Breeding Weakness

This post will anger some Westerners, but some will nod their heads and say, "I see this."

Western culture, specifically parents, even Catholic parents. are breeding weakness into the children of this generation.

I believe this breeding of weakness started with the Gen Xers, as they were the first generation of "hot-house kids". While we Baby Boomers climbed trees, rode on our bikes to school, ate what Mom put before us sitting down to dinner, did tons of homework, plus chores, and grew up in big families, all situations which caused a toughening of character, the last two generations have been bred, on purpose, in weakness.

Breeding a child in weakness is connected to my posts on how to create a Peter Pan or a Peter Pam.

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-to-create-peter-pan.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2014/05/peter-pam.html

But, the breeding of weakness has been taken over by governments bent on creating a slave society.

Breeding weakness into children is the result of two opposite parental problems: the first is over-indulgence, the giving of the child everything he wants, and the needing of the parent to want to be friends with their children instead of parental authorities. But, the second problem is the opposite and that is complete control-freakiness over the children.

Children's schedules have been taken over by parents so that there is no time for freedom in play or reading or doing anything reflection or creative.

The control-freaky parent plans out the entire life of the children for the status and success of the parent.

This control, and the opposite lack of discipline and order, create weakness. Children grow up never having suffered inconveniences or having to wait for satisfaction in anything. They have not had training in the virtues, but only aggressiveness training, or, the opposite, training to be completely complacent.

Weakness had now been bred into the West. Narcissism is rampant, a sign of weakness of character, not strength.

Only a spiritual life at home can change this decay of character. (See my long series on virtue training).

But, I am sure that in some places, the weakness is so endemic that the cultures will not change and the civilizations will fall. This is what happened in Rome-the strong few overcame the weak and the two layers of social organization-the poor and the rich, fell into greater and greater weakness together owing to sin and corruption. Socialism breeds weakness as well, as Catholics know. taking away personal freedoms and responsibilities.

God is in charge. He gave us all free will. Some have used it to breed weakness into their children and, therefore, into society. My parents are 91 and 86. They were bred in strength and passed this down. They are still in their own house and go out to lunch most days. Their generation bred strength in adversity, as adversity surrounded them either through war or the great depression. Suffering, not coddling creates strength.

To breed strength takes time, focus, energy and God's laws. Only holy men and woman can breed strength, real strength.

to be continued...

The Only Independent Institution in The World

  http://www.marxists.org/admin/legal/lw-response.html       Irony times ten and a quotation for the day

July, 1842



from Karl Marx, "if....there is no supreme head of the Church, the domination of religion is nothing but the religion of domination, the cult of the will of the government."

Which is one reason why the Marxists have always hated the Catholic Church above all religions. With a supreme head, there can be no lasting power of a government over the Church. The Church is the only independent institution in the world.

There is a reason why Christ established His Church on earth under Peter and through Peter's successors.
Only an institution of divine origin can withstand the onslaught of political, governmental hatred we are now seeing in the United States, with the planned destruction of religious freedom.

Gramsci, in his first published letter from prison, explained that the Catholic Church, (especially under Popes Pius IX, X and Leo XIII) understood what the Marxists were attempting to do--not merely destroy religion, but destroy the Catholic Church.

They failed in the 19th century, so decided to infiltrate the Church in the 20th and 21st centuries. They has succeeded in many quarters, especially in Latin America and in the United States, as well as Italy.

Do not kid yourselves, dear readers, this is a real battle. The Church will survive, but as a remnant.

Will you be part of that remnant? Will you stay in the Church and suffer with Her?

Continuing with the Pope Emeritus

Moving towards the section on love, Benedict develops ideas which came to fruition in his encyclical on love, examined on this blog. Follow the tags under love, marriage, and socialism.

The sacred and the so-called profane, that is spirit and matter, were redeemed on the Cross. Love, as the Pope Emeritus points out, must include not only the spiritual relationship with God, but real involvement in the lives of others. Whether we are married or not, this involvement demands our time and energies in order to make love real.

Benedict notes that love means a fundamental "yes" to another person.  He quotes Pieper, a great author I taught in days past,writing that love states to another person, "it is good that you exist". This affirmation of a person's goodness and the commitment which follows indicates a moving out of one's self into love.

The existence of another person is confirmed, writes the Pope Emeritus, in love.

How wonderful for those who experience this. Some of us have not experienced the intimate love which should accompany a good marriage. Some of us have experienced love in friendship. Some have experienced love through parents.

For those who have not, this love becomes an act of faith and an act of hope. I believe God loves me, therefore, I am loved and can love, despite a lack of intimate love in my life from a human.

