Miscellaneous Meanderings from a Wandering Mind

My mind has been wandering all over the planet since I got up at 6:45 -- to Canada...to the Amazon rain forest...to Nashville and the Outer Banks of North Carolina and Wheeling...to Kazakhstan...Whew! I'm tired already.

Here are just a few miscellaneous meanderings from my wandering mind.

From Canada: We still have heroes among us and it's good to remember them when we are tempted to abandon hope. Remember, all discouragement comes from the devil. No matter how bleak things look, God is sending us prophets. One of them is Mary Wagner. Please pray for her and those whose lives she touches, both inside and outside of jail.

From Wheeling: The diocese has sold Bishop Bransfield's home in a private sale to the son of Congressman David McKinley for $1.2 million. Think about it. Bransfield spent over $4 million renovating the house during his reign in Wheeling. Sounds like the congressman's son got a bargain. Is there more to this story? It begs for further investigation!

From Kazakhstan: Bishop Athanasius Schneider, another hero of mine, is a prophet for our time. He recently reflected on the Notre Dame fire seeing it as a warning:

The destruction of a visible sign of such vast proportion as the Cathedral Notre Dame in Paris also contains an unmistakable spiritual message. The fire of Notre Dame is without doubt a powerful and stirring sign which God is giving to His Church in our day. It is a cri de Coeur for authentic conversion, first and foremost among the Shepherds of the Church. The fire has largely destroyed Notre Dame, a centuries-old masterpiece of the Catholic Faith. This is a symbolic and highly evocative representation of what has happened in the life of the Church over the last fifty years, as people have witnessed a conflagration of the Church’s most precious spiritual masterpieces, i.e., the integrity and beauty of the Catholic Faith, the Catholic liturgy and Catholic moral life, especially among priests. 

Is the Notre Dame fire a metaphor for our Church? Pray for the defeat
of the planned conflagration in October at the Pan-Amazon synod.

The climax of this decades-long spiritual conflagration has manifested itself in the clerical sexual abuse scandals which have profoundly shaken the entire Church. Sadly, we must say that the handling of the clerical sexual abuse scandal has remained more or less on the level of emotional dismay. The true roots of this crisis have not been transparently disclosed, nor, consequently, have effective spiritual medicine and peremptory canonical norms been applied. In a recent and detailed essay, the former Pope Benedict XVI identified one of the most important roots of the abuse crisis, i.e. the loss of the true Faith, the prevalence of moral relativism, and the heterodox and unspiritual formation of seminarians. In reactions to the statement of the former Pope Benedict XVI one could observe an embarrassed silence — and even some indignant outcries — rumbling throughout the ranks of the establishment of liberal theologians and liberal clergy, who are the true spiritual arsonists in the Church today. They now consider the former Pope Benedict XVI to be a troublemaker whose blunt observations obstruct their incendiary work. 

If the Shepherds of the Church will not recognize in the Notre Dame conflagration a Divine warning, they will be behaving like the people in Salvation History who did not recognize the warnings that God often gave them through the uncomfortable and unabashed words of the prophets, through natural catastrophes and various events....

From the Amazon: Reading the bishop's words (and I recommend you read the entire article) reminded me of an effort launched by Bishop Schneider and Cardinal Burke to pray and fast for the Pan-Amazon synod next month: Cardinal Burke, Bishop Schneider Announce Crusade of Prayer and Fasting. I signed up last night to participate and I hope you will too. The fires in the rainforest are a real opportunity for the synod manipulators. They are being used as a political football to advance the left's agenda and their hysteria about global warming climate change.

Expect change agents at the Pan Amazon synod to do all they can to burn
Christ's teachings in Holy Scripture so they can achieve their own progressive agenda.

But might the fires be another kind of warning as the Church prepares for the Amazon synod? Its planners, (including mastermind Bishop Erwin Krautler who opposes baptizing the indigenous people and favors priestesses) want a conflagration in the Church where doctrine is thrown on the fire so a "new Pentecost" and a "new revelation" can take the place of the old, outdated Faith of our Fathers.

From the U.S.: Too many things for my weary mind to go into at present. But I do rejoice at the good priests who fill me with hope for the future -- from Fr. Dan Rehill to Msgr. Charles Pope to Fr. Mark Goring to the priests I know in my own diocese who are faithful shepherds leading their flocks.

Pray for priests!

Our Lady, Queen of the Clergy, pray for them and us.