The Things that Make for Peace: Reflection on the Gospel for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

In his first encyclical, Summi pontificatus, Pope Pius XII reflected on the catastrophe about to envelope the European continent as Adolph Hitler began the invasion of Catholic Poland:

"What calamities could be averted, what happiness and tranquility assured, if the social and international forces working to establish peace would let themselves be permeated by the deep lessons of the Gospel of Love in their struggle against individual or collective egoism!"

The Pope then cited Jesus’ reaction as he wept over Jerusalem, a verse drawn from the gospel for today in the traditional liturgical calendar:

"Our pastoral heart looks on with sorrow and foreboding, the Image of the Good Shepherd comes up before Our gaze, and it seems as though We ought to repeat to the world in His name: 'And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! [i.e., the lessons of the Gospel of Love] But now they are hid from your eyes.'" (RSV)

As Christians are persecuted around the globe, and Israel is being bombarded with Hamas rockets while they use innocent Palestinians as shield for Israel’s retaliation, as the demonic Islamic caliphate attempts genocide vs. the Yazidis, let us listen to the words of the present pope as the world flirts with a wider war:

“Today our brothers are persecuted….they are banished from their homes and forced to flee without even being able to take their belongings!” ….My dear brothers and sisters who are persecuted, I know how much you suffer; I know that you are deprived of all. I am with you in faith in He who conquered evil”. May the God of peace arouse in all an authentic desire for dialogue and reconciliation. Violence cannot be overcome with violence. Violence is overcome with peace!”

Taking his cue from the parable of thee weeds and the wheat, Pope Francis explained that here Our Lord speaks to us of the problem of evil in the world and God’s patience. The devil, he said, plants evil where there is good, trying to divide people, families and nations. But God knows how to wait. He looks into the ‘field’ of each person with patience and mercy: he sees the dirt and the evil much better than we do, but he also sees the seeds of good and patiently awaits their sprouting.

Francis teaches that God is a patient father who waits with an open heart to welcome us and to forgive us, but His patience does not mean He is indifferent to evil. One day knownst only to Him, He will separate those who have sown good seed from those who have sown weeds. And, Francis said, we will be judged with the same measure with which we judged others; we will be shown the same mercy we showed towards others. Let us join together as the Holy Father has implored to pray for an end to the strife and sufferings caused by those from whom the things that make for peace are hidden.

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Neomodernism's Attack on Religious Life- (continued).

Who’s that on page 180 of that book? This is Sister Mary Benjamin, IHM. Sister Mary Benjamin got involved with us in the summer of ‘66, and became the victim of a lesbian seduction. An older nun in the group, “freeing herself to he more expressive of who she really was internally,” decided that she wanted to make love with Sister Mary Benjamin. Well, Sister Mary Benjamin engaged in this; and then she was stricken with guilt, and wondered, to quote from her book, “Was I doing something wrong, was I doing something terrible? I talked to a priest—” Unfortunately, we had talked to him first. “I talked to a priest,” she says, “who refused to pass judgment on my actions. He said it was up to me to decide if they were right or wrong. He opened a door, and I walked through the door, realizing I was on my own.” This is her liberation? How excited they were, to be delivering someone into God’s hands! Well, instead they delivered her into the hands of nondirective psychology. ...

Satan makes his way to us through the libido!

Let us take a great civilization historically devoid of pornography, and examine what happens once the door is opened a crack, for smoke to enter:

"The Spirit of Vatican II"

My advice to one confronted with doubt sown by those who make reference to “correct interpretations of Vatican II” is to reflect closely upon the words of John Paul II: With the Council, the Church first had an experience of faith, as she abandoned herself to God without reserve, as one who trusts and is certain of being loved. It is precisely this act of abandonment to God which stands out from an objective examination of the Acts. Anyone who wished to approach the Council without considering this interpretive key would be unable to penetrate its depths. Only from a faith perspective can we see the Council event as a gift whose still hidden wealth we must know how to mine . In short, it is this abandonment, this interpretive faith perspective that is woefully lacking in many who would offer to explain what the Council taught in “the spirit of Vatican II.” Watch here to see what abandonment looks like!

From "The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God"

….At the close of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI remarked that Christianity, the religion of God-Incarnate, had encountered the religion of man-made God. He was of the opinion that much of the Council was given over to demonstrating the compatibility of Enlightenment belief with Catholicism. Several years hence, on June 29, 1972, Paul delivered another assessment of the state of the Roman Catholic Church since the close of Vatican II. As Cardinal Silvio Oddi recalled it (in an article first published on March 17, 1990, in Il Sabato magazine in Rome) the Holy Father told a congregation: We have the impression that through some cracks in the wall the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: it is doubt, uncertainty, questioning, dissatisfaction, confrontation. And how did this come about? We will confide to you the thought that may be, we ourselves admit in free discussion, that may be unfounded, and that is that there has been a power, an adversary power. Let us call him by his name: the...

Do Not Be Ashamed

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My Intended Audience

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Popes are not Presidents...

John Allen of the Globe has opined today that there are two key words that capture why many church officials believe it’s so important to avoid what they regard as false expectations of swift change to the church’s ban on divorced and remarried Catholics receiving communion and the other sacraments: Humanae Vitae, Paul VI's 1968 document reasserting the church’s traditional ban on birth control. It rocked the world, Allen writes, "in part because the reforming energies of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) had led people to suspect change was just around the corner, in part because the pope himself had created a commission to study the issue." The o utcome of the Pope’s evential reassertion of the ban “soured public opinion on Pope Paul, in some ways inflicting a blow from which his papacy never really recovered. ” On matters related to marriage and the family, the Church has always seen the fertility of the husband and wife as a gift from God and the end ( telos...

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