Pope Francis: Do you want to pray the Creed?

Dorothy Sayers, in her classic work Creed or Chaos, reminds us that, "The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man — and the dogma is the drama.

That drama is summarised quite clearly in the creeds of the Church, and if we think it dull it is because we either have never really read those amazing documents, or have recited them so often and so mechanically as to have lost all sense of their meaning.  The plot pivots upon a single character, and the whole action is the answer to a single central problem: What think ye of Christ?

The Church's answer is categorical and uncompromising, and it is this: That Jesus Bar-Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, was in fact and in truth, and in the most exact and literal sense of the words, the God "by Whom all things were made."  His body and brain were those of a common man; His personality was the personality of God, so far as that personality could be expressed in human terms.  He was not a kind of dæmon or fairy pretending to be human; He was in every respect a genuine living man.  He was not merely a man so good as to be "like God" — He was God…This is the dogma we find so dull — this terrifying drama of which God is the victim and hero.

If this is dull, then what, in Heaven's name, is worthy to be called exciting?  The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused Him of being a bore — on the contrary; they thought Him too dynamic to be safe.  It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified Him "meek and mild," and recommended Him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.  To those who knew Him, however, He in no way suggested a milk-and-water person; they objected to Him as a dangerous firebrand."

For authentic Christians then, the Creeds are essential.  They are our response to the question, "What think ye of Christ?"

But for Pope Francis, the Creed seems to be of little importance.  As related here, when challenged on some of his views (which many consider far to the left), Francis responded, "..if they want me to recite the Creed, I can!"

First of all, the Creed is a prayer.  It should be prayed and not simply recited.  Secondly, we should possess the desire to pray the Creed, and not simply recite it as some sort of formula to convince others that we really believe.

It was Archbishop Fulton Sheen who cautioned, "The modern man must decide for himself whether he is going to have a religion with thought or a religion without it. He already knows that thoughtless policies lead to the ruin of society, and he may begin to suspect that thoughtless religion ends in confusion worse confounded.

The problem is simple. The modern man has two maps before him: one the map of sentimental religion, the other the map of dogmatic religion. The first is very simple. It has been constructed only in the last few years by a topographer who has just gone into the business of map making and is extremely adverse to explicit directions. He believes that each man should find his own way and not have his liberty taken away by dogmatic directions. The other map is much more complicated and full of dogmatic detail. It has been made by topographers who have been over every inch of the road for centuries and know each detour and each pitfall. It has explicit directions and dogmas such as, 'Do not take this road - it is swampy,' or 'Follow this road; although rough and rocky at first, it leads to a smooth road on a mountaintop.'

The simple map is very easy to read, but those who are guided by it are generally lost in a swamp of mushy sentimentalism. The other map takes a little more scrutiny, but it is simpler in the end, for it takes you up through the rocky road of the world's scorn to the everlasting hills where is seated the original Map Maker, the only One who ever has associated rest with learning: 'Learn of Me...and you shall find rest for your souls.'

Every new coherent doctrine and dogma add to the pabulum for thought; it is an extra bit of garden upon which we can intellectually browse; it is new food into which we can put our teeth and thence absorb nourishment; it is the discovery of a new intellectual planet that adds fullness and spaciousness to our mental world. And simply because it is solid and weighty, because it is dogmatic and not gaseous and foggy like a sentiment, it is intellectually invigorating, for it is with weights that the best drill is done, and not with feathers.

It is the very nature of a man to generate children of his brain in the shape of thoughts, and as he piles up thought on thought, truth on truth, doctrine on doctrine, conviction on conviction, and dogma on dogma, a very coherent and orderly fashion, so as to produce a system complex as a body and yet one and harmonious, the more and more human he becomes. When, however, in response to false cries for progress, he lops off dogmas, breaks with the memory of his forefathers, denies intellectual parentage, pleads for a religion without dogmas, substitutes mistiness for mystery, mistakes sentiment for sediment, he is sinking back slowly, surely, and inevitably into the senselessness of stones and into the irresponsible unconsciousness of weeds. Grass is broad-minded. Cabbages have heads - but no dogmas."

A religion with thought or a religion without it.  Which do you think Francis advances?

Related reading here.

Doctor David Jeremiah engages in historical revisionism as he libels the Catholic Church

Dr. David Jeremiah, senior pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, California, in his book entitled "I Never Thought I'd See The Day," which is listed as a "# 1 New York Times Bestseller," engages in historical revisionism as he attempts to portray William Tyndale as a "martyr" for the Bible.

On page 161 of his book, Dr. Jeremiah asserts that, "..because TYndale believed that every English-speaking person deserved to have access to the Bible in English, he labored to produce the first complete New Testament (and part of the Old Testament) in English translated directly from the original Hebrew and Greek texts.  Finding no support for his efforts in England, the Oxford and Cambridge trained scholar, fluent in no fewer than eight languages, left for Germany in 1524, never to see England again..."