Christ loves us intimately. That is one of the messages of the Cross.

The Pope Emeritus notes that by saying yes to another person, one affirms one's self as well. How wonderful. The person who loves, even in unrequited love, experiences an affirmation of being, as one recognizes that love is from God.

The happiness of love, therefore, expands from this mutual affirmation. And, as Benedict points out, love, by nature, is creative. For a married couple, this creation most often is seen in the children born of the couple. But, not always is love expressed in such a way. A loving marriage may be infertile, for God's reasons, or by choice.

Such marriages then become a force of creativity for the community, for the Church, such as that of the Maritains.

All love affirms existence and is creative by nature, by the spirit. And, in this love, one wants to sacrifice, to die for the other.

I feel sadness for those who have never been open to love. They live in the shadow of grace and life.

Today, contemplating the Cross, one sees love in action.

Again, on the cult of personality

Several times in the past five years, I have written on the cult of personality. After reading Paul C. Vitz, Faith of the Fatherless, it is clear to me that the substitution of tyrants could very well be because people have an inflated view of leaders as fathers. I make this extrapolation looking at the growing cult of personality, which revealed itself to me in 2007 in the States.

During the media crisis of the first few months of the current papacy, this was true. People wanted a perfect man to be pope. Well, he is not perfect. Neither am I. But, those most distressed are those who fall into the cult of personality.

Also, the huge over-idolization of movies stars, political leaders and even CEOs, has led more and more to the worship of persons, rather than the worship of God.

For a man to come into the world, claim to be the savior of all economic and political problems, and then be given the power to do so, a man usually called the Anti-Christ, would be easier and easier coup to "pull-off" in this climate of hero-worship.

The lack of fathers provides an entire club of people who are looking for someone to take care of them, to guide them, to mold them.

The popularity of super-hero movies may be part of this sensibility to the cult of personality.

See how easy it would be for one superman, one extremely talented leader to take over, using the emotional needs of an entire world of fatherless creatures.

Vitz noted that most atheists are highly intelligent, are ambitious, are arrogant and vain. This sounds like many of our so-called leaders today.

Envy and personal resentment cause arrogance, and even atheism. I see this close at hand. That many Americans now hate the good, the true and the beautiful, as Vitz notes atheist so, is a sad declaration of the attitudes of arrogance and hatred coming out of the world of the atheists.

Hatred leads to envy and envy leads to the politics of envy, which we now see in America. How easy it would be for one tyrant to stir up this envy to a frenzied state, and take control after the chaos of civil war.

We need to pray, reflect, study, act....or we shall be swept away in that chaos.

The Sins of Christmas Time-Greed

The post has been a drum beating the problems of the consumerism and materialism of this time.

There are many posts on these subjects. But, today, I want to highlight the worship of Mammon.

Thanks to Wiki for painting 1909 painting The Worship of Mammon by Evelyn De Morgan.

Many years ago, I had a poem published in one of the Notre Dame poetry journals, which connected the worship of Mammon with abortion. That the poem was published astounded me. It is floating around somewhere, but I do not have a copy.

However, today, I do not want to connect the worship of Mammon, who is a false god of the ancient world, but still active in our society as either an ideal or as a demon, with abortion.

I want to connect this horrible worship, the idolatry of things, money, position and status with the capital sin of Greed.

The trouble is that the capital sins reward those who commit them. That is part of the fatal attraction of these sins. In Advent, instead of praying and meditating on the coming humble Birth of the Incarnate Son, people are obsessed with things, parties, more things, concerts, more things, and so on.

That the capital sin of greed could be connected to a demon is seen in the Scriptures. Here is a line from CE, which saved me some time in finding the references....

The Catholic Encyclopedia notes this: In the New Testament only Matthew 6:24, and Luke 16:9-13, the latter verse repeating Matthew 6:24. In Luke 16:9 and 11 Mammon is personified

This source also notes. 

Thus Peter Lombard (II, dist. 6) says, "Riches are called by the name of a devil, namely Mammon, for Mammon is the name of a devil, by which name riches are called according to the Syrian tongue." Piers Plowman also regards Mammon as a deity.

That many Catholics voted for their wallets by following the socialist doctrines of a certain party, and did not vote pro-life, is an indication of demonic influences.

The Avaricious in Dante

That many Catholics are not praying, or going to confession or spending time in mediation during Advent, but running around buying things, is an indication of excess.

