There are no obstacles we can't overcome in His Holy Name!

Brian Hudon, a faithful Catholic blogger loyal to the Church's Magisterium, notes that, "It's a given that the Catholic Church is in decline in the United States of America. The priesthood is aging, the average age of those who attend mass on a regular basis is rapidly increasing and there are nearly none to replace the members of either group. The Church in America is dying and no one will be left the remember it. How did this happen? You might think you know, or perhaps you think you don't, but the answers are more painfully obvious than anyone would believe and in many cases, will be more than unpopular.

A mess has been created in the Catholic Church in America. Note than I said the Catholic Church in America, not the Catholic Church of America or the American Catholic Church as there are no such things as those. But therein lies the problem. Catholics who are American have for too long attempted to put their trademark upon the Catholic Church in America, not realizing the Catholic Church is not only a foreign presence in the United States, but a foreign presence in the world. We here are exiles in the world.

Let us be clear, the Catholic Church is the one true visible presence of Jesus Christ's authority on earth. The Bible comes from the Catholic Church, Catholic meaning universal only, the one true Church founded by Christ. We do not believe in Jesus because of the Bible. We trust in the veracity of the Bible because of the authority of the Church. The Catholic Church, and the Church alone, through the authority of the Apostles of Christ's Church on earth decided what was in the Bible. We used to believe and profess this.

Unfortunately, we have now come to profess, as the lapsed Catholics we have become, that Catholicism is a faith rather than the faith. In a true syncretistic style, many believe all religions now, are more or less the same. Many foolishly and falsely believe we all worship the same God, if only differently. While even popes warn of the danger of "New Age" there is nothing more "new age" than radical ecumenism, if in fact there is ever any ecumenism that is not radical, or rather a type of veiled shame of being Catholic.

And so, we might have our children baptized, and as often have them receive first communion, and now seldom see them confirmed. Parents if they even attend mass from week to week and often don't, do not require their children to attend weekly mass as God requires them to. We allow our children to marry non-Catholics and often marry outside the Catholic faith, even while they continue to receive communion while never attending confession. And we think this all kosher because they are good people.

The marines may be looking for a few good men, but God is looking for valid Catholics, in all human persons, who live their lives in the sacraments of Holy Mother Church. Christ is right when he says the road to the kingdom of heaven is narrow and few there are who will find it. Very few we might fear. Should we believe otherwise is to call Jesus Christ a liar. But we often do that anyhow, even while desecrating and profaning the very sacraments we choose not to believe while making empty public professions.

The Creed of the Church is what we believe. It is not what what we wish for. It is not a menu. When we say "I believe" we must mean "I believe" even if we do not understand. All else that is contrary to this makes us enemies of the son of the living God, his Father in heaven and the Holy Spirit. God needs our opinions and personal beliefs no more than the earth requires our opinions of gravity when we trip and fall violently to the ground. The Creed is the physics of Catholic thinking and is not subject to opinion polls.

Among the worst forms of offense against God and the Church are in matters of sexual morality. The first directive of God in all of human history was to be fruitful. We are not however fruitful. Far from it, we are quite barren, a situation that has led directly to the current crisis in the Church. We as a Catholic people are largely producing chaff, the very chaff that the threshers will burn in unquenchable fire. Man commits few offenses so grave as impurity and contraception which produce no heirs for the Gospel.

The Church with regularity prays for vocations as it should, but it does not ask why the garden of Catholic living does not produce bountiful harvests.* Why are the fields dry and the produce so little? Why? Illegitimate births, birth control, pre-marital sex, abortion, divorce and perhaps the thing most deadly to the Church, the loveless marriage that finds no conjugal unity and procreative love in marriage which finds strength and nourishment in the sacraments of the Church. And what of this? Marriage dies without God.

A Church without sons is a Church without priests. A Church without sons is a Church without priests and a Church without sacraments. Before all things Jesus Christ, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, was a son. A Church without sons, dies. He was a son before all things in his last words, made his most faithful disciple at the Cross a son of his own mother, Mary and made her a mother again. Be fruitful God says to the first man and woman and we have not been and the Church thus withers gravely.

I had the opportunity to deliver a much abbreviated version of these concerns to the Bishop of my own diocese this past July. A Church without sons, a Church without family, has no future I told him and a room of some 70 people. Now that has come to fruition as we have been formally informed to expect changes in the Church. The fear is a logical and likely one and inevitable. There are going to be fewer priests and as a result, fewer masses. The end result will be unmistakable, even less mass attendance.

The template here is clear. The destruction of the Catholic family leads to the destruction of the Catholic Church. Like water in the hot sun the faithful will gather into ever fewer and smaller pools to face the world alone under the brutal hot sun of faithlessness, relativism, ecumenism, and sterility. Some, lukewarm, may be soaked up by the protestant residual, but many will simply resume life without God. Hardcore faith rooted in the Tradition and sacraments of the Church will become ever more the exception, than the rule.

Consider the attacks of the world upon faith, public mockery of Catholicism, false claims of science and reason, the propaganda of the culture of death including forms of artificial forms of conception, euthanasia, radical feminism, the homosexual movement, alternate forms of so-called marriage, pornography and near legal and state sanctioned forms of religious discrimination against Catholics by a rogue American state and the road to the kingdom of heaven becomes all the more narrow and difficult to navigate.

I am not proposing solutions. I am not making wild unsubstantiated suppositions. I am simply telling you the time of the day. 50 years of post-Vatican II dissolution of the Liturgy and sacramental life, of rampant birth control, cohabitation, divorce, abortion and timid ecumenism have eviscerated the Catholic faith. Lump on top of this weak and absent catechesis, rote and thoughtless reception of our Lord in Eucharistic communion without repentance in the sacrament of confession and you have a recipe for spiritual disaster."

 

Brian Hudon is doing what Vatican II instructs us to do as Catholics.  For the Council reminded us that we have a duty to clean up every environment where sin and injustice have found a home.  And this includes the local Church.  The Council said, "...the faithful must strive, as much as they can, to clean up the world's institutions and environments, if in some manner they incite to sin, in such a way that they come to conform to the principles of justice, and favour more than they impede the practice of the virtues."

