What do the following news links have in common? They are all prime examples of near, total, societal meltdown. Yes, I admit this is a generalized statement, but based on the 80 / 20 rule it would hold true.
What are the themes in the news; this week?
If you are a Catholic, you are not wanted in the court system of the federal government.
Special protection and segregation for those outside of accepted male/female relationships.
Poor stewardship / husbandry / environmental problems as the result of greed.
Gratification of lust, leading to a new increase of deadly virus and std's.
The intentional erosion of the sanctity of the family by accepting alternate life-styles.
Christians having to fight to preserve their Christian Heritage, in the United States.
What is more important, the economy or stopping abortion.
Christian ministers and family being burned alive.
The demonization of chatrooms and its effects on marriage.
The spiritual war against the Catholic Church.
The bias of the media in not reporting sexual abuse among non-Catholic clergy with the same ferocity as the Catholic is reported.
A family suing because of the prediction of a departed soul ending up in Hell at a funeral.
All I do is snack; I do not exercise and because I am not accountable for my actions, I will sue the food industry.
The surrender of parental rights to get financial aid of mentally ill children.(This was from an article in our local rag.)
- Give up custody of son to the state, so the state could get more federal monies to pay for child's psychiatric needs.
Collins seeks help for vulnerable children
Bill targets mental health services for children
Litigation Strategies
- British Snack Giant Could Be Target of Heavyweight Lawsuit
- FEINSTEIN TO NATION’S LARGEST CHURCH: “HELP WANTED, CATHOLICS NEED NOT APPLY”
- SEC FORCES MERCK TO REVEAL USE OF ABORTED FETAL CELL LINES IN VACCINES
- Pedophile Wrote the Book on Abuse
- A Full-Fledged High School For Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual And Transgender Students
- Why Anti-Catholicism Remains Alive and Well
- Depletion of Ozone Layer Lessening, Researchers Say(Shades of Highlander 2, the movie)
- Rise of Internet Fuels Fears of AIDS Resurgence
- Pope: Stop gay union: Vatican urges politicians to fight same-sex marriage
- Christians Prepare to Defend Ten Commandments in Alabama
- Davis Recall Effort Pits Economy Against Abortion
- Islamists burn to death Christian pastor, family
- Abuse Suits Point at Jehovah's Witnesses
- Chat rooms hurting marriages
- Family Suing Over Hell Prediction at Funeral
O Jesus, how I wish that my heart lived solely in obedience to Your adorable Heart!
I will become more humble, more sweet, more charitable, from the moment that your Heart is admired especially for its sweetness, its humility, and charity.
When, O God, will You give me the grace to free myself of my miserable heart and give me Your own, if not in the sacrament of the Eucharist, supreme pledge of Your love?
May the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus be praised, adored, and thanked, in every moment, in all the tabernacles of the world, until the end of time! Amen (St Francis de Sales).
In HIS Name,
Roy
After reading, “Liberalism is a Sin”, many times, the second chapter presents itself as one of the important chapters, as this chapter begins the defining of liberalism;
"Such are the radical principles of Liberalism. In the assumption of the absolute sovereignty of the individual, that is, his entire independence of God, we find the common source of all the others. To express them all in one term in the order of ideas, they are RATIONALISM or the doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of human reason. Here human reason is made the measure and sum of truth. Hence we have individual, social and political Rationalism, the corrupt fountain head of liberal principles: absolute freedom of worship, the supremacy of the State, secular education repudiating any connection with religion, marriage sanctioned and legitimatized by the State alone, etc.; in one word, which synthesizes all, SECULARIZATION, which denies religion any active intervention in the concerns of public and of private life whether it orate or assassinate; whether it call itself Liberty or Government or the State or Humanity or Reason, or what not, its fundamental characteristic is an uncompromising opposition to the Church.”
“Liberalism is a world complete in itself; it has its maxims, its fashions, its art, its literature, its diplomacy, its laws, its conspiracies, its ambuscades. It is the world of Lucifer, disguised in our times under the name of Liberalism, in radical opposition and in perpetual warfare against that society composed of the Children of God, the Church of Jesus Christ.:
This can be read from these following URL’s:
This applies to liberals in today’s context of usage, and it also applies to those who desire to return to the past. It applies to those who pick and choose to support what they feel is correct, and this selective selection is often done out of context.
During this same time I am reading “The Catholic Controversy.”
Quoting from,“The Catholic Controversy: St. Francis de Sales Defense of the Faith; Part II The Rule of the faith, Chapter VIII. How the Majesty of the Scriptures Has Been Violated in the Interpretations and Versions of the Heretics, PG 122.
