Sins Which Cry Out to God for Vengeance

These sins may even be found in the CCC, as noted here before. What many Catholics do not understand is the Justice, Righteousness, Innocence of God, Who is not "hurt", as we sometimes are by sins against us, but "offended" because He is All Good. See my other posts on this.

Today, I am reminded of these sins, as I have been witnessing PDAs (public displays of affection), right here in suburbia, between lesbians, several who live in this neighborhood.

God will not be mocked. He created us and gave us natural law, which is being spurned by those who accept such lifestyles.

I repeat the CCC on these sins:

1867 The catechetical tradition also recalls that there are "sins that cry to heaven": the blood of Abel,¹³⁹ the sin of the Sodomites,¹⁴⁰ the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt,¹⁴¹ the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan,¹⁴² injustice to the wage earner.<sup>14

These are considered the sins which will bring down God's vengeance on all of us.</sup> 

Those people who are violent---look at the news; those people who are sodomites--look in your own areas; those people who are abandoned to poverty, loneliness, even penury--look here; those who receive unjust wages to we can buy cheap goods--look at most of the stores and name brands and what they pay for goods, as opposed to what they charge; slavery, such as sexual abuse of children, (as in Great Britain), sexual slavery of women, slavery of those who are under tyrannies--look at the news.

God will not ignored these sins much longer. Reparation is needed. 

We cannot lose the virtue of being shocked by sin. Complacency deadens the soul. We should be intolerant of our own sin, first, and then not tolerate sin in a society. But, as Fulton J. Sheen stated, intolerance is the only sin most Americans believe in. And, he said and wrote about this two generations ago. God will not be mocked.

http://www.northamericanmartyrs.org/pdf/Plea-for-Intolerance.pdf

Retreat Notes on The Virtues

Father Xavier spoke of the virtues with regard to breaking demonic influences of obsession and oppression.

The virtues on which he concentrated are the cardinal virtues, again defined on this blog in both posts on virtues and posts on the way to perfection.

Father assumed that his audience knew the definitions of these, but he did emphasize some rather than others.

Prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude provide means to counter demonic influences in our lives. Father said plainly that children must be confirmed, and that too many are not being confirmed. These virtues are necessary, not only as natural virtues, according to the ancient Greeks, but as supernatural virtues given as gifts for all confirmed Catholics to use daily.

Father noted that the demons do not want to attack a person who has control over their bodies and their emotions.

There are antecedent appetites which need to be controlled. Father gave the example of people sleeping too much. If one gives into such a pleasure, one is allowing the possibility of demonic  influences over the body. Prudence, which is right reason applied to practice, allows us to be temperate in our lives regarding food, sleep and other things, perhaps connected to the passions which can drive us.

The cardinal virtues inform reason, the intellective appetites, so that we can overcome sin, weaknesses, and demonic influences. Practicing the virtues also gives us confidence in fighting demonic influences. Obviously, if we are slothful, and bombarded by demons of sloth for example, the opposite virtue of temperance would be a necessary practice in our lives. Temperance is won through chastity, fasting, and abstinence, which combat demonic influences. Father emphasized the necessity in spiritual warfare for fighting demons with temperance.

The other virtues, justice, prudence and fortitude, also are necessary in combating evil in our lives.

The importance of battling daily cannot be underestimated. I came away from this retreat realizing that there is little "down time" in the effort to become perfect, to become holy. Father Xavier said to beg God for the virtues and the graces to become holy.

I am begging....And remembering that to overcome even venial sin with the virtues, one should do the opposite of the fault or vice.

One more point which slightly overlapped with my reading of the City of God.

Father said that there are people out there building on purpose the City of Satan. We cannot deny this.
Becoming holy means being a member of the Church Militant.

End of retreat notes....

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.

Raissa's Journal Continued Perfection Series VIII Part XXXIII

The fact that 100,000 Jews have left Paris in the past year, out of 400,000, and many more are seriously considering leaving, reveals the fact that the French government cannot protect its own citizens, many of whom have had families here for over 400 years.

