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Monday 17 March 2014

Back in Business

I had to deal with a family situation which has turned out well. Whew!

Back to blogging. We have deer mice in the house where I am temporarily staying, and the man who will plug up the holes in this old farmhouse is here.

Nature and humans-a continual struggle.


Good News!

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100264057/a-miracle-oxford-oratorian-who-celebrates-the-old-mass-is-to-be-made-a-bishop/

A new idea two....

It is almost impossible to get real news in the States. One wonders if the five groups (people) which own the five largest media outlets in the world give us the real deal. Of course, the answer is "no".

I wrote several weeks ago on the necessity of discernment. Most Catholics do not discern either the signs of the times, or the reality of mass manipulation.

Blogs may be the last free expression of truth, but trying to find good sources proves to be more and more difficult.

When I was last in Europe, I distinctly felt that the news from some quarters was "fixed', as is most, if not all the news, in this country.

Readers of newspapers here and watchers of the main-stream-media do not get the truth.

Even a popular Catholic TV station does not report the important stuff. Sad.

I put out a feeler yesterday to start a new Catholic newspaper for Great Britain. No one offered to help.

The laity are caught up in the jello state of apathy. I would like help to set up a news website and try my hardest to get real news, which may be almost impossible.

Are there no lay persons interested in helping?

If people fall for falsified sources and for editorials and articles not in keeping with Catholic teaching, they have only themselves to blame for not finding the real deal.


Interesting Two

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10700652/Malaysia-Airline-MH370-911-style-terror-allegations-resurface-in-case-of-lost-plane.html

and

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/03/16/Israel-Prepares-for-Attack-by-Hijacked-Malaysian-Plane

One of my friends pointed out a Lost episode from ten years ago with this same plot. As I do not watch TV, I was interested in her opinion. Either this is a copycat event, or, as she believes, this story is made up for some malicious reason.

And, please pray for Nigeria, as 150 Christians were just killed. The numbers rise. And, our government ignores this genocide. http://www.spyghana.com/massacre-over-150-christians-butchered-in-south-kaduna/

