In a recent First Things column, George Weigel attempted to defend Pope Francis against the allegedly false impression so many have that he is “some kind of radical wild-man, eager to toss into the garbage bin of history” the more traditional aspects of the Catholic faith.
And you’ll never guess who he blames for perpetrating this distortion…
According to Weigel, it’s the media’s fault for “filtering out” of their reporting Pope Francis’ teachings in defense of tradition.
In this, one cannot but recognize the similarity between the modus operandi of the neo-conservative papal excuse makers and the Obama worshipping political left, as each group has created a scapegoat that can be flogged whenever their chosen idol is properly criticized; for the latter, it’s George W. Bush, for the former, it’s the big bad media.
As evidence of this media filter, Weigel points, among other things, to the pope’s “passionate defense of marriage as the stable union of a man and a woman, which he underscored in an address to the Schoenstatt movement right after Synod 2014.”
True enough, this address didn’t exactly make international headlines, but let’s not pretend that it was a “passionate defense” of tradition; in truth, it was nothing more than a pope reiterating immutable Catholic doctrine.
This is what popes are supposed to do!
So, why, one wonders, would George Weigel expect the media to alert the world to a run-of-the-mill occurrence such as this?
I mean, wouldn’t that be like me notifying my auto mechanic every time my truck starts?
Well, sorta…
Consider this; my truck starting really would be news if I hadn’t been able to get it going for some twenty-one months.
With this in mind, Weigel is actually on to something, even though all indications are that he doesn’t quite possess the wherewithal to connect the dots.
You see, the only reason any Catholic might consider a pope speaking like a pope newsworthy (Weigel included, even if only subconsciously), is the plain fact that he so often attacks the doctrines of the Faith!
In the present case, everyone who is paying attention realizes that the greatest challenge facing the Church as it concerns her treatment of marriage is Pope Francis himself; otherwise, the pope repeating the Faith of the Church on the matter wouldn’t even merit a yawn.
Lastly, Weigel concluded with another favored maneuver of the defenders of all things Francis; he played the Devil card:
Another aspect of Pope Francis’s preaching that’s been too often filtered out of the coverage of his pontificate involves (if you’ll pardon the term) demonology. No pope in decades has so regularly referred to Satan as Pope Francis. The Evil One is no abstraction to this pontiff, nor does he think of “satanic” as a rhetorical intensifier to underscore one’s disapproval of, say, Hitler. Satan and his minions are very real to Pope Francis; it would be interesting for an enterprising reporter to draw him out on the subject in one of those freewheeling papal press conferences.
Need I remind Mr. Weigel that “the last pope in decades” to so regularly refer to Satan was none other than Pope Paul VI; the Jimmy Carter of popes who will forever be remembered in history as he whose ineptitude paved the way for a period of unprecedented upheaval in Catholic life; including having presided over the greatest liturgical disaster the Church has ever, and very likely will ever, have to endure.
Perhaps Pope Paul of bitter memory found the Devil’s name on the tip of his tongue so frequently because he was so often, knowingly or not, marching to the Evil One’s orders.
In any case, it is at once interesting and a cause for deep concern that our current Holy Father has confirmed that for him, “the great light was Paul VI.”
And so the upheaval continues…
How truth is despised, now! It is heartbreaking. There is no worse torture than the denial of truth itself, and the penalisation of those who refuse to bow down to the regime’s new determination of what’s true and false, good and evil. And so many have caved in to the tyranny of thought and new diktats of Faith and morality (which are fixed, and unchangeable). It is as if people who had their powers of reason before Pope Francis’s accession have been drugged by some invisible poisonous vapour. It’s the Emperor’s New Clothes, only multiplied in its evil effects.
George Weigel writes (emphases added): “Satan and his minions are very real to Pope Francis; it would be interesting for an enterprising reporter to draw him out on the subject in one of those freewheeling papal press conferences.”
Perhaps this “freewheeling” conference could include this reporter, who has been given the impression that Bergoglio “doesn’t do God“.
Louie, the picture of Weigel and Francis gives new meaning to the phrase: “A picture is worth a thousand words”. Absolutely inspired “classic”!!!
Louie,
Thank you for covering this very important topic.
