Wednesday 7 August 2013
Some Catholics As Sowers of Discord
I taught debate and argumentation. I taught in the Socratic Method. So many of those who write on line on blogs, or twitter, or other social media do not know how to argue points without falling into name calling. There are some Catholics on line who do this on a daily basis. Some are in America, some Great Britain.
But I say to you, that whosoever is angry with his brother, shall be in danger of the judgment. And whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council. And whosoever shall say, Thou Fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. Matthew 5:22 DR
I have distanced myself from all those who use ad hominem in their efforts to fight abortion and heresies. These types of words create strife and have nothing to do with debate or evangelization.
Do not get involved. There is a huge campaign in the States at this time and some Catholics are allowing themselves to join the group which is calling a prominent person a name.
Let me explain something. Arguing a moral point should never include a reference to the persons in the debate. This not only lowers the tone of the argument, but is the fallacy of ad hominem.
Ad hominem aims at discrediting the person in a debate by undermining their character or authority. This is one of the weakest and most inept fallacies.
For a Catholic, it is also a sin. If one wants to become an apologist or fight the good cause against abortion or ssm, one cannot, must not descend to name calling or personal attacks. One can go to hell doing this according to Our Lord, Jesus Christ. Calumny involves lies and defamation; and scandal is the malicious spreading of either lies or truthful situations about a person or group. I would place these sins under maliciousness and treachery. It is possible that such sins fall under wrath and anger. I think these are sins of hatred.
Logic was required in private Catholic high schools in the States, at the freshman or ninth grade levels, until the late 1970s. It should be required again.
Some modern moralists disagree with this traditional fallacy and claim that it helps understand a moral position to understand the guilt by association, for example, involved in ad hominem.
As a person who has won debating contests in the past and who taught debate, I learned the fallacies in order to avoid these, and, more importantly, to win an argument.
Please do not lower yourself in using inappropriate language, and stick with facts.
The truth will win every time.
See also....
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.ie/2013/08/why-are-so-many-catholics-nasty.html
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.ie/2013/08/on-factions-rumours-quarrels-divisions.html
Explanation, Please
I am listening to end of Ramadan prayers. I have been wondering about something which I find puzzling. Why is there a rise in suicide and other bombings, and killings even against fellow Muslims during this time of prayer and fasting? I just want to understand the connection between Ramadan and death. Can someone tell me, please? 800 people were killed in Iraq during Ramadan, according to France24. And, that is only one country.
Join The Boycott Against Facebook
Do you need Facebook? Look at this and join the outcry against this site Virgin Mary Should've Aborted. Do not use offensive language, do not engage in debate with such hatred. Just try and help FB see that this is offensive to millions of Catholics. Can you imagine if this was a title for a site against Mohammed? Boycott.
Kyrie eleison...
http://www.ibtimes.com/virgin-mary-shouldve-aborted-facebook-page-not-anti-christian-hate-speech-says-social-network
'Virgin Mary Should've Aborted': Facebook Page Is Not Anti-Christian Hate Speech, Says Social Network....
However, the website said then, as it maintains now, that content is not deemed in violation simply because it is offensive or controversial. “[T]here are instances of offensive content, including distasteful humor, that are not hate speech according to our definition,” the website said.
As of Monday afternoon, Virgin Mary Should’ve Aborted had more than 5,200 likes.
Feast Day of St. Donatus, Patron Against Lightning, Fires, Storms
When my ancestors from Luxembourg left Europe to live in America, some settled in Jackson County, Iowa.
The village of St. Donatus bears the name of today's saint, and I have been there many times visiting the places my pioneer fathers and mothers lived.
St. Donatus, the village, is so beautiful I can hardly describe the area. There is a fantastic church, a stations of the cross which makes a pilgrim climb up a steep hill, and a lovely chapel of the Pieta at the top.
I do not know if Catholic Iowan newly weds still go to this sweet place, but they used to do so.
Being that my relatives on the paternal side of the family resemble Rabbit's relations, I can say that I am related to at least one person, if not more, in the cemetery there.
