Heresy Is The Sin of Sins

Are you saying "no" to the Church in any way, large or small? Do you mock or have pride concerning a teaching of the Church? Are you totally faithful to the Magisterium?

If not, you are in rebellion and unorthodox, and your immortal soul is in danger.

If you are not a devout, orthodox, obedient Catholic, you cannot commit the big sins. But, if you depart from Church teaching in ANY way, then you will be open to great temptation and mortal sin.

Think about this.

Here is the Merriam-Webster definition:

her·e·sy

 noun \ˈher-ə-sē, ˈhe-rə-\

: a belief or opinion that does not agree with the official belief or opinion of a particular religion

plural her·e·sies

Full Definition of HERESY

1

a :  adherence to a religious opinion contrary to church dogma

b :  denial of a revealed truth by a baptized member of the Roman Catholic Church

c :  an opinion or doctrine contrary to church dogma

2

a :  dissent or deviation from a dominant theory, opinion, or practice

b :  an opinion, doctrine, or practice contrary to the truth or to generally accepted beliefs or standards

Salvation Within A Context

When my son was a child, one of his favorite stories was Rip Van Winkle. Rip falls asleep after drinking magic ale with the "ghosts" of the crew of Henry Hudson's ship, the Half-Moon. When he wakes up twenty years later, he is in a very different world.  He slept through the American Revolution and the election of General Washington as the first president.

Almost daily, I meet Catholics and other Americans, who like Rip, are sleeping. They fell asleep 20 years ago, in 1994, and have not awakened yet to the era of persecution of Catholics, the seemingly triumph of evil in our country, the loss of international prestige for America, the apostasy of bishops and cardinals, the loss of religious liberties, the continued slaughter of unborn children, the financial distress of many middle-class families, and the warring countries of the world which seem to proliferate daily.

I know people who have buried themselves in the 1990s. They do not want to face reality. But, God demands that we face reality. We are saved within a context.

From all eternity, God planned, in His Divine Providence, that we shall live in a particular time, and in a particular place. Salvation is worked out daily in our families, or at work. And, most importantly, we are all given particular graces to live in our time and place.

One of my favorite quotations from literature is from Tolkien:

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” 
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Gandalf is a realist. He is a warrior sent for the times and places in the story. We are warriors, the members of the Church Militant, sent by God, created by Him, for a certain time and place.

Accept this, work for these times and places, ask for more grace. God is there, as He always has been, thinking of you from and for all eternity.

Bishops And The Party of Death

Why Do Trads Trust The Media?

One of the most serious problems among Catholic Traditionals in America is that they read either the wrong sources, or do not understand the media at all. I want to make a few points on the recent problems again with reports from the, mostly, Italian, media concerning statements from the Pope.

Here are my bullets for consideration:

• Not all popes are scholars or saints. Some are more spontaneous and less reflective.
• The Italian media, even the official Vatican newspaper, has been infiltrated by Marxists and even atheists for years and years and years.
• Americans never read foreign newspapers as they are so provincial and do not go to the sources. This is a serious problem among trads who naively trust American news sources, which are also anti-Rome.
• Trad newspapers also have agendas. Some are uncharitable, incorrect, and do not check their sources. Some publish knee-jerk articles.
• This Pope has made no doctrinal statements and has only published one encyclical. He has, therefore, only one infallible document, which is that encyclical, as all encyclicals are infallible.
• This Pope is not European and is not part of the European in-crowd, many of whom are not happy with a New World Pope.
• Trads who say he is not a real Pope have excommunicated themselves as sedevacantinists. 
• One does not have to LIKE every Pope. The Church has been blessed with saintly men as popes for over a hundred years. This pope may become a saint in office, so pray for him.
• The world-wide media hates the Catholic Church so much all statements, photo-ops etc. are ammo. So? What is new? The media hated the Pope Emeritus as well, and St. John Paul II.
• One must not accept disinformation from any source. There is no such thing as a completely objective newspaper or TV presenter. In fact, some trads listen daily to presenters who absolutely hate Catholics. Pay attention, pray, reflect.