We wonder, -would Mr. Weigel tell young children about some nice things occasionally done by a registered sex-offender on his block, before warning them to stay away from the man?. His “Talk about the good the Pope does”- mentality only makes unwary followers more susceptible to the Pope’s very harmful ideas.
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He praised Pope Francis for talking so often about “the Devil”.
Does that include the many false statements this Pope has made about the Devil and evil, confusing Satan with Jesus?
— He told several groups of evangelicals; a number of reporters; and many faithful during homilies: that “Division is of the Devil” and “Focusing on what divides us is a sin.”
–Jesus’ taught the exact opposite–that division was expected (by God) as a direct consequence of the fact that not all would be faithful to His teachings:
“Do not say that I came to bring Peace” ” I came not to bring Peace, but the sword”, “A man’s enemies shall be those of his own household” (Matthew 10:34-36) ” I came to set a man at variance against his Father; daughter against mother,..etc..)
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And focusing precisely ON sin- as what divides people, Jesus’ first words to the crowds in Galilee were: (Mark 1: 15) “Repent and believe for the Kingdom of God is at hand”. When He commissioned the Apostles to :”go teach all nations all that I have taught you”, He warned: “If you follow me, the world will hate you”. Never sugar-coating the consequences of choosing to remain divided from Him, He spoke often of the fires of Gahenna, and eternal punishment.
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So Francis is wrong about some Major concepts regarding the Devil; and what is sinful is NOT our focusing on divisions, but Francis’ NOT enlightening those in error, and worse- encouraging them to stay in it; telling them to “thank” their parents “for whatever faith they were taught”, and leaving them without recourse to the Sacraments so necessary for the forgiveness of their sins, obtaining of Grace, and full communion with God and the members of His body.
-In these instances in particular, Pope Francis doesn’t seem to know right from wrong OR the difference between the Devil and Jesus, false religion and True.. So his speaking frequently about any of that, will likely do more harm, than good to souls.
Back in 2003 Weigel and the other Neocon Catholics, such as Michael Novak, criticized Pope John Paul II for opposing Bush’s Iraq War. He even instructed the Holy Father on Catholic Just War Doctrine, even though, by that Doctrine, the Iraq War was one of the most unjust in history. Then he did the same thing to Pope Benedict XVI.
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We now know war caused most of the country’s Catholics and other Christians to be killed or exiled. After that, Weigel permanently should have retired to a monastery to do penance for all the deaths he helped cause. He didn’t.
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A list of some of Weigel’s pro-Iraq War screeds:
http://catholicjustwartradition.blogspot.com/2008/01/george-weigel-on-iraq-war-debate.html
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This is from Cardinal Ratzinger on May 2, 2003, just after the war started:
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“The Pope expressed his thought with great clarity, not only as his individual thought but as the thought of a man who is knowledgeable in the highest functions of the Catholic Church. Of course, he did not impose this position as doctrine of the Church but as the appeal of a conscience enlightened by faith.
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“The Holy Father’s judgment is also convincing from the rational point of view: There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a ‘just war’.”
Idignus famulus,
your remarks on the origins of divisions as it relates to post-VII papal policy is most interesting. As a mere dabbler in theology, they made me recall statements made by a currently popular theologian, a Lutheran convert to Catholicism, who once while pondering the consequences of VII remarked something to the effect that the Holy Spirit’s breath swept through the council creating this ‘new evangelization’. The comments, as best as I can recall them, made by this sincere and courageous convert, were speculative and seemed to validate his conversion to the true faith; for my part, however, being a ‘cradle Catholic’ steeped in secular mundane culture and its mountain of sins and heresy, received with unease those remarks.
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But this thesis by this eminent theologian is fascinating. I think it captures, somewhat, the spirit of the post-VII church, especially based on the scriptural foundations in Christ’s very passionate words in the later chapters of John’s Gospel in which an explicitly powerful prayer by the God the Son is made to God the Father for his Church to avoid the scandal of division.
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However, God’s ways are always mysterious, and, it seems that divisions may come in different forms, the prototypical one being that of the ‘breath’ of God blowing over the towers of Babel when the Nimrods ruling over it thumbed their nose at God while re-committing the original sin of believing they had no need of communion with God and could be gods themselves. (Wonderfully awesome is how on the day of Pentecost the same consequences of that ‘Spirit’ blowing would be present, namely the division of tongues, but for the opposite purpose, namely that of spiritual unity in the one true faith.)
