us, "All whatsoever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.." (Col. 3:17).  This is the sacred rule for Christians.  But we know, because Jesus has already warned us, that the Man of Sin, the Antichrist, will come in his own name (John 5:43), believing instead in his own greatness and spiritual power.  He will come to despise the Holy Name.  Vladimir Soloviev, in his work The Antichrist, understood that the spirit of Antichrist would become more manifest in the 21st century and describes the Man of iniquity thusly, "...he loved only himself.  He believed in God, but at the bottom of his heart unconsciously and instinctively preferred himself to Him.  He believed in the Good, but the all-seeing Eye of Eternity knew that he would bow down before the powers of evil, as soon as it had corrupted him, not by appealing to his senses, base passions or to the supreme temptation of power, but by caressing his boundless pride...At the beginning he had no hostility against Jesus.  He admitted his messianic dignity and significance, but he sincerely saw in him merely the greatest of his own predecessors; his mind, clouded by pride, could not understand Christ's moral achievement and his absolute uniqueness.  He reasoned thus: 'Christ came before me; I come second; but that which in the order of time comes later is essentially prior. I come last, at the end of history, just because I am the perfect and final savior.  The first Christ was my forerunner.  His mission was to anticipate and prepare my coming.'  With this idea in his mind the great man of the twenty-first century applied to himself all that is said in the Gospels about the second coming, understanding by it, not the return of the same Christ, but the replacement of the preliminary Christ by the final, that is, by himself."

The False Prophet rejects the divinity of Christ and secretly yearns to have the demon worshipped as God - he who comes in his own name and whose arrival is a punishment upon mankind because of its rejection of He Who is Truth and His Commandments.

Coming to a neighborhood near you: An NSA Surveillance Van

It would appear that the NSA is using vans to engage in surveillance against private citizens.  As explained here:

October 20, 2013 in Technology

by Betsy

• 

• 
• 
•  
•  
• “NSA Surveillance Network #1492″ Appears on Wireless Networks

During California Internet Outage

"Saturday night, around 8:30 Pacific Standard Time, Time/Warner Cable was knocked out in 3/4 of the state of California according to Cox Cable in San Diego. Before I called Cox Cable to confirm there was an outage, I checked my Macintosh’s laptop’s wireless network to see who else in the area was affected. To my surprise almost everyone (except for a few possible satellite dish Network routers and a few cell phones) had no signal, but amongst the names of devices was to my shock, “NSA Surveillance Network #1492.”

My first thought was that it was annoying that the NSA were beaming a signal from somewhere treating everyone like they were a criminal and violating our 4th Amendment right to not be searched without a warrant, but then I asked myself where is the NSA broadcasting their signal? Was it coming from a satellite, a van, a broadcast tower, or maybe even a drone?



Next, I had to wonder, “Was this something besides a normal outage or equipment failure or was it a test of the Internet Kill Switch?” Under the Department of Homeland Security’s “Emergency Wireless Protocols,” (Standard Operating Procedure 303 or “SOP 303), the federal agency claims the power to shut down all communications, including the Internet, in the event of a national crisis.
Was there a crisis then or was this a dry run of some sort? Not only was California affected, but East Coast Internet outages happened as well from New York to Philadelphia. According to a “report at the Wall Street Journal” the East Coast downtime was due to equipment failure at a hub. However, according to Time/Warner’s outage map outages occurred in almost every major city in the U.S. except the Northwest and most central states.



So even if it is too premature to question if there was some sort of NSA test or Internet Kill Switch test, what was the significance of the network being labeled as “#1492″? Most of us Americans were taught as kids, “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” Last Monday being Columbus Day probably was not a coincidence in the timing, more than likely it was a planned event.
It is as if the NSA were following some sort of time table for kill switch tests coming one week after last Saturday’s EBT outage which caused panic, threats of rioting, and emptying of shelves at Wal-Mart stores.

I don’t know what is for sure going on, but all I know is, America, things are happening fast and this event seems planned. Do your part to get your personal and spiritual affairs in order and inform people about the creepy underreported widespread outages that have been happening."

