Solemn Vespers for Lætare Sunday (EF) at Saint Mary's, Alexandria, VA, with @InstituteCC. See you there? http://bit.ly/1hwGi4E
Thursday, 27 March 2014
Catholic Amish: Leaving or Leaven?
I have been speaking to some people about what I call the "moat mentality" among lay people of a certain ilk. Too many trads fall into this category. These people want to be "Catholic Amish", forgetting that their call is not to leave the world but be leaven in the world.
Leaving or Leaven?
The Bruderhof movement is a great example of community, but it is based on heretical ideas that the entire world is evil. Of course, this idea is either Manichean or Calvinism (or the modern equivalent-Christian Scientism, which believes that all matter is evil).
Heresies which hold that the world is evil see all matter as fallen and not redeemed by Christ.
Catholics believe in the opposite, that God recreated the world on Calvary.
The confusion is in the term "the world". Yes, the immorality of "the world" leads us astray, but the response of the Catholic is not to leave but to be leaven.
If a group developes a "moat mentality", that group becomes a cult.
This last century witnessed the rise of cults, including Christian cults.
Now, I was in a community for seven years. This was an urban community of 2,000 people. On the whole, the experience proved to be beneficial to my spiritual growth, and especially to developing a life of discipline.
This group was not cultic. However, many cults attracted people of my generation, people who wanted both a spirituality and structure.
Sadly, too many traditional Catholics have become cultic. A cultic group demands that all women dress alike, or that all people pray the same prayers.
Cultic behavior many times encircles a strong personality, such as a strong priest, who is treating his flock like children and not leading them to become adults.
Too many cultic leaders shine in the glow of specialized groupings. This "cult of personality" provides a false security which takes people away from God, away from the Church, and away from their own adult responsibilities.
An adult is one who takes responsibility for his own spiritual life without depending on either a spiritual director or a priest.
To become holy, one must become a responsible, spiritual adult, (a theme of this blog).
If one leaves the mainline Church and becomes cultic, one's soul is in grave danger. One then has a tendency to be more Roman than Rome and more holy than the saints.
None of the saints fell into cultic behavior. Those who were lay people, such as Louis and Zelie Martin, remained in the world as "leaven".
They did not leave the world, but changed it. Such is the call of the lay saint.
Is it hard to stay in the world and be a saint? Yes, but that is our call.
Leaving or Leaven?
The Bruderhof movement is a great example of community, but it is based on heretical ideas that the entire world is evil. Of course, this idea is either Manichean or Calvinism (or the modern equivalent-Christian Scientism, which believes that all matter is evil).
Heresies which hold that the world is evil see all matter as fallen and not redeemed by Christ.
Catholics believe in the opposite, that God recreated the world on Calvary.
The confusion is in the term "the world". Yes, the immorality of "the world" leads us astray, but the response of the Catholic is not to leave but to be leaven.
If a group developes a "moat mentality", that group becomes a cult.
This last century witnessed the rise of cults, including Christian cults.
Now, I was in a community for seven years. This was an urban community of 2,000 people. On the whole, the experience proved to be beneficial to my spiritual growth, and especially to developing a life of discipline.
This group was not cultic. However, many cults attracted people of my generation, people who wanted both a spirituality and structure.
Sadly, too many traditional Catholics have become cultic. A cultic group demands that all women dress alike, or that all people pray the same prayers.
Cultic behavior many times encircles a strong personality, such as a strong priest, who is treating his flock like children and not leading them to become adults.
Too many cultic leaders shine in the glow of specialized groupings. This "cult of personality" provides a false security which takes people away from God, away from the Church, and away from their own adult responsibilities.
An adult is one who takes responsibility for his own spiritual life without depending on either a spiritual director or a priest.
To become holy, one must become a responsible, spiritual adult, (a theme of this blog).
If one leaves the mainline Church and becomes cultic, one's soul is in grave danger. One then has a tendency to be more Roman than Rome and more holy than the saints.
None of the saints fell into cultic behavior. Those who were lay people, such as Louis and Zelie Martin, remained in the world as "leaven".
They did not leave the world, but changed it. Such is the call of the lay saint.
Is it hard to stay in the world and be a saint? Yes, but that is our call.
Looking Ahead
A clever mom asked me advice on what to do if home schooling becomes illegal. Short of immigrating to Greenland, I think one could consider these possibilities.
One, starting a home schooling school, which I tried to do in this area with another mom six years ago. The talk I presented to moms and dads attracted about 130 people. We divided a discussion group into high school and elementary school children and parents. The idea was to have me and others pool resources to have a school based on home schooling, or just classes. Of course, with the tyranny of the Common Core and the fact that the new ACT will reflect the CC, parents may not be able to avoid some rules.
Two, a school may be started easily. I highly suggest looking at the NAPCIS site. I helped start up several grade and high schools from scratch, as well as a college. This is easier than one would think.
Three, setting up a long-distance learning company and include students at home or in home schooling schools which would be legal in some states.
The most important thing, however, is to train your children in the virtues early in order to become saints, now. If the tyranny in the US continues, your children will be taken away from you.
Look at my long series on virtue training and home schooling from last summer.
One, starting a home schooling school, which I tried to do in this area with another mom six years ago. The talk I presented to moms and dads attracted about 130 people. We divided a discussion group into high school and elementary school children and parents. The idea was to have me and others pool resources to have a school based on home schooling, or just classes. Of course, with the tyranny of the Common Core and the fact that the new ACT will reflect the CC, parents may not be able to avoid some rules.
Two, a school may be started easily. I highly suggest looking at the NAPCIS site. I helped start up several grade and high schools from scratch, as well as a college. This is easier than one would think.
Three, setting up a long-distance learning company and include students at home or in home schooling schools which would be legal in some states.