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So the contemporary question we have is this: who are the modern day Nimrods? Are they, from the modernist point of view, the inflexible, stiff traditionalists who maintain the unchanging rigid backward looking Traditional Mass obsessed with the Latin language holding to the dogmatically arrogant position of Papal infallibility as though the Bishop of Rome himself were God? Or are the Nimrods Bishops like Martini and Bergoglio casting their net indiscriminately over all, like St. Peter saw in his dream before accepting Cornelius’ invitation to dinner, while the errant children of the Church continue to lose themselves further in the wilderness of heresy, becoming easy prey to hungry wolves?
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So the ultimate question is not what is the spirit of VII, nor what is the ‘spirit of this age’, but what is God the Holy Spirit up to. All questions better answered by holy theologians out there….somewhere out there.
Dear Alarico,
Thanks for your thought-provoking comment. We know what you mean about the “powerful prayer of Jesus (That all may be One)
-Answering your (hopefully- rhetorical) question of “Who are the modern-day Nimrods?” was a 60-year ongoing struggle for us, assessing both “camps” – trying hard to do so without losing our Faith- as we witnessed so many others do.
– Like others who understand the necessity and value of Tradition, our hearts agonize over friends and loved ones as we struggle to go on hoping for turn-around(s), while most continue to harden hearts with the passing of years during which even our Popes seem to confirm them in their errors- making our beliefs appear even more “out-dated” to them, and deafening them to our pleas.
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A recent Liturgy of Hours brougnt some comforting words from St. Augustine. He extolled such agony- as the Christian means of constantly praying to God- the best fulfilling of St. Paul’s exhortation to Christians to “pray constantly”. That makes sense, since it is a manifestation of pure Love despite persecution.
–It’s that agony and love that keep us so aware of the ongoing damages of Popes who think man’s efforts, (while disregarding Our Lady of Fatima’s requests) will be able to reverse the downward spiral of the world and those in the Church who are abetting it by shelving Revealed Truth.
–THIS tower of Babel has now become very visible, and answering two simple questions- demonstrates clearly who its heretical builders have been:
— Which “side” advocates ignoring sin in the name of Mercy, and placing all hope for sinners in a (now-proven-erroneous) pastoral concept of “attraction by befriending” leading to hypothetical future desires for fuller participation in the Church, and its accompanying eventual repentance?
–And which side still insists, like our Lord and Our Lady of Fatima did, that genuine Mercy consists in speaking the truth about the eternal consequences of sin- despite all opposition– and calling sinners to repent or face rejection by the Church, before they face their final judgment and end up in Hell for eternity?
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The first contains the mantra of the post VII Church for as long as we’ve lived in it, and is the very REASON we all face the great need of addressing, (even with a Synod?), such an overwhelming flood of “former and current Catholics” living in sinful lifestyles; unwilling to change but requesting impossible concessions; and why society is now passing laws that are intolerant of the Faithful, which punish discrimination against sexual aberration and sin of every kind. This “tolerance” promoted by our Bishops for generations, is also what has led this Christmas,to State-approved Satanic-Temple displays in Lansing Michigan and Tallahassee Florida.
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In the letters to the Churches- in Revelations, Jesus tells St. John to warn about what He “has against them” despite all their good deeds: that they “TOLERATE the Jezebel IN THEIR MIDST,-who goes about teaching error and corrupting the innocent”…and that unless they change, he will come and remove their lampstand.
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Has the Vatican, with its ongoing “homosexual lobby”, (read Magister’s Ricca-recall-history in South America) ecu-praying with, instead of converting Pagans and Anti-Christians; and ongoing persecutions of the Faithful– not become the visible image of the Babylon in Rev. 18?:
“Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen; become the habitation of devils; hold of every unclean spirit and hateful bird: Because all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.
— (Maybe Cardinal Burke be grateful for his recent demotion and transfer?)
–“And I (St. John) heard another voice from heaven, saying: Go out from her, my people; that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you receive not of her plagues. [5] her sins have reached unto heaven..– she saith in her heart: I sit a queen, and am no widow; and sorrow I shall not see. [8] Therefore shall her plagues come in one day..she shall be burnt with the fire; God is strong, who shall judge her…they shall see the smoke of her burning: [10] saying: Alas! alas! that great city…..