Father Charles Arminjon, in his book entitled 'The End of the Present World," explains that, "..the Antichrist will be lord of the world" and that, "It is abundantly clear that the effect of all the events of the present time is to prepare the social setting in which the dominance of the man of sin will be exercised...any careful observer [this would rule out the vast majority today] of the events of the present time cannot escape the conviction that everything is being done to bring about a social environment where the man of sin, by combining in his person all the depravity and every false doctrine of his age, will be produced spontaneously and effortlessly, like the parasitical tapeworm that breeds naturally in gangrenous flesh and organs.."

Men, crippled by their atheistic humanism, are today forging their own net of despotism which will be encompassed by the walls of new concentration camps. Already citizens find themselves being monitored by a surveillance society which is merely a preparation for the fish-tank men will find themselves within when the Man of Sin assumes power. "Man," Father Vincent Miceli, S.J., explains, in attempting to be both an atheist and his own God, "has only succeeded in establishing an inhuman humanism, a political and religiously perverted atheism which violently forces him..into total bondage to the father of lies and the unnatural perversions that lead to nihilism. Idol-perverted through the worship of itself, atheistic humanism practices the licentious liturgy of feeding its Man-God on man-god victims, a sort of divine-human cannibalism. The adventure of atheism is seen, in the last analysis, to be that unfathomable iniquity which attacks the very roots of reality, divorcing things, persons, societies from God and organizing them into a militant Kingdom of hate that ceaselessly and sacrilegiously assaults the sanctity of God and the dignity of men."

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."

Readers of this Blog know that I have been warning of the encroaching darkness for some time. Some have dismissed my warnings as "alarmist." Many Americans have been desensitized to the darkness and have come to accept new values without even realizing it. Such people believe that we still live in a democracy. But we do not.

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


"Authentic democracy is possible only in a State ruled by law, and on the basis of a correct conception of the human person. It requires that the necessary conditions be present for the advancement both of the individual through education and formation in true ideals, and of the "subjectivity" of society through the creation of structures of participation and shared responsibility. Nowadays there is a tendency to claim that agnosticism and sceptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude which correspond to democratic forms of political life. Those who are convinced that they know the truth and firmly adhere to it are considered unreliable from a democratic point of view, since they do not accept that truth is determined by the majority, or that it is subject to variation according to different political trends. It must be observed in this regard that if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.

Nor does the Church close her eyes to the danger of fanaticism or fundamentalism among those who, in the name of an ideology which purports to be scientific or religious, claim the right to impose on others their own concept of what is true and good. Christian truth is not of this kind. Since it is not an ideology, the Christian faith does not presume to imprison changing socio-political realities in a rigid schema, and it recognizes that human life is realized in history in conditions that are diverse and imperfect. Furthermore, in constantly reaffirming the transcendent dignity of the person, the Church's method is always that of respect for freedom.

But freedom attains its full development only by accepting the truth. In a world without truth, freedom loses its foundation and man is exposed to the violence of passion and to manipulation, both open and hidden. The Christian upholds freedom and serves it, constantly offering to others the truth which he has known (cf. Jn 8:31-32), in accordance with the missionary nature of his vocation. While paying heed to every fragment of truth which he encounters in the life experience and in the culture of individuals and of nations, he will not fail to affirm in dialogue with others all that his faith and the correct use of reason have enabled him to understand." (No. 46).


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).

The desire to conform and not to be perceived as being "different" or "countercultural," can be a very powerful force. Many Catholics (and other Christians) voted for President Barack Obama knowing full well that he supports abortion through all nine months of pregnancy right up to so-called partial-birth abortion - which is actually infanticide - as well as his support for Embryonic Stem Cell Research (ESCR) and the radical homosexual agenda.


According to Site Meter, various federal offices and agencies have been visiting La Salette Journey.  Including the State Department, the DOJ and the Executive Office for the President of the United States.  Just a couple of says ago, an NSA Surveillance Van was in my neighborhood:

At the same time that the NSA is surveiling American citizens, detention camps are being prepared - see here.

The day is coming when faithful Catholics and other people of good will who refuse to worship the Beast or to receive a chip in their bodies will be targeted for detention or removal.  Many will probably be rounded up before martial law is even declared.

