Need a Good Read for Lent? Credo Will Build Your Faith!

I decided to read Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith by Bishop Athanasius Schneider for Lent. If you want to love God, you first have to know Him. And what better way to know Him than to study the faith using a solid Catholic catechism. 

Unfortunately, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, like so many things coming in these modernist-infected times, has been corrupted.  Studying a catechism like the Catechism of the Council of Trent or the Baltimore Catechism or, in fact, Credo is more likely to build up the faith without introducing novelties that twist the truth.

Traditionally most Catholic catechisms begin with the creed. I'm on Chapter 16 "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints." With all the chaos in the Church at present, this chapter offers clear teaching on the nature of the Church, the papacy, and our obligations as Catholics. I'll quote several questions: 

If You Really Want a Holy Lent, Walk it with Mary!

On the first and third Sunday's of the month we have catechism after Mass. It's short, only about twenty minutes, but what a grace! There is always a message that touches the heart and brings clarity to the "fog of the moment"* in which we live. 

Several Sundays ago Fr. Albert, a retired Dominican in residence at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, delivered the teaching and focused on discouragement and Mary's role in protecting us based on the teachings of St. Maximilian Kolbe, Knight of the Immaculata.

Sunday Meditation: Pope St. Pius X, a Man for Today

In the traditional calendar, yesterday was the feast of Pope St. Pius X, a man for our age. 

The situation at the beginning of the 20th century was much the same as it was for us at the beginning of the 21st. Dissent was rampant. Catholics in the pew were being formed and misled by theologians and catechists espousing a novel religion at odds with the faith, the very essence of modernism which the pope called the "synthesis of all heresies."

Modernism both without and within the Church led Pius X to publish Pascendi, the encyclical against modernism, as relevant today as when it was published September 8, 1907. Pius lamented that the modernists preached that "Dogma is not only able, but ought to evolve and to be changed." That for the faith to be "living" it had to adapt to the spirit of the time. Like today's modernists, those of the early 20th century maintained that "all religions are true" and that doctrine "evolves." Nothing is fixed; the rock is smashed to sand. Although the Assisi meetings were decades away, the spirit of false ecumenism was already polluting the faith with syncretism.

"All things work together for good for those who love the Lord."

Have you voted for life today, considering the will of the Lord of Life? Then be at peace no matter the outcome. "All things work together for good to those who love the Lord and serve according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28)

It is the feast day of St. Charles Borromeo, one of the leading reformers of the Catholic Church. That, seems to me, to be a sign of hope that no matter what happens today we are to continue to fight for a culture of life and for our holy faith. St. Charles was born during the Protestant Revolution and became a cardinal at a time of serious abuses in the Church (sound familiar?). He assisted in the final deliberations of the Council of Trent and contibuted to the writing of the catechism of the Council. His catechetical efforts were so effective in his diocese (Milan, Ialy) that the protestants were unsuccessful in attempts to evangelize there.

St. Charles saw that many of the problems in the Church were due to the ignorance of the clergy, so he started seminaries and colleges to ensure the proper training of men aspiring to the priesthood. During times of famine and plague, he was a minister of charity, never sparing himself and liberally applying the wealth of the Church, even going into heavy debt.

But natural disasters were not his only challenge. His efforts at reform were resisted. One religious order, the Humiliati (Brothers of Humility), conspired to kill him. Gunshots were fired in his archiepiscopal chapel, but he escaped harm which many considered miraculous.

Having poured himself out as a libation for his people, St. Charles died November 3, 1584 at the age of only 46. To the end he was a model of his Lord, the Good Shepherd. Let us ask St. Charles to intercede for our Church and our country, and especially to pray for the hierarchy in the United States that they might put the common good of their people first. St. Charles Borromeo, pray for us.