Fr. J. Michael Flammang, the pastor of St. Donatus Church and an immigrant from Koerich, Luxembourg, built the stations in 1861. One can look here for more information on that.
http://www.luxamculturalsociety.org/OutdoorWayofCross.htm
Some of my paternal ancestors were named Capesius, some Scheckel, some Miller, as well as other names.
Inside the church, are fantastic wood carved pieces done in the German style. Some of my ancestors stayed in Iowa, here and elsewhere, and some went westward on the Oregon Trail.
There is a magnificent photo found here of the little, stone church and the chapel.
The Mississippi River provides a great scenic drive as well. The town was named Tetes de Morts before the settlers came, and an area near by was called Mille de Tetes, which my ancestors told me about as a child. Thousands of skulls were found, the horror of one Native tribe wiping out another, and not burying or properly dealing with the dead. The Luxembourgian people were all Catholic, and the tribes had moved west, although some Saux Fox remained, but not in the immediate area.
But, let me write about St. Donatus himself. Now, there are at least four saints by the name of Donatus.
Saint Donatus of Muenstereifel wears the honor of being the saint of this church and village. Wiki shares this on his life:
Saint Donatus is said to be a 2nd-century Roman soldier and martyr. His parents were named Faustus and Flaminia. When Faustus was deathly ill, his wife Flaminia sought the intercession of Saint Gervasius, who assured her that her husband would recover and beget a son. This came to pass, and Flaminia named the boy Donatus, which means "gift". She educated him in the Christian faith. At the age of 17, he enlisted in the famed 12th Legion "Fulminatrix", i.e., the "Thundering Legion". He rapidly rose through the ranks and soon became a personal bodyguard to the emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
In the year 173 the 12th Legion was engaged in the Marcomannic Wars in Moravia along the Danube frontier. According to the contemporary writer Dio Cassius, part of the legion was surrounded and nearly overwhelmed when it was miraculously saved by a divine thunderstorm. Cassius attributed the thunderstorm to the invocation of Mercurius by Aurelius' Egyptian sorcerer, Arnuphis, butTertullian and other Christian writers ascribed the miracle to the prayers of the many Christians in that Legion. Later legend credited Donatus as the leader of the Christians' prayers. After the miracle, Donatus gave thanks to God, and he was martyred by the emperor.
He was buried by his mother in the Catacombs of Saint Agnes. Over the centuries, access to the catacombs was lost. In 1646, the catacombs were re-opened, and the relics of Donatus and many other saints were re-discovered. Pope Innocent X bequeathed Donatus's relics to the Jesuit church in Muenster Eifel, and they were carried in procession from Rome to the Rhineland. On June 30, 1652 the relics were at St. Martin's church in Euskirchen as a Jesuit priest, Fr. Heerde, was saying mass in the morning. With the conclusion of benediction, lightning struck the church and lit the altar and the priest on fire. He immediately invoked the aid of Saint Donatus and was miraculously restored unharmed. This miracle spread the fame of the Roman martyr throughout the region.
If you want to read about his relics in Germany, go here for a treat.
http://empiredelamort.com/skeletonoftheweek/skeleton-of-the-week-april-8-st-donatus-of-bad-munstereifel-germany/
http://empiredelamort.com/skeletonoftheweek/skeleton-of-the-week-april-8-st-donatus-of-bad-munstereifel-germany/
Reparation
Repetition on reparation. If anyone is moved to help me with the Adoration House in Walsingham, please contact me. After this week, the need should be more obvious than ever-praying and adoring in reparation for sins against the Eucharist.
Problems in Bordeaux
http://www.france24.com/en/20130806-french-state-urged-help-devastated-winemakers-bordeaux-hailstorm
Maybe those who can should stock up on French Bordeaux now, as prices will rise. A bit of the article...
The total cost to the mostly small-scale winemakers in the Entre-deux-Mers region is difficult to calculate.