 

Why does the evil in our midst continue to grow unchecked?  Because good men and women have become afraid.  It was Sir Edmund Burke who said that, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

But excessive conformism has led to the passive acceptance of evils which are fatal for the life of the Church and which fearful and timid Catholics now view as unavoidable.  The challenge, as I see it, is for Christians to once again pray for the Cardinal Virtue of Fortitude. Omnia possum in eo qui me confortat. I can do all things in Him who strengthens me. (Phil 4:13). These words are engraved on a bracelet which I wear. Do we really believe this? Or do we let others define who we are?


Issue the battle cry! Let's take back our cities!  Let's say "enough" to the "Culture of Death," the "Cult of Softness," the radical homosexual agenda, New Age Gnosticism, and all the other myriad evils which have infected Holy Mother Church.

Those who walk in the Spirit know no fear. What are we waiting for? The Lord Jesus waits. He grows tired of our excuses:


I’m not holy enough:
Is 6:1-9; Lk 5:1-11

I’m afraid I will fail:
Ex 14:10-31; Lk 15

I’ve made mistakes and I’m a sinner:
Jn 21:15-23; Mt 9:9-13; Lk 7:36-50

I’m too young:
1 Sam 3:1-18; Jer 1:4-10; Lk 1:26-38

I’m not talented enough:
1 Sam 17:32-51; Lk 1:26-38

I want to have a family:
Gn 12:1-3; Mt 12:46-50; Mk 10:28-30

I’m afraid of making a permanent commitment:
Ruth 1:15-17; Mt 28:16-20

I’m afraid of public speaking:
Ex 4:10-17; Jer 1:4-10

I’m not smart enough:
2 Cor 4:7-18; Ex 4:10-17

I’m afraid of being alone:
Ex 3:4-22; Lk 1:28-38

I want to be happy:
Ps 37:4; Mt 5:1-12; Jn 10:10; Mk 10:28-31

I can do all things in Him who strengthens me. There are no obstacles we can't overcome in His holy name. Even while others attempt to label us and dismiss us as useless, as having no worth. I knew a young man with developmental disabilities whose father told him he was "worthless." He was told by his father that the best thing for him would be a bullet in the head. When he asked me one day if he was worthless, I reminded him of his many gifts: his sense of humor, his ability to love others, his ability to pray to God and a litany of other gifts. And I assured him that he is not "worthless."

We live in a sad, broken world. There are many people who are heavily burdened with sin who are hurting. And because they are hurting, they want to hurt others. If you could read some of the comments which have been left at this Blog you would cringe. Sad time. Hurting time. And we pray for such people.

But we cannot let others define who we are. We are children of God who have access to the Holy Spirit's Gifts just by asking for them.

The Son of God loves us. What does that suggest about those who hate us?

The Spirit within us is NOT a spirit of fear!  Now is the time to act if we want to imprint the Christian character on every environment we encounter.  If we fail to rise up to this challenge, the tears of the next generation will be the fruit of our complacency and cowardice.

Is this what we want for the next generation?

*  See here. 

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As Catholics, we are called upon to imitate Mary's "virginally integral" faith, hope and charity

Faith is God’s gift to created persons who are entirely dependent on Him. The proper response to this gift is reverent obedience. Christian faith is characterized by a humble and reverent submission to what God has revealed. Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) has this to say: “’The obedience of faith’ (Rm 16:26; cf. Rm 1:5; 2 Cor 10: 5-6) ‘is to be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals,’ and freely assenting to the truth revealed by him. To make this act of faith, the grace of God and the interior help of the Holy Spirit must precede and assist, moving the heart and turning it to God, opening the eyes of the mind and giving ‘joy and ease to everyone in assenting to the truth and believing it.’” (Dei Verbum, No. 5).


For many if not most Catholics today, obedience to revealed truth seems difficult if not impossible. The idea of submitting one’s mind and will to another authority is viewed as repugnant. And this largely because, as Dr. Dietrich von Hildebrand reminds us, “The egocentric sovereignty that modern man arrogates to himself bans everything that has the character of coming from above, of imposing bonds upon us, and of calling for an adequate response. Modern man also shuns all the factors in life which are gifts, which he cannot grant to himself: they remind him of his dependence upon something greater than himself and above himself. Thus truth in its implacable sovereignty – absolute truth that judges our reason instead of being judged by it – is denied.” (The New Tower of Babel: Modern Man’s Flight from God, p. 19).

This is most unfortunate for St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that, after the virtue of religion, obedience is the most perfect of all the moral virtues. And this because the virtue of obedience unites us more closely to God than any of the other virtues, insofar as it detaches us from our own will. For the main obstacle to union with God is self-will.

Obedience unites us to God and enables us to share habitually in His life. Obedience subordinates our will directly to the will of God and, as a consequence, all of our other faculties since these are subordinated to our will.

When we offer our wills as a sacrifice to God through obedience, we enter into communion with God, since we no longer have any other will but God's will. Only then can we make the words of Jesus in His agony our own words: "Not my will, but thine be done." This conformity of our will to the Divine will becomes one with charity. As St. Thomas reminds us, love effects primarily a union of wills.

This is the teaching of St. John, the beloved Apostle. After teaching us that he who claims to love God and keeps not His commandments is a liar, the Apostle declares: "But he that keepeth his word, in him in very deed the charity of God is perfected; and by this we know that we are in him" (1 John 2:5). This is the teaching of Jesus Himself, Who tells us that to keep His commandments is to love Him: "If you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15).

True obedience is, in reality, a genuine act of love. And this genuine love, this genuine conformity to the Divine will, purifies us from sin. Moreover, this conformity to the Divine will is what works out our reformation. It is, after all, the disordered love of pleasure - to which we yield through either weakness or malice - which has deformed us.

Happily, as we strive to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5: 48), we have a most perfect model of faith, hope and charity in the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary is all holy. Her earthly life was characterized by perfect harmony with the person and redeeming work of her Son. Pope John Paul II reminded us that, “The Council urged the faithful to look to Mary so that they may imitate her ‘virginally integral’ faith, hope and charity. To preserve the integrity of faith is a demanding task for the Church, which is called to constant vigilance even at the cost of sacrifice and struggle. The Church’s faith is not only threatened by those who reject the Gospel message, but especially by those who, in accepting only part of the revealed truth, refuse to share fully in the entire patrimony of the faith of Christ’s bride. Unfortunately, this temptation, which we find from the Church’s beginning, continues to be present in her life, urging her to accept revelation only in part, or to give the Word of God a limited, personal interpretation in conformity with the prevailing mentality and individual desires. Having fully adhered to the Word of the Lord, Mary represents for the Church an unsurpassable model of ‘virginally integral’ faith, for with docility and perseverance she accepts the revealed truth whole and entire…” (General Audience of August 20, 1997).

