Candle Mass from the Catholic Encyclopedia

Also called: Purification of the Blessed Virgin (Greek Hypapante), Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. Observed 2 February in the Latin Rite.

According to the Mosaic law a mother who had given birth to a man-child was considered unclean for seven days; moreover she was to remain three and thirty days "in the blood of her purification"; for a maid-child the time which excluded the mother fromsanctuary was even doubled. When the time (forty or eighty days) was over the mother was to "bring to the temple a lamb for aholocaust and a young pigeon or turtle dove for sin"; if she was not able to offer a lamb, she was to take two turtle doves or two pigeons; the priest prayed for her and so she was cleansed. (Leviticus 12:2-8)

Forty days after the birth of Christ Mary complied with this precept of the law, she redeemed her first-born from the temple(Numbers 18:15), and was purified by the prayer of Simeon the just, in the presence of Anna the prophetess (Luke 2:22 sqq.). No doubt this event, the first solemn introduction of Christ into the house of God, was in the earliest times celebrated in theChurch of Jerusalem. We find it attested for the first half of the fourth century by the pilgrim of Bordeaux, Egeria or Silvia. The day (14 February) was solemnly kept by a procession to the Constantinian basilica of the Resurrection, a homily on Luke 2:22 sqq., and the Holy Sacrifice. But the feast then had no proper name; it was simply called the fortieth day after Epiphany. This latter circumstance proves that in Jerusalem Epiphany was then the feast of Christ's birth.

From Jerusalem the feast of the fortieth day spread over the entire Church and later on was kept on the 2nd of February, since within the last twenty-five years of the fourth century the Roman feast of Christ's nativity (25 December) was introduced. InAntioch it is attested in 526 (Cedrenue); in the entire Eastern Empire it was introduced by the Emperor Justinian I (542) in thanksgiving for the cessation of the great pestilence which had depopulated the city of Constantinople. In the Greek Church it was called Hypapante tou Kyriou, the meeting (occursus) of the Lord and His mother with Simeon and Anna. The Armenians call it: "The Coming of the Son of God into the Temple" and still keep it on the 14th of February (Tondini di Quaracchi, Calendrier de la Nation Arménienne, 1906, 48); the Copts term it "presentation of the Lord in the Temple" (Nilles, Kal. man., II 571, 643). Perhaps the decree of Justinian gave occasion also to the Roman Church (to Gregory I?) to introduce this feast, but definite information is wanting on this point. The feast appears in the Gelasianum (manuscript tradition of the seventh century) under the new title of Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The precession is not mentioned. Pope Sergius I (687-701) introduced aprocession for this day. The Gregorianum (tradition of the eighth century) does not speak of this procession, which fact provesthat the procession of Sergius was the ordinary "station", not the liturgical act of today. The feast was certainly not introduced by Pope Gelasius to suppress the excesses of the Lupercalia (Migne, Missale Gothicum, 691), and it spread slowly in the West; it is not found in the "Lectionary" of Silos (650) nor in the "Calendar" (731-741) of Sainte-Geneviève of Paris. In the East it was celebrated as a feast of the Lord; in the West as a feast of Mary; although the "Invitatorium" (Gaude et lætare, Jerusalem, occurrens Deo tuo), the antiphons and responsories remind us of its original conception as a feast of the Lord. The blessing of the candles did not enter into common use before the eleventh century; it has nothing in common with the procession of the Pupercalia. In the Latin Church this feast (Purificatio B.M.V.) is a double of the second class. In the Middle Ages it had an octave in the larger number of dioceses; also today the religious orders whose special object is the veneration of the Mother of God(Carmelites, Servites) and many dioceses (Loreto, the Province of Siena, etc.) celebrate the octave.

Blessing of candles and procession

According to the Roman Missal the celebrant after Terce, in stole and cope of purple colour, standing at the epistle side of thealtar, blesses the candles (which must be of beeswax). Having sung or recited the five orations prescribed, he sprinkles andincenses the candles. Then he distributes them to the clergy and laity, whilst the choir sings the canticle of Simeon, "Nunc dimittis". The antiphon "Lumen ad revelationem gentium et gloriam plebis tuæ Israel" is repeated after every verse, according to the medieval custom of singing the antiphons. During the procession which now follows, and at which all the partakers carry lighted candles in their hands, the choir sings the antiphon "Adorna thalamum tuum, Sion", composed by St. John of Damascus, one of the few pieces which, text and music, have been borrowed by the Roman Church from the Greeks. The other antiphonsare of Roman origin. The solemn procession represents the entry of Christ, who is the Light of the World, into the Temple of Jerusalem. It forms an essential part of the liturgical services of the day, and must be held in every parochial church where the required ministers can be had. The procession is always kept on 2 February even when the office and Mass of the feast is transferred to 3 February. Before the reform of the Latin liturgy by St. Pius V (1568), in the churches north and west of the Alps this ceremony was more solemn. After the fifth oration a preface was sung. The "Adorna" was preceded by the antiphon "Ave Maria". While now the procession in held inside the church, during the Middle Ages the clergy left the church and visited thecemetery surrounding it. Upon the return of the procession a priest, carrying an image of the Holy Child, met it at the door and entered the church with the clergy, who sang the canticle of Zachary, "Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel". At the conclusion, entering the sanctuary, the choir sang the responsory, "Gaude Maria Virgo" or the prose, "Inviolata" or some other antiphon inhonour of the Blessed Virgin.