Today's First Reading Is From This Chapter

Daniel 9  DR
1 In the first year of Darius the son of Assuerus of the seed of the Medes, who reigned over the kingdom of the Chaldeans:
The first year of his reign, I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, concerning which the word of the Lord came to Jeremias the prophet, that seventy years should be accomplished of the desolation of Jerusalem.
And I set my face to the Lord my God, to pray and make supplication with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes.
And I prayed to the Lord my God, and I made my confession, and said: I beseech thee, O Lord God, great and terrible, who keepest the covenant, and mercy to them that love thee, and keep thy commandments.
We have sinned, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly, and have revolted: and we have gone aside from thy commandments, and thy judgments.
We have not hearkened to thy servants the prophets, that have spoken in thy name to our kings, to our princes, to our fathers, and to all the people of the land.
To thee, O Lord, justice: but to us confusion of face, as at this day to the men of Juda, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to all Israel to them that are near, and to them that are far off in all the countries whither thou hast driven them, for their iniquities by which they have sinned against thee.
O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face, to our princes, and to our fathers that have sinned.
But to thee, the Lord our God, mercy and forgiveness, for we have departed from thee:
10 And we have not hearkened to the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in his law, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.
11 And all Israel have transgressed thy law, and have turned away from hearing thy voice, and the malediction, and the curse, which is written in the book of Moses the servant of God, is fallen upon us, because we have sinned against him.
12 And he hath confirmed his words which he spoke against us, and against our princes that judged us, that he would bring in upon us a great evil, such as never was under all the heaven, according to that which hath been done in Jerusalem.
13 As it is written in the law of Moses, all this evil is come upon us: and we entreated not thy face, O Lord our God, that we might turn from our iniquities, and think on thy truth.
14 And the Lord hath watched upon the evil, and hath brought it upon us: the Lord our God is just in all his works which he hath done: for we have not hearkened to his voice.
15 And now, O Lord our God, who hast brought forth thy people out of the land of Egypt with a strong hand, and hast made thee a name as at this day: we have sinned, we have committed iniquity,
16 O Lord, against all thy justice: let thy wrath and thy indignation be turned away, I beseech thee, from thy city Jerusalem, and from thy holy mountain. For by reason of our sins, and the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem, and thy people are a reproach to all that are round about us.
17 Now therefore, O our God, hear the supplication of thy servant, and his prayers: and shew thy face upon thy sanctuary which is desolate, for thy own sake.
18 Incline, O my God, thy ear, and hear: open thy eyes, and see our desolation, and the city upon which thy name is called: for it is not for our justifications that we present our prayers before thy face, but for the multitude of thy tender mercies.
19 O Lord, hear: O Lord, be appeased: hearken and do: delay not for thy own sake, O my God: because thy name is invocated upon thy city, and upon thy people.
20 Now while I was yet speaking, and praying, and confessing my sins, and the sins of my people of Israel, and presenting my supplications in the sight of my God, for the holy mountain of my God:
21 As I was yet speaking in prayer, behold the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, flying swiftly touched me at the time of the evening sacrifice.
22 And he instructed me, and spoke to me, and said: O Daniel, I am now come forth to teach thee, and that thou mightest understand.
23 From the beginning of thy prayers the word came forth: and I am come to shew it to thee, because thou art a man of desires: therefore do thou mark the word, and understand the vision.
24 Seventy weeks are shortened upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, that transgression may be finished, and sin may have an end, and iniquity may be abolished; and everlasting justice may be brought; and vision and prophecy may be fulfilled; and the saint of saints may be anointed.
25 Know thou therefore, and take notice: that from the going forth of the word, to build up Jerusalem again, unto Christ the prince, there shall be seven weeks, and sixty-two weeks: and the street shall be built again, and the walls in straitness of times.
26 And after sixty-two weeks Christ shall be slain: and the people that shall deny him shall not be his. And a people with their leader that shall come, shall destroy the city and the sanctuary: and the end thereof shall be waste, and after the end of the war the appointed desolation.
27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many, in one week: and in the half of the week the victim and the sacrifice shall fall: and there shall be in the temple the abomination of desolation: and the desolation shall continue even to the consummation, and to the end

Perfection II: lv

Perfection Nine--Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God Repost




A few days ago, I wrote of the lack of the work ethic. What I did not elaborate in the post was the downside of the Calvinistic idea that if a person is saved, one of the elect, that person is blessed materially in this world. The entire Protestant heritage is imbued with this falsehood, but if pervades the Western world, or more correctly, America, 
Great Britain and Ireland, those countries which inherited Calvin's hatred of poverty and symbol of grievous sin. Now, growing up in an area of the Midwest where Catholics still are and always have been since Columbus, the minority religion, the Calvinist idea of the blessed elect was in the very air. Comments from adults and even skewed 
teaching taught us children that to be poor was not only a great shame on the family, but a curse from God.

Does this sound familiar? How Catholics feel into judging those less fortunate than themselves can only be 
attributed to this encroachment of the Calvinist idea of the material elect. However, I have seen this heresy grow 
as the faith of Calvin dwindles on the fact of the earth. Something else is pushing the agenda that poverty is to be eradicated at all costs and is an evil in and of itself.

Christ never said this. Christ Himself chose poverty and the call to radical holiness in the world demands a certain detachment from the things, and more importantly, the status of this world.

I do not want to hear about suffering! I do not want to hear about the poor!
How many times do the Gospel writers quote Christ and His parables about not preferring the rich man to the poor man. But, the politics of envy contradict Christ. And, the socialist and communist agendas hate both the rich and
the poor. How convenient.



But, what is worse, are the Catholics who hate the poor and do not want to admit such people into their society, homes, conversations. It is as if poverty were some sort of disease, like the measles, which one can catch from a 
poor person. They do not want to hear about poverty.

And, yet, Mary, the Queen of the Universe married a poor man and bore the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity 
in a stable. I am convinced that people really do not believe this, or somehow have brought antiseptics and central heating into the cold, dank and dirty place where Christ was born. I know a couple who are probably the holiest 
people on earth I can call friends. They live in poverty. They never have new clothes and eat the same thing every 
day-cabbage, turnips, fish, potatoes, tea. They have a car which is twenty-two years old and runs because the head of the house is a genius at mechanical things. They rent a house which is partly over a pub and put up with smoke, horrible language and music, until early hours. They always wanted their own house, but now, as they are growing older, they are seeing this may not happen, ever.

