Skip to main content

The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God

In my first Chapter I discuss at length a phenomenon which the Holy Father in a recent audience recalled like it was yesterday: the true and false Second Vatican Councils:


"I would now like to add another point: there was the Council of the fathers - the true Council - but there was also the Council of the media. It was almost a Council unto itself, and the world perceived the Council through these, through the media.

"Therefore the Council that immediately and efficiently arrived to the people was that of the media, not that of the fathers. And while the Council of the fathers was realized within the faith, and was a Council of the faith that seeks 'intellectus,' that seeks to understand itself and seeks to understand the signs of God at that moment, that seeks to respond to the challenge of God at that moment and to find in the word of God the word for today and tomorrow, while the whole Council - as I have said - was moving within the faith, as ''fides quaerens intellectum,' the Council of the journalists was not realized, naturally, within the faith, but within the categories of today's media, meaning outside of the faith, with a different hermeneutic.

"It was a political hermeneutic. For the media, the Council was a political struggle, a power struggle between different currents in the Church. It was obvious that the media were taking sides with that part which seemed to them to have the most in common with their world. There were those who were seeking the decentralization of the Church, power for the bishops and then, through the expression “people of God,” the power of the people, of the laity. There was this threefold question: the power of the pope, then transferred to the power of the bishops and to the power of all, popular sovereignty. Naturally, for them this was the side to approve of, to promulgate, to favor.

"And so also for the liturgy: the liturgy was not of interest as an act of faith, but as a matter where understandable things are done, a matter of community activity, a profane matter. And we know that there was a tendency, that was also founded historically, to say: sacrality is a pagan thing, perhaps even in the Old Testament, but in the New all that matters is that Christ died outside: that is, outside of the gates, meaning in the profane world. A sacrality therefore to be brought to an end, profanity of worship as well: worship is not worship but an act of the whole, of common participation, and thus also participation as activity.

"These translations, trivializations of the idea of the Council were virulent in the praxis of the application of liturgical reform; they were born in a vision of the Council outside of its proper key, that of faith. And thus also in the question of Scripture: Scripture is a book, historical, to be treated historically and nothing else, and so on.

“We know how this Council of the media was accessible to all. Therefore, this was the dominant, more efficient one, and has created so much calamity, so many problems, really so much misery: seminaries closed, convents closed, liturgy trivialized. . . . And the true Council had difficulty in becoming concrete, in realizing itself; the virtual Council was stronger than the real Council.

"But the real power of the Council was present and, little by little, is realizing itself more and more and becomes the true power that then is also true reform, true renewal of the Church. It seems to me that, fifty years after the Council, we see how this virtual Council is breaking up, is becoming lost, and the true Council is appearing with all of its spiritual power. And it is our task, precisely in this Year of Faith, beginning from this Year of Faith, to work in order that the true Council, with its power of the Holy Spirit, may be realized and that the Church may really be renewed. Let us hope that the Lord may help us. I, retired with my prayer, will always be with you, and together we will go forward with the Lord. In the certainty: the Lord triumphs!”


Though he is retiring, I suspect The Holy Father is not going away>

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dancing With Mr. D: Grooming the Little Children

A former pro-transgender activist said she regretted her previous work in pro-transgender activism, adding she felt she was "indoctrinated" on gender ideology in an interview with  Fox News Digital.  "I started to realize that what I had been doing at my job at the LGBT Center, it was grooming," Kay Yang, a former employee of a location in New York, said. Grooming in this context means "to get into readiness for a specific objective." Kay works as a 'deprogrammer' to help parents and children who have been 'indoctrinated' by the 'cult-like' transgender agenda. Yang herself previously went by they/them and worked as a 'trans educator' in schools for years.  Listen to her testimony.    

This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News

DANCING WITH MR. D:   This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News : 'via Blog this'

Bishops Bishoping!

I view of the Federal Disctict Judge's ruling on same-sex "marriage" in Michigan, and the Circuit Court's stay : Marriage is and can only ever be a unique relationship solely between one man and one woman, regardless of the decision of a judge or future electoral vote. Nature itself, not society, religion or government, created marriage. Nature, the very essence of humanity as understood through historical experience and reason, is the arbiter of marriage, and we uphold this truth for the sake of the common good. The biological realities of male and female and the complementarity they each bring to marriage uniquely allows for the procreation of children. Every child has the right to both a mother and a father and, indeed, every child does have lineage to both. We recognize not every child has the opportunity to grow in this environment, and we pray for those single mothers and fathers who labor each day to care for their children at times amid great challe...

The 21st Century Must Come Into the Church

Continued from September 14.... T hrough the Church’s teachings, God has also revealed his truth on how humanity can live happily. What is so little understood by Catholics and Christians is that doctrinal revelations that come through the Church come out of God’s very Self. They are not tied to culturally constructed norms! Read Vatican II’s   Dei Verbum : “by divine revelation God wished to manifest and communicate both himself and the eternal decrees of his will concerning the salvation of humankind.” Our Lord’s Church derives its basic vision not from mere human speculation, which would be tentative and uncertain, but from God’s own testimony—from a historically given divine revelation.  Thus Catholics believe that just as God himself is immutable, so, too, are His teachings as revealed through the Church because they come from him. As I discuss in my book, although the Church does not change its central teachings, we do see the theological principle of “devel...