Any excessive love is lust and so, too, lust is connected to Mammon. Another name for Greed is Avarice or covetousness. Detachment is the answer, by the way

Here is Thomas Aquinas from the Summa:

On the contrary, The Apostle says (1 Timothy 6:10): "The desire of money is the root of all evil."
I answer that, According to some, covetousness may be understood in different ways. First, as denoting inordinate desire forriches: and thus it is a special sin. Secondly, as denoting inordinate desire for any temporal good: and thus it is a genus comprising all sins, because every sin includes an inordinate turning to a mutable good, as stated above (Question 72, Article 2). Thirdly, as denoting an inclination of a corrupt nature to desire corruptible goods inordinately: and they say that in this sensecovetousness is the root of all sins, comparing it to the root of a tree, which draws its sustenance from earth, just as every singrows out of the love of temporal things.
Now, though all this is true, it does not seem to explain the mind of the Apostle when he states that covetousness is the root of all sins. For in that passage he clearly speaks against those who, because they "will become rich, fall into temptation, and into the snare of the devil . . . for covetousness is the root of all evils." Hence it is evident that he is speaking of covetousness as denoting the inordinate desire for riches. Accordingly, we must say that covetousness, as denoting a special sin, is called the root of all sins, in likeness to the root of a tree, in furnishing sustenance to the whole tree. For we see that by riches manacquires the means of committing any sin whatever, and of sating his desire for any sin whatever, since money helps man to obtain all manner of temporal goods, according to Ecclesiastes 10:19: "All things obey money": so that in this desire for riches is the root of all sins.
Reply to Objection 1. Virtue and sin do not arise from the same source. For sin arises from the desire of mutable good; and consequently the desire of that good which helps one to obtain all temporal goods, is called the root of all sins. But virtue arises from the desire for the immutable God; and consequently charity, which is the love of God, is called the root of the virtues, according to Ephesians 3:17: "Rooted and founded in charity."
Reply to Objection 2. The desire of money is said to be the root of sins, not as though riches were sought for their own sake, as being the last end; but because they are much sought after as useful for any temporal end. And since a universal good is more desirable than a particular good, they move the appetite more than any individual goods, which along with many others can be procured by means of money.
Reply to Objection 3. Just as in natural things we do not ask what always happens, but what happens most frequently, for the reason that the nature of corruptible things can be hindered, so as not always to act in the same way; so also in moral matters, we consider what happens in the majority of cases, not what happens invariably, for the reason that the will does not act of necessity. So when we say that covetousness is the root of all evils, we do not assert that no other evil can be its root, but that other evils more frequently arise therefrom, for the reason given.

Summa Theologica: First Part of th e Second Part: Question 84  link

Avarice is "the root of all evils" 1 Timothy 6:10.

to be continued...

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2013/12/rejecting-gospel-of-christ-part-two.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2013/12/consumerism-and-materialism-part-two.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2013/11/past-posts-on-cardinal-virtues.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2013/12/downsizing-two-advent-thoughts-on-death.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2013/12/downsizing-again-advent-thoughts-of.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2013/12/why-jesus-came-as-baby.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2013/12/think-about-this.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-last-mini-series-post-on-death-and.html

and more......follow the tags Advent, etc.

Who Is The Elite? Who Is Transforming Your Children?

Why did Italy put this man on one of the national stamps? This happened in 1987. The world was very asleep then. Now, more Catholics are waking-up to the tyranny which is and has been forming the minds, the souls of your children.

I do hope, as I noted on this blog a few weeks ago, that Antonio Gramsci converted on his deathbed. I use to keep two lists on my dorm door at college. One was the list of home-schooled greats-like Dorothy Sayers. The other was a list of deathbed conversions. These lists were reminders to me and to my hall-mates that an alternative lifestyle was better than conformity to the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Many posts on this blog are about the cleansing of the imagination. Many posts on this blog are about the necessity of moving out of the world in one's mind and spirit, even though one has to work in the world.

As laity, we are in the world, but not of the world.

The culture has moved beyond saving in the areas of morals. It is highly unlikely, unless there is a huge catastrophe, that people will change.

Let me go back to Gramsci again.

He wanted education to be taken out of the hands of the "elite". Now, what we see as the elite are the atheists and agnostics who have taken over the universities, colleges, high schools and elementary schools. In Gramsci's time, the elite were Catholic intellectuals, not Marxists. They were men, mostly, who were educated in the classical tradition and who were conservative.

His kulturkampf succeeded in removing the traditional elite and supplanting that group with those we see now in charge of all levels of education-ie. Core Curriculum.

Gramsci's vision is now American's vision, replacing the philosophies of Western Civilization, such as natural law philosophy, the Rule of Law, Catholicism, and so on.

Gramsci and his followers wrote that the elite would form the child. Of course, this is the duty of parents, not schools, who should be working with parents and not against parents in the formation of the child.