And yet, they are content. They go to daily Mass and pray the fifteen decades of the rosary daily. They fast for 
souls and pray for the dead. They do missionary work quietly and consistently. They help those poorer than themselves. For such humans is heaven waiting.

But, they are judged mercilessly by others. They are considered low class, unhealthy, uneducated. They are 
scorned and thought odd. They are judged as having some horrible sin or failure in their lives which must account for their 
lack of financial success. Their fellow Catholics see them with the eyes of Calvinism.

Even their families betray them and think them “too poor and too proud”, that is, taking pride in their poverty. 
This is not true. They have no pride, only a simply humility which shows that they know God and God knows them.

And yet, people prefer others to their company. No one gives them meat to enhance their diet. No one notices that they use firewood and not their central heating. No one notices because the poor are invisible. And, already, I know that some of the readers will be saying, “Why didn't the man do something else besides carpentry? “Why don't they move?” “Why doesn't she get a job? And, why doesn't the family help” Simply because he wants to live near his old mother until she dies and because the building industry is at a stand-still. Because they cannot afford to move, because the woman was ill and whether one believes it or not, people who have been ill, especially with cancer, 
do not get hired. And, some families either do not help or cannot help. It doesn't matter what the reasons are, these good people are very poor. Judge not...


Mother Teresa made the dying of Calcutta visible to the world. No one makes the poor visible, unless there is an underlying, heretical agenda. That the poor remain invisible is the largest sin of the Catholic Church. And, they are 
in our midst, daily. Only, we do not see them. We do not want to see them. Our blindness is our judgement and 
death.

It is not for governments to help the poor, but for the Catholics who can to do so. Such is the call of holiness for 
those who have riches. Such are the words of Christ.

What does it take to give to the poor? It takes humility to see that someone actually has a need that one may not have, and that there is a duty to respond. It takes humility to reach out and be involved with someone different, someone vulnerable, someone outside one's comfort zone, someone who does dress like you or talk like you. One must become “personal” to help the real poor. Throwing money at charities is not what Christ had in mind.

This Lent, I challenge my fellow Catholics not to just see the poor in the desperate third world countries, but to see 
the poor down the street, waiting for the bus, sitting near you in Church at Mass. We shall all be judged on what we saw and what we did not want to see, and therefore ignored. Could it possibly be that God allows poverty for our holiness? Could it be that the poor are always with us for our own benefit so that we come to see Christ in all men 
nd women? The answers are yes and yes.

Perfection Series II: lv

Thursday, 8 March 2012 repost


Perfection Part Seven-Stability


As those who have read my blog now and in years past know, my basic spirituality, as best as I can manage in the lay world, is Benedictine. The balance of work, prayer and study has always touched my heart as a student and as a teacher. The trilogy of such different types of focus have helped me stay focussed on the present moment, the sacrament of the time we have now.

One of the best books I ever read as a young person, was Consider Your Call: A Theology of the Monastic Life 
Today, edited by Daniel Rees. I highly recommend this book for all, to glean something for our daily lives from the riches therein. The other book which actually changed my life is Jean LeClerq's The Love of Learning and the 
Desire for God, which taught me that the innate love to know, to study, to find Truth is a path to God Himself. 
I knew this instinctively, to find one's self placed firmly in the Benedictine spirituality is a gift. I recommend this 
book, especially for scholars.

But, in today's post, I am going to refer to something in the Rule of Benedict, which is not found in the other 
religious orders and which is a must for the laity in today's crazy, mobile world.