I’m not sure I understand everything you say, Alarico, but one thing stands out:
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I quote you, “Are they, from the modernist point of view, the inflexible, stiff traditionalists who maintain the unchanging rigid backward looking Traditional Mass obsessed with the Latin language holding to the dogmatically arrogant position of Papal infallibility as though the Bishop of Rome himself were God?”
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I realize this hyperbole is from the modernist point of view, but it points out the diabolical use of language to twist meaning. Everything said in this quote is “true” in a way, but the spin is negative. We used to call such people Catholics, no?
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It’s been pointed out here several times that abuse of language is the devil’s tool, now being used to bludgeon faithful Catholics into silence.
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You also say ” All questions better answered by holy theologians out there…somewhere out there.”
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Problem is, as you know, the only theologians we hear speaking out are not holy ones. WE must be the ones who call a rat a rat – who smell the rotting fish and say so – who push and keep pushing – if we wait for the theologians to fix things we’re done for.
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I understand you are just raising questions in your post, but I’m a bit troubled by your musings about the Holy Ghost. He is NOT breathing on the Church now. It is possible for God to WITHDRAW grace even from the Pope. I believe this is part of the chastisement Our Lady warned would come.
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We are to suffer this time, and offer all the suffering to Our Lady of Fatima like Lucia, Jacinta, and Francesco did, for the conversion of sinners – wherever those sinners live – even in the new Papal apartments.
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This trouble is not going away.
Dear Alarico
A P.S.-on the Traditional Mass versus N.O. you mentioned:
When we found the TLM ten years or so ago, the utter beauty, majesty, and glory of the Truths the Church has preserved in that Liturgy, came surging up to make God’s presence FELT in our souls, in a way that is almost indescribable- leading us from start to finish, to find our proper place in the universe in relation to Him; to deeply repent of our sins, realizing our capacity for doing evil, and, at the same time beginnning to comprehend our own greatness-being made in His image and capable of so much good–IRONICALLY all the things the N.O. Church had “promised”, (and failed), to provide, were finally being realized so much more fully in us, by experiencing all that they had rejected. This makes it easy to relate to what Cardinal Burke recently said in an interview:
— “I understand that they are the same rite, and..when the Ordinary Form is celebrated with great care and with a strong sense that the Holy Liturgy is the action of God, one can see more clearly the unity of the two forms of the same rite. On the other hand,…the difference between the two forms is very stark. The rich articulation of the Extraordinary Form, all of which is always pointing to the theocentric nature of the liturgy, is practically DIMINISHED TO THE LOWEST POSSIBLE DEGREE in the Ordinary Form.”
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There may be genuine sincerity on both “sides” of this ongoing struggle, but unlike Pope Benedict, long-term traditional Catholics don’t find ourselves having to recant liberal views of years gone by. We didn’t fail to see the harm of novelties that appeared to come from the Holy Spirit, but were actually just re-formatted former heresies, combined by ” highly educated theologians” to appeal to “modern” man. This “modernism” was the well described synthesis of all heresies, condemned by Pius X in “Pascendi Dominici Gregis”. Those who listened to him, avoided it.
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Dear Barbara,
Amen! .
Dear all:
Cardinal Burke expressed more deep concern in yet another interview– This one with Jean-Marie Guénois of the French Mag “Le Figaro” given in Rome;-translated by Rorate
-(In addition to the “usual”–intermediate relatio, and the divored and remarried reception of Communion explanations):
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The reporter asked the Cardinal:
–“What are the stakes in what has become a controversy”?
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Cardinal Burke replied:
“… the Church must defend marriage, and not weaken it. The indissolubility of marriage is not a penance, nor a suffering. It is a great beauty for those who live it, it is a source of joy.”
-“I am therefore very worried, and I call upon all Catholics, laymen, priests, and bishops, to involve themselves, from now up to the upcoming Synodal assembly, in order to highlight the truth on marriage.”
http://motheofgod.com/threads/cardinal-burke.6919/
p.s. The above-interview with Cardinal Burke is in the Dec 19, 2014 issue.
Well said, Barbara. Ours is not an esoteric or gnostic Faith. It is fully understandable by anyone who has attained the age of reason (where there is no great impediment due to bad will, lack of grace). You speak plain and simple common sense – which seems to be unacceptable now, in the Church, as it has been for such a long time in the secular world.
