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Friday, November 30, 2012

Wisdom from Fr. Rutler


Fr. George Rutler writes a weekly column for his parish website. The one below sends a trumpet blast warning that the faithful Catholic Church will became a remnant. Let us make sure we are in that little band of brothers and sisters. Take a virtual trip to the Church of Our Savior in Manhattan at the end. It is worth a field trip to Manhattan to see its beauty up close and personal!



FROM THE PASTOR
November 18, 2012
by Fr. George W. Rutler

In the wake of the recent hurricane, a sibilant television commentator said, “I’m so glad we had that storm.” Apologies aside, his words betrayed a view: people are expendable for the sake of promoting a political program. In this instance the program was a form of socialism that has brought so much sorrow to other nations.

When free people vote against their own freedoms, they knock down the columns of a free society on themselves, the way Samson brought down the temple on his own head. The first column to collapse will be the First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Naïfs who thought this could not happen will be startled when the Church has to close charities, hospitals and schools, and even parish churches if they are subject to tax intimidation. This will be far more disastrous to our civilization than the looming fiscal chaos and international instability. Although certain areas on November 6 reported massive voter fraud, the election results cannot be blamed just on corruption. Voters deliberately rejected warnings clearly made by moral and political leaders.

At least we have a beacon of honesty shining on the Catholic Church in the United States. The 70 million or so Catholics were a Potemkin village, and the numbers of faithfully practicing Catholics are a small portion of that. Long before he became pope, Benedict was a prophet who said, “The church will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.” As the state’s lions begin to roar, the nominal Catholics will skip out of the arena.

For a long while Roman Catholicism became for many a nervously self-conscious kind of Cute Catholicism, with leprechauns, mariachi bands and Santa Claus instead of confession, prayer and fidelity to doctrine. But behind each leprechaun St. Patrick stares, and behind every mariachi band Our Lady of Guadalupe weeps, and behind every Santa Claus, Christ Himself judges.

Catholics could have saved the best in America, and they can only blame themselves for what has fallen down: marriage breakdown, contempt for chastity, a record low birth rate, and destruction of infants. Looking at his own decadent empire, Cicero wrote:

“Do not blame Caesar; blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and given him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the ‘new, wonderful, good society’ which shall now be Rome’s, interpreted to mean: more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.”

We can feast with Caesar, but he will soon feast on us, and we can laugh with him, but he will soon laugh at us. “Risus abundat in ore stultorum.” There is much laughter in the mouth of the foolish.


8 comments:

  1. I have seen and heard Fr. George Rutler speak on EWTN ....
    The Remnant is for sure coming and let us pray daily for the strength to stay stron and focused ...filled with the Holy Ghost we will see HIS FACE one day!
    God Alone....

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  2. I always find Fr. Rutler's sermons and articles quite inspiring and accurate. He and the artists have done a beautiful job of making this church more beautiful. As a Latin rite Catholic I must admit that I have always loved icons, sometimes more so than certain statues of Our Lord and the Saints. Perhaps it because I am a convert, and my grandmother, who helped raise me, would allow me to have pictures of Christ and the Saints but not statues, so I have fond memories of the pictures. Also, there was a Greek Orthodox lady, who lived a few houses away from my grandparents, who taught me how to pronounce and memorize the Greek alphabet, so I was introduced to the Orthodox quite early in life.

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  3. And so it begins: Zechariah 13:8-9

    And there shall be in all the earth, saith the Lord, two parts in it shall be scattered, and shall perish: but the third part shall be left therein. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined: and I will try them as gold is tried. They shall call on my name, and I will hear them. I will say: Thou art my people: and they shall say: The Lord is my God.

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  4. The Rush Limbaugh video is attached go this article.

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  5. Elizabeth, I'm getting the correct videos on this article. I don't know if anyone else is having the same problem as you are. Maybe it has to do with your server. All of the articles you're getting the wrong videos on also show up okay when I go to the pages. I have no idea what's going on.

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  6. Mary Ann: I apologize for all my little alerts to you, in that case. It didn't occur to me that it was MY computer that would or could be changing the video's placements. How strange, but then again, I know next to nothing about computers!

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  7. Don't apologize, Elizabeth. I appreciate it and wonder if it's happening to anyone else. I originally had a different format, but it came up all messed up for the Firefox users so I changed to a friendlier one. But I have no idea why the videos would trade around and wonder if it's happening to many people.

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  8. Weird, weird, weird. I just opened this to read your comment back to me and the videos had all been where you'd intended them to be. Then I went back to the main page and they're all screwed up again! How strange. Never mind, I know where you mean them to be!

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