Mary accepted revealed truth whole and entire. She fully adhered in obedience to the Word of God. Shall we do any less?

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St. Padre Pio: "prayer is the best weapon we have, a key that opens the heart of God"

Today is St. Padre Pio's birthday.  It is mine as well.  The following is a translation of the homily which Pope John Paul II delivered during the canonization ceremony of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina (1887-1968):



"For my yoke is easy, and my burden light" (Matthew 11:30).

"Jesus´ words to his disciples, which we have just heard, help us to understand the most important message of this solemn celebration. Indeed, in a certain sense, we can consider them as a magnificent summary of the whole life of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, today proclaimed a saint.

The evangelical image of the 'yoke' recalls the many trials that the humble Capuchin of San Giovanni Rotondo had to face. Today we contemplate in him how gentle the 'yoke' of Christ is, and how truly light is his burden when it is borne with faithful love. The life and mission of Padre Pio prove that difficulties and sorrows, if accepted out of love, are transformed into a privileged way of holiness, which opens to prospects of a greater good, known only to the Lord.

"But may I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Galatians 6:14).

Is it not, precisely, the 'glory of the Cross' that shines above all in Padre Pio? How timely is the spirituality of the Cross lived by the humble Capuchin of Pietrelcina! Our times have need of rediscovering its value in order to open the heart to hope.

Throughout his life, he always sought greater conformity with the Crucified, being very conscious of having been called to collaborate in a special way in the work of redemption. His holiness cannot be understood without this constant reference to the Cross.

In God´s plan, the Cross constitutes the true instrument of salvation for the whole of humanity and the way explicitly proposed by the Lord to all those who wish to follow him (see Mark 16:24). The Holy Brother of Gargano understood this well who, on the feast of the Assumption in 1914, wrote: 'In order to succeed in reaching our ultimate end we must follow the divine Head, who does not wish to lead the chosen soul on any way other than the one he followed; by that, I say, of abnegation and the Cross' (Epistolario II, p. 155).

"I, the Lord, bring about kindness" (Jeremiah 9:23).

Padre Pio was a generous dispenser of divine mercy, making himself available to all through hospitality, spiritual direction and especially the administration of the sacrament of penance. The ministry of the confessional, which is one of the distinctive traits of his apostolate, attracted numerous crowds of faithful to the monastery of San Giovanni Rotondo. Even when that singular confessor treated pilgrims with apparent severity, the latter, becoming conscious of the gravity of sin and sincerely repentant, almost always came back for the peaceful embrace of sacramental forgiveness.

May his example encourage priests to carry out this ministry with joy and assiduousness, so important today, as I wished to confirm in the Letter to Priests on the occasion of last Holy Thursday.


"Lord, you are my only good."

This is what we sang in the Responsorial Psalm. Through these words, the new saint invites us to place God above all, and to consider him our sole and highest good.

In fact, the ultimate reason for Padre Pio´s apostolic efficacy, the profound root of so much spiritual fruitfulness, is found in that intimate and constant union with God, of which his long hours spent in prayer were eloquent testimonies. He loved to repeat: 'I am a poor Brother who prays,' convinced that 'prayer is the best weapon we have, a key that opens the heart of God.' This fundamental characteristic of his spirituality continues in the Prayer Groups that he founded, which offer to the Church and society the wonderful contribution of incessant and confident prayer. To prayer, Padre Pio joined an intense charitable activity, of which the House for the Relief of Suffering is an extraordinary expression. Prayer and charity, this is the most concrete synthesis of Padre Pio´s teaching, which is proposed again today to everyone.

"I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike" (Matthew 11:25).

How appropriate these words of Jesus seem, when applied to you, humble and beloved, Padre Pio.

Teach us also, we pray, humility of heart, in order to be numbered among the little ones of the Gospel, to whom the Father has promised to reveal the mysteries of his Kingdom.

Help us to pray tirelessly, certain that God knows what we need, even before we ask him.

Obtain for us eyes of faith capable of recognizing immediately in the poor and suffering the very face of Jesus.

Sustain us in the hour of battle and trial and, if we fall, make us experience the joy of the sacrament of forgiveness.

Transmit to us your tender devotion to Mary, Mother of Jesus and our Mother.

Accompany us on our earthly pilgrimage toward the blessed homeland, which we also hope to reach, to contemplate forever the Glory of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen!"


I know full well that I am not welcome in my own diocese.  I know that I am hated for defending the Church's authoritative teaching, especially in the area of human sexuality, as well as for opposing New Age occultism.  But it matters not.  Because I have a vocation which cannot be taken from me: a vocation to prayer which is, as Pio reminded us, the best weapon we have.

As one who is excluded from the life of the local Church, even as dissenters are welcomed with open arms, I know that the Lord Jesus does not exclude me.  And I continue to pray for a diocese which has lost its way.  I continue to pray for all the needs of the Church.  I continue to defend the teaching of the Magisterium.  If I am to be hated for doing so, then so be it.  John the Baptist was excluded from public life, his head severed from his body.  Stephen was stoned to death.  The Apostles were martyred.

They knew what it was like to be excluded from "polite society."  So too did St. Pio, falsely accused and censured for so very many years.  But in the end truth triumphs.  And those who give themselves to hatred will reap what they have sown.

Related video here.

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Pope Benedict XVI: "We would be mistaken to think that Fatima's prophetic mission is complete.."

Many Catholics today, including some priests and religious,  have no use for Fatima.  Just recently, Archbishop Loris Capovilla expressed his "reservations" about the apparition.  Others believe that Fatima just isn't "relevant" any longer.