Raissa at the end of 1945, discovered the loss of many of her friends in the Holocaust. She wrote this:

"....speaking of the six million of whom so little is said, we counted very close friends among them: three of the Jacobs--the old mother, his daughter Babet, his son Manu....And Fondane and his sister and the elder brother of our friends Jean an Suzanne Marx...And, as you know, when one can put a name to a few of those who died in Auschwitz, in Belsen, or in Dachau and call up a face among the, the vast sorrow one feels for all the other victims itself assumes a face which haunts you with unspeakable horror and compassion. In spite of all this, God preserves in our souls a weight and stability of peace which I cannot understand; it is thus, no doubt, and much more powerfully still, that he preserved the souls of martyrs against despair." pp. 303-304.

We shall face this again and again as Catholics. Are you getting ready?

The Growing Shadow of Mordor

It is interesting that the prequel game related to the LOTR came out this past September.

Some Catholics and I have been experiencing the long arm of Mordor. Some of us are exhausted by the spiritual warfare coming out of Rome and the final public heads of the enemies coming above the trenches. Those who hate Christ and His Church, who are within the Church, now are obvious.

We call it the Shadow of Mordor.

My energies have been sapped by the level of evil coming out of those leaders, who are schismatic and bringing their flocks to perdition.

Some of my good Catholic friends have felt the shadow of evil falling upon their parishes, neighbourhoods, towns, cities, nations.

The shadow is beginning to cover Malta. When the majority of people turn away from God and His Church and live, as one good layman said today, a life of immorality and selfishness, the shadow is fed. The shadow is being fed by those who do not love Christ or His Church.

This miasma is like a fog of pestilence moving into the churches with great speed and clutching at the heels of the Faithful to bring them down.

Like a plague, this shadow interrupts normal daily life.

A friend of mine shared with me a terrible vision this evening. He saw nations with two classes-the rulers and the slaves, as in the movie The Time Machine, which I wrote about on this blog years ago. The rulers will feed off the slaves. I can believe this type of time may come. The man who shared this with me is holy and sensitive to God's Ways. He feels the pressure of this shadow which I feel as well.

Another holy layman told me last week that he sees shadows on those who are not walking with God, the unbaptized, the unrepentant. He sees a growing number of people in Malta with a shadow on their faces.

I believe God is allowing the forces of evil to come out of this shadow and be more obvious. I had wondered why some people on the bus and in the street  stare at me when I am out. My friend said it was because they see the light in those of us in sanctifying grace and they wonder at this. Light is getting lighter and dark is getting darker. Some are attracted to the light, which is Christ and some are repelled.

I shall have to change my habits and go into my cell more, as the fighting of the enemy is wearing me out. Pray God leads me soon to a community. Like a lone guerrilla soldier, I need a break and am not getting it. I need a pod.

Neither are many of my friends getting rest, those who are isolated, who absolutely need daily Mass and the rosary.

We are the vanguard, and I am warning all of you it will come to this, into your lives.

My entire life has been one of prophetic movements, which God has allowed. What I have experienced privately, the Church has experienced.

As one who loves the Church passionately, I have felt on my own body the whips satan uses against Holy Mother Church.

Grieving over the great ruptures in the unity of Catholicism, which have been there my entire adult life, but which are now obvious. forms part of this suffering.

God will prevail. The Church will remain until Christ comes again.

But, those of us in the remnant may have to learn to live under the shadow of evil, without giving in.

We are a generation like our fathers or grandfathers who fought in WWII. Get ready. The battle is real and it is hard.

Aquinas on The Abolition of Natural Law Part One

Some people have met others who act as though they have no natural law in their hearts, and who act contrary to reason. Let me start with Aquinas again.

Article 6. Whether the law of nature can be abolished from the heart of man?