And while most of them do not insure their crops, the damage to the local industry is likely to be huge.
Farges explained that 2013 was already set to be a small year – with an anticipated 4.5 million hectolitres compared to 5.4 in 2012. The weekend’s storm was “a catastrophe”, he said.
Winegrower Loic de Roquefeuil, who produces a Bordeaux Supérieur at Saint-Léon, said his entire 30 hectares had been destroyed. He was not insured.
“There’s nothing left, it’s appalling,” he told AFP. “I’ve lost the equivalent of 200,000 bottles, with a wholesale value of three euros each. That's a huge loss.”
The Basic Gospel
I was discussing the Gospel with someone last night. I said that Christ was emptied on the Cross. and in that kenosis, a word I did not use, gave Himself up to His Father in a sheer act of Will.
"Father, into Your Hands I commend My Spirit."
Now, the word kenosis, we know from Scripture, from Philippians 2 is from the Greek ekenosen, meaning emptied. "Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as man."
This emptying of Christ, the Second Person in the Blessed Trinity was not a pretence, but a reality.
He was emptied. He felt nothing beyond pain. He thought nothing in the darkness of death. He anticipated nothing in His senses or intellect, in the perfect assent to the loss of God for the moment of Redemption. His last cry was a perfect act of the will, His Will.
Christ calls us to be like Him in this kenosis. If we want to be like Christ, and if we want to be loved by Christ, and if we want to love Christ, we must be emptied.
And this kenosis of Christ began at His Conception. His entire life on earth was an emptying. He did this for love.
Why, asked my friend, do we have to die to ourselves?
Because only in humility, in the realization of our own sin and nothingness, can we find Christ, Who humbled Himself to love us for all eternity.
Nada, writes St. John of the Cross.
When one stops trying to be somebody, and merely wants to be loved by God, and to love Him in return, then we experience kenosis.
Joy follows, just as the Resurrection followed the Crucifixion and Death of Our Lord.
Choices
The entire globe is entering into a time of change like we have not seen since WWII. This change is made up of some similar changes and some varied changes.
Some things which are new are actually very old, like aggressive Islam.
Some things which are new are new, like post-Christian paganism, and even barbarism.
Never before has the world seen Christianity wane and paganism wax in every country so quickly.
These changes will force us, even now, to make choices for the present, and for the future.
Some people cannot face the present, and many people do not want to face the future.
But, in reality, all we have is today. The choices we make today determine our futures. Easy.
People may resist cause and effect, but this movement is a reality.
Every day, we as Catholics are faced with many choices which may seem small, but are not.
For example, I stopped twittering because tweeting was an occasion of venial sin for me.
So, I now avoid the near occasion of sin. Someone may say that the good of evangelizing by tweeting is greater than the occasion of venial sin.
I think not. I made a choice.
Simple.
The nuns in Tyburn keep silent. By keeping silence, they do not lie, or gossip, or waste time talking trivia.
All sins are avoided by one, simple rule of St. Benedict. Like not tweeting, I have omitted the possibility of these sins in my life through twitter. My betters can tweet without sinning.
We can all make choices daily which help us to become saints, slowly but surely.
I shall always choose to avoid venial sin, if I can.
What choices can you make today to clear the way of sin and the tendency to sin?
The Enemies Within
If history was still being taught, the Gen-Exers and Millennials would know that those who persecuted Catholics to death in England in the 15th and 16th centuries were men and women who had been Catholics and became Anglicans or Puritans, or whose parents and grandparents had fallen away, quickly.
Wake up, readers. You will be dragged to court not merely by the secularists and the practical atheists, but by those who sit next to you in church,and those who go to prayer meetings in your neighbourhood.
Complicity with evil is compromise and that starts with daily compromises, such as contraception, supporting abortion, supporting ssm, and so on.
I can make a list of some Catholics who are so disobedient regarding private revelations and doctrines, that I can imagine them cooperating with out and out persecution of the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.
Disobedience leads to errors of discernment. A compromise in a small area leads to a softening of conscience.
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