Cardinal Sarah’s warning of “demonic” “apocalyptic beasts” of “the idolatry of Western freedom” verified in Argentina

There is indeed a great battle being played out in that three-week meeting that is rightfully being followed and reported on by all the world’s media. Society is reaching a climax in the war against the family.

In the above video, hordes of women, many of them masked and half naked, violently assaulted a group of young men who stood outside the Cathedral of Mar de Plata, praying.

One Peter Five has written:
Over the past three weeks, Catholic Church leaders from around the world have gathered for the Ordinary Synod of the Family in Rome, the second in a two-part session that began in October 2014.

The meeting was a perfect opportunity for bishops to discuss how to strengthen the family in the midst of serious challenges — issues such as contraception, abortion and chastity in a sexually licentious culture. Instead, it has become mired in debates over long-settled teaching on sexual mores, with agendas advanced by progressive and controversial figures invited by Pope Francis himself. What we’re left with is nothing less than a battle for the soul of Catholicism.

The church’s teaching on marriage has always been that it is indissoluble. As we read in Matthew 19:6, “so they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” While annulments can be granted, those who divorce then remarry are living in de facto adulterous relationships, according to the church. This violation of the sixth commandment is, according to Catholic belief, a serious sin. It does (and should) preclude such individuals from receiving the body of Christ until they repent.

Despite this, the Synod might recommend relaxing this very serious rule.

In reaction, a group of concerned Catholic writers, theologians, journalists and lay faithful drafted a petition calling on Synod participants who stand for the unchangeable doctrines of the church to walk out in protest if this comes to pass. Such a gesture would make clear who among the flock is seeking to remake the church in their own image.

In the first 24 hours, the petition gained more than 2,000 signatures. Comments left by signatories were more telling than the numbers. “I am divorced, against my will,” wrote one man from Brooklyn. “I am a Catholic. Not the best Catholic, certainly overwhelmingly in need of Christ’s mercy, but I am Catholic. Watering down Christ’s explicit Word will not help me. It will not help my children in any way. If the Synod conforms the Church to the world, it will only make Catholicism irrelevant to the world.” Some have tried to assuage such concerns.

George Cardinal Pell of Australia, viewed as a leader among those Synod fathers faithful to church tradition, dismissed the petition request in a recent interview. “There’s no ground for anyone to walk out on anything,” he said. His assurances provided little comfort. Bishops in attendance from Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia — regions where progressive ideology holds less influence — have continued to issue dire warnings about the Synod. Archbishop Peta of Kazakhstan said that he detects the “Smoke of Satan” in the meeting’s working documents and interventions, favoring compromises with Gospel truths that cannot be accepted. Archbishop Stankiewicz of Latvia said that “the admission [to Communion] of persons living in new unions would be an act of injustice against those couples who are struggling to save their marriage and with a great effort to remain faithful.”

Meanwhile, media coverage of the advances of radical proposals to change established practices, coupled with the implied approval of Pope Francis, has given the impression that many of the rules under discussion have already changed. Subsequently, individual Catholics are not waiting for a final document but are instead drawing the conclusion that the existing rules no longer apply to them.

Lacking a corrective word from the vicar of Christ, a gesture that might calm the storm, Catholics are left to wonder which side the pope is on. In his address last Sunday, Francis spoke of “the synodality of the Church” and his intention to impose greater “decentralization.” Were he to delegate to local bishops, as many suspect he will, the authority to determine such questions as whether the divorced and remarried could receive communion without a change of life, the effects would be catastrophically divisive, as the battle between opposing camps within the Synod has demonstrated.

Catholics are facing a watershed moment. The oldest and largest Christian denomination in the world is undergoing an identity crisis so profound that it may well split the church irrevocably along theological fault lines. For the first time since the Arian Heresy of the fourth century, Catholicism seems poised to break apart — shattered on an unalterable principle, the indissolubility of marriage, the image of the unbreakable union between Christ and his church. Despite our faith that the “gates of hell will not prevail,” it is a crisis that, for the foreseeable future, may engulf the church and scatter the faithful. -Steve Skojec

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'

Dancing with Mr. D: Gender Ideology

In a private conversation with Bishop Andreas Laun on January 30 as part of the Austrian bishops’ ad limina visit , Pope Francis strongly condemned “gender ideology.” In so doing he follows the example of Pope Benedict, who is on record as saying that gender ideology is “a negative trend for humankind,” and a “profound falsehood,” which “it is the duty of pastors of the Church” to put the faithful “on guard against.” Bishop Laun The Austrian bishop stated, “In response to my questioning, Pope Francis said, ‘Gender ideology is demonic!’” As I have chronicled on these pages, the Holy Father often refers to the work of the devil. Of gender ideology, Bishop Laun explained that “the core thesis of this sick product of reason is the end result of a radical feminism which the homosexual lobby has made its own.” “It asserts that there are not only Man and Woman, but also other ‘genders’. And furthermore: every person canchoose his or her gender,” he added. “Today,” he said, ...

