Archbishop Chaput and the U.S. Bishops are challenging us: How shall we respond?

In a homily delivered at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception that brought the U.S. bishops' "fortnight for freedom" to a close, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput stressed that defending religious liberty is part of the bigger struggle to "convert our own hearts" and to "live for God completely."  See here.

This struggle to convert our own hearts and to live for God completely encompasses a battle against Satan and his demonic forces.  Satan does not want the follower of Jesus to live in peace and harmony.  He wants to seduce the followers of the Lord away from God.  How easy it is to lose sight of this reality.  Just recently, I noted how the Profession of Faith, the Nicene Creed, was omitted during Holy Mass at Saint Joseph's Parish in Fitchburg.  A parishioner named Jan left a comment at this Blog telling me that if I have a problem with such liturgical abuse, I shouldn't attend Mass there.  I was told that Jan is most likely the parish secretary at Saint Joseph's, the same woman with an internet profile photograph depicting herself in a state of undress and sporting devil's horns.  See photo.  Readers of this Blog know that Saint Joseph's Parish has had its share of difficulties.  Last year, one of the priests attached to the parish, Father Lowe Dongor, was found to have been downloading child pornography and fled the country to avoid prosecution.

This is the same parish which excluded me from participating in ministry because of my orthodoxy.

In order to live our lives completely for God, we have to struggle against the principalities and powers of this world.  So many Catholics today refuse to acknowledge this truth.  For such people, belief in evil spirits is a matter of "superstition."  Pope Paul VI, in a general audience on November 15, 1972, refuted this notion saying, "What are the Church's greatest needs at the present time?  Don't be surprised at our answer and don't write it off as simplistic or even superstitious: one of the Church's greatest needs is to be defended against the evil which we call the Devil...Evil is not merely an absence of something but an active force, a living, spiritual being that is perverted and that perverts others....It is a departure from the picture provided by biblical and Church teaching to refuse to acknowledge the Devil's existence...or to explain the Devil as a pseudoreality, a conceptual, fanciful, personification of the unknown causes of our misfortunes...St. Paul calls him the 'god of this world,' and warns us of the struggle we Christians must carry on in the dark, not only against one Devil, but against a frightening multiplicity of them.."

Our spiritual struggle, then, is against a host of evil spirits.  And these evil spirits are extremely cunning.  Although they are fallen angels, they are still far more intelligent than us because of their angelic natures.  Pope Paul VI, during the same audience, stressed that the Devil, "..undermines man's moral equilibrium with his sophistry.  He is the malign, clever seducer who knows how to make his way into us through the senses, the imagination and the libido, through utopian logic, or through disordered social contacts in the give and take of our social activities, so that he can bring in us deviations that are all the more harmful because they seem to conform to our physical or mental make-up, or to our profound, instinctive aspirations....The matter of the Devil and of the influence he can exert on individuals as well as on communities, entire societies or events, is a very important chapter of Catholic doctrine which should be studied again, although it is given little attention today.."

Forty years later, we can still say the same.  Little if any attention is paid to this critical aspect of Catholic doctrine.  Mostly, I think, because we believe (in our arrogance) that we can solve all problems and difficulties ourselves.  We forget Jesus' warning that some spirits can only be driven out through much prayer and fasting.

Jesus gives us power and authority over demonic forces.  The demons were subject to the seventy disciples (Luke 10: 17-20).  They were subject to Saint Paul and the first Christians.  And they are subject to us as present-day followers of the Lord Jesus.  But in order to use this power over the evil spirits, those of us who profess to be Christian must grow and develop in our spiritual lives.  This means that we must strive to "live for God completely" as Archbishop Chaput reminded us.  We must attend Holy Mass faithfully (and reverently), pray daily - the Rosary is a spiritual weapon which Satan fears, and spend time with Sacred Scripture - God's Holy Word.

As Christians, we are MORE THAN CONQUERORS through the shed Blood of Jesus Christ (Romans 8: 37-39).  Let's live our lives accordingly.  This means listening to the Magisterium of the Church with docility and submitting our minds and wills to that teaching authority which has been established by Jesus Himself.  Without such obedience, how can we expect the evil spirits to obey our command - in the name of Jesus - to depart?  Disobedience and sin will not drive out the demons.  Only a life of faith lived in humility, taking the Virgin Mother of God as our model.