What a blessing for England!  Let's begin with Dr. Jeremiah's asinine claim that William Tyndale was a "trained scholar."  Actually, Tyndale was a mediocre scholar at best.  He described himself as, "evil favoured in this world, and without grace in the sight of men, speechless and rude, dull and slow witted."  In other words, he had no special qualifications for the monumentally important task of translating God's Holy Word.  To put it mildly.

Of course this doesn't concern Doctor Jeremiah.  But then why should it?  As with many other anti-Catholic propagandists, Dr. Jeremiah cannot afford to let the truth get in his way or produce the slightest crack in his wall of conviction.  He implies in his book that the Catholic Church didn't want the people to have access to the Scriptures.

Tyndale had fallen under the influence of Martin Luther and his version of the Scriptures was full of Lutheran heresies.  Canon Dixon, an Anglican historian, referring to the fact that copies of Tyndale's Bible were burnt, says: "If the clergy had acted thus simply because they would have the people kept ignorant of the Word of God, they would have been without excuse.  But it was not so.  Every one of the little volumes, containing portions of the sacred text that was issued by Tyndale, contained also a prologue and notes written with such hot fury of vituperation against the prelates and clergy, the monks and friars, the rites and ceremonies of the Church, as was hardly likely to commend it to the favours of those who were attacked."

Bishop Tunstall of London declared that he found more than 2,000 errors in Tyndale's Bible while Saint Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor of England, wrote a treatise against the heretical translation and asserted that to "find errors in Tyndale's book were like studying to find water in the sea."

The Church had to condemn Tyndale's Bible because it was not a true or correct version of the Scriptures.  The Catholic Church had copies of Tyndale's Bible burned.  But it was not the Word of God which Church authorities were destroying but instead a corrupted version of the Scriptures.

In 1531, King Henry VIII, acting upon the advice of his Council and prelates, published an edict ordering that, "the translation of the Scripture corrupted by William Tyndale should be utterly expelled, rejected, and put away out of the hands of the people, and not be suffered to go abroad among his subjects."

Years later, the Royal Defender of the Faith issued another Act entitled "For the advancement of true religion and for the abolishment of the contrary" which said that, "all manner of books of the Old and New Testament in English, being of the crafty, false, and untrue translation of Tyndale....shall be clearly and utterly abolished, extinguished, and forbidden to be kept or used in this realm."

The Catholic Church did not oppose William Tyndale's Bible because he thought people "deserved to have access to the Bible in English."  The Church had to oppose this heretical translation because it is her duty to safeguard the Deposit of Faith.

Dr. Jeremiah needs to apologize for his libel.

President Obama, dictatorship and control

In my last post, I compared President Obama's new executive order with the Third Reich's "Decree for the Protection of the German People."  Every dictatorship, or every country en route toward dictatorship, justifies its lust for power and control by asserting that such power grabs are for the "good of the people" or "public safety in times of crisis" or for reasons of "national security."  But all of the bovine scatology in the world cannot conceal the fact that control is the driving force behind dictatorship.

In an article for the Canada Free Press entitled "Obama's obsession with control," Doug Hagmann and Joseph Hagmann write:

In the event you missed the Friday news dump, Barack Hussein Obama issued yet another executive order. Titled “Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions,” it may be read in its entirety on the White House website here. At first blush, it appears that the order modernizes previous communications functionality, particularly as it relates to the continuity of governmental communication during wartime or national crisis as defined by Obama.


The text of the order itself consists of 2,205 words and seven-(7) sections and multiple subsections. The policy statement (section one) seems innocuous and actually beneficial to the continuity of communications within the U.S., until one begins to dissect the order and consider it in context with other Obama issued directives. Extensive analysis of this order, in tandem with other recent Obama orders and signed legislation, suggests a disconcerting pattern of potential overreach by Obama into the area of normal and customary commercial communication systems.

Based on our analysis of this order, it would appear that the implementation of emergency communications by Obama, using all forms of wired and wireless communication systems, is redirected through the Executive branch and could expand such takeover abilities beyond the limits of an actual act of war, national emergency, or other event impacting the national security of the U.S. The order also mandates that the Department of Homeland Security develops and submits such a plan to Obama within sixty-(60) days of this order (section 5.2(h)).

Additionally, Obama’s order completely revokes Executive Order 12472 of April 3, 1984, as amended, which established and defined the National Communication System (NCS). The purpose of the NCS is to “assist the President” in matters of emergency communications in war-time emergencies, and during “those crises or emergencies in which the exercise of the President’s war power functions is not required or permitted by law.” By the stroke of his pen, such distinctions are removed.

Security or control?

After reviewing this order, one is forced to wonder whether the actual function of this order is to assure continuity of communications during an actual emergency, or if this order is designed to expand the control of all communications by implementing measures that redefine crises and emergencies. In the context of the most recent orders implemented by the stroke of his pen, it would appear that Obama is more concerned with command and control than ensuring continuity of communications during times of actual national emergencies."

Total control of the means of communication is necessary for a dictatorship, or emerging dictatorship, so that through mass communication the individual may be propagandized and molded into conditioned responses.  It is necessary to destroy the individual's ability to figure things out for himself.  And as this ability atrophies, the individual is inundated with entertainments [think of Juvenal and his comment about bread and circuses] which prevent him from reflecting on the fact that his authorities are deceitful and manipulative.