Sigh, the good old days..............

From Old Tan Book on Masonry

 I would only add that there is an occult dimension not explored here, as well as the heresies of indifferentism and relativism. They want the complete destruction of the Church. Too bad, so sad...we shall be here until Christ returns again, albeit maybe, very small.

TEN REASONS CATHOLICS CANNOT BE MASONS (there are more)

Freemasonry, contrary to public perception, is a secret society rather than a fraternity. Its principles are fundamentally contrary to the Catholic faith and explicitly deny key tenets of Christianity. Below are ten reasons why Catholics cannot be Masons or participate in their activities.

1). The Holy See on Nov. 26, 1983, at the direction of the Pope, issued a "Declaration on Masonic Associations" restating the Church's position condemning the basic principles of Freemasonry. It also states that Catholics who join Masonic organizations are in a state of grave sin and are automatically denied Holy Communion.

2). God as described in Masonic works is an impersonal "Great Architect of the Universeî," not the personal God of the Patriarchs, the One True God of Revelation, the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit.

3). Masonic writings specifically deny that God has revealed Himself and His truths to us, or that He ever established a Church.

4). In Masonry Jesus Christ is portrayed as merely a man, a great teacher, on a par with Buddha or Mohammed and His Divinity is denied.

5). The Trinity is denied and compared to the "trinitiesî"of pagan religions. The Holy Spirit is blasphemed by Masonry's denial of the Divine Inspiration of Scripture.

6). Christianity is considered a derivative of ancient pagan religions and like all religions deliberately ladens itself with error. God is portrayed as a deceiver who leads many men away from truth as not all are worthy of it.

7). All truth is relative according to Masonry, thereby rejecting objective, absolute truth and therefore the dogmas of the Catholic faith.

8). Freemasonry is portrayed as the foundation of all religion and it is built on Naturalism, a system of belief that makes human nature and human reason supreme in all things.

9). At the various degrees when an oath is sworn, even the initial ones, it is a blood oath swearing for example, "binding myself by no less penalty than that of having my throat cut from ear to ear, my tongue torn out by its roots, and buried in the sands of the sea..." This is a real oath sworn with one's hand on the Bible or Torah, etc.

10). One can easily be deceived by Masonry's rituals and symbols that an objective transformation of man is being carried out. This will lead one away from the workings of God's grace especially manifested in the Sacraments instituted by Christ. Remember, Masonry denies Christís Divinity and therefore His role as our Savior.

For further information the book "Freemasonry: Mankind's Hidden Enemy"can be obtained from TAN BOOKS, Rockford,IL., ($8.00 retail). Your local bookstore can order it for you. 

Something coming about which the Great Fr. Z, and I disagree

Valentine's Day. My view is that anything which celebrates love is a good start for evangelization. See my series last year on the Pope's encyclical.

Eros can lead to Caritas.

With grace...

And mercy..

And forgiveness...

And self-giving

And freedom....

And self-denial.....




And openness....

And goodness.....

And kindness....

And patience....

And God.....


And, the Indwelling of the Holy Trinity....

Have you all seen this? Been on line for a long time, folks....

Do not believe any of the press releases on changes to Obamacare

Lies are in the press concerning the health care bill. There is going to be only a small group which will qualify for the changes, as I see it. Read and be careful. The administration is spinning this to confuse people.

Statement of Michael P. Warsaw, President and Chief Executive Officer of EWTN Global Catholic Network in response to Notice of Proposed Rulemaking by the US Government on the HHS Contraceptive Services Mandate Issued Friday, February 1, 2013:

From EWTN

"This morning the US Department of Health and Human Services issued a notice of proposed rulemaking on the government mandate that employee health plans must provide contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs as part of their coverage. On February 9, 2012, EWTN was the first organization to file a lawsuit challenging this mandate shortly after the original rules were promulgated by the government. That lawsuit is still pending in the US District Court in Birmingham, Alabama.

