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Tuesday 28 October 2014

The Protestant Mind-Set in The Synod

Years ago, an excellent teacher of mine, now an ancient priest far, far away in the islands of Oceania, explained a difference to the class as to the Catholic and the Protestant mind-set regarding doctrine.

Father drew a line on the board. Then, he explained that the horizontal line was the ideal of doctrine as taught by Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Second Person in the Blessed Trinity. Father said that the Catholic Church expected each member to reach this ideal, which was made up of the Teachings of the Magisterium, and to become holy. In other words, all Catholics were called to be saints, to transcend the ordinary expectations of daily life for the heroic life of the virtues.

Then, Father drew another line under the first one and he called this line "reality". He said that the Protestants looked at what people were actually doing and believing and determined teaching from that reality, which included sin and imperfections.

In other words, the human expectation for holiness had been dropped for the acceptance of the status quo.

Father noted that Protestants did not believe in saintliness, in transcending the daily hum-drum of life, but accepted less than what God had taught. Therefore, the doctrines of the Protestant congregations were being, as he spoke to us, changed, lessened, meeting the lowest common denominator.

A few years after this talk, all but two of the Lutheran synods accepted abortion. A few years later, homosexuality was no longer seen as an aberration, but as an acceptable difference. When Humanae Vitae was promulgated, many Catholics fell into this Protestant mind-set, declaring that it was too hard to follow the Church's teaching against contraception. Those Catholics forgot about grace.

What we saw last week in the synod was the ugly head of Protestantism. In fake language invoking tolerance, soft love, as opposed to hard love, and the horrible use of the term "pastoral", as if there was an opposition between doctrinal and pastoral truth, which there is not, some bishops and cardinals revealed that they were thinking and believing like Protestants.

Catholicism is like a diamond, hard, brilliant, expensive. The truth cannot be bought with cheap grace.

Too many of our leaders, especially those from the States, but not exclusively, believe in cheap grace. They want to dumb-down Catholicism and make the Church one more Protestant denomination.

Some will succeed in protestantizing their dioceses. Some will fight for the truth. The Church will never be the same, but enter into a period of chaos and purging.

Make sure you are on the right side of this battle. Make sure you teach yourself the truths of the faith so that you will not be swayed into accepting rebellious, Protestant thinking.

We all have to make choices. I, for one, choose Christ and His Church, not a man-made construct, not Protestantism.

I shall strive to meet the high bar, knowing that with the grace of God, I can become a saint. That is my calling and your calling. Anything less is a lie. Anything less insults the Trinity and blasphemes Christ on the Cross. Remember that some of the Sanhedrin taunted Christ while He was sacrificing Himself for the Church. This cry was heard last week in Rome-without the Cross there is no salvation, no Church.

Mark 15:30 Douay-Rheims

Save thyself, coming down from the cross.

Great News!

A priest shared with me recently that a woman came up to him in tears. She said, "Father, help me..I want to become a Catholic."

The priest replied that there was no need to cry about becoming a Catholic. She said, "But, I am crying tears of joy because I have finally found the Truth."

How wonderful. How moving.

Please pray for a dear friend of mine with whom I have had discussions on Catholicism. Her stumbling block is the Eucharist, as she was raised to see the Adoration of the Host as idolatry.

She is a step away, but this is the blockage. Please join me in prayer for this good woman.

Hello to Readers in Canada


Hello to Readers in Austria



I have happy memories of Vienna.

We need more

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/10/28/Pope-Blesses-Work-of-Exorcists

Another Blog Poem by Supertradmum-The Fire and The Rose Are One

The Fire and The Rose are One

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one. T.S. Eliot from Little Gidding


Sitting in darkness, alone with my heart pierced in love
unknown, unwanted, at the time of a full moon, sailing
in clouds above this Middle-Sea, no noise, but the sense 
of a Man lying on rock, on the stones of Gethsemane, 
praying, then rising and joining in another's prayer.

