About the Author Fini

....When I did return to the Faith, I was unable to find employment in my undergraduate major, history, so I began to volunteer teaching CCD in my parish, St. Agatha in Redford Twp., hoping eventually to land a job there teaching history. This required me to earn catechist certification offered by the Archdiocese of Detroit, which I did in 1978. No sooner had I completed the requirements, when a combination Religion/History opening occurred at Benedictine High School in Detroit. I taught there for one year, after which I landed a job teaching Scripture (for which I, by true Catholic standards, was woefully unprepared to do) at St. Agatha, where I remained for one year. I then took a position at a Catholic high school in a suburb of Detroit, where I have been ever since. Since 1995, however, and my “reversion” (no doubt through the prayers of my Mom) to the fullness of Catholic teaching, I have made ten year study of the post-conciliar years in the United States, for which my training in history and as a catechist at the St. John Bosco Institute for Catechetics, as well as twenty-five years as a catechist in the Archdiocese of Detroit have come in handy. As to the book, there is very little that is original; rather I offer a synthesis of much that I have read in the sources and in print regarding the years immediately following the Second Vatican Council, though my interpretation of Paul VI on the state of the Church in 1972 I believe to be somewhat original. I decided to write the book out of my experiences as a catechist (1978-2000) and a life-long student of history.

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Are We in a War?

Power Line POSTED ON NOVEMBER 22, 2020 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN DEMOCRATS , LIBERALS , SOCIALISM FIGHTING WORDS, BY DAVID HOROWITZ Our friend David Horowitz wrote this essay, which he titled “Fighting Words.” It is a call for freedom-loving Americans to fight back against the totalitarian Left. By now it should be obvious – even to conservatives – that we are in a war. It is a conflict that began nearly fifty years ago when the street revolutionaries of the Sixties joined the Democrat Party. Their immediate goal was to help the Communist enemy win the war in Vietnam, but they stayed to expand their influence in the Democrat Party and create the radical force that confronts us today. The war that today’s Democrats are engaged in reflects the values and methods of those radicals. It is a war against us – against individual freedom, against America’s constitutional order, and against the capitalist engine of our prosperity. Democrat radi...

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...

Message to The Stressed from Covid-19

I cannot recommend more the following letter I received from our Chaplain where I am employed. It reminds me of Pope St. JPII! April 19, 2020 Divine Mercy Sunday Dear Marian Sisters and Brothers, Happy Easter! I write this letter to you from our Chapel in the Rectory and am entrusting each one of you to Jesus through the intercession of His Blessed Mother. He is Risen! Today, He brings to us the fruit of His passion, death and Resurrection … Mercy. Blood and water poured forth from the heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us, soak it in on this beautiful feast day. I chose to write a letter, and not record a video because the exercise of putting thoughts to paper allows a person to really pour himself into the message. And writing a letter before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament creates an intimate space for both you and me. As I write each sentence to you, the Lord is able to interact with me and what you read reflect...

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...

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.

On the Universalist Heresy

Universalism is the speculation that we can know with certainty that every single human being or possibly every creature, including the devil himself, will be saved, and was condemned in 543 by the Church. It dates from the time of Origen in the third century, with his defense of what he called “Apocatastasis,” the notion that all things will be all in God—everyone shall be saved. I dare say it is a belief well-established among Catholics today, supported by some Catholic theologians predisposed to this view. Universalism stems from doctrine of hell, the idea that people might be separated from God for all eternity and endure eternal conscious torment because of this alienation. Universalist theologians, following Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar say that Universalism represents the triumph of hope over biblical evidence. Yet t he Church has taught from the beginning that both heaven and hell exist, and there are two possibilities for each of us: eternit...

On Follow Up

Having worked for the Church for my entire adult life, I have encountered many women whose stories have proven that abortion hurts women, not only the ones denied life, but those who, for whatever reason, choose to end life. Here are some given in response to yesterday's post on Emily, for whom I now pray. Please watch this....

Paul VI Wakes Up!

-from The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God: ….In effect, a “rival magisterium” of theologians and religious education experts had arisen, taking upon itself the authority to say what Catholic teaching was and was not after Vatican II. Paul VI noted this, alarmed at the apostasy of these neomodemists in not believing the fullness of Catholic teaching handed down from the Apostles and interpreted for the faithful by the Vicar of Christ in union with the successors of the Apostles. The Pope’s alarm was evident in his call for the Church to observe a “year of faith” in honor of Sts. Peter and Paul: We wish to address a special exhortation to those engaged in the study of Sacred Scripture and theology, to collaborate with the hierarchical teaching authority of the Church in defending the true faith from all error and in sounding its unfathomable depths, in correctly expounding its content and in drawing up reasoned norms for its study and spread. This sa...

Divide et Impera

Mr. Patrick Boyden has penned a reflection worth noting. In 2013 I wrote: Lest we forget, there were indeed reform-minded Council Fathers who responded to Pope John’s vision of the Church growing in spiritual riches as a fruit of the Council under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the hope that the faithful might through grace be aided in turning hearts and minds toward heavenly things. Given what has been said thus far, it should not surprise the reader that many “liberal Catholics” view the pontificate of John Paul II as too “conservative,” and out of touch with the modern world, while the traditionalists view the writings and teachings of the Holy Father as modernist! Thus the schema of “liberal” (progressive, left) vs. conservative (traditional, right) which followed upon the close of Vatican II is wholly inadequate for explaining the present-day crisis of faith within the Church of Jesus Christ, though it is most unfortunate that usage of these terms persist...

The Body of Christ and the City of Men

The “Statement of Principles” issued by select Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives on June 18, disapproving of Bishops in the United States for allegedly “politicizing the Eucharist” is an example of deceitful equivocation. Essentially, the Statement maintains that the Bishops should not “politicize” the Eucharist. On this the insight of Flannery O’Connor proves enlightening: Those whose lives are not ordered by, around, and toward the Eucharist, therefore, are those whose lives are defined by some love other than love of the Christ who is present there. Rather, their lives are ordered by the earthly city, manifest in this case, by, variously, partisan political identity or individual, radially sovereign conscience. This applies across the American political spectrum, to those who deny human dignity of the unborn, the immigrant, and the person on death row. In Catholic teaching the Eucharist creates St. Augustine’s City of God, the definit...

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