We have analyzed today's notice with our legal team from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the initial conclusions are not promising. First, this is simply a notice of a proposed rule; it is not an actual rule that changes anything. Second, while the proposed rules might expand the mandate's religious exemption for some organizations affiliated directly with the Church, it does not appear that EWTN will qualify for this exemption. Third, the proposed rules have not dealt with the concerns of self-insured health plans like EWTN's. Today's notice from the government simply kicks this can further down the road.

Sadly, throughout this proposed rule, the government continues to make the erroneous assertion that contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs are health care. They are not.

We will continue to study this notice with our attorneys, but are highly doubtful it will provide EWTN with any relief from this immoral mandate. EWTN remains firmly committed to pressing forward with our case in the Federal Courts and will take all steps necessary to challenge this unjust mandate."

Last reference to The Dialogues and other writings of St. Catherine of Siena

In some translations of her treatises and Dialogue, the sins referred by Christ regarding His priests point to the fact that if these men said the Mass properly, not mumbling, they knew that they would be creating a sacrilege.

Some things have not changed, but we should be so scandalized....

"The fruits of this death-giving tree, are as diverse as sins are diverse. See that some of these fruits are the food of beasts who live impurely, using their body and their mind like a swine who wallows in mud, for in the same way they wallow in the mire of sensuality.

"Oh, ugly soul, where have you left your dignity? You were made sister to the angels, and now you are become a brute beast. To such misery come sinners, notwithstanding that they are sustained by Me, who am Supreme Purity, notwithstanding that the very devils, whose friends and servants they have become, cannot endure the sight of such filthy actions.

"Neither does any sin, abominable as it may be, take away the light of the intellect from man, so much as does this one. This the philosophers knew, not by the light of grace, because they had it not, but because nature gave them the light to know that this sin obscured the intellect, and for that reason they preserved themselves in continence the better to study.

"Thus also they flung away their riches in order that the thought of them should not occupy their heart. Not so does the ignorant and false Christian, who has lost grace by sin."
 

more


"What I say of the universal body and the mystical body of the Holy Church (that is to say the Christian religion) I also say of My ministers, who stand and feed at the breasts of Holy Church; and, not only should they feed themselves, but it is also their duty to feed and hold to those breasts the universal body of Christian people, and also any other people who should wish to leave the darkness of their infidelity, and bind themselves as members to My Church.

"See then with what ignorance and darkness, and ingratitude, are administered, and with what filthy hands are handled this glorious milk and blood of My spouse, and with what presumption and irreverence they are received. Wherefore, that which really gives life, often gives, through the defects of those who receive it, death; that is to say, the precious Blood of My only-begotten Son, which destroyed death and darkness, and gave life and truth, and confounded falsehood.

"For I give this Blood and use It for salvation and perfection in the case of that man who disposes himself properly to receive it, for It gives life and adorns the soul with every grace, in proportion to the disposition and affection of him who receives It; similarly It gives death to him who receives It unworthily, living in iniquity and in the darkness of mortal sin; to him, I say, It gives death and not life; not through defect of the Blood, nor through defect of the minister, though there might be great evil in him, because his evil would not spoil nor defile the Blood nor diminish Its grace and virtue, nor does an evil minister do harm to him to whom he gives the Blood, but to himself he does the harm of guilt, which will be followed by punishment, unless he correct himself with contrition and repentance.

And one of her letters to the Pope Gregory XI in Avignon: http://www.britannica.com/women/article-9404147