It is horrifying to see so many people deny their own reason, their access to common sense in order to explain away the evil that is dominating the Church from the top down.
Blessed Michael defend us in battle . . .
St John Vianney, intercede for us that we may have holy priests, bishops and pope.
Louie, perceptive commentary as usual. Weigel’s credibility continues to shrink like a cheap suit. The one good thing that is coming out of the PF papacy is that it is/has/will smoke out the pretenders and heretics. Even the neo-catholics are going to be forced to choose between the OTF or defend the indefensible aka PF. He takes/makes numerous positions/pronouncement that are outrageous and clearly heterodox. It is the norm and not the exception. One can only deny the king has no clothes on for so long before convicting oneself of the same thing.
The extremely liberal NEW YORK TIMES, printed a Sunday-piece that makes C.Burke’s comments sound timid? We wonder how we missed this at the end of October, when Ross Douthat wrote: “..ALL [Pope Francis’] moves point in a pro-change direction…”If this is so, the synod has to be interpreted as a rebuke.. Given what the church has always taught, many of the synod’s participants replied, he and we cannot.”
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” .. going beyond -a welcome, to a kind of celebration of the virtues of nonmarital relationships generally, as the synod document seemed to do, might open a divide between formal teaching and real-world practice that’s too wide to be sustained….The Catholic Church was willing to lose the kingdom of England, and by extension the entire English-speaking world, over the principle that when a first marriage is valid a second is adulterous, a position rooted in the specific words of Jesus of Nazareth. To change on that issue, no matter how it was couched, would not be development; it would be contradiction and reversal.”
…”SUCH a reversal would put the church on the brink of a precipice… it would sow confusion among the church’s orthodox adherents — encouraging doubt and defections, apocalypticism and paranoia…and eventually even a real schism.”
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“Those adherents are —sometimes a small minorityamong self-identified Catholics..But they are the people who have done the most to keep the church vital in an age of institutional decline: have given their energy and time and money in an era when th e church is stained by scandal,have struggled to raise families and live up to demanding teachings, have joined the priesthood and religious life in an age when those vocations are not honored as they once were.. have kept the faith amid moral betrayals by their leaders; they do not deserve a theological betrayal. ..he[Pope Francis]can be, as he clearly wishes to be, a progressive pope, a pope of social justice — and he does not have to break the church to do it.” But if he seems to be choosing the more dangerous path — if he moves to reassign potential critics in the hierarchy, if he seems to be stacking the next synod’s ranks with supporters of a sweeping change — then conservative Catholics will need a cleareyed understanding of the situation.”
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His concluding line is an even bigger surprise!:
“They can certainly persist in the belief that God protects the church from self-contradiction. But they might want to consider the possibility that they have a role to play, and that this pope may be preserved from error only if the church itself resists him.”
Link to Ross Douthat’s full Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-the-pope-and-the-precipice.html
You know what we never hear any more? That all sin, mortal and venial, is vastly, vastly repugnant to God. He will not be near it. He will repel anyone from His presence who is stained with sin and unrepentant. All sin.
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The sin of fornication? Repulsive to God. Sodomitic acts? Repulsive to God. Never going to Sunday Mass? Repulsive to God. Taking the name of God in vain? Repulsive to God. Lying? Repulsive to God. Cheating on your wife? Repulsive to God. Masturbation? Repulsive to God. Killing grandma so she wont’s suffer? Repulsive to God. Killing a poor little unborn babe, that true gift from Our Loving Father? Just how does He see the soul of the murderer?
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God is not some hoary grandpa who will let little johnny/janie sinner climb upon His knee and twirl their fingers in his long white beard and baby-talk Him out of being mad at them.
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Unless sinners understand that their sins are really, truly repulsive to God they are dead now, and will die for eternity in the flames of Hell.
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Why can’t we hear our priests and bishops and pope shout that from their respective rooftops?
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This is a very scary thought. All we hear these days is that the nasty old Church has these rigid rules, and some really ‘free’ mature Christians want to break them – and boo hoo. It’s NOT about the Church and her rules. It’s about GOD and his disgust at the souls of sinners crusted over with the pus of sin after sin – with no interest in finding out about what’s needed to please Him.
