STM
Monday, 19 January 2015
Irish Readers
Is there any Adoration in Dublin? If so, can you tell me the place, day and time? Thank you.
STM
STM
Ireland Knows How To Do Christmas
http://www.whitefriarstreetchurch.ie/christmascrib.html
and
http://clarendonstreet.com/index.php?article=homepage
These two churches still have their cribs up.....good thing, too, as the Christmas Season can go until the Feast of the Presentation, Candlemas, on February 2nd.
and
http://clarendonstreet.com/index.php?article=homepage
These two churches still have their cribs up.....good thing, too, as the Christmas Season can go until the Feast of the Presentation, Candlemas, on February 2nd.
Repost because of a famous blog topic
Thursday, 28 November 2013
How To Create a Peter Pan
Many women with whom I speak have discussed with me the number of men who are not acting like men, but like boys. Many reasons have created this huge group of Peter Pans. Sadly, I know that many women are not able to follow the call of marriage and raising children because of the lack of the Protector Males.
I have many posts on Peter Pans, Protectors and Predators-just follow the tags.
However, I have been thinking about why there are so many Peter Pans.
I can share, after some observation and thought, how to create a Peter Pan.
1) Never allow your sons to learn how to do any work around the house. Do not let them learn how to cook, or use tools, or do garden work.
2) Never allow your male children to endure suffering. Coddle them, feel sorry for them, and give in to their weaknesses.
3) Never make your sons work without pay.
4) Be rude and mean to women, including your wife, if you are the husband. This creates Peter Pans.
5) If you are the mom, treat your sons like your husband instead of like sons. They will never grow up respecting women, which is a sign of a Peter Pan. They will want to marry moms instead of helpmates.
6) Never allow your sons to fail and then to get up and try again.
7) Never allow your sons to do hard things on their own,. Micro-management creates Peter Pans.
8) Let them watch lots of tv and do lots of gaming. Let your sons think that entertainment is more important than work. Peter Pans do not learn to work.
9) Never protect your wife and daughters. If you do, you will be making a Protector Son, instead of a Peter Pan.
10) Always shield your sons from physical pain of any sort. Of course, Peter Pans never learn to deal with physical pain.
Maybe some dads who are readers will not like to do these things and will honestly raise sons to be Protectors.
My female friends and I would be astounded! I am sure that TLM and home schooling parents create Protectors.
What do you think?
The Extinction of Souls Part Two
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.ie/2015/01/the-extinction-of-souls.html
"Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength, but it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it."( Leon Bloy, Auden & Kronenberger, 1966)
The short post yesterday on Leon Bloy's comment about the purposeful extinction of souls needs to be expanded.
The present Pope quoted Bloy in 2013 in his first address to the cardinals.
This quote below pins down the point I make constantly on this blog that there is no middle-state, no neutral state in the world.
Most Westeners play footsy with the world. And, yes, there are ways around this daily compromising attitude.
When Bloy noted that the extinction of souls was the goal of the growing evil of Europe, he knew who was behind the gross materialism evading the Church. Now, American Catholic use the philosophical term of materialism when they should be using the term consumerism.
Consumerism is the heated pursuit of things, the addiction to novelty shopping, and the false needed for status symbols.
Materialism is the philosophical belief that the created universe is all there is--that there is no spiritual world, no heaven, hell, or purgatory, no soul.
The trouble with Europe is that the vast majority of people live like true materialists. But, one cannot. One who lives without any thought of the next life is doomed to a rather horrific surprise.
‘He who does not pray to the Lord prays to the devil.’ When one does not confess Jesus Christ, one confesses the worldliness of the devil.”
Until Catholics wake up and realize that there are no neutral states of life choices, of daily actions and thoughts, these people are in danger of losing eternal life with God.
There is no middle ground in Europe and those who pretend that there is cannot understand what is happening.
In The Woman Who Was Poor, Bloy puts the now-famous words into the mouth of one of the main characters, Clotilde: For there is only one reason for us to be sad,” says Clotilde, “And that is that we are not saints.”
As I walk up and down the streets of Dublin today, going to Mass, doing some chores for myself and a friend, I see thousands of materialists. In McDonald's, where I had a coupon, I met a charming Irish woman who was extremely well-dressed, eating toast and tea. We sat at the same table and had an interesting talk about the Irish.
She shared an intriguing insight. She noted that the time of interest in the Irish "has passed" and that the type of tourists who came for years and years are gone.
She noted that the little house in The Quiet Man was allowed "to be overgrown with weeds" and ruined. She said that the little cabin in Ryan's Daughter was not kept up. The older generation in American who had heard stories from their grandparents and parents would never find that old Ireland again.
"Old Ireland is gone." Voltaire has won here.