Such an attitude is most unfortunate and is not consistent with the thought of Pope Benedict XVI.  On May 13, 2010, the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima, the Holy Father said that, "We would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete. Here there takes on new life the plan of God which asks humanity from the beginning: “Where is your brother Abel […] Your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!” (Gen 4:9). Mankind has succeeded in unleashing a cycle of death and terror, but failed in bringing it to an end… In sacred Scripture we often find that God seeks righteous men and women in order to save the city of man and he does the same here, in Fatima, when Our Lady asks: “Do you want to offer yourselves to God, to endure all the sufferings which he will send you, in an act of reparation for the sins by which he is offended and of supplication for the conversion of sinners?” (Memoirs of Sister Lúcia, I, 162).


At a time when the human family was ready to sacrifice all that was most sacred on the altar of the petty and selfish interests of nations, races, ideologies, groups and individuals, our Blessed Mother came from heaven, offering to implant in the hearts of all those who trust in her the Love of God burning in her own heart. At that time it was only to three children, yet the example of their lives spread and multiplied, especially as a result of the travels of the Pilgrim Virgin, in countless groups throughout the world dedicated to the cause of fraternal solidarity. May the seven years which separate us from the centenary of the apparitions hasten the fulfilment of the prophecy of the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to the glory of the Most Holy Trinity." (See here).

Vatican II, addressing the charismatic gifts, said that they "must be accepted with gratefulness and consolation."  At the same time, the Council insisted that, "Judgment as to their genuineness and their correct use lies with those who lead the Church and those whose special task is not to extinguish the spirit but to examine everything and keep that which is good." (Lumen Gentium, No. 2).  But there are dark forces at work within the Church which seek to bury Fatima in a deep, dark hole and to convince others to ignore the message of Our Lady, thereby stifling the prophetic mission of the apparition.

The Devil knows full well that his time is short.  Our Lady told Father Stefano Gobbi that, "The powers of hell will not prevail, even if now they have reached the point of contesting the Pope, of opposing him openly and of rejecting his Magisterium.  Thus, errors are being spread about which draw many away from the true faith, and sects are being propagated which draw to themselves many children of the Church...But I am calling all my children to the greatest fidelity to the Catholic Church; I am instilling in them a love for the Church, zeal for her unity, passion for her holiness, and strength for her work of evangelization.  And thus, through those who consecrating themselves to my Immaculate Heart, I am bringing to nothing all the effort which Satan is exerting, in his attempt to draw many of my children away from the one and only Church instituted by my Son Jesus.  And by means of my extraordinary and motherly intervention, once again, the powers of hell will not prevail.." (February 22, 1996).

The Devil knows this.  Which is why he uses others (usually the self-important "intellectuals" who are puffed up with pride) to attack Fatima or Marian apparitions and messages in general or to attempt to undermine their prophetic significance.

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We must offer women who have had an abortion hope and encouragement and avoid judging their internal guilt

It was St. Augustine, Father and Doctor of the Church, who said, "Interficere errorem, diligere errantem" - Kill the error, love the one who errs.  I have actually taken that as the motto for this Blog.  Gaudium et Spes of the Second Vatican Council put it this way: "..it is necessary to distinguish between error, which always merits repudiation, and the person in error, who never loses the dignity of being a person even when he is flawed by false or inadequate religious notions. God alone is the judge and searcher of hearts, for that reason He forbids us to make judgments about the internal guilt of anyone." (No. 28).

This teaching isn't always understood by some.  In an article on abortion which may be found at LifeSiteNews, Stacy Trasancos, who writes a column for The Catholic Free Press, writes, "It's a faulty question to ask whether or not a woman suffers mental anguish after she kills her own child.  Of course she does, a woman with her sanity and dignity intact doesn't do that in the first place....a woman  who kills her child in the womb is suffering mentally and will suffer mentally afterwards.  Something is terribly wrong in her soul and in her life." See here.

But here we encounter an immediate problem.  To say that there is something "terribly wrong" in the soul of a woman who has had an abortion and that her sanity and dignity are not intact is to make a judgment about her internal guilt and her motives.  The very thing which the teaching of the Church forbids.


Pope John Paul II, in his wonderful Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, explains that many factors influence the decision which a woman makes when she is burdened with an untimely pregnancy.  He writes, "As well as the mother, there are often other people too who decide upon the death of the child in the womb. In the first place, the father of the child may be to blame, not only when he directly pressures the woman to have an abortion, but also when he indirectly encourages such a decision on her part by leaving her alone to face the problems of pregnancy...Nor can one overlook the pressures which sometimes come from the wider family circle and from friends. Sometimes the woman is subjected to such strong pressure that she feels psychologically forced to have an abortion: certainly in this case the moral responsibility lies particularly with those who have directly or indirectly obliged her to have an abortion. (EV, No. 59)

The Holy Father also places responsibility for the tragedy of abortion on, "doctors and nurses...when they place at the service of death skills which were acquired for promotion of life," and on "legislators who have promoted and approved abortion laws," and, "to the extent that they have a say in the matter, on the administrators of the health-care centers were abortions are performed” (EV, No. 59).

It is always a tragedy when a woman makes the decision to have an abortion.  But this decision to have an abortion is made in the context of multiple personal and societal pressures in what Pope John Paul II so aptly termed the "culture of death." Although the responsibility for the abortion decision is not entirely, nor perhaps even primarily hers, she must bear its burdensome consequences almost entirely alone for the rest of her life. So perhaps it's best to avoid questioning her sanity and dignity?

Perhaps instead, we should follow the lead of Pope John Paul II, whose pastoral outreach to women who have had an abortion is a model of tenderness and compassion [rightly understood] as well as being hopeful:

"I would like to say a special word to women who have had an abortion. The Church is aware of the many factors which may have influenced your decision, and she does not doubt that in many cases I was a painful and even shattering decision. The wound in your heart may not yet have healed. Certainly what happened was and remains terribly wrong. But do not give in to discouragement and do not lose hope. Try rather to understand what happened and face it honestly. If you have not already done so, give yourselves over with humility and trust to repentance. The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation." (EV, No. 99).

Notice how the Holy Father does not condone sin or error?  He rightly stresses that an abortion is, objectively speaking, a grave wrong even as he offers hope and encouragement by reminding women who have had an abortion that forgiveness and peace may be theirs in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. 

One would think that Stacy Trasancos would understand this better than most.  For she has herself admitted, at the website Catholic Online, that she got pregnant in college, has had an abortion, that she's taken drugs and worked as a stripper, that she's been divorced, and that her seven children are from three different men.