“You see something of the violence and profanation of your ministers do and offer to the Scriptures: what think you of their ways? What will become of us if everybody takes leave, as soon as he knows two words of Greek, and the letters in Hebrew, thus to turn everything topsy turvy? I have therefore shown you what I promised, -- that this first rule of our faith has been and still is most sadly violated in your pretended church; and that you may know it to be a property of heresy thus to dismember the Scriptures, I will close this part of my subject with what Tertullian says, + speaking of the sects of his time. “This heresy” (of the Gnostics), says he, “Does not receive some of the scriptures; and if it receives some it does not receive them whole… and what it receives in a certain sense whole, it still perverts, devising various interpretations.”
This book is a compilation of the ‘tracts’ that St Francis de Sales used, since no one would truly discourse with him, in September 1594. The region had 72, 000 persons who had converted to Calvinism, over a number of years. Four years later, almost the entire population had returned to the Catholic Church. St Francis was the proverbial “Prince of Apologists” and he did not apologize for being Catholic. I am amazed at how this points to today's times, as well.
The book is hard to read due to the prose style of the time. You cannot gloss over it in twenty-first century English at the normal grade 4 to grade 6 reading level. I have been reading this book for almost one year, and am on page 145, but it is read on a weekly basis.
I was reading it the other day, in the Sanctuary at our parish, and it was one of those divine two by four days to the back of the head. This thought was presented, “Everyday this goes on in the Holy Mother Church; people, lay, religious and ordained, picking and choosing what they want to retain from the teachings of the Church; trying to twist the Church into what they want it to be. You see this on the televised news; you read it on online newspapers; you read it from various Catholic websites. Not only can these souls can no longer call themselves Catholic, but also now they have become an apostate.
As a state of being, Apostasy is the leaving of a position(this being the humble and obedient Catholic), the giving up of a state of life; it is the voluntarily embracing of a definite state of life and cannot leave it, without becoming an apostate. Was not the prodigal son an apostate to the Jewish faith while he tended swine in order to eat? The prodigal was getting beat up by the world; He was getting mauled by Satan and his demons.
He returned home to his Father and his faith, in other words he repented. And so may these people, so let us pray that these souls see the truth, not the lies from the deceiver of us all.
The Christian faith is critical to life; both finitely for our temporal time and infinitely for the soul, and it can not be be relativised to the times, as ideas and philosphies mutate. As man, we try to construct or reconstuct the Church to that of our liking, this liking is the sin of PRIDE in the form of a non-humble and a non-obedient spirit.
“If we consider the present cultural situation, about which I have tried to give some indications, frankly it must seem to be a miracle that there is still Christian faith, despite everything, and not only in the surrogate forms of Hick, Knitter and others, but the complete, serene faith of the New Testament, and of the Church of all times. Why, in brief, does the faith still have a chance? I would say the following: because it is in harmony with what man is. Man is something more than what Kant and the various post-Kantian philosophers wanted to see and concede. Kant himself must have recognized this in some way with his postulates. In man there is an inextinguishable yearning for the infinite. None of the answers attempted are sufficient. Only the God himself who became finite in order to open our finiteness and lead us to the breadth of his infiniteness responds to the question of our being. For this reason, the Christian faith finds man today, too. Our task is to serve the faith with a humble spirit and the whole strength of our heart and understanding.” - by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Address during meeting of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the presidents of the Doctrinal Commissions of the Bishops' Conferences of Latin America, Guadalajara, Mexico, May 1996.
St. Michael, the archangel, Defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do Thou, O prince of the Heavenly Host By the power of God, thrust into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen. Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God's love commits me here. Ever this day (night) be at my side, To enlight and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.
In His Holy Name,
(bro) Francis Patrick Mary, olsm(s)
European officials warn about pro-life groups from the United States.
July 16, 2003 / BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European commissioner for Overseas Development and Humanitarian Aid is taking action to counter U.S.-based pro-life groups.
A five-page internal memo circulated by Poul Nielson earlier this year discusses the problems posed by American pro-lifers to the Third World “reproductive health” policies promoted by Nielson’s European Commission office.
These groups “hold extreme views on religion and sexuality with their ultimate goal being no contraceptive use at all and sex within marriage only,” the memo states.
To read the complete article,copy and paste this link in your browser:
http://www.catholic.net/us_catholic_news/template_channel.phtml?channel_id=1
Catholic Higher Education
Let us get close to home on a totally different problem, Non-Catholic professors at a Catholic University teaching theology courses and others, including Catholic Theologians not teaching theology in communion with the Church?