Objection 1. It would seem that the natural law can be abolished from the heart of man. Because on Romans 2:14, "When the Gentiles who have not the law," etc. a gloss says that "the law of righteousness, which sin had blotted out, is graven on the heart of man when he is restored by grace." But the law of righteousness is the law of nature. Therefore the law of nature can be blotted out.
Objection 2. Further, the law of grace is more efficacious than the law of nature. But the law of grace is blotted out by sin. Much more therefore can the law of nature be blotted out.
Objection 3. Further, that which is established by law is made just. But many things are enacted by men, which are contrary to the law of nature. Therefore the law of nature can be abolished from the heart of man.
On the contrary, Augustine says (Confess. ii): "Thy law is written in the hearts of men, which iniquity itself effaces not." But the law which is written in men's hearts is the natural law. Therefore the natural law cannot be blotted out.
I answer that, As stated above (4,5), there belong to the natural law, first, certain most general precepts, that are known to all; and secondly, certain secondary and more detailed precepts, which are, as it were, conclusions following closely from first principles. As to those general principles, the natural law, in the abstract, can nowise be blotted out from men's hearts. But it is blotted out in the case of a particular action, in so far as reason is hindered from applying the general principle to a particular point of practice, on account of concupiscence or some other passion, as stated above (Question 77, Article 2). But as to the other, i.e. the secondary precepts, the natural law can be blotted out from the human heart, either by evil persuasions, just as in speculative matters errors occur in respect of necessary conclusions; or by vicious customs and corrupt habits, as among some men, theft, and even unnatural vices, as the Apostle states (Romans 1), were not esteemed sinful.
Reply to Objection 1. Sin blots out the law of nature in particular cases, not universally, except perchance in regard to the secondary precepts of the natural law, in the way stated above.
Reply to Objection 2. Although grace is more efficacious than nature, yet nature is more essential to man, and therefore more enduring.
Reply to Objection 3. This argument is true of the secondary precepts of the natural law, against which some legislators have framed certain enactments which are unjust. 

Therefore, we see that natural law cannot be abolished in men unless a person sins. In this case, natural law is blocked, blotted out, by the consistent choosing of evil.

These sections from Aquinas as from

Next, I shall return to Father Chad Ripperger on the nature of insanity...

Mary and The Daughters of Eve

That Satan hates mankind is obvious. He is miserable and will be for all eternity, so he wants as many of God's human creatures to be as miserable as he is.

He also hates God Who Is All Goodness.

And, he hates Mary, the Perfect Mother of God, the Virgo Potens, who has crushed his head with her humility, purity and obedience, all things he lost in his instance of rebellion.

Because Satan hates Mary, the Daughter of God, the Bride of Christ and Mother of God, he hates all daughters, brides, and mothers. One of the reasons why there is so much contraception and abortion aimed at getting rid of girls is because Satan hates women.

Catholic women mold themselves into mini-Marys, trying to imitate the virtues of Mary as much as they possibly can, with the grace and virtues God has given them. But, Satan wants to hold back, and destroy those virtues in women, causing rebellion and the masculinizing of women across the world. Just as men have been feminized through the gay rights movements, so to have women become more masculine.

Mary is our model for complete femininity. She is our model for all feminine virtues.

Satan also shows his hatred for women in our society by destroying protectors. How many women do I know who have no protectors in this world? Many, many, many...

Satan has taken away from men that sense that women and children need protection by creating narcissists and peter pans.

I have written much on this topic.

Mary, especially as Virgo Potens, is our stronghold against the attacks of Satan on our womanhood.

Pray the rosary daily. Honor her. And, Satan will flee from your world. Mary instructs us to be women of the Church Militant as well.

Virgo Potens
Virgin Most Powerful

This illustration bears evident martial features.  Mary's picture is set against a shield, which is surrounded with a panoply of weapons, from bow and arrow to flags and cannons.  Mary holds in her hand a commander's staff; however, the motto around her head refers to Christ.  It says, "I can do everything in Him."  Right and left of Mary's image we read this inscription, "He made powerful things with his arm."

On the lower half of this illustration we find the representations of two powerful typological feminine figures of Mary in the Old Testament.  To the left we have Jael, who killed Sisera, the commander of the Canaanites, hammering and crushing his head with peg and mallet (Judges 5:26).  The woman to the right is Judith decapitating Holofernes (Judith 11:17).