In the Name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary: Most holy and dear and sweet father in Christ sweet Jesus: I your unworthy daughter Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, write to you in His precious Blood. With desire have I desired to see in you the fulness of divine grace, in such wise that you may be the means, through divine grace, of pacifying all the universal world. Therefore, I beg you, sweet my father, to use the instrument of your power and virtue, with zeal, and hungry desire for the peace and honour of God and the salvation of souls. And should you say to me, father--"The world is so ravaged! How shall I attain peace?" I tell you, on behalf of Christ crucified, it befits you to achieve three chief things through your power. Do you uproot in the garden of Holy Church the malodorous flowers, full of impurity and avarice, swollen with pride: that is, the bad priests and rulers who poison and rot that garden. Ah me, you our Governor, do you use your power to pluck out those flowers! Throw them away, that they may have no rule! Insist that they study to rule themselves in holy and good life. Plant in this garden fragrant flowers, priests and rulers who are true servants of Jesus Christ, and care for nothing but the honour of God and the salvation of souls, and are fathers of the poor. Alas, what confusion is this, to see those who ought to be a mirror of voluntary poverty, meek as lambs, distributing the possessions of Holy Church to the poor: and they appear in such luxury and state and pomp and worldly vanity, more than if they had turned them to the world a thousand times! Nay, many seculars put them to shame who live a good and holy life. But it seems that Highest and Eternal Goodness is having that done by force which is not done by love; it seems that He is permitting dignities and luxuries to be taken away from His Bride, as if He would show that Holy Church should return to her first condition, poor, humble, and meek as she was in that holy time when men took note of nothing but the honour of God and the salvation of souls, caring for spiritual things and not for temporal. For ever since she has aimed more at temporal than at spiritual, things have gone from bad to worse. See therefore that God, in judgment, has allowed much persecution and tribulation to befall her. But comfort you, father, and fear not for anything that could happen, which God does to make her state perfect once more, in order that lambs may feed in that garden, and not wolves who devour the honour that should belong to God, which they steal and give to themselves. Comfort you in Christ sweet Jesus; for I hope that His aid will be near you, plenitude of divine grace, aid and support divine in the way that I said before. Out of war you will attain greatest peace; out of persecution, greatest unity; not by human power, but by holy virtue, you will discomfit those visible demons, wicked men, and those invisible demons who never sleep around us. But reflect, sweet father, that you could not do this easily unless you accomplished the other two things which precede the completion of the other: that is, your return to Rome and uplifting of the standard of the most holy Cross. Let not your holy desire fail on account of any scandal or rebellion of cities which you might see or hear; nay, let the flame of holy desire be more kindled to wish to do swiftly. Do not delay, then, your coming. Do not believe the devil, who perceives his own loss, and so exerts himself to rob you of your possessions in order that you may lose your love and charity and our coming be hindered. I tell you, father in Christ Jesus, come swiftly like a gentle lamb. Respond to the Holy Spirit who calls you. I tell you, Come, come, come, and do not wait for time, since time does not wait for you. Then you will do like the Lamb Slain whose place you hold, who without weapons in His hand slew our foes, coming in gentleness, using only the weapons of the strength of love, aiming only at care of spiritual things, and restoring grace to man who had lost it through sin. Alas, sweet my father, with this sweet hand I pray you, and tell you to come to discomfit our enemies. On behalf of Christ crucified I tell it you: refuse to believe the counsels of the devil, who would hinder your holy and good resolution. Be manly in my sight, and not timorous. Answer God, who calls you to hold and possess the seat of the glorious Shepherd St. Peter, whose vicar you have been. And raise the standard of the holy Cross; for as we were freed by the Cross--so Paul says--thus raising this standard, which seems to me the refreshment of Christians, we shall be freed--we from our wars and divisions and many sins, the infidel people from their infidelity. In this way you will come and attain the reformation, giving good priests to Holy Church. Fill her heart with the ardent love that she has lost; for she has been so drained of blood by the iniquitous men who have devoured her that she is wholly wan. But comfort you, and come, father, and no longer make to wait the servants of God, who afflict themselves in desire. And I, poor, miserable woman, can wait no more; living, I seem to die in my pain, seeing God thus reviled. Do not, then, hold off from peace because of the circumstance which has occurred at Bologna, but come; for I tell you that the fierce wolves will put their heads in your bosom like gentle lambs, and will ask mercy from you, father. I say no more. I beg you, father, to hear and hark that which Fra Raimondo will say to you, and the other sons with him, who come in the Name of Christ crucified and of me; for they are true servants of God and sons of Holy Church. Pardon, father, my ignorance, and may the love and grief which make me speak excuse me to your benignity. Give me your benediction. Remain in the holy and sweet grace of God. Sweet Jesus, Jesus Love.

© 2013 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

On a happier note, I shall use this great saint in the perfection series....later on this year

Third selection of message to St. Catherine Siena from Christ

Because of the news from Los Angeles, these bits from Catherine seem timely....
"I have shown to the eye of your intellect a very small part of what happens, and so
small is what I have shown you with regard to what it really is, to the suffering, that
is, of the one, and the happiness of the other, that it is but a trifle. See how great is
the blindness of man, and in particular of these ministers, for the more they have
received of Me, and the more they are enlightened by the Holy Scripture, the greater
are their obligations and more intolerable confusion do they receive for not
fulfilling them; the more they knew of Holy Scripture during their life, the better do
they know at their death the great sins they have committed, and their torments are
greater than those of others, just as good men are placed in a higher degree of
excellence. Theirs is the fate of the false Christian, who is placed in Hell in greater
torment than a pagan, because he had the light of faith and renounced it, while the
pagan never had it.