Liberal columnist Bonnie Erbe: the Christian era is crumbling and this will be liberating

In their Pastoral Letter on Freedom of Conscience and Religion, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, citing Blessed John XXIII's Encyclical Letter Pacem in Terris, No. 14, remind us that, "Every individual has the 'right to be able to worship God in accordance with the right dictates of conscience....Besides being free from external coercion, everyone must be able freely to exercise the right to choose, profess, disseminate, and practice his or her own religion in private and in public.  This includes the freedom for parents to educate their children in their religious convictions and to choose the schools which provide that formation.  Moreover, the State has the obligation to protect this right by means of a legal and administrative framework and to create a suitable environment where it can be enjoyed...Unfortunately, religious freedom is far from being effectively guaranteed everywhere.  Sometimes it is denied for religious or ideological reasons.  At other times, although it may be recognized in law, it is hindered in practice by a legal system or social order which enforces strict control, if not a monopoly, over society....

More subtle threats to religious freedom arise from the cultural predominance of radical secularism and 'a subliminal relativism that penetrates every area of life.  Sometimes this relativism becomes aggressive when it opposes those who say they know where the truth or meaning of life is to be found.' (Pope Benedict XVI, Address to Central Committee for German Catholics, Freiburg in Breisgau, September 24, 2011).

This aggressive and hate-filled secularism which Pope Benedict XVI refers to aims at forcing religious believers - and especially Catholic Christians - to keep their religious convictions to themselves while insisting that atheists, agnostics and the "non-affiliated" should not be held to the same restriction.  The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops rightly declare that such an aim amounts to nothing less than "an expression of religious intolerance."

This intolerance is embraced by liberal columnist Bonnie Erbe.  In a column entitled "Christian leaders losing power, and I'm fine with that," which was carried by the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise, Ms. Erbe argues that America is morphing "from one nation under one Christian god to an amalgam nation under many gods" and that it is "liberating" to know that the non-Christian population is increasing even as the ranks of Church-going Christians decreases.

Ms. Erbe rails against the Catholic Church in particular because the U.S. Bishops have had the audacity to stand up for religious freedom against the Obama administration's contraception mandate which would violate the First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty.  She writes, "Clearly, they and other Christian church leaders still see us as one nation under one god.  But...this is changing.  Another Pew poll released two years ago on the 'millennial' generation and its relationship with faith should be even more troubling to Christian leaders.  It showed the following, quoting from the Pew website: 'Americans ages 18 to 29 are considerably less religious than older Americans.  Fewer young adults belong to any particular faith than older people do today.  They also are less likely to be affiliated than their parents' and grandparents' generations were when they were young.'

For Ms. Erbe, this is all just great news.  She writes joyfully, "One day, Christian leaders will wake up and recognize that their era is crumbling.  If that means they will have decreasing power in the political realm, it will be a blessing for all of us..."

In other words, if the rights and freedoms of Christians are to diminish as their ranks grow smaller, such will represent a blessing to those who oppose the Christian Church.  Having succumbed to the Father of Lies (John 8: 44), Ms. Erbe could not possibly understand that the growing apostasy will not represent a "blessing" for pagans, atheists, agnostics and the "non-affiliated."  On the contrary, the Holy Spirit assures us through Saint Paul that the day of the Lord will not come "unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition" (2 Thessalonians 2: 3) and that, "The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved." (2 Thessalonians 2: 9-10).

The coming of the lawless one (the Antichrist for the scripturally illiterate) will set off a sequence of events culminating in the complete destruction of those who have "refused to love the truth and so be saved."  Jesus refers to this mystery in John 5: 43.  After this destruction comes, we will have a new heavens and a new earth where nothing unclean shall enter (Revelation 21: 27).

Now that will be a blessing!

The Social "Gospel" spreads: Preparation for the Reign of Antichrist.

I've said it many times over the past twenty years, as we move toward one world government, the new humanitarian religion will become more and more aggressive. Catholicism, its greatest enemy, must be overcome at all cost. To this end, ecclesiastical masonry (see here and here) has inflitrated the Church.


Through one of the characters in his book The Lord of the World, Robert Hugh Benson describes this humanitarian religion which is to overcome the Catholic Church: "Humanitarianism...is becoming an actual religion itself, though anti-supernatural. It is a Pantheism. Pantheism deifies all nature, God is the world, but naturally, man above all is God since he is the highest expression of nature. It is a religion devoid of the 'super' natural, because since God is nature itself, there is no longer a distinction between Creator and creature. The creature is God and hence arbitrator of his own destiny and establishes the moral law for himself. Nature, and man is its highest expression, has all the divine attributes. Humanitarianism is a religion devoid of the supernatural. It is developing a ritual under Freemasonry; it has a creed, 'God is man'; and the rest. It has, therefore, a real food of a sort to offer religious cravings: it idealizes, and yet makes no demands upon the spiritual faculties. Then, they have the use of all the churches except ours, and of all the Cathedrals; and they are beginning at last to encourage sentiment. Then they may display their symbols and we may not..."