From SPUC

3 Whitacre Mews, Stannary Street London, SE11 4AB, United Kingdom Telephone: (020) 7091 7091 Email: information@spuc.org.uk http://www.spuc.org.uk
A moving account why Lord Falconer's assisted suicide bill is wrong
JOHN SMEATON, SPUC DIRECTOR Friday, 18 July 2014 A moving account why Lord Falconer's assisted suicide bill is wrong Matthew Schellhorn, a highly-regarded classical pianist, has kindly given me permission to reproduce below his moving account of his late mother's terminal illness and his insightful arguments against Lord Falconer's assisted suicide bill, beingdebated at Second Reading today: Living life to the full When my mum was diagnosed with late-stage cancer she turned to me and said, ‘We will get through it.’ At the time, I did not know what that could possibly mean. Looking after my mum disrupted my normal life. Being her carer took away my time. It made me lose interest in music and endangered professional opportunities. It also dragged my pregnant wife and young son into a world of commodes, hoists, medication and round-the-clock worry. But amidst the difficulties we all built our motivation on one solid belief, that life was something precious, something to be celebrated, cherished and affirmed. As mum’s health declined and the opportunities for ‘normal life’ decreased, the possibilities expanded. We lived the paradox that when there are limits to life the freedom is greater. Mum also knew that positive experiences would sustain the bereaved left behind: that further altruism also gave her life some meaning. I am so glad I did not have to discuss the Assisted Dying Bill with my terminally ill mother. I think that if my mum had lived to know about this Bill it might well have destroyed all our happy experiences. I think she would have been terrified to know that the same doctors so keen to see her enjoying life, even in a limited way, might be perfectly willing to help her to end her life, should she have so chosen. It would have destroyed the relationship of trust to know that there were no boundaries between healthcare professionals and patients. And it would have demoralised her carers, who together worked towards making life comfortable, to think that their efforts might be considered futile. It would also have increased my mother’s vulnerability. As she lay in bed for 23 hours a day in our living room I knew she was already self-conscious about the enormous strain put on us. Numerous times she took decisions about routine and food that she presumed would alleviate any difficulties in our family life. The sanctioning of that inclination, the condoning of any despair, might well tip the balance in favour of a fatal outcome ahead of further positive experiences. As I tried enormously hard to remove all suggestion that her presence was an unwelcome burden, there could have been an altogether more powerful tacit force undermining me. Although it has made for uncomfortable reading, I have considered the arguments in favour of this Bill. Lord Carey and Desmond Tutu have given their reasons why it is ‘compassionate’ to provide an exit door to the terminally ill ahead of their natural demise. The Care Minister, Norman Lamb, thinks people should be able ‘to make their own decision about their life’. These ways of thinking contradict established medical ethics and fly in the face of all logic. The life of a physically sick person is worth as much as a physically healthy person. Importantly, the person in question gains happiness from experiencing that truth. Now that the dust has settled, I see we ‘got through’ terminal illness, each in our own way. That is why I oppose this Bill. Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk

Hey, Guess What?

Everything the Catholic Church teaches is true!

We shall be judged on junk

In the past eight months, I have been in many American houses. One thing which has struck me here, coming from being in Europe for three years, is the amount of "stuff" people collect in their houses. Most of those people lived through the depression and are afraid to not have things. Some are afraid of death, and think that things will keep them from facing the inevitable. Some  find solace in things because they were poor as children.

Attics, basements, spare rooms, and even living spaces are full of small decorations, too many dishes and glasses, nick-nacks and even too much art.

Americans seem to want to collect stuff beyond what they need and beyond what is attractive.

We shall be judged on junk

Millions of people in the world and in the USA go to sleep hungry daily and Americans still buy nonsense daily.

I do not want to be judged on how much stuff I bought and did not use, or bought and stuffed in closets and attics.

God forgive us for greed, for that is the sin behind stuff.