The same Good God Who forgave Stacy her sins offers His Mercy to every woman who has had an abortion.  Perhaps instead of questioning the souls of such women or their dignity and sanity, Stacy could follow Pope John Paul II's lead?  As should we all.

Kill the error, love the one who errs.  Hate the sin, love the sinner.

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America: Will we be inspired by Sparta or Calvary?

It can no longer be denied that America has become a "seething cesspool of filth and corruption."  America has become a haunt of demons and of every foul spirit.  Today, even those who present themselves as "Catholic" have lost the sense of sin.  Archbishop Fulton Sheen warned that, "Man is powerless to resist evil if he does not recognize it as such, and deceives himself when he becomes indifferent to evil; his whole personality immediately begins to dissolve, for the power of conscience is inseparably bound up with the denunciation of evil. And this is precisely what our world is doing today; the very beliefs on which the best culture of the world was built are now called in question.  Even the distinction between good and evil is lost, and now only a sense of civic loyalty remains.  The prophet Isaias sounded such a decadence in his day: 'Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.'  If we called sin by its name it would lose all of its seductiveness.  Hell can be made attractive, only by surfacing it with the gold of Paradise." (Essay entitled The Sense of Sin).

Today, evil is called good and good is called evil.  Catholics faithful to the Magisterium are portrayed as "divisive" and "offensive" even as active homosexuals are celebrated and told to have "pride" in their behaviors. 

On April 6, 1941, Bishop Fulton John Sheen gave a sermon on his radio show "The Catholic Hour" in which he reminded listeners that, "The basic spirit of the modern world for the last century has been a determination to escape the Cross." He told his audience as well that, "There is no such thing as living without a cross. We are free only to choose between crosses." And then he asked them: "Will it be the Cross of Christ which redeems us from our sins, or will it be the double cross, the swastika, the hammer and sickle, the fasces"? Bishop Sheen believed, as I do, that America is at a crossroads. In his own words, "We in America are now faced with the threat of that double cross...Our choice is not: Will we or will we not have more discipline, more respect for law, more order, more sacrifice; but, where will we get it? Will we get it from without, or from within, Will it be inspired by Sparta or Calvary? By Valhalla or Gethsemane? By militarism or religion? By the double cross or the Cross? By Caesar or by God? That is the choice facing America today.


The hour of false freedom is past. No longer can we have education without discipline, family life without sacrifice, individual existence without moral responsibility, economics and politics without subservience to the common good. We are now only free to say whence it shall come. We will have a sword. Shall it be only the sword that thrusts outward to cut off the ears of our enemies, or the sword that pierces inward to cut out our own selfish pride"?

Thus far, America has chosen the double cross. Fleeing from the Cross of Christ and the supernatural kingdom established by the Son of God; one of sacrifice and sanctity, America has chosen to pursue a terrestrial kingdom of pleasure and power founded upon a distorted idea of what constitutes liberty or freedom. But this city of man, which has certainly achieved astounding advancements in various spheres while increasing the affluence of some, has also contributed to a climate where men are regarded as mere machines whose only value is to be found in what they produce or consume. This in turn destroys the individual’s sense of personal dignity and responsibility. Americans, in their tragic desire to flee from the Cross of Christ, have rushed to embrace this distorted notion of "freedom" and have forgotten that, as created beings, they only possess contingent rights. That is to say, rights which are accorded by Almighty God. Consequently, in their zeal to promote the fallacious idea that the basis of public morality should be whatever the majority of citizens are prepared to accept, they have also forgotten that man does not possess, and never will possess, the right to perform or engage in any act which is displeasing to God.

And where has this flight from the Cross of Christ led us up to this point? Was Bishop Sheen being an alarmist? In the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, taken from his Commencement Address at Harvard University entitled "A World Split Apart": "Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, the misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. This is considered to be part of freedom, and theoretically counterbalanced by the young peoples’ right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil."

Getting back to Bishop Sheen. What did he mean when he said that, "Our choice is not: Will we or will we not have more discipline, more respect for law, more order, more sacrifice; but, where will we get it"? I believe Pope Benedict XVI was providing us with a hint toward an answer when he spoke of the "dictatorship of relativism." Americans who have gleefully embraced the tenets of liberalism have not learned the lesson the concentration camp and the gulag. These unfortunate souls refuse to acknowledge that atheistic ideology (and make no mistake, the current idea of "freedom" which has taken root in America is itself rooted in atheistic ideology) always, and without exception, gives birth to sheer violence. This is the lesson of atheistic humanism. A lesson which the majority of Americans would rather not think about.

Who would deny that Bishop Sheen’s warning, issued 71 years ago, was highly prophetic? America, and the West in general, is at a crossroads. We have before us two crosses: The Cross of Christ and the double cross (which may also be referred to today as the "dictatorship of relativism"). Which will we choose in the end? Will we continue on our present course or change direction and finally come to embrace the Cross of Christ? Will we embrace Christ and His kingdom of sacrifice and sanctity or continue to rush headlong into the idolatry of unbridled hedonism while declaring ourselves, even if only tacitly, to be God?

If we continue to choose the latter, then we should remember the words of Fr. Vincent Miceli, S.J., "When man becomes God, history testifies that then millions of men become imprisoned slaves, terrified automatons and murdered corpses. Society, in the words of Gabriel Marcel, becomes a ‘termite colony.’" (The Gods of Atheism, p. 463).

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Can we trust the Sentinel & Enterprise to cover the Catholic Church or issues which concern Catholics?

Professor James Hitchcock has said that many in the media belong to a "self-defined 'enlightened' class who claim the right to judge other people's beliefs, even when they do not understand those beliefs, a claim which clearly contradicts the same enlightened class's constant sermons about 'respect' and 'understanding.' Their favorite cause is 'sexual freedom' and nothing sets off their alarm bells faster than the suggestion that chastity may have some value...Religious believers are continually accused of trying to impose their beliefs on others, which in reality means resisting having secular beliefs imposed on them...The enlightened class obviously does not understand Catholic teachings about many things, nor does it wish to, and it gives itself license to trash those teachings..." (See here).