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The next time I hear the Pope vomit out more words about the peripheries and the poor instead of begging sinners to stop offending Our Beloved Lord I’m going to scream!
Dear Folks,
thank you all for your kind and thoughtful criticisms of my remarks… and your ongoing indulgences expressed towards them. Your charity is greatly appreciated.
I discern that my approach is somewhat alien to those with a stronger traditionally Catholic convictions than mine….and rightfully so. I often cringe rereading my statements or remarks or thoughts…so saddled they are with heresy or brushes with heresy. For example, there is the feeble and fumbling attempt to show individual inspiration in interpreting scripture with little or no recourse to Catholic traditional authority. This is a sure sign of the liberalism, idealism, and protestantism deep in my bones and very being.
Paul VI and VII have truly spiritually debilitated and stunted an entire generation of Catholics: we are petty shadows of men compared to our ancestors. This is what happens when the church is hell bent on “serving man” instead of “serving God”.
For anyone interested :
From today through Wednesday, Christmas Eve:
Rorate Coeli has called for Christians everywhere to join in a 3-day pre-Christmas fast (till noon each day) and pray for our suffering brothers and sisters in the Middle East as the people of Ninevah did in the time of Jonah. Rorate reminds us that ” until 1959, Christmas Eve was a day of fasting and abstinence for Latin-Rite Catholics worldwide. From 1959 to 1965 the fast could be observed by the faithful either on the 24th or the 23rd. See our post here. In joining the special pre-Christmas fast of the Chaldean Catholics we will therefore also be reviving what used to be a universal practice among Latin-Rite Catholics.
http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/12/dec-22-23-24-let-us-join-special-pre.html#more
Dear Alarico,
The humility inherent in your above words, gives a witness that is of equal, if not greater value than any you have received here.
Louie has mentioned in the past, his deep awareness that many people are just now waking up to what has been going on in the Church -since even before VII. So if his posts and the comments we all share here can help in any way with that, then we thank God, and see the work of the True Holy Spirit, taking place before our eyes.
If our relatives and friends who are still in the dark, were to speak as you have just written, our joy would be even more complete.
God Bless you.
Thanks for pointing this out. Rorate Caeli is a wonderful blog. Something to think about: just WHY were the old fasts done away with? Did people not work hard in the ‘old days’? Are we so different now that we have so many ‘psychological’ reasons that we can’t fast? Back in the day, there were many, many feast days, including Sundays, and the vigils were always fast days, then there’s Lent which used to be kept strictly, and Advent too. We are total wimps because we’ve matured, evolved, er, whatever – and our lives which leave God totally out have no room for discipline and suffering either.
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Our Generous Lord fasted on our behalf, and to prepared His human body for the ordeals to come.
Dear Barbara,
You’re very welcome.
Regarding the tossing out of all the old fasts—it’s likely the same reason many Dioceses cancel Obligations for Holy Days that fall anywhere near weekends–to make our lives “easier”. (helping the Devil destroy the Church hopefully unwittingly-for their sakes)
– This is one major blindness we’ve seen over and over touching SO many areas–all leading to greater weakness and the tolerance of sin (rather than preaching against it) you so aptly denounced above. (We felt like shouting Amen X 10 to that.)
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In Ezechiel 13, God condemns false prophets and prophetesses, who claim to speak in His name, making people more comfortable in their sins and failing to build the “tempered walls” that will protect them in time of attack (i.e. they throw away the necessary disciplines and teach people to ignore God’s Commandments) –all in the name of a Merciful, loving i.e. lenient, God.
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“Woe to foolish prophets that follow their own spirit, and see nothing…5] You have not gone up to face the enemy, nor have you set up a wall for the house of Israel, to stand in battle in the day of the Lord. .. they have deceived my people, saying: Peace, and there is no peace: and the people built up a wall, and they daubed it with dirt without straw. [11] Say to them that daub without tempering, that it shall fall…. [14] And I will break down the wall that you have daubed with untempered mortar: and I will make it even with the ground, and the foundation thereof shall be laid bare: … and you shall know that I am the Lord.
-[15] And I will accomplish my wrath upon the wall, and upon them that daub it without tempering the mortar, and I will say to you: The wall is no more, and they that daub it are no more.