"So these wretches will be punished more than other Christians for the same sin, on
account of the ministry which I entrusted to them, appointing them to administer
the sun of the holy Sacrament, and because they had the light of science, in order to
discern the truth both for themselves and others had they wished to; wherefore they
justly receive the greater pains. But the wretches do not know this, for did they
consider their state at all, they would not come to such misery, but would be that
which they ought to be and are not. For the whole world has thus become corrupt,
they being much more guilty than seculars, according to their state; for with their
stench they defile the face of their soul, and corrupt their subjects, and suck the
blood from My spouse, that is, the holy Church, wherefore through these sins they
make her grow pale, because they divert to themselves the love and charity which
they should have to this divine spouse, and think of nothing but stripping her for
their own advantage, seizing prelacies, and great properties, when they ought to be
seeking souls. Wherefore through their evil life, seculars become irreverent and
disobedient to the holy Church, not that they ought on that account to do so, or that
their sins are excused through the sins of My ministers." Diallogues

Second selection from St. Catherine of Siena on bad priests

Because of the news from Los Angeles...

So, were the prelate, or any other lord having
subjects, on seeing one putrefying from the corruption of mortal sin, to apply to him
the ointment of soft words of encouragement alone, without reproof, he would
never cure him, but the putrefaction would rather spread to the other members,
who, with him, form one body under the same pastor. But if he were a physician,
good and true to those souls, as were those glorious pastors of old, he would not
give salving ointment without the fire of reproof. And, were the member still to
remain obstinate in his evil doing, he would cut him off from the congregation in
order that he corrupt not the other members with the putrefaction of mortal sin.
But they act not so today, but, in cases of evil doing, they even pretend not to see.
And do you know why? The root of self-love is alive in them, wherefore they bear
perverted and servile fear. Because they fear to lose their position or their temporal
goods, or their prelacy, they do not correct, but act like blind ones, in that they see
not the real way by which their position is to be kept. If they would only see that it is
by holy justice they would be able to maintain it; but they do not, because they are
deprived of light. But, thinking to preserve their position with injustice, they do not
reprove the faults of those under them; and they are deluded by their own sensitive
self-love, or by their desire for lordship and prelacy, and they correct not the faults
they should correct in others, because the same or greater ones are their own. They
feel themselves comprehended in the guilt, and they therefore lose all ardor and
security, and, fettered by servile fear, they make believe not to see. And, moreover, if
they do see they do not correct, but allow themselves to be bound over with
flattering words and with many presents, and they themselves find the excuse for
the guilty ones not to be punished. In such as these are fulfilled the words spoken by
My Truth, saying: 'These are blind and leaders of the blind, and if the blind lead the
blind, they both fall into the ditch.'

For those who do not have the time...........Obamacare bits

Effective August 1, 2012

• All new plans must cover certain preventive services such as mammograms and colonoscopies without charging a deductible, co-pay or coinsurance. Women's Preventive Services – including: well-woman visits; gestational diabetes screening; human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA testing for women age 30 and older; sexually transmitted infection counseling; human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) screening and counseling; FDA-approved contraceptive methods and contraceptive counseling; breastfeeding support, supplies and counseling; and domestic violence screening and counseling - will be covered without cost sharing.^[87] This is also known as the contraceptive mandate.^[64][88][89]

Obamacare already in effect....off the link in the last post here. And coming persecutions.........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act

Effective by August 1, 2013

• Religious organizations that were given an extra year to implement the contraceptive mandate are no longer exempt. Certain non-exempt, non-grandfathered group health plans established and maintained by non-profit organizations with religious objections to covering contraceptive services may take advantage of a one-year enforcement safe harbor (i.e., until the first plan year beginning on or after August 1, 2013) by timely satisfying certain requirements set forth by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.^[99]

Try again, stages four and five of persecution

I have written this post before..

Stages four and five of persecution are clear. We are in stage four in the States and entering into it in Great Britain.

Stage Four is criminalization. I tried to explain this to my seminarian students right before Obamacare was passed in the House and Senate-- and Stupek caved in, December 24th, 2009. America changed that day. If one wants a dummy view of what will come--check out this plan of action and fill in the spaces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act

Fines for disobeying state laws, such as in the Reformation, will be common.

Obamacare. SSM

Fines for teaching the truth will be imposed.

Bishop Henry of Calgary was fined years ago for teaching against homosexuality and civil marriage.

Being put out of business. Loss of status.

Catholic pharmacists in Illinois with consciences had to leave their jobs rather than pass out abortifactients and birth control pills. Catholic medical students have to leave certain courses at certain universities which are required-abortion classes which do the real thing--and move to other universities. I know this.

Adoption agencies in England and in the US, which will not allow same-sex couples to adopt, and rightly so.

33% of the hospitals in the States are Catholic.  They will go out of business or go under secular control.

Imprisonment for hate speech, loss of status and jobs, (which some in academia have already experienced for standing up for Catholic truths in Catholic institutions-I have many examples).

And so, on

Why are people in denial about this?

Stage five is out and out murder.

It will be worse in America as the government is more organized and the populace more stupid and naive.

America will see organized imprisonment and death. Europe will fall into scape-goating and kill when things fall apart out of spite.