We live in the age of mobility. We move to go to college and university, to obtain work, to get married and live with a spouse from, perhaps, even another country rather than our own. We move daily to and from work, Church, 
shopping for necessities and even meeting friends. The fidelity to place has been lost in most of our lives through travelling, choice and even, tragedy. My family came to America from Europe, breaking the stability of place in Luxembourg, Moravia and Bohemia. All my siblings, bar one, and myself included, do not live in the town of our 
birth. As one who moved to England, and also lived in many states for my job and jobs, I moved. But, the 
Benedictine ideal of stability is what I desire and have always desired. That the modern cultures of most countries demand that we move, stability becomes not only a mirage, but an ideal only seen in the lives of previous 
generations.

Now, people did travel, even in ancient times, as we know. Britain was visited by St. Joseph of Arimithea and St. Patrick went to Ireland. The saints of the Middle Ages, positively moved back and forth over the mountains and 
plains of Europe, finally coming to America as missionaries and parents.

The Benedictines are the only order which take an additional vow of stability. Perseverance, even in entering, was a mark of a vocation to St. Benedict. I would like to emphasize that the vow of stability is about “coming home”.


We travellers all know the excitement and joy of moving out of the ordinariness of our daily lives into the new and strange through travel. And, yet, we delight in coming home again. The stability, the symbol of commitment, love 
and rest all reside in the word “home”. For some of us, homes can be denied us through events in our lives outside 
of our control. In today's chaotic economics, one can lose one's home, and become a dweller of apartments, or flats. One can even lose one's entire family through tragedies, such as war and illness, or even sin.

 But, the Benedictine ideal of stability teaches us that to be in a place is the only way to face ourselves and become the person God has called us to be. If we are given gifts, we cannot use our gifts easily, if we are constantly moving about. We may even make bad choices which effect the rest of our lives when we lose our roots.

Rootedness is a sign of spiritual contentment. To be rooted in Christ, is the message of St. Paul, who was called 
to be a missionary, and indeed, some still are called to give up rootedness for such evangelization. Stability of place 
allows for stability of the heart and mind. As in a good marriage, commitment brings depth. In the Benedictine Rule, stability brings life to the inner person. I connect stability with the idea of the Sacrament of the Present Moment. 
If I can concentrate and live in the NOW, I can be stable interiorly. If one has a pattern of life, exteriorly, one can develop this pattern interiorly. How many of us get up at the same time daily without the use of an alarm clock? 
How many of us feel lost if we do not pray and go to daily Mass? These are the marks of a stable heart, even if 
one is in the world of mobility.

The interior life needs stability so that we are not confused or taken up with novelty and change. Stability allows for growth, like the plant in the ground,which grows from roots.

For me, stability, either interiorly or exteriorly, means that I know that God is with me. He is, like Julian of Norwich 
told us, the “still point of the turning world”.

And, the virtues of perfection come with stability. Perseverance in the face of sameness and repetition is a virtue. Suffering, from facing the same trials and even people, brings life. Patience, one of the greatest virtues missing in 
this modern world, comes from waiting and enduring suffering. Like perseverance, it comes only with practice. And, 
the life of the virtues is what God calls all of us to live.

I suggest that Satan is the great mover who wants to keep us moving and not settling down. He knows that novelty 
and confusion cause a weakening of focus and even Faith, Hope and Charity. In Dante's Divine Comedy, so many 
of the souls in hell must keep moving, in a fury of ceaseless, anxious frenzy, as part of the punishment for their sins. If we do not stop moving, we shall never know ourselves, see our sin, wait for God.

St. Benedict's vow is one all the laity should consider, if at all possible. And, if God, through His mysterious plan denies someone stability, one must develop the interior disposition for it, as a missionary would do in a foreign land.

That the missionaries went out in twos or more, was a sign of the need for stability. In company, one can keep schedules for prayer, fasting, charity. Such were those who came to America, such are those who go into the world daily on trains, buses, undergrounds.

Stability=resting in God Alone. Hopefully, we can find others to share in that stability. Such is a real community of grace. Such is holy companionship.

Missing Ireland


Happy St. Pat's Day to my dear friends in Ireland. I especially salute Lynda, David, Margaret, Katherine, Seamus, the good priests at St. Kevin's in Dublin, and all my other friends.

Having been to Cobh, Cork, Dublin, Kerry, and Carnaross for long times, I miss those places. There is an ancient stone which could be connected to the name of Carnaross.  I spent many peaceful hours in St. Kieran's Parish Church.