Just last month the "enlightened class" over at the Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise provided anti-Catholic bigot Bill Press the opportunity to trash the Catholic Bishops, accusing them of being deceitful with regard to the Obama administration's contraception mandate and of advancing a teaching which is appallingly "medieval."  Mr. Press wrote, "I love protests, and have taken part in many. But there are real protests and there are phony protests. And one of the phoniest we've ever seen is today's protest by Catholic bishops against the Obama administration's new rules on insurance coverage of contraception.


Here's the truth. On Jan. 20, the Health and Human Services Agency, under Secretary Kathleen Sibelius, issued a new rule that insurance policies, as part of their basic package, must offer contraceptive services with no deductible or co-pay. An exception was made for 335,000 churches, missions, or other places of worship where all employees were Catholic or members of any religion which opposed contraception as a matter of faith.

The new ruling does not require Catholic hospitals or clinics to provide birth control pills or devices. It does not force Catholics to practice contraception. It does not interfere with anyone's religion. It does not prevent priests and bishops from continuing their appalling medieval and widely ignored attempts to convince Catholics that contraception is sinful. It simply says that there can no longer be two kinds of health insurance policies: those that cover contraception and those that don't.

Catholic bishops are being dishonest. They accuse the president of infringing on religious liberty. Yet they fail to acknowledge, for example, that not everybody who works in a Catholic hospital or university is a Catholic."  (February 13, 2012 edition of the Sentinel & Enterprise).

Even non-Catholics of good will can see through Mr. Press' nonsense.  But to label the Church's teaching on artificial contraception "medieval" is just hateful and proves Archbishop Fulton Sheen was correct when he said that, "There are not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions of people who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church — which is, of course, quite a different thing."

This ignorance as to what the Church is and what she teaches pervades most of our secular media.  The Sentinel & Enterprise routinely publishes opinion pieces which are just wrong on the facts.  Not only is Catholic teaching often misrepresented but the newspaper fails to get even basic facts correct.  For example, in an article which may be found here, the newspaper reports on more than 25 protesters and their children who stood outside St. Anna's Parish on Lancaster Street in Leominster to show their opposition to the Obama adminstration's contraception mandate.  The article says that one protester is from St. Camilla's Church in Fitchburg.  The problem?  The parish referred to is dedicated not to St. Camilla but rather to St. Camillus de Lellis, who was actually my father's patron saint.*

Now before you say, "Well that's an honest mistake," consider that this Catholic parish is in the Sentinel & Enterprises' very own city!  And they still managed to get it wrong!  But hey, why should the "enlightened class" worry about such matters?  After all, the Church and her teaching are merely "medieval throwbacks" to a "superstitious time" right?

I wrote the editor of the newspaper a while back offering to cover the Church and Church-related issues.  I didn't get a response.  But the newspaper did publish this gem on Easter Sunday.

Can we trust the Sentinel & Enterprise to cover the Catholic Church and issues which concern Catholics with fairness, accuracy and objectivity?  What do you think?

*  More accurately, the parish is now St. Bernard's at St. Camillus.

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Archbishop Vincent Nichols, we need Shepherds not Keystone Cops who fall asleep while on duty

Writing from the UK, my good friend Deacon Nick Donnelly of Protect the Pope reports that:

Archbishop Nichols has re-affirmed the Archdiocese of Westminster’s provision of pastoral care to homosexuals through the so called Soho Masses, while at the same time announcing that he is undertaking a review of the current provision to ensure these Masses are not occasions for opposition to the Church’s teaching on sexuality: ‘At the present time consideration is being given to the circumstances in which these Masses are celebrated to ensure that their purpose is respected and that they are not occasions for confusion or opposition concerning the positive teaching of the Church on the meaning of human sexuality or the moral imperatives that flow from that teaching, which we uphold and towards which we all strive.' (See full article here).

Deacon Nick comments: "This is good news from Archbishop Nichols,and signifies an important shift in his position on the Soho Masses. Before the Holy Father’s visit the archbishop expressed, in intemperate language, that those Catholics concerned about public dissent at the Soho Masses should ‘hold their tongues.’ Now 18 months later Archbishop Nichols has admitted the concern that the Soho Masses could be occasions for confusion and opposition to the Church’s teaching, and needs investigating. This is exactly the claim made by Daphne McLeod and Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice....Protect the Pope recommends that the archbishop includes in his review an examination of the website Queering the Church, run by a member of the organising council Terence Weldon."

So Archbishop Nichols is going to conduct a "review" to ensure that the infamous Soho Masses "are not occasions for confusion or opposition" to the Church's moral teaching regarding homosexuality?  Why is it that I have an image of The Keystone Cops playing in my head?  Your Excellency, Terence Weldon, who serves as an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist at these Masses, has been engaging in public dissent from the Church's teaching in this area for years.

In his latest post at "Queering the Church," Mr. Weldon writes that, "One part of conventional Catholic teaching on homosexual persons, is that our orientation is the cross that we must take up, and deal with. I disagree – orientation in itself is a gift from God, not an ordeal to survive. The cross that we carry, as I wrote in a Lenten post last year, is the disordered teaching of the Church, the persecution that it brings in discrimination bullying, gay -bashing and hate-crime murders – and the internalized homophobia that drives a disproportionate number of us to suicide, or to less extreme pathological behaviour, in addictions or in the closet....CDF documents claim, with no evidence whatsoever, that homosexuality/homosexual acts lead us away from God. That is certainly not my experience, which shows the exact reverse." (See here).

What do you think Your Excellency?  Does this passage indicate that Terence Weldon is striving to conform to Church teaching or that he is openly dissenting from the same?

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"He is now ruling over you as a sure victor..."

All across the United States, Occupy Wall Street protests have erupted and are now becoming violent.  In Oakland, California things have spiraled out of control.  On May 13, 1993, Our Lady told Father Gobbi that, "Satan has set up his kingdom in the world.  He is now ruling over you as a sure victor.  The powers which are directing and arranging human events, according to their perverse plans, are the dark and diabolical powers of evil.  They have succeeded in bringing all humanity to live without God.  They have spread everywhere the error of theoretical and practical atheism.  They have built the new idols before which humanity is bowing down in adoration: pleasure, money, pride, impurity, mastery over others, and impiety.  Thus, in these years of yours, violence is spreading more and more.  Egoism has made the hearts of men hard and insensitive.  Hatred has blazed up like a scorching fire.  Wars have multiplied in every part of the world, and you are now living in the danger of a new terrible world war which will bring destruction to peoples and nations, a war from which no one will emerge victorious..."