Lord, I was dancing, dancing, dancing so free And dancing, dancing, dancing so free And dancing, Lord, keep your hand off me And dancing with Mr. D.,

Andy Cohen Gala Selfie In my thirty years as a Catholic educator, I have observed innumerable communal concerns displacing the reenactment of the saving passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Our Lord. Paul VI referred to an excessive concern with communal aspirations as the result of positivism, wherein God has become society, the ultimate reality. I would add that this particular crack through which Satan entered God’s Temple is an accurate explanation of the disregard for organic development in the liturgical reform of Vatican II. Thus as the Church began her aggiornamento , she presided over a disintegration of her most relevant instrument for presenting the truth of Jesus Christ to the modern world, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, now at the mercy of liturgical commissions wishing to make the liturgy more “pastoral.” Let us also remember Paul VI’s teaching that Satan is always seen as active where the spirit of the Gospel is watered down, as in the reformers’e...

Rolling Stone gathers Ross

Halfway through reading Ross Douthat's Bad Religion , I wish to warn Catholic "progressives" that liberal Protestantism gives us a for-taste of what the Holy Spirit will always guard Christ's Church against- read it in the Times here. See also Ross' blog at right.

Not Everybody Knows

I n the book I noted that a grave moral crisis facing the Church, of which the public is misinformed, is not a "pedophile priest" crisis, but a crisis which stems from an inordinate amount of active homosexuals as ordained priests and some inattentive bishops who have run interference for them, all the consequences of a failure to uphold and live the Church’s sexual moral teaching. For the doubting Thomases out there, please read Rod Dreher's recent piece.

Libido Redux: Apple Employees Fired For Stealing Nude Pics From Female Customers' Phones

Apple Employees Fired For Stealing Nude Pics From Female Customers' Phones : 'via Blog this' And it doesn't stop here. See here .

Bishops Bishoping!

I view of the Federal Disctict Judge's ruling on same-sex "marriage" in Michigan, and the Circuit Court's stay : Marriage is and can only ever be a unique relationship solely between one man and one woman, regardless of the decision of a judge or future electoral vote. Nature itself, not society, religion or government, created marriage. Nature, the very essence of humanity as understood through historical experience and reason, is the arbiter of marriage, and we uphold this truth for the sake of the common good. The biological realities of male and female and the complementarity they each bring to marriage uniquely allows for the procreation of children. Every child has the right to both a mother and a father and, indeed, every child does have lineage to both. We recognize not every child has the opportunity to grow in this environment, and we pray for those single mothers and fathers who labor each day to care for their children at times amid great challe...

Beyond Gay

David Benkof It is refreshing to see that our elder brothers, the Jewish people, have a spokesperson in the media for the truth that abstaining from sex is a real option for frum (traditionally observant) gay men. David Benkof i s a St. Louis-based writer and former faculty member at Yeshivat Darche Noam/Shapell’s in Jerusalem. Check him out. Also, I am reading a marvelous work, apologetic in nature, for those looking for resources to combat the slippery slope of the erosion of traditional marriage in our culture.... View the YouTube video, Is making Gay OK?

Read the Documents!

The third reflection in the series on why Catholics must know the real Vatican Council II: 3) “The Church acknowledges Gregorian chant as specially suited to the Roman liturgy: therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services” ( Sacrosanctum Concilium , #116). Here's why.

Rolling Stone Gathers Pope Francis

Final thoughts on the Rolling Stone feature on Pope Francis… The article attempts to show Francis’ break from the supposedly “conservative” Church of old, in the process remaking Pope Francis as the hero of the liberal left. It uses the scandals of Vatican finance and sexual abuse, coupled with old stories about Opus Dei and the Latin Mass, to fashion Pope Benedict XVI as a “conservative” conniver. In short, Francis is portrayed as the populist leader of a movement to “liberalize” the Catholic Church. Certainly the article contains a great deal of untruth. Inconvenient facts, like Francis’ theological orthodoxy, are ignored. Rolling Stone draws arbitrary conclusions from selected illustrations drawn from the Pope’s life. Why would this pop cultural icon do this? Easy. Sexual and social relativists wish to refashion Christianity such that they may claim Christ, and his vicar, as their supporters, for their social agenda is more appetizing to people if it complements, r...

Search This Blog