What are we waiting for? And whom shall we take as our model: Our Lady and the Saints who lived for God completely or the devils who reject God's saving plan?

The answer to that question will determine whether we re-evangelize our culture or come to resemble the demons whose doctrines we follow.

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Episcopal "Bishop" V. Gene Robinson: Let the demon of chaos reign in the churches

It was St. Peter Damian, a Doctor of the Church, who explained that the vice of sodomy "surpasses the enormity of all others," because, "Without fail, it brings death to the body and destruction to the soul. It pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the mind, expels the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart, and gives entrance to the devil, the stimulator of lust: It leads to error, totally removes truth from the deluded mind . . . It opens up Hell and closes the gates of Paradise . . . It is this vice that violates temperance, slays modesty, strangles chastity, and slaughters virginity . . . It defiles all things, sullies all things, pollutes all things . . . " (The Book of Gomorrah).


Homosexual acts expel the Holy Spirit and give entrance to the Devil. This according to a Doctor of the Church.  Striking evidence of this truth may be found in the words of Episcopal "Bishop" V. Gene Robinson, the same confused sodomite who told a Catholic man that the Vatican's decision to bar homosexuals from seminaries constituted an "act of violence" against gay folk.  Speaking at a dinner hosted by More Light Presbyterians, a pro-homosexual activist group of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Mr. Robinson, referring to the work of radical homosexual activism, said, "This is hard work, but we can do it because it is worthy work and it is Godly work."
 
As this article notes, "The Presbyterian Church (USA), the country’s largest Presbyterian group with 1.95 million members, is holding its 220th General Assembly in the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown, through Saturday. Various proposals concerning gay marriage could lead to contentious debate within the Louisville-based Protestant denomination. Those proposals include calls to confirm the church’s traditional definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, calls to change the definition to being between 'two people,' and a request that the General Assembly, the church’s ruling body, deem it acceptable for Presbyterian ministers to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies in states where such unions are legal."
 
Robinson, in a rant which may only be described as demonic, asserted that, "We will live to see the day that the church of Jesus Christ, in whatever form it is, will repent from what it has done to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people the way it has repented for slavery."  And, referring to the turmoil and divisiveness which is ripping apart the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches as "holy chaos," Robinson insisted that this confusion represents "a step forward" from the certainty that most Christians felt when it came to what God and churches thought of homosexuals.

This is the "gospel" of Nietzsche.  Indeed he was its prophet.  For he saw and foretold the coming of the "new" immorality which would usher in the Beast.  "The time has come," he wrote, "to oppose morality with immorality, to call what priests call good, evil and what they call evil, good.  The time has come for the transvaluation of all values." (Thus Spake Zarathustra, p. 144).  This prophet of unbridled hedonism and revolution boasted that the adherents of revolution and radical thought, "would come into power without the truth....The magic that fights for us is the magic of extremism." (Karl Jaspers quoting Nietzsche in his Nietzsche and Christianity).

This then is the revolution proposed by V. Gene Robinson and the radical homosexual activists within the churches.  It is a movement of revolution aimed at sowing confusion and discord.  It represents for minds darkened by sin "a step forward" from the certitude of God's Holy Word and the Church's Tradition. 

It is a movement hell-bent on advancing the doctrines of demons.

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German magazine Titanic attacks Pope Benedict XVI

The German magazine Titanic, founded in 1979 by former contributors and editors of Pardon, a satirical monthly, after they had a series of conflicts with their publisher, is mocking Pope Benedict XVI and holding the Holy Father up to contempt by depicting him as a senile and incontinent person.  See here.

In our modern, paganistic world, the authority of the Holy Father is often challenged, openly defied and even rejected.  The early Christians understood Peter's divinely appointed role.  They understood that the Lord Jesus appointed Peter to be the guardian and teacher of the Church.  They loved him, honored him and obeyed him.

It is the vocation of the Holy Father to proclaim the truth even though it may result in virulent attacks and contempt rather than respect.  But it must be understood that disobedience and insults against Christ's Vicar are, in reality, attacks against the loving Heart of Christ.