All we need is a crisis and one which can be manipulated. Hitler used inflation and unemployment to stir up the simmering hatred of the Jews. All we need is one stupid, orchestrated event.........

All this has happened before....Two out of three Jews in Europe were killed in the Holocaust. The population of the Jews now would be three times greater had there been no Holocaust.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090422121852.htm



.http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/jewpop.html

Trying to be patient............the missing articles rewritten on persecution.-stages four and five

I am presenting these in a backward looking manner. Stages one, two and three are long gone. I shall show stages one and two after four and five.

Step three is in the last post, but I shall recreate one, two, four and five today. I think we are entering into stage four. Here is my link for three on my blog. I wrote that one in January, 2012

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/beginning-of-gulag-in-america.html

Stage Four includes the outlawing of certain activities and the targeting of a group in jobs and positions. I am indebted to several sites for this information, noted at the end of the quotations.

What you have to understand is that the Holocaust did not just happen. Years and years of propaganda and hatred, plus the loss of critical thinking among the German people under Bismarck's changes in education, created a compliant people. Here are a few highlights of article for Stage Four.

In 1933, new German laws forced Jews out of their civil service jobs, university and law court positions, and other areas of public life. In April 1933, laws proclaimed at Nuremberg made Jews second-class citizens. These Nuremberg Laws defined Jews, not by their religion or by how they wanted to identify themselves, but by the religious affiliation of their grandparents. Between 1937 and 1939, new anti-Jewish regulations segregated Jews further and made daily life very difficult for them. Jews could not attend public schools; go to theaters, cinema, or vacation resorts; or reside or even walk in certain sections of German cities.

Also between 1937 and 1939, Jews increasingly were forced from Germany's economic life. The Nazis either seized Jewish businesses and properties outright or forced Jews to sell them at bargain prices. In November 1938, the Nazis organized a riot (pogrom), known as Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass"). This attack against German and Austrian Jews included the physical destruction of synagogues and Jewish-owned stores, the arrest of Jewish men, the vandalization of homes, and the murder of individuals.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history/Modern_History/1914-1948/The_Holocaust/Early_Stages_of_Prosecution.shtml

 And from a great site, from talks in 1998 on the stages of persecution of the Jews.

This would be the beginning of stage five.

There were other stories that, despite containing quite chilling information, were treated in a rather perfunctory fashion. For example, in the summer of 1944 the New York Times carried a story concerning the deportation of Jews form Hungary. Significant details were available by this time. The short article, which was appended to another article concerning the evacuation of Hungarian children from Budapest because of bombing campaigns, reported that Jews had been deported from various areas in Hungary and “will arrive in Auschwitz and Birkenau by this weekend” where, if previous schedules are adhered to, they will go “directly to the gassing halls...to expedite matters.” The most striking about this article is, of course, that it is in the future tense. This had not yet happened. It was about to happen.

Let me close by citing yet another story from the New York Times. It is, despite its brevity, one of the most powerful I confronted in my research. It was one of the few articles to appear on the front page of this paper. It appeared on April 22, 1943 -- which, we might note, happened to be during the middle days of the Passover festival. It was placed at the top of the page. The headline read: “SECRET POLISH RADIO ASKS AID, CUT OFF.”

Stockholm, Sweden April 21: The secret Polish radio appealed for help tonight in a broadcast from Poland and then suddenly the station went dead. The broadcast, as heard here said, the last thirty five thousand Jews in the ghetto at Warsaw have been condemned to execution. Warsaw again is echoing to musketry volleys. The people are murdered. Women and children defend themselves with their naked arms. Save us...”

http://www.ushmm.org/genocide/analysis/details.php?content=1998-12-10-01

After that was chaos and one of the greatest evils witnessed by humankind--the massacre of six million Jews.  

To be continued...

Another reminder to check this out...

http://issuu.com/persecution/docs/persecutionmagazine_feb2013-week1?mode=embed&pageNumber=1

An old combination of evils

A long time ago, a good TLM priest told me to look at the connection between liturgical abuse and sexual abuse. I did and I do.

I shall write more on this tomorrow.  I knew about this years ago, as my diocese was one of the worst areas for both sexual and liturgical abuses.

To be continued...series on St. Catherine's writings regarding bad priests.............

http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/there-is-no-excuse-in-la-defcon-5.html

http://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/01/25/cardinal_mahonys_la_cosa_nostra.html

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/01/archbishop-takes-action-on-mahony-curry-over-abuse-scandal.html

Thanks to wiki

Christ words in the Dialogues of St. Catherine of Siena on good and bad priests:

“You should love them therefore by reason of the virtue and dignity of the Sacrament, and by reason of that very virtue and dignity you should hate the defects of those who live miserably in sin, but not on that account appoint yourselves their judges, which I forbid, because they are My Christs, and you ought to love and reverence the authority which I have given them.
“It not being My will that they should be in this state, you should pray for them, and not judge them, leaving their judgment to Me. And I, moved by your prayers, will do them mercy if they will only receive it, but if they do not correct their life, their dignity will be the cause of their ruin. For if they do not accept the breadth of My mercy, I, the Supreme Judge, shall terribly condemn them at their last extremity, and they will be sent to the eternal fire.”