I have studied and shared on this blog the various Catholic educational methods of formation-see the links below. That the Marxists have succeeded in taking over what parents declined to do is obvious now.

However, Catholics are still not responding to this situation of the brain-washing of children by the State. The fact that all those dioceses have accepted the Core Curriculum, again noted on this blog earlier, demonstrates both the level of deceit and the level of complicity with the State in undermining both the authority of the parent over the formation of the child and the creation of a morally bankrupt generation, again.

Commentaries on Gramsci use the term "transformer" with regard to schools.

I hope readers are getting really scared. Your children are being transformed into persons who will not share your beliefs on natural law, the Rule of Law,

By the way, these ideas of Gramsci were disseminated around the world-not just in Europe. Marxists active in both North and South America, Central America, and, of course, parts of Asia and Africa have founded the new elite. To see who members of this new elite actually are, just look at the MPs in Great Britain, Ireland, the Hague.

Tyranny does not take over in a day. Two idols have been worshiped by some Catholics to bring us to this crisis in the culture. The first, the biggest idol, is money.

The second is conformity-the false American ideal of Americanism.

And back to my entertainment theme this month-look here for the source this phrase.

Certainly, nearly all major writers, artists and film-makers of post-Second World War Italy were to a greater or lesser extent influenced by his mighty presence in the recent past. 

And for those who tell me Marxism is a dead and spent ideology in Europe (rofl), check this out for one indication of new life. 

to be continued...

Repeats as I see too many socialist Catholics here in the States

Friday, 27 April 2012

Socialists and Abortion

Posted by Supertradmum

Question for thought on this cold April day. Why is it that socialist governments push abortion and contraception? For those who have not noticed, this is usually the case, in Europe and in America. A few reasons off the top of my head are here. One, socialism is materialistic, does not believe or value the spiritual life; two, socialism is pragmatic and utilitarian-that is, the person, the individual lives for the State, not the State for the person and therefore, the weak are disposed of as not useful to the State ; three, socialism separates the Church from all life of the State.

Tuesday, 10 September 2013

On Bunny Rabbits

Posted by Supertradmum

Years ago, just because I do these sorts of things, I studied rabbits. I was interested in their social structure, habits, needs, and so on. That was in the days before blog and websites on house rabbits. I had to use books!

We had a house rabbit, and I wanted to make sure I understood, to a certain extent, my pet. Sooty Little Ears was a Black Rex, which are highly intelligent and fun pets.

Sooty Little Ears had the run of the house. He did his necessaries in a cat box, and was tidy.

This rabbit would meet people at the door. A person would bend over and stare, then say something like, "What an unusual cat. OH! It's a rabbit."

Sooty thought we were all rabbits. It thought we were strange rabbits, but rabbits none the less.

It sat next to us when we were on the sofa.  It sat under the table when we ate dinner.

But, if there was danger, in its little, beady, black eyes, Sooty revealed it was an Alpha Rabbit. We found this out in several ways.

One day, a huge cat from the neighbors, a house once removed, jumped into our upstairs window. Suddenly, we heard this thumping. Sooty was warning all of us of danger. Then, Sooty ran under the bed in the master bedroom and hid until I tossed the cat out of the house.

From then on, Sooty changed behavior. The rabbit would sleep at the door of the master bedroom at night, when before it would sleep anyway. It would sleep right at the open door, across from the window where the cat had jumped in.

Sooty was from there on in alert mode. If it sensed danger, it would thump and even wake us up at night.

Sooty remained wild, as most house rabbits do, because they have not been domesticated as long as dogs or cats. Wild animals need much more freedom and less stress than domesticated ones.

I compare Sooty's reversion to being a guard rabbit with thinking like a Christian.

Sometimes, Christians must move along with society or culture becoming domesticated, becoming one with the rest of society, losing the edge of being a contradiction in the world.

Then, something happens which awakens the wild, wakens the real Christ-likeness is the soul, the mind the heart.

This is our situation now. We need to be like Sooty Little Ears. We have been warned.
Unless we think like Christians, we shall not see the danger nor be ready for it.

Tuesday, 10 September 2013

On Bunny Rabbits And Socialism-Part Two Out of Three

Posted by Supertradmum

I am reading off and on for fun Venerable Fulton J. Sheen's Your Life is Worth Living. If you are evangelizing someone from age 16 on, I recommend this book. The chapters are from his television series and the chapters are short and self-contained.

Now, you might be puzzled as to what Fulton J. Sheen has to do with bunny rabbits or with socialism.