The new humanitarian religion, which is anti-supernatural, must absorb Christianity as it prepares for the entrance of the Man of Sin. Catholics who maintain a devotion to the Holy Eucharist and Our Lady must be first ostracized and later eliminated as incompatible with the New Order.

The Man of Sin will soon reveal himself.  There is preparation for this event.  There is a new television series entitled "666 Park Avenue."  Children are being tagged with RFID technology and soon the entire populace will be subjected to mandatory microchipping.  Here in the Worcester Diocese [Massachusetts], the Chancery is selling books written by New Age advocate/Pantheist and dissident Servite Sister Joyce Rupp who has publically denounced the Church's hierarchy while agitating for a change in Catholic teaching. 

Seldom is a sermon heard in local parishes which deals with sin, heaven, hell or purgatory.  The justice which Christ came to establish for men is the interior justification which makes them children of God in grace.  And the kingdom which Christ came to establish is a spiritual kingdom  of interior holiness.  But  many (if not most) of our local clergy no longer preach the Gospel of Christ and have succumbed to what Dietrich von Hildebrand referred to as "this-worldliness" - a transfer of the center of gravity from eternity to this world.

Dr. Hildebrand writes, "The this-worldly tendency can be detected in various pastoral letters, and above all in countless sermons.  One speaks more about the fight against poverty and for social justice and world peace - in a word, more about improving the world - than about offending God by our sins, sanctifying the individual, about heaven and hell, eternity and the hope of eternal union with God in the beatific vision.  The this-worldly tendency emphasizes the earthly future more than eternity, and this is an unfortunate heritage of the evolutionism of [Pere] Teilhard de Chardin.  The sancitification of the individual soul and the eternal salvation of the individual is pushed aside to make room for the evolution of mankind on earth, for progress in what concerns man's earthly existence." (The Devastated Vineyard, pp. 128-129).

I witness this phenomenon on a regular basis at my parish.  The "pastor" there is more concerned with raising monies for Food for the Poor (a most worthy charity to be sure) than he is with saving souls.  During last Sunday's homily he told a story about a man sentenced to hell for only giving a quarter to the poor.  But never has this priest told a story about someone going to hell for having an abortion, for having contracepted, for engaging in fornication, adultery or sodomy.  It would seem that, for this priest, the only sin which merits hell is a failure to practice the corporal works of mercy.

Which is not to say, of course, that we will not be judged on such works.  Even a cursory read of Matthew 25 by even the most intellectually-challenged amongst us will quickly reveal the necessity of sharing the good things which God has provided us.  But, having succumbed to a false social "gospel," clerics who have fallen into this-worldliness fail to understand that temporal justice is not an essential message of the Gospel and, as Father Vincent Miceli reminded us, "...has nothing to do directly with God's economy of salvation as revealed in the life and teachings of Jesus.  Christ Himself stressed this truth when He urged His listeners to act as follows concerning their natural needs: 'Therefore I say to you, do not be anxious for your life...for your Father knows that you need all these things.  But seek first the Kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be given you besides.'" (Essay entitled "St. Thomas, Justice and Marxism," citing Matthew 6: 25, 32-33).

As the false humanitarian "gospel," the "social gospel," continues to spread, we will witness more and more hostility toward supernatural faith and those who still have a sense of sin. 

Prepare.  For soon persecution will overcome the Church for a time.  The day is fast-approaching when those who kill us will believe that they are serving God in truth.

Steve Jobs: Secular Prophet for a Secular Age

Writing for the Wall Street Journal online, Andy Crouch says that, "Steve Jobs was extraordinary in countless ways—as a designer, an innovator, a (demanding and occasionally ruthless) leader. But his most singular quality was his ability to articulate a perfectly secular form of hope. Nothing exemplifies that ability more than Apple's early logo, which slapped a rainbow on the very archetype of human fallenness and failure—the bitten fruit—and turned it into a sign of promise and progress.