The dictatorship wants, the dictatorship needs, to reduce the individual to being an apathetic machine devoid of independent, critical thought.  The individual is subjected to a process of "massification" until he or she is completely dependent upon the State.  It was Hitler's boast that: "..sixty thousand men have outwardly become almost a unit, that actually these men are uniform not only in ideas, but that even the facial expression is almost the same.  Look at these laughing eyes, this fanatical enthusiasm, and you will discover how a hundred thousand men in a movement become a single type."

If you believe that Americans are "too intelligent" and too "fiercely independent" to succumb to intellectual and emotional subjection through the use of mass communication, rallies, emotional oratory and slogans, consider how a man of no particular intelligence or experience seduced so many into believing that he would effect positive change in the United States.  Has Barack Obama delivered?  And how often do you come across people whose views are merely a regurgitation of what they read in their local newspaper or hear from the mainstream media?

Once the individual has succumbed to totalitarian ideology, the critical faculty is suspended.  And it is difficult, if not impossible, for the brainwashed individual to revert to his former self.  Collective totalitarian thinking [which again is the goal of every dictatorship] may be compared with schizophrenia.  In both, says Joost Meerloo in The Rape of the Mind, there is, "a loss of an independent, verifiable reality, with a consequent relapse into a more primitive state of awareness."  In both, thought and action are arrested at the infantile level of development.

Such a person is easy to control and manipulate. 

And that's exactly what Barack Obama is about: control.

"..it can happen that this non-Catholic thought within Catholicism, will tomorrow become the stronger."

While Cardinal Christoph Schonborn has said that "We should give more consideration to the quality of homosexual relationships," The Austrian Independent is reporting that Father Gerard Swierzek's fidelity to Catholic doctrine isn't getting much consideration at his parish or in his community. 

The Austrian Independent:

"Florian Stangl, a homosexual carer of disabled children, received a majority of votes in the recent Stützenhofen parish community council ballot. Viennese Archbishop Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, the highest representative of the Austrian Roman Catholic Church, gave the green light to Stangl’s engagement in the parish despite his sexual orientation. Schönborn said last week that he had been "impressed" by Stangl. Schönborn met with the 26-year-old social worker before making clear that he supported his nomination.


Now Gerhard Swierzek, the Catholic priest of the town of 110 residents, said he did not want to hold masses in Stützenhofen any longer. Swierzek explained he opposed the "sinful lifestyle" of some members of the local Catholic community. Swierzek added he planned to ask clerical leaders for a position in another parish due to recent occurrences.

Stangl refused to comment on Swierzek’s statements except stressing that a possible appeal for a job somewhere else was the priest’s "personal decision". Other members of the Stützenhofen parish community council are less cautious with keeping their opinion to themselves. Local newspapers quote them as saying that Swierzek gambled away the chances for a mutual agreement. They told reporters that the priest was well advised to leave the village to help its Catholic community to regroup and get over the latest turmoil." (See full article here).

It was Pope Paul VI who said, back in 1977, "There is a great uneasiness, at this time, in the world and in the Church, and that which is in question is the faith.  It so happens now that I repeat to myself the obscure phrase of Jesus in the Gospel of St. Luke: 'When the Son of Man returns, will He still find faith on the earth?'  It so happens that there are books coming out in which the faith is in retreat on some important points, that the episcopates are remaining silent and these books are not looked upon as strange.  This, to me, is strange.  I sometimes read the Gospel passage of the end times and I attest that, at this time, some signs of this end are emerging.."

And this was 35 years ago when, compared with today, things were far better.  Pope Paul VI also said, "What strikes me, when I think of the Catholic world, is that within Catholicism, there seems sometimes to predominate a non-Catholic way of thinking, and it can happen that this non-Catholic thought within Catholicism, will tomorrow become the stronger.  But it will never represent the thought of the Church.  It is necessary that a small flock subsist, no matter how small it might be." (The Secret Paul VI, by Jean Guitton).

Every day the non-Catholic way of thinking Pope Paul VI spoke of grows stronger.  Minds are succumbing to the darkness.  Our Lady told Father Stefano Gobbi on November 15, 1990, "I have not been listened to.  You have continued to walk along the way of rejection of God and of his Law of love.  Sins of impurity have become ever more widespread, and immorality has spread like a sea which has submerged all things.  Homosexuality, a sin of impurity which is against nature, has been justified; recourse to the means of preventing life have become commonplace, while abortions - these killings of innocent children, that cry for vengeance before the face of God - have spread and are performed in every part of your homeland...there will remain only a small faithful remnant, over which I will keep watch in the garden of my Immaculate Heart..The chastisement, predicted by me at Fatima and contained in that part of the secret which has not yet been revealed, is about to take place.  The great moment of divine justice and of mercy has come upon the world."
Pray.  Remain faithful to the Holy Father.  Live a sacramental life.  Confess your sins.  The hour of Calvary approaches.