It's a good question? Where do we come from and what state do we live in? And the follow up question is obviously, where are we going?
My readers come from all over the map according to Google. Some come from my home state, Virginia. Others come from just about every other state in the country. Readers come from other countries and continents as well. I welcome them all as we explore life from a Catholic point of view.
Parents want to rear their children to be truth-tellers. At least they should. But many parents today lie regularly to their children. Why? Mostly out of human respect. I’ll give an example from my own experience.
There seem to be a lot of circus acts in the Church these days. My dad would be shaking his head and talking about the clowns, especially those in Roman collars. We certainly see them on a daily basis. Some clown around during the Mass dressing up as Barney or blessing the congregation with a guitar or singing silly songs (like Larry from Veggie Tales) or warming up the congregational audience before every homily with a joke.
And the Church was silent. It was about fifteen years after Humanae Vitae, the encyclical that condemned contraception that I first heard a sermon on the papal document. I went out of church and congratulated and thanked the priest. Today, polls show that most Catholic women, about 87%, use a form of artificial birth control to avoid pregnancy.
This bishop speaks with a clear voice and what he has to say should give all those saying the SSPX acts like Protestants pause. The real Protestants promote the synodal church, disregarding dozens of popes who spoke with clear voices. They have traded those popes for those who speak off the cuff on airplanes and other miscellaneous locations causing serious confusion among the faithful
Here's the statement of Bishop Athanasius Schneider who is well named. Thanks to Diane Montagna for posting it on her substack:
The Dilemma Between Preserving the Unambiguous Integrity of the Catholic Faith and Being Canonically Recognized by the Popeby Bishop Athanasius Schneider
I've spent most of my adult life fighting for the little ones in the womb waiting to be born. For many infants, it's the most dangerous place in the world. That was recently emphasized by the attempt of a couple to force the surrogate mother carrying "their" baby to undergo abortion because the little one had a curable heart problem. She refused and fled from the biological parents who live in the death state of California to Texas where the little one could be treated after birth.
I love the description of Sunday as a "day of rest." It comes from Genesis. God worked for six days and then He rested giving us the example of how important it is to "keep holy the Lord's day." It belongs to Him, not to us.
This morning at Mass the image came to me from the Irish blessing.
May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
Truth is one of the first casualties of a revolution. When a revolutionary wants something he knows is a lie, he very quickly finds a way to bury the truth. Study history and you'll find the lies behind every revolution. I can't count how many times I heard those going into abortion centers say, "You have your truth; I have mine." No truth exists in the revolution except what pleases the revolutionary.
Here is a sobering thought from St. Paul. Before he headed to Rome to meet his death he met with the elders at Ephesus. He told them they would never see him again and warned them of the threat that would come from within from "ravening wolves...not sparing the flock."
I thought of Archbishop Lefebvre as I read this and his Open Letter to Confused Catholics outlining the damage done by the wolves within. St. Luke blew the warning trumpet in Acts chapter 20 quoting St. Paul with whom he traveled. That warning is most appropriate today as well as we see the devastation caused by wolves in Roman collars "not sparing the flock," wolves from among "your own selves," the hierarchy:
I'm not sure what the appropriate word is for the way the Vatican is going. Puzzling, baffling, idiotic, contradictory, chaotic? Dare I say satanic? Confusion and chaos are always signs of the evil one and, as Pope Paul VI so famously said, "Satan's smoke has made its way into the temple of God through some crack." [Source]
Rome calls the SSPX rebels and the recently consecrated bishops as well as the two consecrating bishops excommunicated and schismatic. Meanwhile, the chaos and rebellion against the Vatican from within goes on unchecked and unpunished everywhere else. The Communist Chinese are allowed to appoint bishops and persecute the underground Church unopposed. Bishops in the name of synodality promote all kinds of doctrinal deviations. Freemasons rejoiced over the election of Francis and Leo walks in his footsteps. One Peter Five did a three part series titled Why Do the Freemasons Love Pope Francis? [Source] The Masons described Francis as "a radical agent of change." Interesting, eh?
So what is the appropriate word for the Vatican's response to the crisis in the Church? Do they even admit there is a crisis? Or is the crisis part of the change agents' plan with or without the deliberate cooperation of the hierarchy? They don't need to be Masons or Communists, just think like them.