"In your hand are virtue and power"  ( 1 Paral 29).

http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/prayers/virgopotens.html

Mary and Eve

Mary is sometimes called the New Eve.

But, a thought came to me today in my contemplation on sins of envy and pride.

Some theologians claim that Satan fell when he was shown the future and the fact of the Incarnation. Some say he refused to serve God in the Person of Jesus Christ, True God and True Man.

But, what if Satan saw the honor given to the most perfect of creatures made by God, the Immaculate Conception?  What if Satan refused to honor the Theotokos, or even accept his inferiority to her as the brightest angel in the heavens?

What if he was so envious of Our Lady's perfection that he plotted to tempt Eve in retaliation for the most beautiful creature on earth, who he would have to serve, the New Eve, Mary? What if Satan's hatred and temptation of Eve came from his envy and pride?

It is odd that in my short life, I have met priests who do not love Mary. One actually told me "The Church no longer emphasizes Mary." How interesting that years later I found out that these priests who hated Mary were acting homosexuals.

The grave sins of the universe, especially pride and envy, prevent a man from loving Mary.

Satan does not nor ever did love Mary.

Is is possible that he cried out "I will not serve" because he would have served The Woman?

Genesis 3:15 DR

¹⁵ I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.

On The Growing Evil

One of the most obvious things to me being back in America for three months is the obviously raw evil which is bombarding the people here.

I am not referring to the evils of abortion or same-sex marriage, which is growing. I have never seen such an onslaught of satanism as I have seen in the past two months, such as the real satanic chants on the Grammies and the satanist lyrics of the band which sang at the Super Bowl.

Is anyone paying attention? Does anyone care? If anyone is watching these things on their television, that person is allowing the demons of the air in his or her own home.

Get real! So many leaders are into satanism. An exorcist told me years ago that in some cities in the Midwest, the main governmental leaders, including mayors, were into satanist cults.

Get real! Satan gives temporal power. He gives money. He makes agreement with people who want their own kingdoms on earth.

If you are letting your children watch television, you will be responsible to God for any evil which these children encounter.

Many, many home schoolers do not have televisions.

Computer games are also problems. This is so obvious to see-obvious evil-coming from Europe after three years.

The frog in the water..................most people do not see this.

Do not let your own children become hostage in satan's games.

For Parents Who Still May Not Be Listening

I was one line and I saw a pink Ouija board for little girls for sale. I was astounded.
The other things I saw were Harry Potter games and Twilight paraphernalia in a toy section of a drug store near things for little girls, like Hello Kitty stuff.

For over 13 years, there have been warnings, including my own a long time ago in a home schooling magazine. 

Did you know, American Catholics, that Cardinal Ratzinger, now our dear Pope Emeritus, made a statement on Harry Potter books? The report was in Europe, but not here.

“It is good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly.”

Cardinal Ratzinger

Also, the Vatican warned against Twilight and, frankly, I am tired of pointing this evil out to parents who should know better. These tales confuse good and evil. 

Monsignor Franco Perazzolo of the Pontifical Council of Culture, "The theme of vampires in Twilight combines a mixture of excesses that as ever is aimed at young people and gives a heavy esoteric element. It is once again that age-old trick or ideal formula of using extremes to make an impact at the box office. This film is nothing more than a moral vacuum with a deviant message and as such should be of concern."

http://catholicmediareview.blogspot.com/2009/11/vatican-official-slams-twilight-series.html

Please parents, listen to both Fr. Chad Ripperger and Fr. Gabriele Amorth on such topics.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2006/mar/06030104

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2006/mar/06030104

http://www.sensustraditionis.org/


There is nothing which is neutral in the world.

Either something brings us closer to God or something brings us far away from God.

The occult and anything connected to it is not neutral.

Boycott this store to start with....... http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2266493

Another Talk by Father Ripperger

I am highlighting these because of of some conversations which indicated that more people need information on this. I shall say the decades for posting these.

Father Ripperger Again

All of his talks are on line. But, I am merely highlighting some. Father Ripperger is highly balanced and experienced. One must listen to him as an antidote to much of the wrong teaching floating around the international charismatic community. Only priests or lay people on teams which are approved and trained by approved exorcists.