The dark room fills with fire, flames moving in and out
of a giant heart, the Heart of God, taking me in, like a 
child in papoose, in swaddling clothes, or a moth caught in flame.
These flames do not burn outwardly, but inwardly cause
a newness, a rebirth in tears and wonder. The flames surrounding

me sustain, create a cell of protection, of deep privacy, of
a sad knowledge that pain is the only way to Truth. Heart of God
encircles me as I weep in abnegation, in nothingness, truth, as I
was taken back to Gethsemane, in the dark, dark of this Night.
No comfort but love, no sense, but calm resignation on the shores

of the wind-swept sea. And, again, another taking-in, another shelter
of love, of wonder, of mystery, into the Rose of the World, a rose
so large I stand in it, the petals changing colors, from blue, to red, to 
white, and to blue again. Resting in the rose, a voice comes telling
me to join in the rest of the Rose. And, so the great bard has been

proven correct, the fire and the rose are one, but one is pain and the 
other rest, a restful, quiet, endless prayer of praise and worship. I walk
in the rose, in the flame, unseen by others, unknown except to me and
the One Who calls and creates the fire, the rose, the endless rest which 
only my pettiness can disturb. One wills nothing, wants nothing, knows

little but the mystery of the Rose of the World, but not of this world.
This rose is here and in England, as the poet wrote, where the heart is
as well, as I wait for the answers to the mysteries of flame, of sparks
reaching up engulfing anyone who cares to come to love. The poet
writes of the longest river, my river, but now I have transferred my

love to this blue, grey, purple, silver sea, which heals my body and 
my soul. But, all waters are one, all are connected in spirit and in truth,
in the water which makes us new, if we so desire it. So now, like a 
body coming out of a slow convalescence, I wait for great strength.
The throbbing Heart and the floating Rose protect me while I wait.

The rose remains blue, as I am not worthy of white, and red is the 
fullness of love, while blue is the waiting, the wondering, the reaching
for what seems unattainable, I, like the small yellow butterfly fighting
the wind to reach oleander or bougainvillea. They have other names
for such here, but no matter, the butterfly knows the essence of the bloom.

But, I must leave and wander, no longer in, or with, or known, but like
a shadow walking among men who cannot imagine that the flames
and the petals join in some unseen dance of joy. A shadow in flame,
a shadow in soft blue, hearing the Woman who alone dwells in the
heart of the rose. Rosa Mystica, we prayed after Mass today, the 

one who waits as well for the time of illumination, the time when 
all sin ends, laughed away in tears of relief and sorrow, laughed away
because one sees, finally, the foolishness of self. We shall not cease from 
exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.



.

A Dying Church? I Don't Think So

I have noticed a severe drop in the numbers of people at daily Mass this visit to Malta. I first came here in 2011, and some of the Masses in Valletta were full. Now, the numbers seem to be halved.

This is also true in Sliema. The age of the typical daily Mass-goer seems to be between 50-90. I do see students and young tourists at daily Mass, however, but they are not Maltese. Some are English.

Many pundits state that the aging Church in Europe indicates a dying Church. The Church will never die.

Numbers have never meant anything to me, knowing as a teacher that a class of 25 means nothing in comparison to a class of 20, as the same percentage of students would work and succeed. In fact, the smaller classes always had higher success rates, as one could give attention to the few.

God is giving more attention to the few. He is calling forth a strong remnant. This remnant will be those who are not sinning mortally and who daily call out to Him in prayer and petition. Again, for newer readers, I have many posts on the remnant-just follow the tags.

If the Church is getting smaller in numbers, this only means that God is weeding the members of the Church. Already, the separation of the sheep and goats is happening.

I am not one of these people who think we need ministries which chase after those who have decided to use birth-control, marry outside the Church and prefer the modern culture to a Catholic one. We should pray and do penance for those who have fallen away. But, converts keep the Church alive.

I speak to those who need meat, not milk. And, this is the time for fortifying one's body, mind, soul, memory, imagination and will.

This is the time for the remnant to get serious about being saints now.

Boot camp time is rapidly coming to an end and we shall all be thrown into the various fields of battle. Some of us have been sent before the rest, alone, doing reconnaissance, mapping out enemy territory.

The Church is not dying but getting leaner and meaner. I wrote about this fact in 2007, a year which seems a long time ago to me, when I was still involved in teaching, in academia, in working with students, and helping to form minds for the coming battles.

That year, the year I started the blog, I began to see with the help of a particularly bright student, who is now a lawyer, that the Catholics needed to get down and dirty about the Faith on line. We needed to get on a spiritual regimen preparing us for the time of martyrs, which I had taught my students as early as 2002, was coming and coming fast upon that generation.

The Church will witness formal schism and formal heresy. But, it will not happen as the sedes and pseudo-sedes predict. Some dioceses, as the Church has witnessed before, will slide off into public error. I have said for a very long time that we shall see, or at least my younger readers will see, an American Catholic Church, separate from Rome.

Dying? No. Regrouping and become strong, yes.

Catholicism is not a numbers game. Catholicism is the way to get to heaven, The Church was instituted by Christ and will be here when He returns to judge the living and the dead.

The Church will survive, but will you be part of Her sheepfold?

