YOU Must Get Into Media

Catholics, the laity must be involved in the media. There are too many Catholics who do not know the enemy and the enemy is twofold in the media. The first enemy is the main-stream media. The second enemy is the mediocre Catholic media. One reason why most of the Catholic media are mediocre is that the powers that be are not admitting the real problems in the Church.

As the Pope Emeritus noted two years ago, the enemy is within. This means that the media is full of the enemy within. If you are watching television, STOP. You are not getting Catholic news as it really is.

If you are reading La Stampa or L'Osservatore Romano, read these cum grano salis. 

Do not listen to the mediocre. Be wise, be prudent.

Realize that you are responsible for your own appropriation of news, even Catholic news.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2014/04/01/pope-francis-criticises-anaesthetised-catholics/

This above is good.....

On Mis-Information and What To Do

A friend of mine and I had a fascinating discussion last week on the growing use of false information in most, if not all, the main stream media.

Many of us have seen this, including myself, as I taught media control in a college class in 2010. The manipulation of news has been known since the hay-day of yellow journalism, a la Citizen Kane. 

Also, I have been involved in newspaper writing in the past, so I know of some of this first-hand. Journalism demands honesty, but too often is taken over by agendas and propagandists.

However, what my friend stressed, was the purposeful feeding of mis-information to even so-called independent news sources, including radio and television.

I have been suspicious of some news and wondered about this second, and even third level, of false news, false reporting, false statistics and so on.

The UN is one of the main sources of falsified information, as the Malthusian philosophy holds sway in that organization. Other big groups, such as "charities" funded by Bill Gates, also take part in mis-information for the sake of population control in the Third World.

In the past year, those of us who are "Vatican Watchers" have seen the continual misuse of information from such sources as La Stampa and L'Osservatore Romano.

Check this out for mis-information. The headline makes me sick. This is manipulation loud and clear.

http://www.osservatoreromano.va/en

So, what is a good Catholic to do?

One, be holy and hone one's discernment. See my blogs on this. Here is one link.

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2014/02/why-catholic-cannot-discern.html

Two, choose news sources carefully and use common sense.

Three, always, always, always compare news items and editorials with the Teaching Magisterium of the Church.

Four, be cautious and wise. Pray daily for the gifts of the Holy Spirit to be operative in your life

Five, do not, I repeat, do not watch television. All the news is manipulated on that media.

Six, follow reliable sources by looking at the author's philosophies.

More on this later...

When Does the Virtual Community Become the Real Community?

I have been thinking of the need for blogging among Catholics. Pope Benedict XVI, when Cardinal Ratzinger, in 2001, reiterated an earlier comment about the future of the Church: he stated, "it will be reduced in its dimensions, it will be necessary to start again. However, from this test a Church would emerge that will have been strengthened by the process of simplification it experienced, by its renewed capacity to look within itself." The Church Militant would not in any way resemble Christendom, or the Church Triumphant. The isolation of Catholics causes many problems, especially sacramentally for the number of priests who cannot meet the needs of those in rural or isolated areas already.

The blogging community has characteristics different than other groups already. Firstly, the people in the group are technically savvy to a certain degree, have time to blog and post, and want information. This narrows the community down to a small group among Catholics in general.

Secondly, the people in the group have an unusually high level of reading comprehension, like to pursue the Teachings of the Church and want to grow as adults. The Catholic Faith has always been "intellectual", even in opposition to the Protestant denominations, which undermined the rational and emphasized experience, as the Pentecostals do today. This great heritage of the rational merged with the faith life is essentially Catholic.

Thirdly, these communities are self-selecting and tend to be either conservative, or orthodox, or liberal or liturgical and so on. If one looks at the blog lists of many of the bloggers, one sees overlaps, which indicated a community of sorts.

Lastly, the blogging community is temporary and immediate. That is, it responds to needs and events which are "now". Father Ray Blake's blog and Father Z's blog have responded in depth to areas needing action, political and financial, for example, in the past weeks especially.

But, the temporariness of the blogging community needs to be addressed more seriously. If a lone blogger in Germany cannot find the community with which he or she can share Faith, except online, this is a possible area of real concern. Even me, in a semi-rural area of Ireland, rely on bloggers for my main source of Catholic conversation daily or weekly. The local church communities no longer exist as communities, and the anti-intellectualism of most Catholics leads to isolation. How long we can rely on the virtual communties is a key discussion, as real communities must function in close proximity. I was in a lay community for seven years, and the day-to-day life of a basic Christian community barely resembles the virtual. However virtual communities exist now, this will change and we shall have to adjust in ways which may demand moving or being completely isolated.