William Morris, in The Beauty of Life (1880) said, "If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Sources indicate two things

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/07/photo-pro-russian-buk-missile-system-under-camo-on-street-in-ukraine/

http://news.sky.com/story/1302864/malaysian-plane-shot-down-with-295-on-board

First is that rebels have the missal capacity to do this horrible act; and the second is that sources are stating terrorists with guns are hindering the crash scene.

News Again

If you want real news on the recent horrible plane crash today, most likely shot down by separatists, watch EU news, not American. American coverage is worthless.


http://www.france24.com/en/


http://news.sky.com/story/1302864/malaysian-plane-shot-down-with-295-on-board

News

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_UKRAINE_PLANE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-07-17-12-00-29

http://news.sky.com/story/1302864/malaysian-plane-shot-down-with-295-on-board

Please Continue Your Prayers

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2014/07/thom-peters-progress-1-year-after-his-life-changing-accident/

Note on Calls

I am presently living in a place where my cell phone is not working consistently, and where the voicemail number does not work at all.

I can be reached by email. I am not covered on any of these maps.

http://opensignal.com/network-coverage-maps/

Thanks, STM

Stone Soup

This is a story I grew up with at home....

Some travellers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty cooking pot. Upon their arrival, the villagers are unwilling to share any of their food stores with the hungry travellers. Then the travellers go to a stream and fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travellers answer that they are making "stone soup", which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavour, which they are missing. The villager does not mind parting with a few carrots to help them out, so that gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travellers again mention their stone soup which has not reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit ofseasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all.

In the Portuguese tradition, the traveller is a monk and the story takes place around Almeirim, Portugal. Nowadays many restaurants in Almeirim serve stone soup, orsopa de pedra. Almeirim is considered the capital of stone soup.^{[citation needed]}

In the French and Hungarian versions of the tale, the travellers are soldiers: three returning home from the Napoleonic Wars play the role in the former, and a single, starving one, who encounters several hardships on his journey back to his homeland, is depicted in the latter.

The story is most commonly known as nail soup in Scandinavian and Northern European countries. In these versions, the main character is typically a tramp looking for food and lodgings, who convinces an old woman that he will make nail soup for the both of them if she would just add a few ingredients for the garnish. In Eastern Europe the variation of the story (having more in common with the Northern European rendition) is called axe soup, with an axe being the catalyst. In Russian tradition a soldier eats axe kasha (Каша из топора).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup

Read The Whole Thing--Spe Salvi

ENCYCLICAL LETTER SPE SALVI OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF BENEDICT XVI TO THE BISHOPS PRIESTS AND DEACONS MEN AND WOMEN RELIGIOUS AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL ON CHRISTIAN HOPE Introduction 1. “SPE SALVI facti sumus”—in hope we were saved, says Saint Paul to the Romans, and likewise to us (Rom 8:24). According to the Christian faith, “redemption”—salvation—is not simply a given. Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey. Now the question immediately arises: what sort of hope could ever justify the statement that, on the basis of that hope and simply because it exists, we are redeemed? And what sort of certainty is involved here? Faith is Hope 2. Before turning our attention to these timely questions, we must listen a little more closely to the Bible's testimony on hope. “Hope”, in fact, is a key word in Biblical faith—so much so that in several passages the words “faith” and “hope” seem interchangeable. Thus the Letter to the Hebrews closely links the “fullness of faith” (10:22) to “the confession of our hope without wavering” (10:23). Likewise, when the First Letter of Peter exhorts Christians to be always ready to give an answer concerning the logos—the meaning and the reason—of their hope (cf. 3:15), “hope” is equivalent to “faith”. We see how decisively the self-understanding of the early Christians was shaped by their having received the gift of a trustworthy hope, when we compare the Christian life with life prior to faith, or with the situation of the followers of other religions. Paul reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). Of course he knew they had had gods, he knew they had had a religion, but their gods had proved questionable, and no hope emerged from their contradictory myths. Notwithstanding their gods, they were “without God” and consequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future. In nihil ab nihilo quam cito recidimus (How quickly we fall back from nothing to nothing)[1]: so says an epitaph of that period. In this phrase we see in no uncertain terms the point Paul was making. In the same vein he says to the Thessalonians: you must not “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Th 4:13). Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well. So now we can say: Christianity was not only “good news”—the communication of a hitherto unknown content. In our language we would say: the Christian message was not only “informative” but “performative”. That means: the Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known—it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life. 3. Yet at this point a question arises: in what does this hope consist which, as hope, is “redemption”? The essence of the answer is given in the phrase from the Letter to the Ephesiansquoted above: the Ephesians, before their encounter with Christ, were without hope because they were “without God in the world”. To come to know God—the true God—means to receive hope. We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God. The example of a saint of our time can to some degree help us understand what it means to have a real encounter with this God for the first time. I am thinking of the African Josephine Bakhita, canonized by Pope John Paul II. She was born around 1869—she herself did not know the precise date—in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying “masters” who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of “master”—in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name “paron” for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave. Now, however, she heard that there is a “paron” above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her—that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme “Paron”, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her “at the Father's right hand”. Now she had “hope” —no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me—I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was “redeemed”, no longer a slave, but a free child of God. She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope and without God in the world—without hope because without God. Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her “Paron”. On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter's lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people. The hope born in her which had “redeemed” her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html