Did you know that the wild rabbit can travel up to 25 miles a day? Could....and that is a mile an hour, if the rabbit is not sleeping, which it would be doing, so more than a mile an hour, if needed for safety, food, or setting up a new warren.

That rabbits need freedom for survival is true even of house pet rabbits. This need for movement and freedom is not merely a natural drive, but a need for the rabbit to be a rabbit, and not a cat or a dog, which a rabbit is nothing like.

Now, Fulton J. Sheen had a lot to say about communism. He spoke eloquently and intellectually, but also practically about what communism does to the soul, the mind, the heart of a person, of a nation.

One of the best points Sheen made in one of his talks was that when he was teaching in a Catholic university, (he taught philosophy for 25 years), was that the Catholic teachers knew both sides of the argument concerning communism. These professors could argue, like St. Thomas Aquinas, as Sheen notes, both sides.

When I taught my students debate and argumentation, they had to learn both sides of the argument in order to win their "side".  Unless a Catholic understands from the inside out the real dangers of communism, this Catholic will not see their own slide into mental slavery.

I gave my house rabbit freedom to run around a very large walled-in garden. It was safe in that garden. When we moved into that house, it had been abandoned for a while and the garden was half-full of briars. It took us a month to clear back the heavy, stubborn briars. At the end of the large garden, we left some in a contained area. This was Sooty's special play area. If Sooty needed space, the rabbit would go into the tangled briars for time-out.

One of my favorite memories was a mid-summer night when Sooty did not come back in when we called at the patio door. It was getting dark,  and we were concerned, as Sooty slept inside.

I remember my husband standing on top of the briar patch calling Sooty, who apparently did not want to come in. Finally, I put food in its dish and stood by the patio door. The rabbit came out quickly and popped into the house for din-dins.

Now, we understood Sooty's needs and habits, but also the danger from owls and other predators, which would eat this little rabbit.

Sooty had freedom within limits. This is not the case for those living under communism as Sheen points out.

Our rabbit was free because we loved it and had a relationship with it. As Sheen points out, Catholicism is a relationship with God, not with a system.

Sooty knew whom it was obeying-a kind person who was feeding it and concerned.

We do not have that kind of relationship with tyrannies. Socialism and communism, as Sheen points out, create an anonymous "they" and we give that "they" power, or they take it.

The they is only so powerful as we make it in the West. and we have created a monster.

It is hard for me to convince people who are excellent Catholics of the danger of socialism. These good people in Europe cannot see how the society, the family, their own wildness, that is their own individual dignity have been eroded by group think and the "they" who control their lives.

The arguments usually end up centered on how wonderful the baby-killing national health system are for people.  I cannot help those who desire such systems to determine who lives or who dies, who is fit for the utilitarian world and who is fit to serve the state as opposed to those who are a burden on the state.

I cannot convince group-think Catholics who do not really know the other side of the argument.

Catholicism gives real freedom. As an institutional Church, the Catholic Church knows both sides of the argument. And, she preaches a relationship, not merely dogmas. As Sheen points out, to be free, one needs order and law, but God's laws not man's. And, socialism and communism both re-define man.

That is the problem. I did not re-define my rabbit. It was a rabbit, not a person.

The person is not merely a cog in the wheel of the state; the person does not exist for the state.

To know the arguments might help some Catholic who are socialists to repent.

There is also a misunderstanding between the term materialism and consumerism. This must be corrected. Too many Catholics think materialism is merely being caught up in the buying and accumulating of things-that is consumerism. Materialism is the philosophical idea that the world is all there is-there is no afterlife.

The goal of both communism and socialism is materialism-the denial that the ultimate goal of men and women is heaven. Those isms make earth the goal and earthly comforts the work of humankind.

This is not the case. The popes knew that materialism changes the definition of what it means to be human.

Be a Catholic. Fulton J. Sheen in this chapter mentioned that a communist told him that the encyclical on communism by the pope was the best understanding of the system he ever saw. The same is true for the encyclicals on socialism. Nothing has changed. A rabbit is a rabbit, a man a man, and a system which replaces God for security and identity is a tyranny.

Here is Pope Leo XIII.

In fine, the rewards and punishments of a future and eternal life having been handed over to oblivion, the ardent desire of happiness has been limited to the bounds of the present. Such doctrines as these having been scattered far and wide, so great a license of thought and action having sprung up on all sides, it is no matter for surprise that men of the lowest class, weary of their wretched home or workshop, are eager to attack the homes and fortunes of the rich; it is no matter for surprise that already there exists no sense of security either in public or private life, and that the human race should have advanced to the very verge of final dissolution.

...