I hope so.


Amen!

http://www.churchmilitant.tv/scripts/vort-2014-10-27.pdf

One of my reasons for this blog has been to help teach the laity to be saints. As I wrote a few days ago, we are in the Age of the Laity for one reason-the weakness of the clergy.

Now, everything which Michael talks about above, in this pdf of his most recent video, I experienced in college when I did my theology degree. The rot had taken over almost every instructor and class in the department-and my education at that time was from 1967-1971.

Thankfully, God intervened and began to sort out the bad ideas I had learned, the Protestant theology, especially with regards to Scripture, and the abysmal lack of Thomism I endured working on my philosophy degree.

It took me years to learn, mostly on my own, what I should have learned in college and did not, and in fact I had experienced learning the opposite.

Lay people, stop moaning, and take charge of you own faith walk. This blog is dedicated to make you all think like real Catholics. For those who have been reading my stuff since 2007, you know this well.

Michael Voris has tons of good stuff on his website for you to fill in the gaps of your own education

Stop sending your children to wishy-washy Catholic schools

And, pray for seminarians, who are still, especially in the States, as well as places in Europe, being taught heresy. Pray that these men are not corrupted.

Read the above pdf and know why those of us who are lay must be strong. And copy my articles from this blog now, as one never knows the day or the hour when we sharers of the Truth will be silenced.

On St. Jude for Our Times

Has anyone wondered why St. Jude has been given by God such great powers of intercession? Out of all the thousands of saints, why is it that so many people ask Jude for help and get it?

Various sources have St. Jude preaching in Judea, Samaria, Idumea, Syria, Mesopotamia, Libya, Persia, and Armenia. 

I think the key to his role as intercessor is not just a long tradition of answered prayers, but the fact that Jude writes to a Church under persecution in his epistle.


Let me highlight some of the text for a hint to his power of intercession. Note that he is the brother of James the Lesser, and therefore, like James, a cousin of Jesus through Mary's relations.


The first hint we have of persecution is the word "contend", which means to struggle or assert strongly. The second hint of real trouble in the Church is his reference to "ungodly men" who were known for a long time to have infiltrated the Church and are enemies of God.


This sounds like a news bulletin from Michael Voris last week from Rome.


Jude reminds his audience that men will be judged by Christ, just as the fallen angels have been. Jude clearly refers to the fact that some people are in hell. His list of sins reveals serious mortal evils, such as impurity and blasphemy.


Then, we see the mysterious, Jewish story of how St. Michael fought with the devil over Moses after Moses died because of the prophet's sin at Meribah, when Moses in pride and anger struck the Rock of Horeb three times instead of one, disobeying God.


Archangel Michael took Moses' body from satan, from corruption, meaning that Moses was
body and soul in heaven, like Enoch, mentioned in this epistle as well, (and Elijah). The fact that Moses and Elijah are present with Christ at the Transfiguration supports this belief. But, the point of Jude is that there is a spiritual battle going on, constantly in the Church.

Jude lists three types of sin which are present in his congregations-the sin of Cain which is murdering a brother; the sin of Balaam, which is prophesying for money; and the sin of Core, or Korah, a relation of Moses, who with Dathan and Abiram, rebelled against Moses and were swallowed up in the opening of the earth in the book of Numbers. Core is a symbolic person for the sins of murmuring and rebellion against God's anointed leader, Moses, a sin to which Jude refers. Is this not a major sin in today's Catholic Church among the laity-complaining against leaders? And is rebellion not a sin we have seen for seventy years, at least, among the clergy and laity?


Now, Jude is obviously writing to Jewish Christians who would know all these Biblical references.


Continuing, one sees a letter full of warning against these sinners within the Church. The phrase, "admiring people for gain's sake" reminds me of certain prelates in the States who hob-nob with the enemies of Truth.


Jude adds mocking to the list and is not God mocked today in the West and in Rome itself?

Jude reminds his readers that they are saved only through Christ, through repentance, and through residing in faith, hope and love. Note that Jude calls his congregation to perfection, to being pure and spotless, without sin.

This section is not poetry, or exaggeration, but the reality of the necessity of purification and great holiness in the face of persecution and hard times within the Church.

Some persons have been brought back to Christianity, which Jude notes, by being reproved.

Again, we must pray for those in the Church who hate the Truth, and want to make God into their own image and likeness.

That Jude brought the Gospel to such difficult places, that he converted Jews, that he traveled far and wide, and was martyred cruelly, indicates a man with great strength of character and a man of great faith.