What do you suppose will be the reward for those who insult and attack the loving and Sacred Heart of Christ?  Every attack against the Vicar of Christ represents an attack on Jesus Christ which begs for chastisement.

And so let's pray:

Lord Jesus, shelter our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, under the protection of Your Sacred Heart.  Be his light, his strength and his consolation.

V.  Let us pray for our Pontiff

R.  The Lord presreve and give him life, and make him to be blessed upon the earth, and deliver him not up to the will of his enemies.

Amen.

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Professor Massimo Introvigne: U.S. may be on path toward anti-Christian violence

Professor Massimo Introvigne, Chairman of the newly created Observatory on Religious Liberty, a joint-creation of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the City of Rome, the purpose of which is to monitor religious freedom around the world, has expressed his concern that the United States is on the path to anti-Christian violence.

As reported by the Catholic News Agency here, "The inaugural meeting was held at Rome’s Foreign Press Association June 28. It heard Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore make the case that religious liberty in the United States is currently imperiled by the prevailing culture as well as by legislation such as the recent Department of Health & Human Services mandate.


Introvigne stressed that he did not want to create a 'false impression' that he was equating 'the bloody persecution of Christians' as presently occurs in some African and Asian countries with 'discriminatory legislation in the United States or Europe.'

However, the 57-year-old sociologist suggested that there was a 'three stage process' which could lead to anti-Christian violence in the West if action to protect religious liberty was not taken.

'It starts with intolerance which is a cultural phenomenon,' he explained 'and then if intolerance becomes so widespread and popular, some politicians will act upon it and introduce discriminatory legislation.'

It is in this 'climate of discrimination,' he said, that people can decide to take the law into their own hands and use violence to further suppress Christianity."

This isn't news to readers of this Blog.  For many years I have been issuing the same warning.  As I noted here:

Professor James Hitchcock, in his excellent work entitled 'Catholicism and Modernity' (New York:Seabury Press, 1979, p. 86), explains the role of the media in this entire process: "The media's alleged commitment to 'pluralism' is at base a kind of hoax. The banner of pluralism is raised in order to win toleration for new ideas as yet unacceptable to the majority. Once toleration has been achieved, public opinion is systematically manipulated first to enforce a status of equality between the old and the new, then to assert the superiority of the new over the old. A final stage is often the total discrediting, even sometimes the banning, of what had previously been orthodox."


This is the path Barack Obama and his secular socialist machine have put us on.  And the HHS Mandate is merely the beginning of a process which will lead to oppression and physical violence.  It was Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas who warned of the way in which oppression can subtly arise in our midst: "As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression.  In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."

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Bishop Gerhard Mueller and infallibly proposed teachings

We definitely live in dark times.  Increasingly, Catholic dogma is coming under attack even within the Church.  Just recently, Bill Tammeus, a Presbyterian elder and former columnist for The Kansas City Star, writng for the National Catholic Reporter online, complained that, "Ultimately, truth in Christianity is not a doctrine, not a dogma, not a creed, not a papal bull, not what's said in a sermon, not even the words in the Bible.  Rather, truth in Christianity is a person, Christ Jesus."

Yes, it is true that faith is primarily in God and not in a set of truths.  But because the Lord Jesus reveals truths about Himself and his plan for us, one cannot believe in Him without also accepting with faith every one of the truths which He reveals.  Vatican I definitively teaches that, "By divine and Catholic faith everything must be believed that is contained in the written word of God or in tradition, and that is proposed by the Church as a divinely revealed object of belief either in a solemn decree or in her ordinary, universal teaching" (DS 3011/1792).

To this formulation of Vatican I, Canon Law adds: "It is manifested by the common adherence of the Christian faithful under the leadership of the sacred magisterium; therefore, all are bound to avoid any doctrines whatever which are contrary to these truths." (Canon 750).

In its Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith provides us with a helpful commentary on the nature of the "religious submission of soul" or of "will and mind" which the Fathers of Vatican II said is to be given by the faithful, including theologians, to authoritative but noninfallibly proposed magisterial teachings (see Lumen Gentium, No. 25). 

This Instruction clearly distinguishes between questions that theologiand may raise about such teachings (see Nos. 24-31) and dissent from such teachings (Nos. 32-41).  The Instruction tells us that questioning can be compatible with the "religious submission" required, but the document also firmly repudiates dissent from these teachings as incompatible with this "religious submission" and irreconcilable with the theologian's vocation which is always to be at the Church's service.  Dissent from infallibly proposed teachings is a fortiori excluded.

