Pope Francis and the Devil (Again)

In his homily of October 30, once again Pope Francis returned to a favorite theme, saying that the devil is more than an idea, and in order to fight him, Christians must follow St. Paul’s instructions and “put on the armor of God” which protects us: “In this generation, like so many others, people have been led to believe that the devil is a myth, a figure, an idea, the idea of evil. But the devil exists and we must fight against him,” said the Pope.

The day’s first reading was from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, in which the apostle warns against the temptations of the devil, telling Christians to clothe themselves with the armor of God so they can resist. The Holy Father said that a Christian life requires both strength and courage, and needs to be defended because it is a constant battle with the devil, who tempts with worldly attractions, the passions and our flesh.

“From whom do I have to defend myself? What must I do?” he asked, saying that St. Paul tells us to “put on God’s full armor, meaning that God acts as a defense, helping us to resist Satan’s temptations. Is this clear?”

Would that many who style themselves faithful Catholics understood what Francis does, that no spiritual or Christian life is possible without the need to resist temptation. Our battle is with the principalities and ruling forces of this world, which are rooted in the devil and his followers.

The Pope also pointed out that many Christians no longer believe in the devil, but rather think of him as “a myth, a figure, an idea, the idea of evil.” In this he echoes the famous homily of Paul VI of November, 1972, in which because of this disbelief, the Church’s greatest enemy thus became the need to defend her from Satan. The devil does exist, and Francis rightly teaches that we must constantly be on guard. “Paul tells us this, it’s not me saying it! The Word of God is telling us this. But we’re not all convinced of this,” said His Holiness. Pope Francis then narrated St. Paul’s description of the armor of God, of which the apostle says there are different types.

Paul urges the Ephesians to stand firm with the truth as “a belt around your waist,” the Pope observed, saying that the devil is a liar, and that in order to defeat him we always fight with the truth and with faith in God. Like Saint Paul says, our faith in God is a shield to defend ourselves against Satan, who “doesn't throw flowers at us (but) burning arrows” intended to kill, the pontiff expounded. “Life is a military endeavor. Christian life is a battle, a beautiful battle, because when God emerges victorious in every step of our life, this gives us joy, a great happiness,” the Pope continued, saying that our joy lies in the fact that it is the Lord who is the victor within us, giving us the free gift of salvation.

Francis also cautioned that “we’re all a bit lazy, aren’t we, in this battle and we allow ourselves to get carried away by our passions, by various temptations.” Why? Because each one of us is a sinner, he said, telling those present to not be downcast, but rather to have courage and be empowered by the awareness that the Lord is with us!

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'

Libido Redux: Gabriele Kuby

Gabriele Kuby’s The Global Sexual Revolution has been translated into English and published by Angelico Press. In it, Kuby persuasively argues that the freedom offered by the sexual revolutionaries is another and highly effective means of enslavement. Here are some highlights: · The Marquis de Sade, who lived and wrote violent pornography from his cell in the Bastille as the Ancien Régime fell and the French Revolution began. · Thomas Malthus, Margaret Sanger, Marx & Engels, Wilhelm Reich , Freud & Jung, behaviorist John Watson, Edward Bernays, Bernard Berelson, child abuser Alfred Kinsey, sex-change giant John Money ,--a gallery of evil men whose own immorality drove them to emasculate man’s morality. · The Yogyakarta Principles, a manifesto produced by a cabal of leftist homosexuals and “human rights” activists that purp...

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. ...

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.

Libido Redux: In Praise of Cardinal Dolan: (What are the Sixth and Ninth Commandments?)

In psychoanalytic thought, libido (from the Latin: desire, lust ) is the psychic and emotional energy associated with man’s instinctual biological drives (sexual desire). Though theoretically held in check by the ego and super-ego, in Freudian thought libido understands man as a sexual animal whose happiness derives from the unrestrained libido . The virtue of chastity in Freudian logic could only end in illness and unhappiness. Such thinking became normative in the United States in the 1960s, and it was not long before the greatest of natural mysteries,” the marriage act, was reduced to an openly discussable fun activity. Paul VI offered libido as one way Satan, the “malign, clever seducer” undermines man’s sexual morality with his “sophistry.” The Devil’s strategy here, as the Pope cautioned, is “eminently logical.” He approaches man with what amounts to a false reason in his mind, which, if dwelled on, can influence the will by rousing him to do something evil which seems ...

On Prideful, Utopian Thought

( Continued from September 13 ) T he 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 en...

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:

Setting the Record Straight

Off-topic , but a here is a warranted look at the disinformation in the MSM on President Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. In early March, the WHO said that 3.4 percent of coronavirus patients had died from the disease. Trump said this number was false, as the mortality rate was actually much less because their number didn’t take into account unreported cases. Trump challenged WHO’s number. He was right . It has been said that Trump ignored early intel briefings on possible pandemic. The Washington Post reported t hat intelligence agencies warned about a possible pandemic back in January and February and that Trump “failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen.” Again, i t was fake news. The Trump administration had begun aggressively addressing the coronavirus threat immediately after China reported the discovery of the coronavirus to the World Health Organization. In addition to implementing vario...

Women Warriors?

A s a Catholic man and history teacher, I always tell my classes that, for reasons of masculinity and chivalry, I oppose women in the military (I teach at an all-female Catholic girls high school). So this article gives a better explanation of my view from a Catholic man's perspective: WOMEN DON'T DESERVE COMBAT by Mr. Gabe Jones “For whenever man is responsible for offending a woman’s personal dignity and vocation, he acts contrary to his own personal dignity and his own vocation.” (Pope St. John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, 10) December 3, 2015 ought to be remembered as the date that any remaining vestiges of our country’s collective sense of chivalry died a tragic death. It was on this day that Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced his decision to require combat positions in every branch of the United States military – including the Marine Corps – be opened to women. Despite being one of the most significant news items in recent memory, if you did not p...

The Message of Montfort

Having just completed True Devotion to Mary, I ran across this on the Fr. Aiudan Nichol's Christendom Awake webpage, which has elucidated certain points from Montfort's handbook on spirituality

Search This Blog