I see it and saw it the first time I visited in 2011. The reason for old Ireland disappearing is materialism.
The soul of Ireland has become extinct because of the dying of Catholicism here.
This lovely lady noted that there was a shortage of priests and nuns. She noted that the "elan" of Ireland had vanished. Irish enthusiasm, energy, poise and grace had disappeared.
She noted that now the Irish had become crude and gauche, no longer spiritual--and this from the mouth of a Dubliner.
There is no neutral territory. Like Bloy noted, if one does not worship God, one will worship satan.
I like being here and I have great love for my handful of friends here. But, a cloud hangs over this beautiful country. Like the black breath of Sauron, it seems to be filling the island.
to be continued....
On suffering, again.
What saved us then, what made our real despair still a conditional despair was precisely our suffering. That almost unconscious dignity of the mind saved our minds through the presence of an element which could not be reduced to the absurdity into which everything seemed to be trying to lead us.
I thought I was leaving the Maritains, but the times make me return to one phrase from a later book by Raissa We Have Been Friends Together, which I have.
The above phrase jolted me, jumped out of a page yesterday and gripped my heart. Suffering saves us from despair. This may sound the opposite to what psychologists tell the modern world. The world wants to avoid suffering, but as one sees to clearly today, suffering not only surrounds us, but conditions which will create intense suffering for the remnant have increased the risk of suffering.
How, then, can suffering keep one from despair? When one realizes the dignity of the individual human being, the capacity of humans to create great beauty and culture, the possibilities for love among men and women in a society, even in the darkest of days, one must see that life is not absurd.
Suffering causes one to focus intensely on the spiritual side of man. If one denies the soul, one is denying the very essence of a human being. A human cannot live without a soul and this soul, even in tremendous suffering, is alive because of one reason.
God.
Without God holding the soul, keeping the soul alive in His Providence and care, one dies.
As long as one lives, even in great suffering, and I can attest to this type of suffering, one is given chances for growth in this life. A long time ago, a Jewish-Catholic said to me that without God my life made no sense.
One's life does not make sense without God, and intense suffering brings one back daily to the mystery of God's own suffering, God, the Second Person of the Trinity, whose Passion and Death reveal the greatest love one can imagine.
Last week, I was accused of being a liar four times by a person who does not know me. I realized three things in this unfair, unjust accusation which impacted my life. I pray for him now. He only sees evil and cannot see good anymore. How sad. But, I learned three things in this encounter.
The first was that, as a sinner before God, even though I had not lied, I am not totally innocent, totally pure of sin. Therefore, I deserved, in some strange way, the accusation of evil although I had not committed any evil for which I was being accused. I was peaceful, but firm, calm and clear. However, God allowed this event to occur.
Only Christ could stand before the Sanhedrin, Pilate and Herod as the only completely Pure, Innocent Victim of complete injustice. Only Christ stands before evil without a shadow of sin.
Second, I realized that this is one reason why God wants me and all of us to endure the Dark Night and become pure. How can we stand before those who will persecute us, listening to the words of God, remaining peaceful, even loving, not wanting or even thinking of retaliation unless we are pure of heart?
One cannot respond to evil without anger or revenge unless one is pure of heart.
Third, God allows evil to come into one's life in order to purify us. The dignity of the soul and the human person remains hidden until suffering, which usually brings out the true state of the heart, imagination and soul. One wills, then, to forgive, to pray for one's enemies, to join with Christ on the Cross.
When one's own people turn against a person, one can only think of Christ's rejection by His Own, Beloved People, the Jews.
Raissa's comments draw me back into the mystery of suffering. Indeed, suffering is a crucible, but one in which the soul and mind are purified in order for one to become a saint. One finds the true dignity of being human, which is union with God.
There is no other way.
I think that this is what St. John of the Cross learned when he was imprisoned by his own order for nine months.
In those months, he moved through the two parts of the Dark Night into Illumination and Union.
Suffering opens the heart and mind for grace.
Rant and One-Half
I have done this myself as a blogger--many times, writing about things which could be considered trivial, such as ladies' dress in church.
But, I am astounded at the number of Catholic bloggers who continue to write trivia while the world is edging towards one of the biggest changes since the Fall of the Roman Empire, or the Protestant Revolt.
We are facing, obviously, the complete, final death throes of our civilization.
2015 will be a climatic year.
Already, in the first "barely" three weeks of January, we have seen changes in Europe which we knew would happen and finally did.
We have seen the Swiss ditch the euro and Greece moving towards electing a Marxist who wants Greece to leave the EU.
We have seen huge store chains go out of business in Canada, and the extinction of many small ones.