I was there in February and early March  two years ago. The flowers were beginning to bloom, but the weather was cold. If you want to see my notes on that trip, look at the tag.

God bless Ireland, and I hope to return soon.

Perfection Series II: liv

Reposts from March, 2012


Perfection Part Eleven -Silence


On Perfection continued...

These posts seem to be popular, so I shall do two today. It is Lent, and such meditations may be helpful for some, including myself.


The overlap of the Carmelite, Benedictine and Dominican spiritual ways can be clearly seen in the the call to some silence during the day. Now, as busy lay people, we must create these little shells of silence so that we can hear 
the Voice of God, the small, still Voice. Without silence, one is not in touch with one's own soul or with God.

I have known extremely busy people. Not only are these people busy during the day, but when they come home at night, they have the television on until they go to bed. From the minute they wake up in the morning, when they 
turn on the radio, read the paper, run about doing necessary or unnecessary activities, these Catholics are never 
silent. I would be exhausted without silence.

If I do not have time in the morning and in the evening, at the very least, for reading Scripture, one of the Hours, 
such as Vespers, I cannot act as a serene, human being. Silence gives me grounding for the entire day, and if I practice silence, it can remain within me for the entire day. This is the beauty of silence, it becomes a wellspring of 
life within us, overcoming other noises and confrontations.

Silence breaks down anxiety and fear. The most fearful people I know cannot bear silence. They must keep moving, keep doing, even if they are retired. The rhythm of life which includes silence gives a richness to one's existence 
and keeps one from falling into superficiality.

Why some people are afraid of silence is that they are afraid of suffering. In silence, I see my sins, my failings, my failures. In silence, I face the need for conversion daily. In silence, I meet God, who is All Goodness, All Innocence, 
All Perfection.

Only in Faith can one approach silence, as in silence one meets the God of Mercy and Forgiveness.

I have talked with friends as to how to create more silence in their day. Some want to do so and some want to keep running away from God, which to me, is running away from Love.

Silence is never boring, as some may believe, unless one thinks God is boring. The Infinite is so beyond me, that
only is silence can I meet God.

We are fast approaching Holy Week, when in the Passion of Christ, we see Him keeping silent before both the Sanhedrin and Herod. Christ said little in front of Pilate, but He was calling Pilate to Himself, and was trying to 
make the Roman see. Christ remained silent because He did not need to defend Himself. He is God. He is Man. 
e stood in silence, in Perfection, and those who judged Him unfairly could not see the Silence which stood before them, as they had never met Him in silence. Those who meet God, know Him when they see Him.

Perfection Part Ten-Docility


Reading Garrigou-Lagrange again and again, I am struck with the idea of docility. Now, some of us are made more 
or less docile. As a person with a strong will and strong character, docility is something I have had to learn. Not all 
of us are created the same. The idea of modern psychologically which states in popular terms that we can be all we want to be is simply 
not true in one sense and very true in another. Garrigou-Lagrange insists that docility may be learned or acquired by all, and should be the goal of the saint. In fact, one cannot grow in holiness without docility.

Now, docility is not “wimpiness” or a lack of character. One must have character and person-hood in order to seek spiritual docility. To live in fear, fear of anything or anyone, is no docility. In fact, really craven fear hinders one from coming to trust in Providence, another great theme of Garrigou-Lagrange. Unless one trusts in Providence, one
 cannot grow in docility of spirit.

Perhaps two of the most individual and strong saints, mentioned last week on this blog, SS. Teresa of Avila and Therese, the Little Flower, demonstrated in their autobiographies, that they had powerful, personal characters. They knew who they were, they knew their talents and limitations, they were capable of facing their own lack of perfection and cooperating with grace to attain such perfection.

