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Tuesday, November 5, 2019

How Do You Distinguish a Good Shepherd from a Bad Shepherd?

The amanita species can kill you quickly.
Discernment isn't an option these days; it's a necessity!

If you knew that a restaurant owner gathered mushrooms from the woods and didn't know anything about which were good to eat and which were poisonous, would you eat in that restaurant?

Suppose you knew that not only did he put poisonous mushrooms in his dishes, but he considered it a game of mushroom roulette to add a little "spice" to the dining experience. His motto might be "Eat, drink and be merry because tomorrow you may die." Hey, maybe he would even offer free meals for those willing to consume his mushroom dishes and see what happened, a life or death adventure.


Or suppose he just wanted people to stop discriminating against certain mushrooms because they had a right to be equal. Hey, this amanita (a melodious name that means "death cap) is beautiful. Surely it can't really kill you!

Would you eat in that restaurant?

Many Catholics today are consuming poison by the bucketful in parishes led by shepherds who through ignorance, malice, or clueless bonhomie feed them the equivalent of poisonous mushrooms. Fr. John Lankelt identifies the signs to know whether your shepherd is a wolf. We would be wise to know when we're being stalked by a wolf; otherwise we may end up in the belly of the beast!

4 comments:

  1. Update: USCCB president disinvites Bishop Bransfield from fall assembly.

    Quoting the new bishop:

    "Lest there be any criticism that the bishops don't care about it, well, yeah, we do," he said. "So I took the formal action to ask that he not be invited. And he wasn't. His best interest as well as ours as a bishops' conference are best served by him not being there."

    ___

    My first thought was that the laity are best served by the whole lot of them "not being there" either.

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  2. Couldn't agree more, DJR. I think the handful of good bishops should withdraw from the conference and form another like the good nuns did when they left the Leadership Conference of Women Religious to found the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious. Let the wolves travel in their own pack and gather the good shepherds together to resist them!

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  3. Dear Mary Ann, I recommend this post from the Greek Catholic BCP website http://uogcc.org.ua/en/actual/article/?article=20648 .
    My attention was caught by crosier in the hands of Jorge the Apostate (in the title picture of this video). Earlier I called this item 'dried snake'. Look carefully at the 3-letter acronym: JHS! This is not an IHS Christogram! What could this mean? The IHS Christogram is the Latinized form of the name Jesus in Greek (first, second and third or last letter: iota-eta-sigma). Catholic piety has given IHS additional interpretations, for example:
    'In hoc signo' (vinces) - In this sign (you will win)
    'Iesus Humilis Societas' - Humble Society of Jesus,
    'Iesus Hominum Salvator' - Jesus, Savior of men.
    Consequently "JHS" on the Apostate's staff can mean:
    1. pompous:
    Jorge Humilis Societas - Humble Society of Jorge,
    2. blasphemous:
    Jorge Hominum Salvator - Jorge, Savior of men,
    but it certainly means: In hoc signo you will lose!
    This is not a Catholic bishop's crosier, it is a herdsman's stag to rush offspring of Satan.

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  4. To clarify things for readers, the church in question is a splinter group that broke off from the Ukranian Greek Catholic Church in 2009. The National Catholic Register (aka the fishwrap) sees this new church as a hope for ecumenical relations. Any church heralded by that faux Catholic source is immediately suspect in my opinion. So readers beware.

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