In my last post, I noted how the new Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has denied the dogma of the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Real Presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar in his theological writings.  Does Bishop Gerhard Mueller stand by his writings?  If so, he is dissenting from Catholic dogma, from infallibly proposed teachings.

Our strange time.

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Bishop Gerhard Mueller, the CDF's new Prefect, and the pillars of the Faith

It was Father Vincent Miceli who warned that, "Once the liturgy is humanized, Christ the Center and Object of it becomes the humanist par excellence, the liberator, the revolutionary, the Marxist ushering in the millenium; he ceases to be the Divine Redeemer.  We must be alerted to those who plan, by convincing us to abandon our sacred forms, at length to seduce us into denying our Christian faith altogether.  The Church is attacked by these Sons of Satan, in and outside her fold, because she is a living form, the sacrament - sign and instrument - of communion with God and of unity among all men; because she is the visible body of Religion.  Hence these shrewd masters of sedition know that when her sacred forms go, religion will also go.  Violate the lex orandi and you must inevitably destroy the lex credendi.  That is why they rail against so many devotions as superstitions, why they propose so many alterations and changes, a tactic cleverly calculated to shake the foundations of faith.."

The Devil hates the Eucharist and Our Lady [recall how these two pillars played an important part in Don Bosco's prophetic dream as they stabilized the Church represented by a ship with Peter at the head] and never ceases to attack them.  He uses variations on gnosticism, symbolism and modernism to attack the authentic teaching of the Magisterium on the Holy Eucharist.  As the spiritual war continues to escalate all around us, the Devil's attacks against the Eucharist will multiply.  These attacks will intensify and reach a crescendo with the Man of Sin.  Do you doubt this?  Saint Alphonsus de Liguori, Doctor of the Church, has already warned us that:

"The devil has always managed to get rid of the Mass by means of the heretics, making them precursors of the Antichrist who, above all else, will manage to abolish, and in fact will succeed in abolishing, as a punishment for the sins of men, the Holy Sacrifice of the altar, precisely as Daniel had predicted." ("Le Messa e l'Officio Strapazzati" in Opere Ascetiche).

Pope Benedict XVI has just named Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, who was a student of Father Gustavo Gutierrez (credited with founding Liberation Theology), to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  As this Blog post notes, Bishop Mueller has expressed some rather odd ideas regarding the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Real Presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ - Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity - in the Holy Eucharist:

"On the Perpetual Virginity of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary:


In his 900-page work "Katholische Dogmatik. Für Studium und Praxis der Theologie" (Freiburg. 5th Edition, 2003), Müller denies the dogma of the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary claiming that the doctrine is "not so much concerned with specific physiological proprieties in the natural process of birth (such as the birth canal not having been opened, the hymen not being broken, or the absence of birth pangs), but with the healing and saving influence of the grace of the Savior on human nature."


On the Real Presence of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Lord in the transubstantiated Eucharistic species:

In 2002, bishop Müller published the book "Die Messe - Quelle des christlichen Lebens" (St. Ulrich Verlag, Augsburg). In this book, he speaks of the Sacrament of the Altar and warns against using the terms "body and blood" in this context. These terms would cause "misunderstandings", "when flesh and blood are considered to mean the physical and biological components of the human Jesus. Neither is it simply the transfigured body of the resurrected Lord that is being designated."

Bishop Müller continues: "In reality, the body and blood of Christ do not mean the material components of the human person of Jesus during his lifetime or in his transfigured corporality. Here, body and blood mean the presence of Christ in the signs of the medium of bread and wine."

Holy Communion transmits according to Müller a "community with Jesus Christ, mediated by eating and drinking the bread and the wine. Even in the merely personal human sphere, something like a letter may represent the friendship between people and, that is to say, show and embody the sympathy of the sender for the receiver." Bread and wine thus only become "symbols of his salvific presence".