Our Lady has been warning us for some time that we are the authors of our own chastisement.  But honestly, didn't we already know this?  The people of Nineveh repented of their sins and their city was spared from disaster.  The spirit of penance which saved them from chastisement was expressed through the sackcloth and ashes. We are told in Sacred Scripture that, "The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: Set out for the great city of Nineveh, and announce to it the message that I will tell you. So Jonah set out for Nineveh, in accord with the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an awesomely great city; it took three days to walk through it. Jonah began his journey through the city, and when he had gone only a single day’s walk announcing, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, laid aside his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had this proclaimed throughout Nineveh: 'By decree of the king and his nobles, no man or beast, no cattle or sheep, shall taste anything; they shall not eat, nor shall they drink water. Man and beast alike must be covered with sackcloth and call loudly to God; they all must turn from their evil way and from the violence of their hands.  Who knows? God may again repent and turn from his blazing wrath, so that we will not perish.' When God saw by their actions how they turned from their evil way, he repented of the evil he had threatened to do to them; he did not carry it out." (Jonah 3: 1-10).

Where is our fast?  Where is our penance?  Saint Paul tells us that all men have the basic moral law before them, the Ten Commandments written in their hearts.  All men are capable of knowing good from evil:

"For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made.  As a result, they have no excuse.." (Romans 1: 19-20).

But excuses are all we find today.  As Father Albert J. Hebert, S.M. put it, "All great pagan judicial systems admitted the fact of wrong-doing and their legal systems prescribed punishment for it.  It is only in our day that there is such a widespread denial of the existence of sin and moral laws.  This makes God appear as the Creator of evil, and God hates this blasphemy, pride, and hypocrisy on the part of His creature man...Today, persons great and lowly commit sin, deny it and even blasphemously call it virtue.  For example, active homosexuals and lesbians call their perverse practices 'love' and demand the legal status of normal married man and wife."

We have forgotten the words Our Lord spoke 2,000 years ago to another generation but which nevertheless apply to our own sin-sick generation:

"The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation and shall condemn it: because they did penance at the preaching of Jonah.  And behold a greater than Jonah here." (Matthew 12: 41).

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Janusz Palikot: "We want to remove religion from the public spaces."

Janusz Palikot, the 46 year old leader of the extremist Modern Poland movement, says that if his movement wins a good showing in Parliament, his first order of business will be to push for the removal of a Christian cross that hangs in the assembly hall of the Sejm, Poland's lower house.  Palikot believes the Church is "absolutely too powerful" and  his Modern Poland movement would legalize aborton on demand, provide free condoms and seek to crush the Catholic Church. (See here).

Speaking to a crowd of 4,000 cheering supporters, Palikot was heard saying that, "The Modern Poland movement demands the removal of religious instruction from schools, liquidation of the clergy (pension fund) and state ceremonies at which we do not have to view the fat bellies of bishops."

As the Apostasy continues to spread through all corners of the globe, I am reminded of what Our Lady had to say about Poland as she spoke to Fr. Gobbi on the Feast of Our Lady of Czestochowa on August 26, 1983: "In your lives you carry the sufferings of the peoples reduced to slavery by those who reject God and use every means to spread atheism.  Poland, of whom I have been officially proclaimed Queen, is a symbol of this unending and bloody persecution...For so many years the Red Dragon has extended his dominion over these peoples and persecuted my children by the most subtle and refined means..The apostasy has now been spread into every part of a Church betrayed even by some of her bishops, abandoned by many of her priests, deserted by so very many of her children, and violated by my Adversary."

Satan is intensifying his efforts in Poland precisely because she officially proclaimed Our Lady as Queen.  We are locked in a spiritual war. It was St. Louis Marie de Montfort who explained in his classic work True Devotion to Mary that: "..Mary's power over the evil spirits will especially shine forth in the latter times, when Satan will lie in wait for her heel, that is, for her humble servants and her poor children whom she will rouse to fight against him...They will be great and exalted before God in holiness. They will be superior to all creatures by their great zeal and so strongly will they be supported by divine assistance that, in union with Mary, they will crush the head of Satan with their heel, that is, their humility, and bring victory to Jesus Christ." (TD, No. 54).

According to Montfort, the greatest of the Marian Saints, it is the faithful remnant, consecrated to the Virgin, who will crush the Devil's head (the head representing the intellect and therefore Satan's pride). The heel by contrast represents the lowest part of the body. In other words, those of us who are consecrated to the Immaculata and who are despised by the world because of our lack of wordly "sophistication" and "intelligence." But the wisdom of this world is foolishness (1 Corinthians 1: 18-25). In time, Satan's cohort will come to understand this.

Those who serve the world are enamored with themselves.  But the world, and everything in it, is destined for fire (2 Peter 3: 7-10).  And those who hate God love death.

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The earth is a giant graveyard but we have hope because one of these graves is empty

The earth is a giant graveyard.  But we have hope because one of these graves is empty.  Christ Jesus came to save us from sin and its consequence: death (Romans 6: 23).  And as Dr. Peter Kreeft once said, "The Resurrection also sharply distinguishes Jesus from all the other religious founders.  The bones of Abraham and Muhammad and Buddha and Confucius and Lao-tzu and Zoroaster are still here on earth.  Jesus' tomb is empty.  The existential consequences of the resurrection are incomparable.  It is the concrete, factual, empirical proof that: life has hope and meaning; 'love is stronger than death'; goodness and power are ultimately allies, not enemies; life wins in the end; God has touched us right where we are and has defeated our last enemy; we are not cosmic orphans, as our modern secular worldview would make us.."

In his poem entitled "The Convert," Gilbert Keith Chesterton so eloquently presents this truth:

After one moment when I bowed my head

And the whole world turned over and came upright,
And I came out where the old road shone white,
I walked the ways and heard what all men said,
Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed,
Being not unlovable but strange and light;
Old riddles and new creeds, not in despite
But softly, as men smile about the dead.


The sages have a hundred maps to give
That trace their crawling cosmos like a tree,
They rattle reason out through many a sieve
That stores the sand and lets the gold go free:
And all these things are less than dust to me
Because my name is Lazarus and I live.