Even family life itself, which is the cornerstone of all society and government, necessarily feels and experiences the salutary power of the Church, which redounds to the right ordering and preservation of every State and kingdom. For you know, venerable brethren, that the foundation of this society rests first of all in the indissoluble union of man and wife according to the necessity of natural law, and is completed in the mutual rights and duties of parents and children, masters and servants. You know also that the doctrines of socialism strive almost completely to dissolve this union; since, that stability which is imparted to it by religious wedlock being lost, it follows that the power of the father over his own children, and the duties of the children toward their parents, must be greatly weakened. But the Church, on the contrary, teaches that "marriage, honorable in all,"[13] which God himself instituted in the very beginning of the world, and made indissoluble for the propagation and preservation of the human species, has become still more binding and more holy through Christ, who raised it to the dignity of a sacrament, and chose to use it as the figure of His own union with the Church.

more here and here

http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13apost.htm

http://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/P12CH42.HTM

On this organic conception which alone is living, in which the noblest humanity and the most genuine Christian spirit flourish in harmony, there is marked the Scripture thought, expounded by the great Aquinas: Opus Justitiae Pax—The work of justice shall be peace—a thought which is applicable to the internal as to the external aspect of social life. It admits of neither contrast nor alternative such as expressed in the disjunction, love or right, but of the fruitful synthesis, love and right. In the one as in the other, since both radiate from the same Spirit of God, We read the program and the seal of the human spirit; they complement one another, give each other life and support, walk hand in hand along the road of concord and pacification, while right clears the way for love and love makes right less stern, and gives it a higher meaning. Both elevate human life to that social atmosphere where, even amid the failings, the obstacles and the difficulties of this earth a fraternal community of life is made possible.

But once let the baneful spirit of materialist ideas predominate; let the urge for power and for predominance take in its rough hands the direction of affairs; you shall then find its disruptive effects appearing daily in greater measure; you shall see love and justice disappear; all this as the sad foretaste of the catastrophes that menace society when it abandons God.

to be continued....

Tuesday, 10 September 2013

On Rabbits, Catholics and Communism-Part Three

Posted by Supertradmum

 A Pillow Mound Rabbit Warren from the Luttrell Psalter.

Now, as then, we need to repeat that there can be no genuine solution of the "social question" apart from the Gospel. Bl. John Paul II in Centesimus-Annus.

Well, a rabbit in a briar patch is completely natural. A person in a family is natural as well. For a state to want to supplant the parents and the family as the basic unit of society is not only unnatural, but anti-God. An human has a nature and both communism and socialism destroy that nature. Our nature involved being in the image and likeness of God, not in the image and likeness of an economic or social system.

Perhaps Catholics have never read the Decree Against Communism, written in 1949 by Pope Pius XII andreconfirmed in 1962 by Bl. John XXIII. If a Catholic joins a communist party, that Catholic is excommunicated.

Catholics today need to read several encyclicals on this subject, but here are the links to a few. If you do not know what it is to be an individual, a person, with dignity and independence, you will fall into error.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19031937_divini-redemptoris_en.html

Pius XII against communism--a snippet

What would be the condition of a human society based on such materialistic tenets? It would be a collectivity with no other hierarchy than that of the economic system. It would have only one mission: the production of material things by means of collective labor, so that the goods of this world might be enjoyed in a paradise where each would "give according to his powers" and would "receive according to his needs." Communism recognizes in the collectivity the right, or rather, unlimited discretion, to draft individuals for the labor of the collectivity with no regard for their personal welfare; so that even violence could be legitimately exercised to dragoon the recalcitrant against their wills. In the Communistic commonwealth morality and law would be nothing but a derivation of the existing economic order, purely earthly in origin and unstable in character. In a word. the Communists claim to inaugurate a new era and a new civilization which is the result of blind evolutionary forces culminating in a humanity without God.

13. When all men have finally acquired the collectivist mentality in this Utopia of a really classless society, the political State, which is now conceived by Communists merely as the instrument by which the proletariat is oppressed by the capitalists, will have lost all reason for its existence and will "wither away." However, until that happy consummation is realized, the State and the powers of the State furnish Communism with the most efficacious and most extensive means for the achievement of its goal.