So many people are gifts, some for a lifetime, some for a season. A relative once questioned my statement about being a friend to another relative whom my husband and I supported at a crucial time. She said, "You aren't friends." It was true that we hadn't had much contact for several years, but I still objected. My reply was to ask if the Good Samaritan was a friend to the wounded Jew. How much of a relationship did they have? Did the Good Samaritan ever meet the man again or had he already recovered and gone when he returned to the inn? To stand by someone in need and then lose touch altogether or even go low contact doesn't erase a time of friendship when someone may have been in great need.
In a statement released in tribute to the musician, the Grand Orient of Italy (GOI) revealed his membership in Freemasonry and, above all, the importance of the responsibilities he had held within it. Bruno Battisti D'Amario was presented as the founder of the Giuseppe Leti lodge in Rome and as the composer of the official anthem of the Grand Orient of Italy. He had also twice served as president of the Regional College of Venerable Masters of Lazio and as a councilor of the Order. [Source]
The homily at Mass this morning offered a serious challenge. Father described our greatest passion as the desire to speak. When I think of "passion" I have rarely thought about speaking with the tongue. We speak in other ways with our body, hence the term body language, but how many equate passion with speech? I daresay few.
The first full weekend in August is the Route 11 Shenandoah County Yard Crawl, miles and miles of cast-off stuff looking for a new home. Where will it all go?
When we drove to Raphine, VA last Sunday, I noticed storage facilities all over the place even in what some would describe as being in the middle of nowhere. People own so much junk that they fill up their homes and then rent facilities so they can accumulate even more. It actually reminds me of the vomitoriums of ancient Rome, purge and then refill!
I'm not surprised when I see storage facilities around the cities, but out here in the country? I understand when you are getting ready to move that you might need a temporary place to declutter and give your home a more open feel to enhance the sale. But how many people fill up a storage space and never ever even look at what's in there? I've come to think of it as the graphic display of a degenerate culture buying space to serve as their junk closets! Gosh! I can't even deal with my junk drawers!
Here's the question:
Are grandparents important in the lives of their children and grandchildren?
That question leads to several others:
Western civilization is on the chopping block. The globalists want a world where everything has been tossed in the blender and been homogenized. And it's been going on for decades. Remember the 1987 protest at Stanford when Jesse Jackson led students opposing the required humanities course on Western Civiliazation? "Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Western Civ has got to go." And it's been going ever since at an accelerated rate, although their attack wasn't the first.
Last Sunday, Father preached on mercy which is a subset of charity. There's plenty of false mercy out there these days. We see it preached by those who tell us to "welcome the strangers" invading our shores. Meanwhile, Spain saw a one-day influx of about 60,000 Moors from Morocco, pouring into the city of Ceuta. According to news reports the invasion was facilitated by sex traffickers and most of those entering were young men. What does that do to a country if they allow it to continue citing "mercy?"
St. Dominic is certainly a saint for our time. Zeal for God’s house consumed him. He devoted himself to fighting heresy with the Blessed Mother’s weapon of the rosary. How wise of us if we do the same.
I have the blessing of being a daughter of St. Dominic because he’s my Confirmation patron. St. Dominic, pray for us.
I was thinking about Chuck Coulson the other day. You remember Coulson right? And his involvement in the Watergate scandal back in the Nixon administration? He ended up serving seven months in federal prison for obstruction of justice. It changed his life and brought about a mid-life religious conversion. After release he founded Prison Fellowship and spent the rest of his life spreading Christianity calling for a common witness with Catholics resulting in release of "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" published in 1984.
What made me think of Coulson? The Congressional hearing with Anthony Fauci where he took the 5th in response to every question including the color of his tie.
There's a great post on Substack about the COVID debacle and those responsible for killing millions of people across the globe with their poisonous "vaccines." They made a virus much more lethal to humans and, by accident or perhaps deliberately, let it escape the gain-of-function lab where it was created. Dr. Science Fauci showed his arrogance and hubris in recent weeks and there is some satisfaction to see him finally exposed for the villain he is. Read the article:
The Delicious Humiliation of the Man Who Poisoned the World and the Ignominious Death of 'The Science'.
The Conflict between Modernism and Tradition
by Daniel Graham