That bitten apple was just one of Steve Jobs's many touches of genius, capturing the promise of technology in a single glance. The philosopher Albert Borgmann has observed that technology promises to relieve us of the burden of being merely human, of being finite creatures in a harsh and unyielding world. The biblical story of the Fall pronounced a curse upon human work—"cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life." All technology implicitly promises to reverse the curse, easing the burden of creaturely existence. And technology is most celebrated when it is most invisible—when the machinery is completely hidden, combining godlike effortlessness with blissful ignorance about the mechanisms that deliver our disburdened lives....Steve Jobs was the evangelist of this particular kind of progress - and he was the perfect evangelist because he had no competing source of hope.  He believed so sincerely in the "magical, revolutionary" promise of Apple precisely because he believed in no higher power." (See here).

Steve Jobs was indeed a secular prophet for many.  Having converted to Buddhism, which is essentially atheistic*, and believing blindly in the promise of technology, which he referred to as "magical" and "revolutionary," he was indeed the perfect evangelist for the modern fairy tale that man has come of age and technology will save him.

It comes as no surprise that Jobs would be heralded by so many in this country as a secular prophet preaching salvation through technology.  For, as Father Vincent Miceli has explained, "Atheistic humanism is America's brand of atheism.  It teaches that the human race has reached a leap of advancement, a progressive mutation, not in the organic or bodily sense, but psychologically, a mutation of such high caliber that it can no longer count on any outside forces to solve its problems.  Man must only count on himself if he is to achieve the challenge of creating a cosmos of plenty and a utopia of temporal glory.  He may no longer flee for refuge 'under the umbrella' of divine authority.  The state of the world is no longer compatible with 'the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient and all-benevolent God.'  There are no dogmas, no 'static,' permanent truths, no objective principles or fixed concepts that can help explain the mystery of existence in general or the mystery of the spirit in particular.  'Objective truth is rather a function of developing mind and is always marked by historicity,'...'All we can do,' says Sir Julian Huxley, 'is to truly accept facts.'  After all, the old philosophy which held that truth is so objective that it can exist apart from anyone's possession of it, with 'ideas  always up there in Heaven,' was nothing more than a disguised theology.  And for this reason in such a superstition there was no place for a historical dimension of truth, no space for development, no life for growth.  Harvey Cox could write in his Secular City: 'Religion is in a sense the neurosis of culture; secularization corresponds to maturation, for it signifies the emancipation of man first from religion and then from metaphysical control.'  All that we have and all that we need is given to us in technopolis, even if technopolis is not an easy cup to drink..." (Atheistic Humanism in the U.S.A.).

The new humanitarian religion of Antichrist will embrace technology's amazing achievements, achievements which "..have so divinized man's Ego that man's early attitude toward and dependence on God is now regarded to have been an ignorant, superstitious, magico-religious reaction to the wonderful, the unknown - a response normal enough for mankind in its infancy and puberty stage of social-scientific development...The feat of Prometheus challenging and defying the old gods in snatching fiery power and bringing down to man on earth the arts and freedom is still a thrilling and popular scene.  This titan represents 'man come of age,'man emancipated from childish beliefs, liberated from sexual taboos, able to create for himself a world of plenty, a society of peace." (Father Miceli, Atheistic Humanism in the U.S.A.).

Once again man is being tempted by an apple.  Tempted to eat of the "fruit" which will, according to the Evil One, transform us so that we will be like "gods who know what is good and what is bad." (Genesis 3:5).  When the Evil One makes his appearance in the flesh as the Man-God, as Archbishop Fulton Sheen warned us,  "..when the great conflict between the forces of good and evil takes place," he will "appear without the Cross, as the Great Philanthropist and Social Reformer to become the final temptation of mankind."

Ye shall be as gods.  Ye shall build a utopia without Christ.  And I myself will show you the way.

Meditation: John 5:43.

* "Buddhism is in large measure an 'atheistic' system." (Pope John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, p. 82).