In my little mini-series on perfection, in which I have tried to make Garrigou-Lagrange more accessible to modern readers, I have found that the simple message of perfection rests in the desire and seeking of docility. Now, for any woman in the modern world who is a feminist, my statement sounds like heresy. In the age of the emerging woman, which is a false idea by the way, as one only has to look at the great saints here mentioned, plus SS. Etheldreda, Gertrude, Brigid, Bridget, Matilda, Hilda, Eanswyth, Catherine of Siena, and so on to see powerful women acting in public spheres in the Church for centuries, women are supposed to be what I call “Bolsheviks”, that is, contradictory and totally independent. Of course, this is a physical, psychological and spiritual impossibility, created to destroy vocations as well as society. The Bolshevik mentality lends itself to splendid and, indeed, painful isolation. Some 
men fall into this mode of being, to the loss of their soul's growth and even salvation, as it is in dying to self that one gains heaven.

Docility requires greater courage than action. One must control one's desires, tongue, plans, in fact, give up control one's own life and trying to control the lives of others. This is also a goal of the Benedictine Rule, which I love so 
much. To be obedient to one's superior is to give up control. To give up control, is to become docile.

Obedience, dying to self, docility. The great spiritual masters, 
such as Garrigou-Lagrange and St. Benedict tell us that this is the 
only way to happiness and holiness.

As Garrigou-Lagrange notes, the ultimate docility is the giving of our soul completely to God. This action is connected to detachment and to listening in contemplation. By the way, without some silence in one's life, one cannot attain either docility or detachment. Silence is the absolute sine qua non of the spiritual life.

Posting an oldie because of a commentator who is deluded

On False Prophets and Supposed Seers

repost from March 20, 2012

I must again repeat another theme while I am here in France and have a little time to post. It has been brought 
to my attention by friends in Ireland and Great Britain that many ladies and some gentlemen have been reading prophecies online on the last days and the Second Coming. Now, most of these so-called seers are harmless, but some are heretics. I have found many doctrinal errors looking briefly at some of the sites to indicate to me that 
most should be avoided. If those people I know would spend their time reading the encyclicals and the CCC, they would be much better off than following false prophets. I wrote about this earlier, in January and I use the same facepalm photo to get my point across. Part of the problem is in this post, on the dumbing down of lay expectations....
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.fr/2012/01/apostolicam-actuositatem-and-dumbing.html

 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. Matthew 24:7

We are warned by Christ not to follow false prophets, and the existence of the Internet makes these people have a much larger audience than one would suspect. While I was in Ireland, I was told of three people who are now supposedly seeing the Blessed Virgin Mary regularly, and these false visions are not even on the Net, which has enough nonsense floating into people's unsuspecting souls. Most of these false prophets are anti-intellectuals, 
who do not have a solid grasp of the Teaching of the Catholic Church. I have already mentioned the causes at this post,http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.fr/2012/01/sometimes-i-prefer-secular-humanism.html

One of the most popular in the British Isles and in Ireland is this website, http://www.thewarningsecondcoming.com/ where just on the section on the Second Coming, I found
 twelve errors, including four doctrinal errors. When I have pointed these out to people, I am told that priests are supporting these statements. I hope not.

Some of the errors fall into these categories: one, that Revelation is still being given by Christ. NO, in the answer, 
as all Revelation ended with the death of the last Apostle, St. John. Anything else is blatantly false and should be suspect. Here is the pertinent section from the CCC on this one point.

Here is part of that section:
66 "The Christian economy, therefore, since it is the new and definitive Covenant, will never pass away; and no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ."28 Yet even if 
Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.
67 Throughout the ages, there have been so-called "private" revelations, some of which have been recognized by 
the authority of the Church. They do not belong, however, to the deposit of faith. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ's definitive Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Guided by the Magisterium of the Church, the sensus fidelium knows how to discern and welcome in these revelations whatever constitutes an authentic call of Christ or his saints to the Church.
Christian faith cannot accept "revelations" that claim to surpass or correct the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment, as is the case in certain non-Christian religions and also in certain recent sects which base themselves 
on such "revelations".