Catholics and the Media II: Edmund Campion

Because I am thinking of the Catholic use of the media today, here is Campion's Brag. If you remember, he printed this up at Stonor House, and distributed it, among other places, at the parish in Oxford. Brave, brave member of the Church Militant. Are we going to be so brave under the threat of disembowelment?

Thanks again, Wiki

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE, the Lords of Her Majestie's Privy Council: Whereas I have come out of Germanie and Boëmeland, being sent by my Superiours, and adventured myself into this noble Realm, my deare Countrie, for the glorie of God and benefit of souls, I thought it like enough that, in this busie, watchful, and suspicious worlde, I should either sooner or later be intercepted and stopped of my course.

Wherefore, providing for all events, and uncertaine what may become of me, when God shall haply deliver my body into durance, I supposed it needful to put this writing in a readiness, desiringe your good Lordships to give it y^r reading, for to know my cause. This doing, I trust I shall ease you of some labour. For that which otherwise you must have sought for by practice of wit, I do now lay into your hands by plaine confession.

And to y^e intent that the whole matter may be conceived in order, and so the better both understood and remembered, I make thereof these ixpoints or articles, directly, truly, and resolutely opening my full enterprise and purpose.

i. I confesse that I am (albeit unworthie) a priest of y^e Catholike Church, and through y^e great mercie of God vowed now these viii years into the Religion of the Societie of Jhesus. Hereby I have taken upon me a special kind of warfare under the banner of obedience, and eke resigned all my interest or possibilitie of wealth, honour, pleasure, and other worldlie felicitie.

ii. At the voice of our General Provost----which is to me a warrant from Heaven, and Oracle of Christ----I tooke my voyage from Prage to Rome (where our said General Father is always resident) and from Rome to England, as I might and would have done joyously into any part of Christendome or Heathenesse, had I been thereto assigned.

iii. My charge is, of free cost to preach the Gospel, to minister the Sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reforme sinners, to confute errors----in brief, to crie alarme spiritual against foul vice and proud ignorance, where- with many my dear Countrymen are abused.

iv. I never had mind, and am strictly forbidden by our Father that sent me, to deal in any respect with matter of State or Policy of this realm, as things which appertain not to my vocation, and from which I do gladly restrain and sequester my thoughts.

v. I do ask, to the glory of God, with all humility, and under your correction, iii sortes of indifferent and quiet audiences: the first before your Honours, wherein I will discourse of religion, so far as it toucheth the common weale and your nobilities: the second, whereof I make more account, before the Doctors and Masters and chosen men of both universities, wherein I undertake to avow the Faith of our Catholike Church by proofs innumerable, Scriptures, Councils, Fathers, History, natural and moral reasons: the third before the lawyers, spiritual and temporal, wherein I will justify the said Faith by the common wisdom of the laws standing yet in force and practice.

vi. I would be loth to speak anything that might sound of any insolent brag or challenge, especially being now as a dead man to this world and willing to put my head under every man's foot, and to kiss the ground they tread upon. Yet have I such a courage in avouching the Majesty of Jhesus my King, and such affiance in His gracious favour, and such assurance in my quarrel, and myevi- dence so impregnable, and because I know perfectly that no one Protestant, nor all the Protestants living, nor any sect of our adversaries (howsoever they face men down in pulpits, and overrule us in their kingdom of grammarians and unlearned ears) can maintain their doctrine in disputation. I am to sue most humbly and instantly for the combat with all and every of them, and the most principal that may be found: protesting that in this trial the better furnished they come, the better welcome they shall be.

vii. Because it hath pleased God to enrich the Queen my Sovereign Ladye with notable gifts of nature, learning, and princely education, I do verily trust that----if her Highness would vouchsafe her royal person and good attention to such a conference as, in the ii part of my fifth article I have motioned, or to a few sermons, which in her or your hearing I am to utter----such manifest and fair light by good method and plain dealing may be cast upon these controversies, that possibly her zeal of truth and love of her people shall incline her noble Grace to disfavour some proceedings hurtful to the Realm, and procure towards us oppressed more equitie.

viii. Moreover I doubt not but you, her Highness' Council, being of such wisdom and discreet in cases most important, when you shall have heard these questions of religion opened faithfully, which many times by our adversaries are huddled up and confounded, will see upon what substantial grounds our Catholike Faith is builded, how feeble that side is which by sway of the time prevaileth against us, and so at last for your own souls, and for many thousand souls that depend upon your government, will discountenance error when it is bewrayed, and hearken to those who would spend the best blood in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are lifted up to Heaven for you daily by those English students, whose posteritie shall never die, which beyond seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you Heaven, or to die upon your pikes.