Canon law requires a theologian teaching in a Catholic university to receive a mandatum from the local bishop. What this does is to indicate the theologian’s intention to teach within the Church teachings. Pope John Paul II’s, Ex Corde Ecclesiae (From the Heart of the Church), nailed it home, the canon law requirement was footnoted. The bishops of the United States started requiring the mandatum in 2001.
The Catholic fathers who teach complain that it’s impossible to have any free thought if you implement it, or it compromises the academic integrity of the University or some resent having to take an oath of fidelity to the Church.
Is this a ploy to protect the academian dissenters? How are foundational beliefs changed? The generations are changed by altering the thought processess of each upcoming generation. How is Catholicism in America changed? It is being watered - down, dumbed - down; the foundational beliefs of each generation are less Catholic than the previous; let this process continue and what do you have?
What is the University? Notre Dame.
To read the complete article,copy and paste this link in your browser:
http://www.catholic.net/us_catholic_news/template_article.phtml?channel_id=1&article_id=516
The following seven words are the 7 Capital Sins or Deadly sins. The indented definitions are taken from Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913) from this URL: http://smac.ucsd.edu/cgi-bin/http_webster?
I did not include the actual synonms in most cases, just the definitions of the synonyms.
The goal of this is to illustrate the communicated usage of these words, and if they apply to the above articles.
Pride
1. The quality or state of being proud; inordinate self-esteem; an unreasonable conceit of one's own superiority in talents, beauty, wealth, rank, etc., which manifests itself in lofty airs, distance, reserve, and often in contempt of others.
2. A sense of one's own worth, and abhorrence of what is beneath or unworthy of one; lofty self-respect; noble self-esteem; elevation of character; dignified bearing; proud delight; -- in a good sense.
3. Proud or disdainful behavior or treatment; insolence or arrogance of demeanor; haughty bearing and conduct; insolent exultation; disdain.
4. That of which one is proud; that which excites boasting or self-gratulation; the occasion or ground of self-esteem, or of arrogant and presumptuous confidence, as beauty, ornament, noble character, children, etc.
5. Show; ostentation; glory.
6. Highest pitch; elevation reached; loftiness; prime; glory; as, to be in the pride of one's life.
7. Consciousness of power; fullness of animal spirits; mettle; wantonness; hence, lust; sexual desire; esp., an excitement of sexual appetite in a female beast.
Synonym: Pride is a high or an excessive esteem of one's self for some real or imagined superiority, as rank, wealth, talents, character, etc. Vanity is the love of being admired, praised, exalted, etc., by others. Vanity is an ostentation of pride; but one may have great pride without displaying it. Vanity, which is etymologically ``emptiness,'' is applied especially to the exhibition of pride in superficialities, as beauty, dress, wealth, etc.
Avarice or Greed
1. An excessive or inordinate desire of gain; greediness after wealth; covetousness; cupidity.
2. An inordinate desire for some supposed good.
Synonym: greed, covetousness, rapacity, avaritia . Extreme greed for material wealth syn: avariciousness, covetousness, cupidity
Envy
1. Malice; ill will; spite.
2. Chagrin, mortification, discontent, or uneasiness at the sight of another's excellence or good fortune, accompanied with some degree of hatred and a desire to possess equal advantages; malicious grudging; -- usually followed by of
3. Emulation; rivalry.
4. Public odium; ill repute.
5. An object of envious notice or feeling.
Synonym: enviousness, the green-eyed monster 2: spite and resentment at seeing the success of another (personified as one of the deadly sins). feel envious towards; admire enviously, be envious of; set one's heart on. Begrudge
Wrath
1. Violent anger; vehement exasperation; indignation; rage; fury; ire.
2. The effects of anger or indignation; the just punishment of an offense or a crime.
Synonym: Anger; fury; rage; ire; vengeance; indignation; resentment; passion.
Lust
1. To list; to like.
2. To have an eager, passionate, and especially an inordinate or sinful desire, as for the gratification of the sexual appetite or of covetousness; -- often with after.
Synonym: lecherousness, lustfulness 2: self-indulgent sexual desire, have a craving, appetite, or great desire for, crave, hunger, thirst, starve
Gluttony (Avarice of food)
1. Excess in eating; extravagant indulgence of the appetite for food; voracity.
Synonym: habitual eating to excess 2: eating to excess
Sloth
1. Slowness; tardiness.
2. Disinclination to action or labor; sluggishness; laziness; idleness.
Synonym: apathy and inactivity in the practice of virtue, laziness in the practice of virtue
In the above articles, can you not see these deadly sins being actively practiced? These are just some things to ponder, but remember when the secular world becomes the focus of one’s life, then holiness falls away.
Francis
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