One of the things Father Ripperger refers to is the growing involvement of young people in the occult, especially witchcraft. What I want to stress that one cannot ask for charismatic graces. He says that a lot of people come under demonic influence through charismatic renewal. Especially chasing after apparitions and looking for consolations in prayer are dangerous. He also has a lot to say about Harry Potter.

Spiritual Warfare Conference #2 http://www.sensustraditionis.org/multimedia.html

These media files are Penanceware, which require that you do one of the following: (1) $1.00 via Paypal (http://www.sensustraditionis.org/inde...), (2) offer up a decade of the Rosary, or (3) perform some form of penance for the intentions of Fr. Ripperger (for each individual media file downloaded). The same rule applies if you copy and distribute to friends.

More on evil from the Catholic Encyclopedia

The disorder in the temporal order is due to Original Sin. Adam and Eve started the whole problem of evil in the natural order. We cannot deny this. The world was created in a perfection which was lost by sin and the consequences of sin.

God permits evil for many reasons.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05649a.htm

Evil is threefold, viz., "malum naturæ" (metaphysical evil), "culpæ" (moral), and "paenæ" (physical, the retributive consequence of "malum culpæ") (I, Q. xlviii, a. 5, 6; Q. lxiii, a. 9; De Malo, I, 4). Its existence subserves the perfection of the whole; the universe would be less perfect if it contained no evil. Thus fire could not exist without the corruption of what it consumes; the lion must slay the ass in order to live, and if there were no wrong doing, there would be no sphere for patience and justice (I, Q. xlviii, a. 2). God is said (as in Isaiah 45) to be the author of evil in the sense that the corruption of material objects in nature is ordained by Him, as a means for carrying out the design of the universe; and on the other hand, the evil which exists as a consequence of the breach of Divine laws is in the same sense due to Divine appointment; the universe would be less perfect if its laws could be broken with impunity. Thus evil, in one aspect, i.e. as counter-balancing the deordination of sin, has the nature of good (II, Q. ii, a. 19). But the evil of sin (culpæ), though permitted by God, is in no sense due to him (I, Q. xlix, a. 2).; its cause is the abuse of free will by angels and men (I-II, Q. lxxiii, a. 6; II-II, Q. x, a. 2; I-II, Q. ix, a. 3). It should be observed that the universal perfection to which evil in some form is necessary, is the perfection of this universe, not of any universe: metaphysical evil, that is to say, and indirectly, moral evil as well, is included in the design of the universe which is partially known to us; but we cannot say without denying the Divine omnipotence, that another equally perfect universe could not be created in which evil would have no place.

St. Thomas also provides explanations of what are now generally considered to be the two main difficulties of the subject, viz., the Divine permission of foreseen moral evil, and the question finally arriving thence, why God choose to create anything at all. First, it is asked why God, foreseeing that his creatures would use the gift of free will for their own injury, did not either abstain from creating them, or in some way safeguard their free will from misuse, or else deny them the gift altogether? St. Thomasreplies (C. G., II, xxviii) that God cannot change His mind, since the Divine will is free from the defect of weakness or mutability. Such mutability would, it should be remarked, be a defect in the Divine nature(and therefore impossible), because if God's purpose were made dependent on the foreseen free act of any creature, God would thereby sacrifice His own freedom, and would submit Himself to His creatures, thus abdicating His essential supremacy--a thing which is, of course, utterly inconceivable. Secondly, to the question why God should have chosen to create, when creation was in no way needful for His ownperfection, St. Thomas answers that God's object in creating is Himself; He creates in order to manifest his own goodness, power, and wisdom, and is pleased with that reflection or similitude of Himself in which the goodness of creation consists. God's pleasure is the one supremely perfect motive for action, alike in God Himself and in His creatures; not because of any need, or inherent necessity, in the Divinenature (C. G., I, xxviii; II, xxiii), but because God is the source, centre, and object, of all existence. (I, Q. 65:a. 2; cf. Proverbs 26 and Conc. Vat., can. 1:v; Const. Dogm., 1.) This is accordingly the sufficient reason for the existence of the universe, and even for the suffering which moral evil has introduced into it. God has not made the world primarily for man's good, but for His own pleasure; goodfor man lies in conforming himself to the supreme purpose of creation, and evil in departing from it (C.G., III, xvii, cxliv). It may further be understood from St. Thomas, that in the diversity of metaphysical evil, in which the perfection of the universe as a whole is embodied, God may see a certain similitude of His own threefold unity (cf. I, Q. xii); and again, that by permitting moral evil to exist He has provided a sphere for the manifestation of one aspect of His essential justice (cf. I, Q. lxv, a. 2; and I, Q. xxi, a. 1, 3).