That is how Mgr Müller explains a "change of being" in the Eucharistic gifts:

"The essential definition of bread and wine has to be conceived in an anthropological way. The natural essence of these offerings [bread and wine] as the fruit of the earth and the work of human hands, as the unity of natural and cultural products consists in clarifying the nourishment and sustenance of man and the communion of the people in the sign of a common meal [...]. This natural essence of bread and wine is transfigured by God in the sense that the essence of bread and wine is made to consist exclusively in showing and realizing the salvific communion with God."

Strange days.  Dark days.  The smoke of Satan has darkened many minds.

In his Encyclical Letter Mysterium Fidei, Pope Paul VI warned us that, "..among those who deal with this Most Holy Mystery [transubstantiation] in written or spoken word, there are some who, with reference either to Masses which are celebrated in private, or to the dogma of transubstantiation, or to devotion to the Eucharist, spread abroad such opinions as disturb the faithful and fill their minds with no little confusion about matters of faith, as if every one were permitted to consign to oblivion doctrine already defined by the Church, or to interpret it in such a way as to weaken the genuine meaning of the words or the approved import of the concepts involved." (No. 10).

Pope Paul VI goes on to warn in this important Encyclical that, "it is not allowable...to discuss the mystery of transubstantiation without mentioning the marvelous changing of the whole substance of the bread into the Body and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood of Christ as stated by the Council of Trent, so that it consists in 'transignification' or 'transfinalization.' as they put it."

In No. 46 of Mysterium Fidei, the Pope explains:

"After transubstantiation has taken place, the species of bread and wine undoubtedly take on a new meaning and a new finality, for they no longer remain ordinary bread and ordinary drink, but become the sign of something sacred, and the sign of a spiritual food.  However, the reason they take on a new significance and this new finality is simply because they contain a new 'reality' which we may justly term ontological."

This is the teaching of the Council of Trent regarding Eucharistic dogma: "In the first place the holy Synod teaches...that in the precious Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, after the consecration of the bread and wine, Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is truly, really and substantially contained under the species of those sensible things."

This is the Church's authoritative teaching.  And, as Pope Paul VI said, no one is free to "consign to oblivion" this defined doctrine or to weaken the Church's teaching or the concepts involved.

Pray and watch.  For a diabolical disorientation is clouding minds.  The smoke of Satan continues to wreak havoc.

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The Worcester Diocese should have held onto this faithful priest

Some years ago, a faithful and dedicated priest decided to leave the Diocese of Worcester and become a Chaplain for the United States Army.  During a conversation back in 2000, this priest-friend told me that he had had enough of the nonsense within the diocese.  This was after he presided over a graveside service for my father.

This same faithful priest has a letter in this week's "Catholic" [when they feel like it] Free Press.  As usual, it is an excellent letter.  But then, this priest reads the life of Jesus Christ.  The letter is entitled  "Choose life and love, not moral decay."  Fr. Anthony Kazarnowicz writes:


"According to a survey (CFP, June 1), 83% of Catholics consider it 'morally acceptable' to use contraceptives to prevent pregnancy, 'despite church teachings to the contrary.'  The Church teaches that God designed sex for bonding between a husband and wife and for procreation.  In deciding for ourselves that it is 'morally acceptable' to unnaturally close sex to life, we have made ourselves (not God, or those whom Jesus placed in authority over us) the final arbiters of what is good and evil.  It's Satan's temptation to Adam and Eve all over again.

Next, we judged it 'morally acceptable' to separate sex from marriage.  So now, we have rampant sexual promiscuity, cohabitation before marriage and women treated as sex objects.  A pleasure-seeking 'Me Generation' was born.  Dads had live-in girlfriends; moms, live-in boyfriends.

With this denial of moral wrongdoing came the corresponding denial of sin and even a loss of a sense of sin.  Sacramental confessions dwindled.  However, divorces rose to 50% for first marriages, 65% for second marriages and higher for third marriages.

According to the survey, 53% of Catholics favor same-sex 'marriage.'  Heterosexuals who have lifeless sex are not likely to condemn lifeless homosexual sex.  Though homosexual sex is indeed unnatural, there is something even more unnatural - mothers killing their own babies by abortion - 'morally acceptable' to 35% of Catholics.

Before contraception, families were large.  But, children knew right from wrong, were disciplined, respected authority and learned sacrifice.  Families prayed together.  Confessions thrived; divorces were rare.  Most couples waited until marriage before having sex.  Parents accepted children as God's gift. Womanhood and motherhood were cherished.  Vocations to the priesthood and religious life flourished.