"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it" (Jn 1:5).  And it never will.  Not even that supreme darkness and deception which is fast-approaching (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 675).  Our sad broken world is dying.  Heaven and earth will pass away.  But not the word of the Living God.

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Shall we embrace excuses or the Cardinal Virtue of Fortitude?

In an essay entitled One Solitary Life which was adapted from a sermon by Dr. James Allan Francis, we are reminded about certain aspects of Jesus' life:


Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself...

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth – His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress.

I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.

Omnia possum in eo qui me confortat. I can do all things in Him who strengthens me. (Phil 4:13).  These words are engraved on a bracelet which I wear.  Do we really believe this?  Or do we let others define who we are?


Issue the battle cry! Let's take back our cities!

Those who walk in the Spirit know no fear. What are we waiting for? The Lord Jesus waits. He grows tired of our excuses:


I’m not holy enough:
Is 6:1-9; Lk 5:1-11

I’m afraid I will fail:
Ex 14:10-31; Lk 15

I’ve made mistakes and I’m a sinner:
Jn 21:15-23; Mt 9:9-13; Lk 7:36-50

I’m too young:
1 Sam 3:1-18; Jer 1:4-10; Lk 1:26-38

I’m not talented enough:
1 Sam 17:32-51; Lk 1:26-38

I want to have a family:
Gn 12:1-3; Mt 12:46-50; Mk 10:28-30

I’m afraid of making a permanent commitment:
Ruth 1:15-17; Mt 28:16-20

I’m afraid of public speaking:
Ex 4:10-17; Jer 1:4-10

I’m not smart enough:
2 Cor 4:7-18; Ex 4:10-17

I’m afraid of being alone:
Ex 3:4-22; Lk 1:28-38

I want to be happy:
Ps 37:4; Mt 5:1-12; Jn 10:10; Mk 10:28-31

I can do all things in Him who strengthens me. There are no obstacles we can't overcome in His holy name.  Even while others attempt to label us and dismiss us as useless, as having no worth.  I knew a young man with developmental disabilities whose father told him he was "worthless."  He was told by his father that the best thing for him would be a bullet in the head. When he asked me one day if he was worthless, I reminded him of his many gifts: his sense of humor, his ability to love others, his ability to pray to God and a litany of other gifts.  And I assured him that he is not "worthless."

We live in a sad, broken world.  There are many people who are heavily burdened with sin who are hurting.  And because they are hurting, they want to hurt others.  If you could read some of the comments which have been left at this Blog you would cringe.  Sad time.  Hurting time. And we pray for such people.

But we cannot let others define who we are.  We are children of God who have access to the Holy Spirit's Gifts just by asking for them.

The Son of God loves us.  What does that suggest about those who hate us?

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"We need to stop lying to each other..."

In one of his last homilies, Archbishop Oscar Romero, the martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, said: "A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good so that they become entrenched in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's call. A preaching that does not discomfit sinners but lulls them in their sin leaves Zebulun and Naphtali in the shadow of death. A preaching that awakens, a preaching that enlightens -- as when a light turned on awakens and of course annoys a sleeper -- that is the preaching of Christ, calling, "wake up! Be converted!" this is the church's authentic preaching. Naturally, such preaching must meet conflict, must spoil what is miscalled prestige, must disturb, must be persecuted. It cannot get along with the powers of darkness and sin."


We've had enough of a preaching which leaves Zebulun and Naphtali in the shadow of death.  We've had enough of a Cotton-Candy Catholicism which offers Chicken-Soup Homilies and asinine theatrics rather than the solid meat of sound preaching and liturgical reverence.  Sadly, so many of our priests haven't caught on to this.  And so they continue to spoon-feed us the unsatisfying pablum.

The time for lying is over.  I have been saying this for years.  Back in 2009, Archbishop Charles Chaput noted that, "40 years of American Catholic complacency and poor formation are bearing exactly the fruit we should have expected...We can't talk about following St. Paul and converting our culture until we sober up and get honest about what we've allowed ourselves to become.  We need to stop lying to each other..." (See here).

The lying must stop.  For this to happen, we need priests and Bishops who fear God more than they do men.  Cowards will not lead us out of the valley of death.  Only shepherds who have the spiritual strength, the Cardinal Gift of Fortitude, to brave the risk of worldly criticism, will be able to lead the American Catholic Church out of the valley of the Culture of Death and back on the road to the Civilization of Love which Pope John Paul II spoke of so often.

Why have so many priests succumbed to fear?  Why is it that their preaching no longer points out sin?  Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange provides us with an answer:


"The reason for this is not difficult to find.  A sermon is the result of the combined effort of all the priest's powers; it reveals his entire person; it is his struggle against the vices of the surrounding world."  In other words, if the preaching is unsound, it is because the priest's spiritual life is unsound.  Fr. Lagrange continues, "Everything in the priest cooperates in his preaching - study, reflection, his powers to compose and revise, the activity of his intellect, his imagination, his memory, his feelings, his voice.  Therefore, when he preaches, the priest stands exposed for all to study; some will be attracted, others will not.  Some will accept what he says, others will simply criticize.  So if the priest approaches his task from the human angle, he will say to himself: 'I cannot afford to lose my reputation; people of weight in the parish who take offense easily must be spared their feelings and not provoked; I must proceed warily so as not to incur criticism.'  In that way Christian eloquence is invaded by a profane eloquence in which the preacher looks after his own interests, not the glory of God or the saving of souls." (The Priest In Union With Christ, p. 156).

I've never been a fan of lying.  And this because Our Lord tells us that the Devil is the Father of all lies (John 8:44),  If it's lying you want, this Blog is not for you.  Forty years of lying has wrought so much damage to the American Catholic Church.  Archbishop Chaput is right, we are merely reaping the fruit of what we've planted.  St. Paul tells us that, "...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.." (Galatians 5: 22).  But what fruit have we witnessed in the American Catholic Church?  The Church has been infected with dry-rot as so many Catholics have succumbed to the works of the flesh.

We need heroic shepherds.  Men who, like Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J., are willing to give their very lives for the Catholic Church and her teaching.

This is not a time for cowards.  We need men of holy stubborness which, in spiritual terms, is called perseverance.

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