14. Such, Venerable Brethren, is the new gospel which bolshevistic and atheistic Communism offers the world as the glad tidings of deliverance and salvation! It is a system full of errors and sophisms. It is in opposition both to reason and to Divine Revelation. It subverts the social order, because it means the destruction of its foundations; because it ignores the true origin and purpose of the State; because it denies the rights, dignity and liberty of human personality.

and

30. Man cannot be exempted from his divinely-imposed obligations toward civil society, and the representatives of authority have the right to coerce him when he refuses without reason to do his duty. Society, on the other hand, cannot defraud man of his God-granted rights, the most important of which We have indicated above. Nor can society systematically void these rights by making their use impossible. It is therefore according to the dictates of reason that ultimately all material things should be ordained to man as a person, that through his mediation they may find their way to the Creator. In this wise we can apply to man, the human person, the words of the Apostle of the Gentiles, who writes to the Corinthians on the Christian economy of salvation: "All things are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's."[12] While Communism impoverishes human personality by inverting the terms of the relation of man to society, to what lofty heights is man not elevated by reason and Revelation!

31. The directive principles concerning the social-economic order have been expounded in the social Encyclical of Leo XIII on the question of labor.[13] Our own Encyclical on the Reconstruction of the Social Order[14] adapted these principles to present needs. Then, insisting anew on the age-old doctrine of the Church concerning the individual and social character of private property, We explained clearly the right and dignity of labor, the relations of mutual aid and collaboration which should exist between those who possess capital and those who work, the salary due in strict justice to the worker for himself and for his family.

and, Bl. John Paul II 

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus_en.html

and a snippet from there---His (Leo XIII) words deserve to be re-read attentively: "To remedy these wrongs (the unjust distribution of wealth and the poverty of the workers), the Socialists encourage the poor man's envy of the rich and strive to do away with private property, contending that individual possessions should become the common property of all...; but their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that, were they carried into effect, the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are moreover emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community".³⁹ The evils caused by the setting up of this type of socialism as a State system — what would later be called "Real Socialism" — could not be better expressed.

13. Continuing our reflections, and referring also to what has been said in the Encyclicals Laboremexercens and Sollicitudo rei socialis, we have to add that the fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated to the functioning of the socio-economic mechanism. Socialism likewise maintains that the good of the individual can be realized without reference to his free choice, to the unique and exclusive responsibility which he exercises in the face of good or evil. Man is thus reduced to a series of social relationships, and the concept of the person as the autonomous subject of moral decision disappears, the very subject whose decisions build the social order. From this mistaken conception of the person there arise both a distortion of law, which defines the sphere of the exercise of freedom, and an opposition to private property. A person who is deprived of something he can call "his own", and of the possibility of earning a living through his own initiative, comes to depend on the social machine and on those who control it. This makes it much more difficult for him to recognize his dignity as a person, and hinders progress towards the building up of an authentic human community.

In contrast, from the Christian vision of the human person there necessarily follows a correct picture of society.According to Rerum novarum and the whole social doctrine of the Church, the social nature of man is not completely fulfilled in the State, but is realized in various intermediary groups, beginning with the family and including economic, social, political and cultural groups which stem from human nature itself and have their own autonomy, always with a view to the common good. This is what I have called the "subjectivity" of society which, together with the subjectivity of the individual, was cancelled out by "Real Socialism".⁴⁰

If we then inquire as to the source of this mistaken concept of the nature of the person and the "subjectivity" of society, we must reply that its first cause is atheism. It is by responding to the call of God contained in the being of things that man becomes aware of his transcendent dignity. Every individual must give this response, which constitutes the apex of his humanity, and no social mechanism or collective subject can substitute for it. The denial of God deprives the person of his foundation, and consequently leads to a reorganization of the social order without reference to the person's dignity and responsibility.

The atheism of which we are speaking is also closely connected with the rationalism of the Enlightenment, which views human and social reality in a mechanistic way. Thus there is a denial of the supreme insight concerning man's true greatness, his transcendence in respect to earthly realities, the contradiction in his heart between the desire for the fullness of what is good and his own inability to attain it and, above all, the need for salvation which results from this situation.

14. From the same atheistic source, socialism also derives its choice of the means of action condemned in Rerum novarum, namely, class struggle. The Pope does not, of course, intend to condemn every possible form of social conflict. The Church is well aware that in the course of history conflicts of interest between different social groups inevitably arise, and that in the face of such conflicts Christians must often take a position, honestly and decisively. The Encyclical Laborem exercens moreover clearly recognized the positive role of conflict when it takes the form of a "struggle for social justice";⁴¹ Quadragesimo anno had already stated that "if the class struggle abstains from enmities and mutual hatred, it gradually changes into an honest discussion of differences founded on a desire for justice".⁴²

However, what is condemned in class struggle is the idea that conflict is not restrained by ethical or juridical considerations, or by respect for the dignity of others (and consequently of oneself); a reasonable compromise is thus excluded, and what is pursued is not the general good of society, but a partisan interest which replaces the common good and sets out to destroy whatever stands in its way. In a word, it is a question of transferring to the sphere of internal conflict between social groups the doctrine of "total war", which the militarism and imperialism of that time brought to bear on international relations. As a result of this doctrine, the search for a proper balance between the interests of the various nations was replaced by attempts to impose the absolute domination of one's own side through the destruction of the other side's capacity to resist, using every possible means, not excluding the use of lies, terror tactics against citizens, and weapons of utter destruction (which precisely in those years were beginning to be designed). Therefore class struggle in the Marxist sense and militarism have the same root, namely, atheism and contempt for the human person, which place the principle of force above that of reason and law.

