Sola Scriptura Protestants Don't Really Believe In Sola Scriptura!

I've had a lot of interactions with Protestants on social media over the years, anonymous Protestants usually. They often have no interest in an honest discussion about faith and the differences between Catholic belief and Protestant belief. Often they tell you what Catholics believe which is almost always wrong and, when you correct them, they just repeat their errors insisting they're right. It's actually pretty funny. They know more about what Catholics believe than a life-long Catholic does. They often aren't interested in a good-faith exchange; they just repeat their bigot points. Catholics worship Mary. The Catholic Church is the whore of Babylon and the pope is the anti-Christ. Catholics aren't allowed to read the Bible. Yadda Yadda. Many Protestants are rabidly anti-Catholic bigots who are just trolling and lobbing insults -- not exactly a model of Christian charity.

Screwtape Lives!

One of the scenes in The Screwtape Letters that I find most chilling involves Screwtape's advice to eliminate silence. He writes to his nephew, Wormwood, expressing his concern about the woman Wormwood's "patient" is seeing. She comes from a religious family and Screwtape fears the influence she will have on the young man through her faith:

On Spider Patrol -- Physically and Spiritually!

I decided to go downstairs today and do spider patrol. Our basement is only half below ground, but the spiders and centipedes love to collect there, since the Camp Kreitzer staff holds basement cleaning as a low priority. As I began eliminating the cobwebs and long legged arachnids, I thought of how short a time it takes for them to begin to take over. 

We All Need a Carthusian Spirit in this World of NOISE, NOISE, NOISE!

Today is the feast of St. Bruno, founder of the Carthusians. Did you see the film, Into Great Silence? If not, today would be a great day to watch it and to read about the life of St. Bruno. Our world of chaotic, diabolical disorientation needs silence. I will be watching this movie throughout my day as I take breaks from my household duties. I love the winter scenes particularly. They remind me of the silence that descends on the world with the snow. All is blanketed in silence. 

How important is it to enter into silence? 

Consider Screwtape's letter to Wormwood in chapter 22 of the Screwtape Letters. The text on noise is below the video, but I highly recommend listening to the reading by John Cleese. You can hear the venom of Satan who prowls the world seeking whom he can devour.

Corruption at the Vatican: Drain the Swamp!

“Lower than the Rome of the Borgias”

High-ranking priest caught in cocaine-fueled gay orgy in Vatican apartment

Why report bad news? Because ignorance is not bliss! Corruption among high level churchmen is NOTHING NEW. Even Judas, one of Christ's nearest and dearest, committed treason against Our Lord. Who knows whether greed was his only deadly sin?

So never let things like this scandal damage your faith. Let it, instead, fuel your desire to pray and sacrifice for Holy Mother Church, especially for the clergy who are under multiple assaults from the demons.

We all have guardian angels. We also, no doubt, have at least one devil assigned to tempt us. (Read The Screwtape Letters.) The cartoon with the devil whispering in one ear and an angel whispering in the other is truer than you imagine.

Have You Ever Met the Devil?

Cover of Life Magazine Feb. 2, 1948

Many of you have no doubt read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.  Not being a Lewis fan, I avoided this book for a while, but had it thrust on me by a friend whom I've encouraged to read some of my own favorites.  Having to swallow a dose of my own medicine and read one of her suggestions, I found it was surprisingly good for me to linger a while over a work of fiction.  The clever recognition and scrutiny of human nature was very amusing and sadly all too true.  And having allowed to be created in my mind this fictional dialogue between minions and the devil himself, it was with interest I read something online not long ago about an article Whitaker Chambers wrote in 1948 that was published in Life Magazine on February 2.  (The issue then cost 15 cents.  Today you can buy it for $19.95.) 

 The title of Chamber's article was The Devil.  I have recently discovered a copy of it in a book titled Ghosts on the Roof, Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers 1931-1959.