On Prideful, Utopian Thought

(Continued from September 13)
The Church believes that we can change. She teachs that all sacraments, but most importantly the Eucharist, can and do change our lives. This belief in the power of the Eucharist is manifest in Thomas Merton, the great twentieth-century Catholic mystic: “the grace of the Eucharist is not confined to the moments of thanksgiving after Mass and communion, but reaches out into our whole day and into all the affairs of our life, in order to sanctify and transform them in Christ.” Change, conversion through the Eucharist does not happen overnight. But the Church believes at her core that Her sacramental life, over time, leads us towards holiness, the call of Vatican II.

At the same time, we as Catholics scrap the idea that as a society we will ever arrive at a Morean utopia. To cite only one example, Jesus said: “you always will have the poor with you” (Mark 14:7). Pope Paul VI, about whom I wrote my book, stated in his 1971 encyclical Octogesima Adveniens, that “the appeal to a utopia is often a convenient excuse for those who wish to escape from concrete tasks in order to take refuge in an imaginary world.” America may progress technologically, medically, and scientifically, and, individually, we may (or may not) choose to make progress through the sacraments; however, this growth will never convert into heaven on earth.

The Catholic Church, in contrast to the secular position discussed above about secular law, has taught from the beginning that Church doctrines are tied to God’s revelation of Himself, not cultural norms, though She has been cautious about constructing too many official statements about God (how can one say anything final about He-Who-Transcends-Our-Finite-Intellectual-Capacities?) God is: eternal (Psalm 90:2), omnipotent (Matthew 19:26), omniscient (I John 3:20), omnipresent (Psalm 139:7), and, most importantly for our contemporaries to understand, immutable (Malachi 3:6). Although beyond human intellectual abilities, God has not remained far distant from his creation, as asserted the Enlightenment Deists. Reasonably, God has reveals Himself to his creatures. Dei Verbum, one of the most important documents from Vatican II, has listed the many ways that God has revealed himself to us and how this revelation has been communicated down through the centuries: through the created world, the prophets, the Apostles, bishops, sacred Tradition, sacred Scripture, the magisterium, and Christ Himself. Pridefully we oten make the mistake of pretending to really know God's stane on cultural matters merely from our own finite intellects, a temptation which Adam and Eve first succumbed to.... (To be continued).

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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'

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.

From the WAPO Compost

Benedict XVI once wrote on the Parable of the Sower and the Seed: “When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in his heart; this is what was sown along the path.” Our Lord reminds us here that His teaching on the Kingdom of God in its fullness remains fruitless for those who see the Kingdom as merely an earthly kingdom, having rejected its supernatural dimension. This seed bears no fruit, and its fate is the spiritual fate of the hearer. What the Sisters of Notre Dame DeNamur taught me in my formative years was that there was more to my existence than things temporal, challenging me to work toward holiness and the salvation of my soul Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam that I might enjoy happiness with Him forever. Here is the lastest example of furuitlessness: Outlook Perspective Evangelicals and Catholics made their peace. Catholics are paying the price. Some have begun to realize they tra...

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!?

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 ...

About the Author II

In the years prior to the Second Vatican Council, I also remember attending daily Mass before elementary school, which, because we had fasted for three hours, allowed us to eat breakfast in Mr. Sullivan’s math class. I remember bellowing out Tantum Ergo at Wednesday Evening Benediction, which I was in the habit of attending with my Mom, siblings and “Gramp,” (her Dad, John). I also remember looking forward to participating in the praying of that most sublime form of prayer, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, with my St. Joseph’s Daily Missal. With Pope Benedict’s having granted permission for priests to offer the Extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, we hear much ado in the form of reaction against this from Catholic “progressives,” and about how the Council placed a new emphasis on the laity’s participation at Mass, the implication being that Catholics did not actively participate at Mass prior to Vatican II, opting for such devotions as the praying of the Rosary or Holy Car...

Progressive Catholics? Catholic Right Catholics? Whaddup?

But I, brethren, could not address you as spiritual men, but as men of the flesh, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not ready for it; and even yet you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men? For when one says, "I belong to Paul," and another, "I belong to Apollos," are you not merely men? -1 Corinthians 3: 1-4 During the cou...

Have Nothing To Do With the Dragon!

In Chapter three, I wrote the following: "If one is worldly and hedonistic, Satan enters with temptations of the flesh. One hears often that the “liberation” of the human libido began in earnest in the United States in the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s. Americans, troubled over repressive attitudes toward human sexuality, hoped for a revolution that would free them from outdated moral and social constraints. The ensuing revolution resulted not in liberation but in license and a host of societal sexual crises. One has only to think of the tremendous increase in the number of post-1960s illegitimate births and abortions, sexually transmitted diseases, opposition to censorship of pornography (especially on the Internet), and the resulting sexual addiction (in some extreme instances resulting in murder). Consider too the tremendous blows to marriage and the family done by adultery, the battle over the homosexual lifestyle in the United States, Canada and Europe (now to the poi...

From: The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God

Lumen Gentium instructed that religious are to live out the counsels in community to a greater degree in service to the Church (living for God alone), and in doing so model for the laity what grace can accomplish. Reflecting upon why God made us, which is to share in His life forever, religious are only too happy to be a road sign for the rest of humanity pointing the best way to love of neighbor. Paul VI, expanding on Lumen Gentium , alluded to this in Evangelica Testificatio , his Apostolic Exhortation of June, 1971: It is precisely for the sake of the kingdom of heaven that you have vowed to Christ, generously and without reservation, that capacity to love, that need to possess and that freedom to regulate one's own life, which are so precious to man. Such is your consecration, made within the Church and through her ministry—both that of her representatives who receive your profession and that of the Christian community itself, whose love recognizes, welcomes, sustains ...

Who He is to Judge

I have chronicled in these pages evidence of Pope Francis' traditional views on marriage and family, which give the lie to heterodox claims that he is their man. The latest: Pope Francis warned the bishops of Puerto Rico on Monday, Dear brothers in the Episcopate: I rejoice in being able to greet you on the occasion of the Ad Limina Apostolorum pilgrimage visit. It is my desire that (this visit) be a fruitful experience of communion for each one of you and for Church on its pilgrim journey in Puerto Rico. I thank His Excellency Roberto Octavio González Nieves, Archbishop of San Juan and President of the Bishops Conference for the words he addressed to me in the name of all of you. In that beautiful Caribbean archipelago was founded one of the first three dioceses that were established on the American continent. Since then, the Church’s history has been interwoven with the faithfulness and tenacity of its pastors, religious, missionaries and lay people that, res...

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