68 By love, God has revealed himself and given himself to man. He has thus provided the definitive, superabundant answer to the questions that man asks himself about the meaning and purpose of his life.
69 God has revealed himself to man by gradually communicating his own mystery in deeds and in words.
70 Beyond the witness to himself that God gives in created things, he manifested himself to our first parents, 
spoke to them and, after the fall, promised them salvation (cf. Gen 3:15) and offered them his covenant.
71 God made an everlasting covenant with Noah and with all living beings (cf. Gen 9:16). It will remain in force as 
long as the world lasts.
72 God chose Abraham and made a covenant with him and his descendants. By the covenant God formed his 
people and revealed his law to them through Moses. Through the prophets, he prepared them to accept the 
salvation destined for all humanity.
73 God has revealed himself fully by sending his own Son, in whom he has established his covenant for ever. 
The Son is his Father's definitive Word; so there will be no further Revelation after him. 


The seer on the website claims the opposite.

Secondly, the false prophet states that there is a thousand years of peace after the Second Coming. NO, the 
Second Coming is the end of time and the judgement of all. Again, one only has to look at the CCC, here linked 
for this information. A few lines from this section are sufficient: 680 Christ the Lord already reigns through the 
Church, but all the things of this world are not yet subjected to him. The triumph of Christ's kingdom will not come about without one last assault by the powers of evil.
681 On Judgment Day at the end of the world, Christ will come in glory to achieve the definitive triumph of good 
over evil which, like the wheat and the tares, have grown up together in the course of history.
682 When he comes at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, the glorious Christ will reveal the secret disposition of hearts and will render to each man according to his works, and according to his acceptance or 
refusal of grace.

Another glaring error is the indication that one can pray for a Seal of some sort, to mark that person as saved. 
NO, we receive seals in Confirmation, completely our Baptism, and some men, who are priests, get an mark of the priesthood. All these are given within the context of the Sacraments. The seer is a Protestant. Again, the CCC can 
be used for enlightenment Again, I share a small segment: 
1304 Like Baptism which it completes, Confirmation is given only once, for it too imprints on the soul an indelible spiritual mark, the "character," which is the sign that Jesus Christ has marked a Christian with 
the seal of his Spirit by clothing him with power from on high so that he may be his witness.121
1305 This "character" perfects the common priesthood of the faithful, received in Baptism, and "the confirmed 
person receives 
the power to profess faith in Christ publicly and as it were 
officially (quasi Ex officio)."122


There are more errors, which I elucidate later if people are 
interested. Another false and dangerous site is http://www.courlisius.org/  which includes many people condemned 
by their local bishops. I would steer clear of all those listed on this site. The lack of Catholic Teaching and Catholic discernment means not only that many of those who read these sites are wasting their time, but that they are led astray into theories of the end times which have nothing to do with reality.

We are warned and we need to keep close to the Church in order to decide what is true and what is false. A person can lose one's immortal soul by following these deceived seers. All these prove that the prideful desire for inside knowledge, instead of the pursuit of the True Faith, leads many people into serious error. I ask priests to clarify such things for those who come to them and even from the pulpit.

And, I am simply tired of hearing the argument, such as those from some of my friends involved in Bayside, 
which has been condemned, that one does not have to obey a liberal bishop on matters of private revelation. Since when?

On The Mundane

I have been looking at luggage. The airlines broke two of my suitcases. One was ripped on the side, and the other had both the bottom ripped, and the place where one places the lock broken off. I shall publicly tell you not to buy Rockport luggage, as after one trip these things happened.

However, looking at replacements has proven to be a difficult task. Most of the luggage on sale at a local shop is not first or second rate, but third.  And, the TSA now has approved locks. Sigh, the days of using old Samsonites from the 1960s seems over.

Simpler days.  I remember flying when customers were wooed by airlines, when customers were treated to comfortable seats with leg room, when customers felt like humans and not sardines in "squeezy jets".

Buying luggage complicated my entire day, as looking at consumer ratings took much longer than I expected. The older brands we knew and loved are no longer the best buys or the sturdy suitcases. I have used Delsey in the past, but the prices of this good brand have skyrocketed-no pun intended.

The best ones listed on surveys and consumer "digests" cost way too much for my very small budget, and the sales seem to be clearances of lines no longer applicable to fitting into the new rules for cabin bags. Some airlines now only accept 10 kgs in the cabin, and 20 kgs in the hold. People must buy stuff at the other end of their journeys.

If I could take a ship back to Europe, I would.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:QV_in_Southampton.JPG