And touching our Societie, be it known to you that we have made a league----all the Jesuits in the world, whose succession and multitude must overreach all the practices of England----cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the Faith was planted: so it must be restored.

ix. If these my offers be refused, and my endeavours can take no place, and I, having run thousands of miles to do you good, shall be rewarded with rigour, I have no more to say but to recommend your case and mine to Almightie God, the Searcher of Hearts, who send us His grace, and set us at accord before the day of payment, to the end we may at last be friends in Heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.

Still in print.


St. Edmund is one of our family patrons. As he also worked in Bohemia, from where some of my ancestors hailed, I am partial to him above many saints.

SAINT EDMUND CAMPION, PRIEST AND MARTYR, Evelyn Waugh, 1937 and above link.

The Lack of Catholic Identity in Europe and Blogging for the Catholic Community

Part I On Catholics and the Media

Having traveled in Europe during the past year, I am struck again and again by the lack of Catholic identity among families. Obviously, there are exceptions, such as the families of children which attend the Latin Mass on Sunday in two locations where I have been in Ireland. But, the lack of Catholic identity is a hole in the spirit which seems to be filled with another identity, which is not even European.

It is as if Europeans do not want to be Europeans. The youth wear clothes which look like any styles popular in any large city in the States. The most common tee-shirt, and I am not kidding, which seems popular, besides those with band logos, is the Che Guevara tee-shirt. I wish I had a euro for every time I have seen a young man or woman with a Che shirt. I wonder if these young people have actually read his biography, which I have.

The lack of identity is not merely superficial. It reflects the death of the soul of Europe and, indeed, the national identity of many nations. Language is not the only mark of national identity. But, there is an insidious, slow, chipping away of the family, wherein customs, habits, consciousness of person-hood develop. One notices even in small towns the lack of identity-partly because of the EU regulations which allow all EU nationalities to go and live in other countries and work, creating a pan-European identity. This pan-European identity seems chic, but it has a downside. This identity is not based on the Catholic Faith.  Two young Catholic men-each from two different European countries, told me recently that they have no one with whom to discuss the Faith in their communities. They rely on the Internet Catholic connections and blogs, which seem to be more important than one realizes at first.

For those of us who grew up with Fulton J. Sheen, for example, using the media for an encouragement of our Faith is not a new phenomenon. Resources such as the Catholic Encyclopedia online and other such study guides, including the Vatican website and other websites with the Encyclicals and teachings of the Church provide great sources of information-solid and true.

To be an adult Catholic, one must study the Faith. Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman's famous quotation comes to mind: An ignorant Catholic is a Protestant.  Fulton J. Sheen repeated that truism. And, history shows us that the Catholic Church has always used the media of the day-letters, bulls, documents, etc. to pass on the Faith. The Catechism of the Council of Trent, for example, was widely published, as were pamphlets, such as St. Edmund Campion's tract on Catholicism- his "brag". Using the media of the day marks Catholicism. With the lack of Irish or Maltese identity, or Portuguese or Spanish, comes the lack of a Catholic identity. The Churches are full in Malta, Ireland and elsewhere, but the average Mass attender is older than I am, which is old.

The children from the Catholic schools do not attend daily Mass anywhere that I have seen, coming occasionally. This seems odd to me, as someone who grew up going to Catholic schools where daily Mass attendance was normal. In the States, I am familiar with many NAPCIS schools which have daily Mass, either joining the parish Mass, or having their own, if the schools are fortunate enough to have a chaplain.

The town where I am now literally is full of unemployed men in their twenties. They could be going to daily Mass, which would help them in many ways, I am sure. They lack the center of their being-their Catholic Faith, and the identity which would help them through life to become the person God created them to be.

Catholic media has become more important than ever. Catholics who want the Catholic identity watch Catholic television and such videos as The Vortex in places through-out the world. In my last blog, I had people in Indonesia and Australia, Russia, etc. reading about Catholic issues daily. This is true for most bloggers. The Internet at this moment in time is a key instrument for catechesis and evangelization.

The virtual Catholic community is an important resource for young people and the not-so-young. That we can share ideas and ideals gives many the identity and strength needed. Obviously, Catholic identity must be internalized and that is the job of the Catholic adult. But, until that happens, and perhaps even after that identity is solid and true, the Catholic virtual community remains essential.