The most important thing, however, is to train your children in the virtues early in order to become saints, now. If the tyranny in the US continues, your children will be taken away from you.
Look at my long series on virtue training and home schooling from last summer.
The Trad Blind Guides
Christ Himself told us we would be persecuted, and the Church has seen this over and over and over.
If you are watching daily news on television, you are being duped. If you are not praying for discernment, you will be deceived. If you are sinning and refuse to repent, you will not have the discernment to see what God is telling all of us.
I hear the laity weekly blaming the priests for abandoning their flocks. What about fathers and lay leaders abandoning their wives and children to the world?
St. Timothy in this short passage warned us.
2 Timothy 3:12
Douay-Rheims
12 And all that will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution.
I cannot convince people who are in denial about the role of the Catholic laity in days to come. All I can do is to teach people how to become holy in order to face these days.
Why are there so many trad Catholics who are refusing to face what is happening across the globe concerning the daily martyrdom of Christians?
Why are Catholics who are traditional sending their children to schools which have adopted Common Core?
You will lose your children to the evil one if you do this. They will be indoctrinated to the point where they will turn against you.
That parents and single people act as though everything in this country is the same scandalizes me.
When times get tough, old people will be tempted to suicide, and young people will capitulate to the new world order.
Yet, talk after Mass is full of trivia, as if the powers of evil have not begun a huge assault.
Wake up, trad Catholics, please.
Your souls and the souls of your children are at stake.
Do you think that merely going to Latin Mass will save you without good works, without working on daily holiness in your families, with your friends?
Do you think that the saying of the rosary will protect your children from brainwashing if you send them to Common Core schools?
Do you think and talk about things and money more than thinking and talking about God and His ways?
Do you think you are going to live in the same world, in the same manner as your parents?
It is the duty of the parent to protect the child, and it is the duty of the laity to try and change society.
But, if people are not admitting the evil is growing and forming a circle around them, they may perish, spiritually.
Pray for those who cannot see, or worse, do not want to see, the signs of the times.
God has warned us in history, in the Scriptures. Any prophet crying "Peace in our days" is false. Anyone not forming children in the way of virtue will be judged harshly by God. Anyone thinking that the forms of religion are enough to save one, is no better than the Sadducees and Pharisees.
Matthew 24
Douay-Rheims
24 And Jesus being come out of the temple, went away. And his disciples came to shew him the buildings of the temple.
2 And he answering, said to them: Do you see all these things? Amen I say to you there shall not be left here a stone upon a stone that shall not be destroyed.
3 And when he was sitting on mount Olivet, the disciples came to him privately, saying: Tell us when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the consummation of the world?
4 And Jesus answering, said to them: Take heed that no man seduce you:
5 For many will come in my name saying, I am Christ: and they will seduce many.
6 And you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that ye be not troubled. For these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be pestilences, and famines, and earthquakes in places:
8 Now all these are the beginnings of sorrows.
9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall put you to death: and you shall be hated by all nations for my name's sake.
10 And then shall many be scandalized: and shall betray one another: and shall hate one another.
11 And many false prophets shall rise, and shall seduce many.
12 And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold.
13 But he that shall persevere to the end, he shall be saved.
14 And this gospel of the kingdom, shall be preached in the whole world, for a testimony to all nations, and then shall the consummation come.
15 When therefore you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth let him understand.
16 Then they that are in Judea, let them flee to the mountains:
17 And he that is on the housetop, let him not come down to take any thing out of his house:
18 And he that is in the field, let him not go back to take his coat.
19 And woe to them that are with child, and that give suck in those days.
20 But pray that your flight be not in the winter, or on the sabbath.
21 For there shall be then great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be.
22 And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened.
23 Then if any man shall say to you: Lo here is Christ, or there, do not believe him.
24 For there shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders, insomuch as to deceive (if possible) even the elect.
25 Behold I have told it to you, beforehand.
26 If therefore they shall say to you: Behold he is in the desert, go ye not out: Behold he is in the closets, believe it not.
27 For as lightning cometh out of the east, and appeareth even into the west: so shall the coming of the Son of man be.
28 Wheresoever the body shall be, there shall the eagles also be gathered together.
29 And immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven shall be moved:
30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all tribes of the earth mourn: and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty.
31 And he shall send his angels with a trumpet, and a great voice: and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the farthest parts of the heavens to the utmost bounds of them.
32 And from the fig tree learn a parable: When the branch thereof is now tender, and the leaves come forth, you know that summer is nigh.
33 So you also, when you shall see all these things, know ye that it is nigh, even at the doors.
34 Amen I say to you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.
35 Heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass.
36 But of that day and hour no one knoweth, not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone.
37 And as in the days of Noe, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
38 For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, even till that day in which Noe entered into the ark,
39 And they knew not till the flood came, and took them all away; so also shall the coming of the Son of man be.
40 Then two shall be in the field: one shall be taken, and one shall be left.
41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill: one shall be taken, and one shall be left.
42 Watch ye therefore, because ye know not what hour your Lord will come.
43 But know this ye, that if the goodman of the house knew at what hour the thief would come, he would certainly watch, and would not suffer his house to be broken open.
44 Wherefore be you also ready, because at what hour you know not the Son of man will come.
45 Who, thinkest thou, is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath appointed over his family, to give them meat in season.
46 Blessed is that servant, whom when his lord shall come he shall find so doing.
47 Amen I say to you, he shall place him over all his goods.
48 But if that evil servant shall say in his heart: My lord is long a coming:
49 And shall begin to strike his fellow servants, and shall eat and drink with drunkards:
50 The lord of that servant shall come in a day that he hopeth not, and at an hour that he knoweth not:
51 And shall separate him, and appoint his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.