Did you know about the mini-series on socialism and Deus Caritas Est?

 Pope Emeritus  Benedict XVI

“We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything”

“The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person − every person − needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need. … In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live ‘by bread alone’ (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3) − a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human.” (Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, December 25, 2005, n. 28)

My mini-series on socialism and Deus Caritas Est may be found on the links below.

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2012/05/on-love-and-answer-to-socialism-part.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2012/05/love-and-church-against-socialism-part.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2012/05/eros-to-agape-and-caritas-continued.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2012/05/catholic-parish-life-vs-socialism.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2012/05/part-five-caritas-vs-socialism.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2012/05/part-six-on-deus-caritas-est.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2012/05/ministries-in-church-are-not-just.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2012/05/part-8-love-vs-ideologies-church-vs.html

The most exciting thing I have heard in a long time

http://web.archive.org/web/20090919034614/http://cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=10411

and

http://ncronline.org/news/founder-italian-communism-died-good-catholic-vatican-prelate-says

sent to me by my twitter colleague,

Wagner Clemente Soto; Mr. Soto, a great thanks. I know a few people who would hate this good news. From one 
of the articles....

He had an image of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus in his room,” de Magistris said. “During his final illness, the sisters of the clinic where he stayed brought him an image of the Child Jesus, and Gramsci kissed it,” he said.

“Gramsci died with the sacraments. He returned to the faith of his infancy,” de Magistris said. "Some in the Communist world prefer not to talk about it, but it's true."

Please join me in prayer in case his soul is in purgatory.....Thanks so much!

And, from the other article....On the other hand, Francesco Cossiga, former president of Italy, was prepared to take de Magistris at his word in light of his former role as head of the Apostolic Penitentiary.

“No one else, with the exception of the pope, knows as much when it comes to the Sacred Penitentiary, the office that presides over questions relative to the internal forum of the baptized members of the Catholic church,” Cossiga said.

“If there’s a person who would know about a conversion by Gramsci, about his death in the bosom of the Catholic church, it’s precisely Archbishop de Magistris,” Cossiga said.

Is it time for me to post another Gramsci post?

Look at all of these on the list at the side of this blog. Catholics cannot, cannot be real Catholics and either Marxists or Socialists.

Gramsci knew who the enemy of the lies of these ideologies was-the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.

Those who compromise fall into confusion and ruin the progress of the common good. This is what has happened in the States with all the Obama Catholics.

They cannot see that the very people they have voted in to run this country are enemies of the Catholic Church and religious freedom.

Why such blindness?

A Reminder from The Great Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

from http://www.alor.org/Library/LegacyofTerror.htm

Marxism has always opposed freedom. I will quote just a few words from the founding fathers of communism, Marx and Engels
(I quote from the first Soviet edition of 1929)
"Reforms are a sign of weakness" (vol. 23, p. 339); 
"Democracy is more to be feared than monarchy and aristocracy," (vol. 2, p. 369);
"Political liberty is a false liberty, worse than the most abject slavery" (vol. 2, p. 394). 

In their correspondence Marx and Engels frequently said that after achieving power, terror would be indispensable, that "it will be necessary to repeat the year 1793. After achieving power, we'll be considered monsters, but we couldn't care less" (vol. 25, p. 187). 

Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs at any consideration of "good" and "evil" as indisputable categories. Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter. Depending upon circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of thousands, could be good or could be bad. It all depends upon class ideology. 

And who defines class ideology? The whole class cannot get together to pass judgment. A handful of people determine what is good and what is bad. But I must say that in this very respect communism has been most successful. It has infected the whole world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil. Many people besides the Communists are carried away by this idea today. 

Among enlightened people it is considered rather awkward to use seriously such words as "good" and '"evil." Communism has managed to instill in all of us that these concepts are old-fashioned concepts and laughable. But if we are to be deprived of the concepts of good and evil, what will be left? Nothing but the manipulation of one another. We will decline to the status of animals. Both the theory and practice of communism are completely inhuman for that reason.