Contrasted are a culture of moral decay after contraception and a culture of life and love before contraception.  I pray all Catholics choose life and love."

Sadly, the Worcester Diocese has not always opted for a culture of life and love.  Back in March, I examined an article published in the dissent-friendly diocesan newspaper and written by Father John Catoir, a cleric who also has difficulty telling the truth.  This article was entitled "Birth Control Revisited."  And it was Father Catoir's assertion, while promoting a subjectivist conscience, that the Church's teaching regarding artificial contraception is "beyond the strength" of many Catholics. 

So much for the Worcester Diocese choosing a culture of life and love.

In a talk entitled "Legalism, Moral Truth and Pastoral Practice" given at a 1990 symposium in Philadelphia, Dr. Germain Grisez explained to those present that, "Theologians and pastors who dissent from received Catholic teaching think they are rejecting legalism because they set aside what they think are mere rules in favor of what they feel are more reasonable standards. Their views are thoroughly imbued with legalism, however. For dissenters think of valid moral norms as rules formulated to protect relevant values. Some even make their legalism explicit by denying that there is any necessary connection between moral goodness (which they restrict to the transcendental level of a love with no specific content) and right action (which they isolate at the categorical level of inner-worldly behavior). But whether their legalism is explicit or not, all the dissenters hold that specific moral norms admit exceptions whenever, all things considered, making an exception seems the best - or least bad - thing to do. Most dissenters also think that specific moral norms that were valid in times past can be inappropriate today, and so they regard the Church’s contested moral teachings as outdated rules that the Church should change."


Dr. Grisez reminded his listeners at the Philadelphia symposium, "During the twentieth century, pastoral treatment of repetitious sins through weakness - especially masturbation, homosexual behavior, premarital sex play and contraception within marriage - grew increasingly mild. Pastors correctly recognized that weakness and immaturity can lessen such sins’ malice. Thinking legalistically, they did not pay enough attention to the sins’ inherent badness and harmfulness, and they developed the idea that people can freely choose to do something that they regard as a grave matter without committing a mortal sin. This idea presupposes that in making choices people are not responsible precisely for choosing what they choose. That presupposition makes sense within a legalistic framework, because lawgivers can take into account mitigating factors and limit legal culpability. But it makes no sense for morality correctly understood, because moral responsibility in itself is not something attached to moral acts but simply is moral agents’ self-determination in making free choices.

Repetitious sinners through weakness also were handicapped by their own legalism. Not seeing the inherent badness of their sins, they felt that they were only violating inscrutable rules. When temptation grew strong, they had little motive to resist, especially because they could easily go to confession and have the violation fixed. Beginning on Saturday they were holy; by Friday they were again sinners. This cyclic sanctity robbed many people’s lives of Christian dynamism and contributed to the dry rot in the Church that became manifest in the 1960s, when the waves of sexual permissiveness battered her."


Dr. Grisez went on to explain that, "Pastors free of legalism will teach the faithful how sin makes moral requirements seem to be alien impositions, help them see through this illusion, and encourage them to look forward to and experience the freedom of God’s children, who rejoice in the fruit of the Spirit and no longer experience the constraint of law..They will explain that while one sometimes must choose contrary to positive laws and cannot always meet their requirements, one always can choose in truth and abide in love. They will acknowledge the paradox of freedom - that we seem unable to resist freely choosing to sin - the paradox that Saint Paul neatly formulates: ‘I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate’ (Romans 7:15). But they also will proclaim the liberating power of grace, and help the faithful learn by experience that when one comes to understand the inherent evil of sin and intrinsic beauty of goodness, enjoys the support of a community of faith whose members bear one another’s burdens, begs God for His help, and confidently expects it, then the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead raises him from his sins, and he discovers that with the Spirit’s grace one can consistently resist sin and choose life."

We would have more vocations to the priesthood in the Worcester Diocese if young men witnessed fidelity to the magisterial teaching of the Church from pastors [not to mention the diocesan newspaper] and if orthodox candidates were not excluded because of their commitment to the Church's authentic teaching, especially in the area of sexual morality.

I should know.  I'm one of the excluded.

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