A little bit on evil one

Evil has been defined as both the opposition of good and the absence of good. The common understanding of evil is that it is a negation of good, or the absence of good. For example, if there is a tornado, the odd weather patterns, out of the control of humans, must be accepted as part of a larger scheme of Nature, causing evil, not necessarily by the design of a malevolent force, such as the devil, but as the permissive will of God, or even, in the long run, the perfect will of God. We do not understand our own part in the history of evil. We cannot understand the death of a young soldier walking on a sunny street in London today by two crazed Muslims anymore than we can understand the death of the children in Moore. Such evils are beyond rational explanation, and even scientific examination.

Nature, as created by God, is objective and not subjective. A tornado is however, subjectively evil, as it kills and destroys people and things dear to people, but not in the same way which abortion or homosexual relations are objectively evil. Intrinsic evil must involve a decision. If there were no houses and merely the plains of Oklahoma to meet the tornado's power, we would not even think of it as evil.

Who decides tornadoes? Nature works as it was created to be, by forces, mostly beyond human control.

People who create evil choose that evil for many reasons. Ideology is merely one. Selfishness and pride are the most common reasons for evil.

God in His discussion with Satan in the Book of Job allows evils, even the death of children, to afflict Job. The story teaches us many things, but one is that we cannot understand God or His Ways. We simply cannot.

However, evil is something which is obviously growing around us.

That there is a lack of perfection in the world of Nature and in our own natures seems too obvious to mention, and yet, people ask constantly, "Why does God allow this?"

Perhaps we are entering into a time of great trial because of the great sins of nations, like the passing of the SSM bill here yesterday, or the ideology of Islam. Those are human constructs and it is much easier to understand the evil perpetrated by humans than those objective and remote natural evils, such as drought or flooding.

It is important not to think that evil is inherent in nature. God is in control of Nature. It is one of His creations, like animals and plants.  There is a scheme of things in God's Plans which we cannot see, being finite. One can say, with Augustine, that evil may be used by God for punishment and trial and, indeed, that is so. Therefore, even catastrophes are in a mysterious plan, which we cannot comprehend, but accept in humility and patience.

Human evil based on free will choices and here is the Catholic Encyclopedia on three aspects concerning evil. When trying to deal with evil, we must consider

• the omnipotence, omniscience, and absolute goodness of the Creator;
• the freedom of the will; and
• that suffering is the penal consequence of wilful disobedience to the law of God.

And more

There is therefore no "summum malum", or positive source of evil, corresponding to the "summum bonum", which is God (I, Q. xlix, a. 3; C. G., III, 15; DeMalo, I, 1); evil being not "ens reale" but only "ens rationis"--i.e. it exists not as an objective fact, but as a subjective conception; things are evil not in themselves, but by reason of their relation to other things, or persons. All realities (entia) are in themselves good; they produce bad results only incidentally; and consequently the ultimate cause of evil if fundamentally good, as well as the objects in which evil is found (I, Q. xlix; cf. I, Q. v, 3; De Malo, I, 3). Thus the Manichaean dualism has no foundation in reason.

To be continued...

Too much evil

The horrific murder and beheading of a young soldier in broad daylight by Islamic terrorists and the beheading of his body, all happening in Woolwich on the street, has created a nervous nation here. Sadly, the vote for SSM was passed last night and has very little coverage. The Queen only has to sign it into law.