Third reminder, stage three is here....at this link

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/beginning-of-gulag-in-america.html

Long gone is stage two of persecution

Stage Two is the vilification of Catholics.

Again, this happened years ago in America, with the Ku klux Klan and Masons printing anti-Catholic material, as well as other Protestant groups, such as the old "Chick" cartoon anti-Christ literature which was being passed around as late at the 1980s on college campuses.

Vilification is not subtle. It is obvious, but the ostriches want to keep denying these cultural movements.

Sadly, with the ending of the studies of Western Civilization and even American History in US high schools, and the ending of Western Civilization in high schools in GB, this vilification became worse and worse without the context of history.

I strongly disagreed with Bl. John Paul II's apologies concerning some things in our Catholic past, as these merely added to the vilification and did not end such weak thinking.

If one grew up as I did in the Lutheran Midwest, vilification included out and out prejudice and hatred of the Pope as the Anti-Christ. Not new, long gone on to the next stages.

The fact that the Pope's effigy is still burned in Lewes every year is yet another indication of this hatred which has allowed to fester in England. Why is it that such things still happen on Guy Fawke's Day? Vilification. And, a very old custom allowed to go on and on...............

Can you imagine the town's people burning an effigy of Mohammed? This following poster is from atheistsforum.org.

Catholics who are weak-minded have allowed these types of pre-persecution ideas to simmer in the culture.

So too, Bismarck and others took advantage of simmering anti-Semitism.


To be continued................

Stages one, two and three in persecution--stage one-long gone

As I am the one who has to rewrite my own ideas, I am trying to be patient with myself.

Stages one, two and three in the United States and Europe are long gone. The beginnings of stage one are in the educational systems of government led and controlled education. This is one reason I home schooled, to avoid propaganda in the schools forming my son's character and soul. Again, see my link for stage three on my blog.

Bismarck knew what he was doing. Create an unthinking populace and feed the prejudices which are already there. Put steroids into ancient hatreds. The stage is the stereotyping stage. We Catholics have ALWAYS been stereotyped in the US and in GB and since Humanae Vitae, even more so. We are the pro-life loonies, the insensitive one who do not care about women's reproductive rights, or the rights of gays. We are homophobic, etc.

This type of criticism, nay, hatred is old, very old.

There are some errors of history on one link I gave you, labelled 1933-1939. The author there does not go back far enough into German history to show the strength and persistence of anti-Semitism which led to the Holocaust.

The book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, which I read ages ago, needs to be reread by this generation. If you have not read this, do so.

I do not want to get into an argument about this book, but to read it is to understand a longer and larger process. The author's research is superb.

The problem with stage one is that it is subtle. Changing text books, reducing classical education, using coloring books in schools to make a political point

I knew a woman in Indiana, the first woman representative in that states' legislature, who single-handedly stopped homosexual propaganda in colouring  books from going into the public schools as early as 1981.

Margaret Sanger had a two-page spread in high school public school history books as early as 2000, while one paragraph sufficed to cover General Robert E. Lee. I have studied these trends in education myself. I had such books in my hand in 2000.

Not new and parents were asleep.

No excuses. If I could find out this information as early as 1981, all persons could, and I was single and in university, years away from marriage and child-bearing.

Marx, Engles, Dewey, Bismarck. etc.

Read my stuff on Gramsci (and there will be more from him this weekend on the blog).

Here is the biography, or rather, autobiography of that author.