America flees from theology and toward insanity: Preparation for Antichrist

Patrick Buchanan quotes from the late professor of theology Harold O.J. Brown in his book entitled Day of Reckoning:

"Since the end of World War II, American society has been suffering decomposition and deconstruction..Consider what we have come to in seven decades:

The distinctiveness of marriage has been abolished (Baird v. Eisenstadt); prayer and Bible reading in schools has been stamped out (Abington, Schemp, et al.); the mother's womb has become the most dangerous place for a baby (Roe v. Wade, et al.); the rights (but not the duties) of fathers and parents of minor girls have been voided (Planned Parenthood v. Danforth); divorce has become easier than marrying; the Ten Commandments have been banned from public view; and now the natural distinction between male and female is being abolished (Goodridge, Lawrence, etc).  The Pledge of Allegiance is forbidden; the Boy Scouts are under attack; and Christmas Carols are banned.  Pornography is everywhere.

The structure of American society is being demolished brick by brick.  Within a few short years, Americans will have reached the 'liberty' desired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the abolition of every particular dependency.  This is what Hannah Arendt called 'the atomistic mass,' a precondition for the establishment of totalitarianism." (p. 178).

As I have said so many times before, the retreat from truth is necessary before the reign of Antichrist. There is a preparation. Many are "intellectualizing" themselves into dissent and apostasy from the true Faith. The battlefield is in the mind. The attack is intellectual and psychological. Sin must be justified so that a new religion can turn vices into gods.


What is this but a form of insanity? In the words of the late (great) F.J. Sheed: "..if we see anything - ourself or some other man, or the Universe as a whole or any part of it - without at the same time seeing God holding it there, then we are seeing it all wrong. If we saw a coat hanging on a wall and did not realize that it was held there by a hook, we should not be living in the real world at all, but in some fantastic world of our own in which coats defied the law of gravity and hung on walls by their own power. Similarly if we see things in existence and do not in the same act see that they are held in existence by God, then equally we are living in a fantastic world, not the real world. Seeing God everywhere and all things upheld by Him is not a matter of sanctity; but of plain sanity, because God is everywhere and all things are upheld by Him...To overlook God's presence is not simply to be irreligious; it is a kind of insanity, like overlooking anything else that is actually there." (Theology and Sanity, p.6).

To overlook God's presence (and by extension His Commandments) is not simply to be irreligious; it is a kind of insanity.  Sheed is right.  When we fail to see things as they actually are, we are in the grip of a kind of insanity.  And it is this very insanity which is a precondition for the Reign of Antichrist.

 
Recall the words of those who work at an abortion killing center to Markai Durham on MTV's "reality show" No Easy Decision as they convinced her that the baby within her womb was somehow not human: "Don’t think of it as ten fingers and ten toes with a forehead and all that stuff. Because if you think of it like that, you’re going to make yourself depressed. …Think of it as what it is: a little ball of cells." 

What is this but a kind of insanity?  How is it any different from the Nazi doctors who convinced themselves that they were not torturing human beings but that the Jewish People were somehow "subhuman"?

Before Antichrist can emerge onto the world stage, the people must first embrace this kind of insanity.  Increasingly, Americans are showing that they are willing to do just that.

Polish priest Father Marek Gancarczyk fined for comparing abortion to Holocaust and for saying that abortion is killing

"It is in accordance with their dignity as persons - that is, beings endowed with reason and free will and therefore privileged to bear personal responsibility - that all men should be at once impelled by nature and also bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth. They are also bound to adhere to the truth, once it is known, and to order their whole lives in accord with the demands of truth." (Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae, No. 2).

If abortion is not the killing of a child, what is it?

We are currently experiencing a retreat from truth in preparation for the Reign of Antichrist. It was Jane Le Royer (d. 1798), who said:

"My Father, God has manifested to me the malice of Satan, and the perverse and diabolical intentions of his emissaries (secret societies) against the Holy Church of Jesus Christ. At the command of their master these wicked men have traversed the earth like furies, with the intention of preparing the way and the place for Anti-Christ whose reign is approaching. Through the corrupted breath of this proud spirit they have poisoned the minds of men. Like persons infected with pestilence, they have reciprocally communicated the evil to each other, and the contagion has become general. What convulsions! what scandals! The thick vapours which I have seen rising from the earth, and obscuring the light of the sun, are the false maxims of irreligion and of license (falsely called liberty), which in part originated in France, and in part came to us from abroad. These have succeeded in confounding all sound principles, and in spreading everywhere such darkness as to obscure the light both of faith and of reason. The storm began in France, which shall be the first theatre of its ravages, after having been its forge."