Metanoia

As a Catholic educator I have observed over the years that, due to the ever-increasing secularization of American culture, many baptized Catholics appear not to live the life of discipleship, wherein it is not they who live, but Our Lord who lives in them. Why? As a result of sin, and its instigator, the devil. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Para.. 1237)

If ever there was one who believed in the devil’s existence, it was Our Lord, who called him “the ruler of this world.” We must remember, however, that while the spirit of anti-Christ has been with us since the dawn of history, our enemy is no more than a rebel angel whom God permits to test us. The Father never wills evil, but He does permit Satan to tempt us, just as he allowed the passion of His Son, through which He showed that regardless of the demonic action, God always attempts to bring a larger good out of our enemy’s apparent conquests.

The primary spiritual combat zone here is the human will; because God always respect our integrity, our free will, He never forces us to do good nor to abandon evil choices. Rather, He sends us His grace and truth. As mentioned in my first chapter, it is the enemy who seeks to breach the integrity of the human person, and effect the ruin of souls. And it must also be said that the contemporary polarization in the church discussed in the second chapter is a clear attack by the Evil One. As Basil Cardinal Hume has observed: “I suspect that it is a trick of the devil to divert good people from the task of evangelization by embroiling them in endless controversial issues to the neglect of the Church’s essential role, which is mission.” Thus, in this spiritual combat, trials will come, but God knows they are edifying for us, for they disclose the nature of the enemy and our own need for salvation and growing in relationship with Him.

So it is that because of the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the Devil, many Catholics do not practice their faith to the point of standing out from those who are ignorant of Christ. In approaching the vexing questions of modern society, too many Catholics take positions based on a liberal-conservative spectrum, rather than on the teachings of Jesus Christ which come to us via His church. Only genuine conversion, metanoia, the fruit of evangelization, will change this reality, allowing Catholics to experience the joy of faithful discipleship. No ideology may substitute for real personal conversion. In essence, metanoia means to question one’s own way of living, to start to see life through God’s eyes, and turn away from conformity to this world. Genuine conversion predisposes us not to see ourselves as the measure of all things, but to a humility that trusts ourselves to God’s love, which becomes the measure of all things. This was the central teaching of Vatican II: a renewed call to the faithful to strive after holiness, which means doing the Father’s will in all things, empowered by His grace.

Comments

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'

Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor

Tucker Carlson: The Biden Scandal Is Real And Not Going Away Posted By Ian Schwartz On Date October 30, 2020 TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: It's been obvious for decades now that the Biden family has gotten rich from selling influence abroad. Joe Biden held a series of high level jobs in the U.S. government. Based on that fact and that fact alone, Biden's son and brother approached foreign governments and companies, sovereign wealth funds, energy conglomerates, Third World oligarchs and dictators, and they offered to exchange favors from Joe Biden for cash. The polite term for that practice is influence-peddling. Sometimes it is legal under American law, sometimes it is not. But it has always been the economic engine of the Biden family. They've never done anything else. Until recently, no one debated this fact. Several liberal news organizations, in fact, have written detailed stories about the Biden secret business dealings over the years. Look them up, assuming you still c...

Fr. Barron on Yves Congar and the Council

In my second chapter I recount Benedict XVI's recollections in The Ratzinger Report the origins of the journal Communio, also mentioned by Fr. Mark Barron of Catholicism fame in t his look at the role played by Fr.Yves Congar at the Second Vatican Council. ... For more on the division discussed in Fr. Barron's piece, plan on getting my book!

NINTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST: Time for Weeping

EPISTLE (I Cor. 10. 6-13.) Brethren, Let us not covet evil things, as they also coveted. Neither become ye idolaters, as some of them: as it is written: The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed fornication, and there fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them tempted, and perished by the serpents. Neither do you murmur, as some of them murmured, and were destroyed by the destroyer. Now all these things happened to them in figure, and they are written for our correction, upon whom the ends of the world are come. Wherefore he that thinketh himself to stand, let him take heed lest he fall. Let no temptation take hold on you, but such as is human: and God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able but will make also with temptation issue that you may be able to bear it. Can we sin by thought and desire? Yes, if we de...

Bishops Bishoping!

As the nation’s courts increasingly strike down popularly-supported state bans on marriage between men who have sex with men, and women who have sex with women, bishops increasingly are “bishoping”, to coin a term I use often in my book; i.e., they are at long last defending the faith against the onslaught always sure to come from the secular culture. Diocesan Catholic schools in Cincinnati and Oakland, Calif., are weathering criticism for contracts that require teachers not only to witness to the faith in the classroom, but also in how they live their lives in the public square. Condemnation of Catholic-school contracts that ask teachers to not controvert the Church in public have received dramatized coverage from the secular media in California and Ohio, where a slight number of teachers are opposing the contractual language. A a teacher in a Catholic school it is heartening to see the dioceses in question standing their ground, emphasizing the dynamic role teachers ...

Neomodernism vs. Religious Life (conclusion)

That’s a credit to him, that he at least had pangs of conscience; whereas these other orders, like the Jesuits, even when they saw that the IHMs were almost extinct, nevertheless they invited the same team in. Oh, yes. Well, actually we started with the Jesuits before we started with the nuns. We did our first Jesuit workshop in ‘65. Rogers got two honorary doctorates from Jesuit universities…. A good book to read on this whole question is Fr. Joseph Becker’s The Re-FormedJesuits. It reviews the collapse of Jesuit training between 1965 and 1975. Jesuit formation virtually fell apart; and Father Becker knows the influence of the Rogerians pretty well. He cites a number of Jesuit novice masters who claimed that the authority for what they did—and didn’t do—was Carl Rogers. Later on when the Jesuits gave Rogers those honorary doctorates, I think that they wanted to credit him with his influence on the Jesuit way of life. But do you think there were any short-term beneficial...

On God's Gift of Sex

Having written an entire chapter on dissent from Humanae vitae in the U. S., it was heartening to read that nearly 50 years after this “prophetic” papal document, more than 500 Catholic scholars with doctoral degrees in theology, medicine, law and other fields have recently signed a document in support of Catholic teaching, titled “ Affirmation of the Catholic Church’s Teaching on the Gift of Sexuality.” Humanae vitae speaks against the distorted view of human sexuality and intimate relationships that many in the modern world endorse. The document was prophetic in predicting some of the evils that would result from widespread use of contraception. Dissent from Humanae vitae centers around the claim there are “no grounds” for Catholic teaching against contraception, questioning the idea that openness to procreation is inherent to the significance of sexual intercourse, and that the choice to use contraceptives for either family planning or prophylactic purposes can...

Blogging Disciples!

To promote a book I spent years in writing , I began this blog. I am a baby boomer who knows all too little about blogging and the latest techie stuff. As I was perusing various Catholic blog sites, I noticed a post by Fr. Longenecker entitled, "The Smoke of Satan." If one troubles oneself to read Fr.'s quite accurate assessment, and becomes interested in just exactly how, according to the Pope who coined the phrase "Smoke of Satan" the Devil made his entrance into the post-Vatican II Church in the U.S., then my book is just what the Savior may have ordered, so why don't you!?

Adult happiness declines, while teen contentment grows - Try Jesus Christ!

Adult happiness declines, while teen contentment grows - TODAY.com

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.

Search This Blog