We are witnessing the disappearance of the middle class not only in America, but in other countries of the West. We see such a huge influx of immigrants into America that the country will not be able to deal with the needs and changes.
We watch television news, which omits serious commentary, while Russia flexes her muscles in Ukraine, making Lithuanians and Polish people nervous.
Yet, all Americans care about, it seems, are the academy awards lists and the Superbowl predictions.
January 2015 looks like 1938. That year, Hitler seized control of the German army and placed his own Nazi friends in high military positions. Romania took away citizenship from the Jews. Japan did not cooperate with America or Great Britain concerning a request on the build up of the Japanese navy. Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and Austria and all the Jews lost university positions. And, all this happened in January and February, 1938. A bit later, the head Cardinal in Austria demanded that all bishops and priests support Hitler. Hassan el Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood, speaking in Cairo, asked for Muslims to form one large community of the Ottoman empire. 8,000 Jews in Italy were sent, under Mussolini, to concentration camps.
What are we seeing? Shelling and war in Ukraine. Terrorist massacres in two European countries, resulting in new and harsher border controls. Threats of massacres in other EU countries. Turkey upbraiding the West, destroying ancient monasteries, and thousands of Syrians dying in a civil war. Fighting continues in the Middle East daily. Almost daily massacres in Nigeria and the burning of churches by the same types of people killing Europeans. We see increasing division in the Catholic Church and the votes for ssm coming up in Ireland and in the courts in the States.
Now, in 1938, there were two leaders pulling the strings-Hitler and Stalin. Now, we have multiple leaders demanding violence, and those who hate the Church undermining the moral teaching, including the denial of natural law. But, we do have one leader wanting war, and hidden leaders pulling the puppet strings of both terrorism and financial ruin. We are also facing something which did not happen in 1938, schism in the Catholic Church.
All we need is one leader to come forward to stop the increasing chaos and soon-to-be anarchy in Europe. All we need is the escalation of war from Russia, and a threat from China and we shall see a Julian Felsenburgh emerge. These events will not take long in coming.
And, so many Catholic bloggers ignore the signs of the times.
But, I am astounded at the number of Catholic bloggers who continue to write trivia while the world is edging towards one of the biggest changes since the Fall of the Roman Empire, or the Protestant Revolt.
We are facing, obviously, the complete, final death throes of our civilization.
2015 will be a climatic year.
Already, in the first "barely" three weeks of January, we have seen changes in Europe which we knew would happen and finally did.
We have seen the Swiss ditch the euro and Greece moving towards electing a Marxist who wants Greece to leave the EU.
We have seen huge store chains go out of business in Canada, and the extinction of many small ones.
We are witnessing the disappearance of the middle class not only in America, but in other countries of the West. We see such a huge influx of immigrants into America that the country will not be able to deal with the needs and changes.
We watch television news, which omits serious commentary, while Russia flexes her muscles in Ukraine, making Lithuanians and Polish people nervous.
Yet, all Americans care about, it seems, are the academy awards lists and the Superbowl predictions.
January 2015 looks like 1938. That year, Hitler seized control of the German army and placed his own Nazi friends in high military positions. Romania took away citizenship from the Jews. Japan did not cooperate with America or Great Britain concerning a request on the build up of the Japanese navy. Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia and Austria and all the Jews lost university positions. And, all this happened in January and February, 1938. A bit later, the head Cardinal in Austria demanded that all bishops and priests support Hitler. Hassan el Banna of the Muslim Brotherhood, speaking in Cairo, asked for Muslims to form one large community of the Ottoman empire. 8,000 Jews in Italy were sent, under Mussolini, to concentration camps.
What are we seeing? Shelling and war in Ukraine. Terrorist massacres in two European countries, resulting in new and harsher border controls. Threats of massacres in other EU countries. Turkey upbraiding the West, destroying ancient monasteries, and thousands of Syrians dying in a civil war. Fighting continues in the Middle East daily. Almost daily massacres in Nigeria and the burning of churches by the same types of people killing Europeans. We see increasing division in the Catholic Church and the votes for ssm coming up in Ireland and in the courts in the States.
Now, in 1938, there were two leaders pulling the strings-Hitler and Stalin. Now, we have multiple leaders demanding violence, and those who hate the Church undermining the moral teaching, including the denial of natural law. But, we do have one leader wanting war, and hidden leaders pulling the puppet strings of both terrorism and financial ruin. We are also facing something which did not happen in 1938, schism in the Catholic Church.
All we need is one leader to come forward to stop the increasing chaos and soon-to-be anarchy in Europe. All we need is the escalation of war from Russia, and a threat from China and we shall see a Julian Felsenburgh emerge. These events will not take long in coming.
And, so many Catholic bloggers ignore the signs of the times.
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