-” Woe to them that sew cushions under every elbow: and make pillows for the heads of persons of every age to catch souls: and when they caught the souls of my people, they gave life to their souls. [19] And they violated me …to kill souls which should not die, and to save souls alive which should not live, telling lies to my people that believe lies. …I declare against your cushions, wherewith you catch flying souls: and I will tear them off from your arms: and I will let go the souls that you catch, the souls that should fly.
[Douey-Rheims footnote]: [18] Sew cushions: –, by making people easy in their sins, and promising them impunity. …”They gave life to their souls”: That is, they flattered them with promises of life, peace, and security.
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They have their warning from Scripture, but unfortunately interpret it all to tickle their ears.
I grew up fasting for Advent, and particularly on Christmas Eve. Sadly, I have been very poor at fasting and abstinence in recent years. No wonder I do not enjoy the feasting so much anymore! Fasting, and going without pleasures, generally, is essential for our spiritual and moral welfare – as was always taught until recent decades. It strengthens us to fight temptation to sin, to develop virtues, and grow in Faith.
Lynda, you are so right! And just try to say Compline after eating too much at dinner – forgetaboutit!!!! Prayer and fasting go together and this just IS.
Indignus – love the quote about sewing the pillows – wonderful. The Holy Scriptures are so deep, deep, deep – full of instruction, warning, good news, human interest, history, relationships, adventure, love stories, war, peace – The Almighty, All Powerful, All Good GOD!
Dear Barbara and Lynda,
The Truth is so plainly there- in Scriptures and Tradition, and now being boldly put forth by those like Cardinal Burke, yet there are still too many in power, including this Pope, who seem determined to bypass it . After 50+ years of these idiotic, failed experiments in which we and our families were the guinea pigs and victims, their biggest problems are now the direct results of that “to hell with rules” mentality they fostered. (near-empty pews and proudly, sinful “Catholics) But instead of trying to reverse that, they’re pushing to try to “finish” the demolition.
Lest we depress ourselves utterly, we have to remember that God is working in the midst of all this confusion. People ARE talking about these important matters, in a way we haven’t seen in many decades. And that will help bring truth to the forefront.
One blogger apparently thinks it did and announced a life-changing decision yesterday, which will also affect his family- including their youngest- he says-is due in February. Reading his reasons for the turn-about, we have to assume he did a lot of reading online of opinions like the ones we talk about here.
So maybe a merrier Christmas to all, if we remember Who’s really in charge.
🙂 🙂
http://jessicahof.wordpress.com/author/quiavideruntoculi/
Thank God, we can (thus far) come here or to some other sound, honest, zealous Catholic websites for some sanity. But how to find each other in “real” life, to form communities to preserve the Faith and survive the persecution? We are so scattered in the “real” world, so thin on the ground, isolated – a remnant.
Dear Lynda,
We know how you feel.
We either need a really Good Pope and a lot of converted hierarchy, to get things turned around, or some BIG miracles.
We’re praying for both, and enjoying the good company here and there, wherever we can find it–yours included.. You’re right it’s a less “real” world, but it’s a lot better than before we got on the internet, when almost every relationship was a mission-impossible, rather than a good conversation with a fellow Catholic. We’ll take it, and be thankful, as you said, for now. 🙂 🙂
Comparing Pope Gollum – sorry, Pope Paul VI – to Jimmy Carter is insulting: to Jimmy Carter. For Jimmy Carter did nor wreck the US, nor did he insist that his wreckage was the best thing since Pentecost. Nor did he betray those naive enough to imagine that, because of his position, his word could be trusted. Nor did he go behind the Presidents’ backs, and betray Catholics to the Soviets. Pope Gollum was a thoroughly bad man, and if people were not hypnotised by his occasional Catholic actions, like rabbits by the head-lights of a car, they would see just how utterly execrable the man was. He’s no more a Saint than Stalin or Mao or Hitler or Luther or Judas Iscariot. And since he was not, no Papal assertions to the contrary can make it so. The only question is whether Paul VI is the worst Pope to disgrace the See of Peter, or not. His shenanigans & sins against the Church are responsible for those of JP2 & Benedict & Francis – their sins are his sins, because of his anti-Catholic example. Unlike the other Gollum, his evil works have survived him. I would hate to be him – it must be pretty hot down there.