What God Hath Joined Together...

A recent 2016 study of suicide risk from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a 24% increase in suicides in the United States over the 15-year period between 1999 and 2014,      including a tripling of the suicide rate for females 10-14, this in a culture that posits that all family structures are the same. Research on the children of divorce provides overwhelming evidence to disprove the myth that divorce does not harm children.  In fact, the divorce epidemic has contributed to the serious and growing psychopathology in American youth. One example is the 2010 study of American adolescent psychopathology published in 2010: 49 percent of the 10,000 teenagers studied met the criteria for one psychiatric disorder and 40 percent met the criteria for two disorders. Research by Penn State sociologist Paul Amato (2005) on the long-term damage to children from divorce demonstrated that, if the United States enjoyed the same level of famil...

Rotten to the Core

There are many similarities between Catholic schooling and its public K-12 counterpart, but the two also have profound differences. In addition to providing students with the academic knowledge and skills they need to prosper, Catholic schools have a unique spiritual and moral mission to nurture faith and prepare students to live lives illuminated by a Catholic worldview. The Common Core national standards have been adopted by hundreds of Catholic elementary and high schools. ... Thus, this letter takes on importance of the highest magnitude; Gerard V. Bradley, Professor of Law c/o University of Notre Dame,  The Law School 3156 Eck Hall of Law,  PO Box 780 Notre Dame, IN 46556  October 16, 2013 (This letter was sent individually to each Catholic bishop in the United States. 132 Catholic professors signed the letter).  Your Excellency: We are Catholic scholars who have taught for years in America’s colleges and universities. Most of us have ...

On Marriage and Family

Today should one attend a wedding, it is quite possible that the parents of either the bride or groom in attendance will be married, either in the Catholic Church or outside it, to someone other than the one they were first married to. In such a case, one would find oneself praying that the offspring of said marriage will not meet with the same fate.  The state of marriage today is what it is in part due to poor sacramental preparation in the years immediately following Vatican II for reasons I take up in my book, another fruit of the “sexual revolution” . Sad, but as is well-known, many young Catholics these days are delaying marriage, hooking up, practicing birth control, and  cohabiting  before getting married. Traditional marriage is under assault, and many baptized Catholics are joining in the attack, especially in favoring “same-sex marriage.” Thus it is inspiring to see the shepherds of the flocks gathering in synod to discuss “the pastoral challenges o...

Tolkein, Paul VI, and the Devil

In 1941, Tolkien wrote a masterful letter to his son Michael, dealing with marriage and the realities of human sexuality. The letter reflects Tolkien's Christian worldview and his deep love for his sons, and at the same time, also acknowledges the powerful dangers inherent in unbridled sexuality. From the letter: This is a fallen world…. the dislocation of sex-instinct is one of the chief symptoms of the Fall. The world has been 'going to the bad' all down the ages. The various social forms shift, and each new mode has its special dangers: but the 'hard spirit of concupiscence' has walked down every street, and sat leering in every house, since Adam fell….The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favorite subject. He is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, as through baser or more animal ones.  Tolkien advised his young son that the sexual fantasies of the 20th century were demonic lies, intended to ensnare u...

Pope Francis blasts “gender” ideology, quotes Benedict XVI: “this is the age of sin against the Creator!”

Here is an excerpt.  From   Vatican Insider : “In Europe, America, Latin America, Africa and some Asian countries we are seeing some real ideological colonisations,” he repeated. “And one of these, I’m going to say it outright, is  gender ”: “Today, children, children! are told at school that they can choose their sex. Why are they taught this? Because the books are supplied by the people and institutions that give you the money. These are the ideological colonisations backed also by countries that wield a great deal of influence. And this is terrible. Speaking with  Benedict XVI ,” he said, “who is well and lucid, he told me: ‘ Holiness, this is the age of sin against the Creator! ’ He is intelligent! God created man and woman;  God made the world like this, like this, like this… and we are doing the exact opposite. ” Watch video:

Marquette: Jesuit But not Catholic

In the fall of 2014, a graduate student instructor of a philosophy course , Cheryl Abbate told a student at Marquette University, which claims to continue “the tradition of Catholic, Jesuit education” who secretly recorded the exchange, that his defense of man-woman marriage was an unacceptable topic in her ethics class and compared his views to racism. Abate said, "You can have whatever opinions you want but I can tell you right now , in this class homophobic comments, racist comments, and sexist comments will not be tolerated." And then she told the student he should drop the class. Now, for Marquette to be truly Catholic, a defense of a Cathodic understanding of marriage must not only be tolerated, but promulgated. Marquette Professor McAdams blogged on the incident and charged the teaching assistant with "using a tactic typical among liberals now. Opinions with which they disagree are not merely wrong, and are not to be argued against on their merit...