When in 1996 I published Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, I was transformed unexpectedly, and almost instantly, into the author of a #1 international bestseller of a book published in 15 languages, and the unwitting progenitor of an impassioned international "Goldhagen Debate," which has since become a fixed part of the western, and especially the German, cultural landscape. The book, about the perpetrators of the Holocaust and ordinary Germans' role in it, told buried truths about the tens upon tens of thousands who carried out Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews: these perpetrators were willing executioners, willing because they were antisemites who believed that exterminating Jews was right and necessary. Survivors of the Holocaust -- the people who learned of the perpetrators' beliefs firsthand from the perpetrators themselves -- heartily applauded the book, as did younger Germans and people elsewhere who hankered for these tabooed subjects to be finally discussed openly, even as some others clung to various untenable positions with the effect of denying the humanity of the killers and of exonerating them. Immediately, upon its publication, its contributions were recognized. The New York Times wrote: "Masterly...One of those rare new works that merit the appellation landmark." The Philadelphia Inquirer judged it: "The most important book ever published about the Holocaust...Eloquently written, meticulously documented, impassioned...A model of moral and scholarly integrity." It was honored as a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and Time named it one of the two best non-fiction books of the year. In country after country, similar views and admiration greeted Hitler's Willing Executioners -- as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany conveyed with its summation of the effect of the publication of Hitler's Willing Executioners, which it endorsed as "The most spectacular nonfiction success of this year." With time, as a flood of scholarly studies have come out which have substantiated Hitler's Willing Executioners' conclusions, more and more who have read the book's vast amount of new research and evidence and its challenging perspectives have come to appreciate and accept what the Holocaust's survivors had known all along. And so, a front page article in the New York Times on 15 October 2010 announced that the revolution in understanding that Hitler's Willing Executioners produced about the Holocaust has unequivocally become, just fifteen years after the book's publication, the consensus view in Germany. The establishment German Historical Museum in Berlin has opened a major exhibition that confirms and builds upon the conclusions of Hitler's Willing Executioners: "This exhibition is about Hitler and the Germans -- meaning the social and political and individual processes by which much of the German people became enablers, colluders, co-criminals in the Holocaust," said the authoritative Constanze Stelzenmüller, until recently the director of the German Marshall Fund Berlin Office. "That this was so is now a mainstream view, rejected only by a small minority of very elderly and deluded people, or the German extreme right-wing fringe. But it took us a while to get there."

Thus I became a public intellectual, the startling winner of Germany's prestigious Democracy Prize (there have been only six since it was established) awarded only when someone earns it (the previous winner, seven years earlier, was the East Germany democracy movement), with a debate forever a suffix to my name. I have always been determined to write and speak forthrightly about important topics-topics about which many want to hear, even if many others desperately do not want the truth to be heard. Whether it is about Nazism and the Holocaust, powerful institutions' moral duties, or the dangers of Political Islam, I have never held my tongue out of fear of what people, including powerful people, might say. 

My most recent project, Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity, has issued both in a book (which is being published already in eight languages) and a feature length documentary (the first ever to focus on the phenomenon of genocide itself) that had its national broadcast premiere on PBS on April 14. Worse Than War tells people what I have learned about genocides and genocide in my three decades of studying them, explaining not just how to understand their many complex facets, but also how to stop the killing. As Hitler's Willing Executioners did for the Holocaust, Worse Than War poses a powerful challenge to deeply entrenched myths about why genocides happen. It fundamentally reconfigures our understanding of genocide as a global phenomenon and reconceptualizes it as one aspect of a more fundamental form of politics that can be called "eliminationism." I am gratified that Worse Than War, more than a decade in the writing, has already garnered enormous praise, with words such as "magisterial," "pathbreaking," "masterful," "monumental," and "wholly convincing" gracing the reviews.

I hope that you choose to have a look at it. Whether or not you end up agreeing with every conclusion and proposal in Worse Than War, the book and the film offer a plethora of new information and perspectives not just on genocide or eliminationism but on critical aspects of humanity and modernity, society and politics. I hope to rouse your intellect and conscience, even if I at the same time challenge your views about the most foundational matters of politics, society, and human nature. http://goldhagen.com/. 

On Persecution...and lost posts

Last Spring, I wrote about Fr. Esper's presentation on television from his book on persecution. These were the steps he outlined. Sadly, I lost some posts in an error on the blog, so the original article is gone. He was on the EWTN series, Women of Grace.

Now, sadly, some of the weird websites into false revelations and hysteria have picked his ideas up. Please avoid those websites.  The original research goes back to psychologists studying the holocaust after WWII and coming up with five steps for persecution.

I also looked at this author. Obviously, he is on amazon.com


I repeat some of the information here. These are various ways to say the same thing.

(1) Stereotyping the targeted group; 
(2) Vilifying the targeted group for alleged crimes or misconduct; 
(3) Marginalizing the targeted group’s role in society; 
(4)Criminalizing the targeted group or its works; 
(5) Persecuting the targeted group outright.

I think we are in stage four.
Catholics who refuse to face the reality of new laws in GB and the USA should be directed to the myriad posts I have on persecution. Just type in that tag in search.

Here are only a few of my articles: read and think, please.


http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/kristallnacht-and-lukewarm-war.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/switch-in-attitude.html

http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/beginning-of-gulag-in-america.html

Boycott Facebook

Please adults and students and teens, get off facebook. I am not putting on a link, because it is soft-porn but just go to the Daily Beast and read about the new app for sex.

I am sorry, but it is time for Christians and Catholics to pull the plug on facebook. It is not necessary. We can use other means of communication.

I am asking seminarians, priests and nuns to consider boycotting facebook. The evil outweighs the good.