As an apostle working in areas where the Church was being torn apart from within, most likely by the growing Gnostic threat, he seems a champion for our time.

His intercession would be powerful as he had to face difficulties and lead people under circumstances of chaos and confusion.

Does this sound familiar?

A man in his situation would be strong, courageous, forthright and would be pure in spirit. His words, although few, indicated someone who is able to face horrific problems and deal with them, as a leader, as a saint.

Such a man who contended with so many problems with his people on earth would be a great intercessor for hopeless cases in heaven.

We should be praying to him for those in Europe and elsewhere within the Church, who are bent on destroying God's work from within.

Jude's power comes out of the fire of persecution.

In addition, I want to point out his few lines of metaphors regarding those who are trying to ruin Christ's Church.

Jude calls them clouds without water, which are carried about by winds, trees of the autumn, unfruitful, twice dead, plucked up by the roots,
Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion; wandering stars, to whom the storm of darkness is reserved for ever.
Clouds without water are sterile and the winds are those of false doctrine, and the sound bites of the times. Unfruitful, trees in autumn may look nice, but are becoming dormant, and some die, a second death, which is a reference to the final judgment and eternal damnation.
To be a raging wave, foaming, means nothing, as the wind pushes the sea, just as false and trendy ideas push so many people, including cardinals and bishops, to rage uselessly against Truth.
Foaming in our language refer to a type of madness, irrationality, stupidity which is animal-like.
Now, the phrase "wandering stars" is a reference to meteors, which burn themselves out in the atmosphere, and become dark, falling to the earth as cold metal. Such are those in the main-stream media, blazing for two weeks, causing alarm and disturbing the peace of so many Catholics, but eventually burning out, falling into eternal darkness, unless they repent.
Hard but clear images from the Apostle of Hopeless Cases. Repeating my call of a few days ago to pray for those cardinals, bishops, and priests who want to re-make God's Church into something worldly, I suggest we pray to Jude, who had to endure the same chaos we know see so clearly in the Church.
Jude's congregations survived, and thrived. His powers of commitment and conversion inspired the Church for over two-thousand years.
Do not be afraid, hope and pray to St. Jude.

Jude 1 Douay-Rheims 
Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James: to them that are beloved in God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called.
Mercy unto you, and peace, and charity be fulfilled.
Dearly beloved, taking all care to write unto you concerning your common salvation, I was under a necessity to write unto you: to beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints.
For certain men are secretly entered in, (who were written of long ago unto this judgment,) ungodly men, turning the grace of our Lord God into riotousness, and denying the only sovereign Ruler, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
I will therefore admonish you, though ye once knew all things, that Jesus, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, did afterwards destroy them that believed not:
And the angels who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day.
As Sodom and Gomorrha, and the neighbouring cities, in like manner, having given themselves to fornication, and going after other flesh, were made an example, suffering the punishment of eternal fire.
In like manner these men also defile the flesh, and despise dominion, and blaspheme majesty.
When Michael the archangel, disputing with the devil, contended about the body of Moses, he durst not bring against him the judgment of railing speech, but said: The Lord command thee.
10 But these men blaspheme whatever things they know not: and what things soever they naturally know, like dumb beasts, in these they are corrupted.
11 Woe unto them, for they have gone in the way of Cain: and after the error of Balaam they have for reward poured out themselves, and have perished in the contradiction of Core.
12 These are spots in their banquets, feasting together without fear, feeding themselves, clouds without water, which are carried about by winds, trees of the autumn, unfruitful, twice dead, plucked up by the roots,
13 Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own confusion; wandering stars, to whom the storm of darkness is reserved for ever.
14 Now of these Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying: Behold, the Lord cometh with thousands of his saints,
15 To execute judgment upon all, and to reprove all the ungodly for all the works of their ungodliness, whereby they have done ungodly, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against God.
16 These are murmurers, full of complaints, walking according to their own desires, and their mouth speaketh proud things, admiring persons for gain's sake.
17 But you, my dearly beloved, be mindful of the words which have been spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ,
18 Who told you, that in the last time there should come mockers, walking according to their own desires in ungodlinesses.
19 These are they, who separate themselves, sensual men, having not the Spirit.
20 But you, my beloved, building yourselves upon your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,
21 Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, unto life everlasting.
22 And some indeed reprove, being judged:
23 But others save, pulling them out of the fire. And on others have mercy, in fear, hating also the spotted garment which is carnal.
24 Now to him who is able to preserve you without sin, and to present you spotless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,
25 To the only God our Saviour through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory and magnificence, empire and power, before all ages, and now, and for all ages of ages. Amen.