Poll Alert!

I am a firm believer that horrid photos of aborted babies should be used in protests and at abortion mills.

See the poll for your opinion.

Do any readers get and read this?

No Networking

In the good old days, there was networking. People in professional positions helped each other get jobs. People in factories helped each other get jobs. Families helped each other.

Networking is dead. Why? Networks no longer exists for three reasons:

1) Many old networks have been undermined by governments, such as the Church, as leaders hate Christianity;

2) Many people are so narcissistic that they simply do not want to help others find work;

3) The move towards global government hates networks, which they cannot control.

Those who use to have authority in the society who were Church members know to what I am referring.

Sad. A sign of the death of the Catholic community....

The Medieval View

What is our Catholic journey on this earth supposed to resemble?

What is our place in the world to be in a pagan society?

What is a Catholic worldview?

Who is the true leader of the world?

What should the Kingdom of God look like on earth?

What are my priorities?

Do I realize life is very short?

Am I doing my duty as a Catholic to Church, society, family?

From Msgr. Keith Newton, the Ordinary

Statement from the Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.

 

The Assisted Dying Bill

The Assisted Dying Bill has its Second Reading in the House of Lords on Friday 18 July. If it became law it would make incitement to suicide routine in our society, thereby putting pressure on the most vulnerable to see themselves as a burden to society. The Church’s teaching is clear: that human life, from conception to natural death, is a gift from God. Christ calls us to offer those facing serious illness care and hope, not despair and killing. The emergence of the hospice movement, which has enabled great progress in palliative care, is one of the fruits of this Christian calling common to Catholics, Anglicans and other Christians. The Assisted Dying Bill is a rejection of this Christian inheritance, and instead promotes what Pope St John Paul II called a ‘culture of death’.

Information on lobbying Peers can be found here:
www.catholicchurch.org.uk/Home/Featured/Assisted-Dying-Bill/Contact-a-Peer 

This conflict against the culture of death is first of all a spiritual one, and therefore I invite members of the Ordinariate and others to dedicate some time today (Thursday) or tomorrow (Friday) to pray - if possible before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament - for the upholding of the sanctity of human life.

 

I know girls

...who are into national and state competitions for cheerleading and baton-twirling. They practice hours each day. They learn to wear make-up and sexy costumes at the age of five.

Can one imagine how saintly these little girls would be if their moms spent as much time teaching them virtues and how to pray? A lady I know said to me of her young grandchild who is eleven, "She is growing up a little pagan."

Little pagans...

Last year and a long time ago when I was in grad school, the Batontwirling Championships took place at Notre Dame.

I remember a sign in the old bookstore, 'No batons allowed."

Way back then, many of us were scandalized by the heavy make-up, the skimpy costumes, and the purposeful sexualization of little girls.

I cannot, or rather, will not, show photos.