Sunday Meditation: Guest Post -- Watch Your Language! Words Mean Something!

Fr. Tom Collins hits one out of the ball park again! Words are important. Be careful how you use them!

As the juggernaut of the Culture of Desecration and Death continues to push for the secularization and perversion of humanity, it is worth noting that Church leaders have been seriously remiss by allowing its premises to pollute even the Church’s New Evangelization.

Specifically, many Church leaders have embraced the premises contained in secularist language to pollute even the sanctuary of the Church. For example, many seem to agree that the Eucharistic Christ is either not a person or a transgendered person by routinely referring to Him as “it”. Note how, even in the officially approved translation of the commingling prayer before the Agnus Dei, the  Eucharistic Christ is referred to as “it’, not as “Him”. And the laity routinely and without correction refer to Him as “it”, just as they glibly and without correction refer to His Precious Blood as “wine”.

A Practical Suggestion for the New Evangelization

Do you have a burning desire to bring people to Christ? If you are a real Catholic you do, because evangelizing is the duty Jesus laid on us when he ascended into heaven.

"Go forth and teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spriit." Is that intimidating? I think so. But it doesn't have to be. We don't need to go out to the park, stand on our soapbox, and begin preaching (Unless we really feel called and have the skill to do it.). We can simply resolve to be the link between an evangelizer and the one who needs to hear the message.

Does "Social Justice" Justify Sin? by Fr. Tom Collins

My friend, Fr. Tom Collins, hits another one out of the ball park! I know many Catholics with a false notion of "social justice" who act exactly as Father describes labeling all those who disagree as intolerant and hateful. What times we live in when those who call for social "justice" act so unjustly toward their brothers and sisters!

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It is painful to acknowledge the fact that we have witnessed a serious degradation of many of the Church's sacred disciplines over the past half century. One of the most glaring examples has been the development of unwritten, but de facto policies, which not only passively ignore, but also pro-actively laud and reward the immoral practices of certain political and civic leaders. Provided such practices are allegedly done for the sake of promoting a "social justice" agenda, they apparently are only to be meekly tolerated, but not carefully critiqued, much less vigorously condemned.

Among the immoral practices routinely embraced by many proponents of the" social justice" agenda are slander, deception, voting fraud, abuse of power, political cronyism, denial of accountability, violation of solemn oaths, the lax enforcement of our laws against the illegal infiltration of our nation (thereby enriching drug cartels and human traffickers for decades), the destruction of pre-born children by abortion, the degradation of our posterity by amoral "family life education" programs and by imposing on them an ever-increasing obscenely onerous burden of debt slavery and unfunded mandates. Sadly, in spite of all these abuses, those who routinely practice them are all too often praised by Church leaders, organizations and institutions as champions of justice.

New Evangelization or New Capitulation?

IS THE NEW EVANGELIZATION BEING DIVERTED INTO A NEW CAPITULATION? 

By Fr. Tom Collins

As the Church seeks to embrace the call to a new evangelization, we must ask ourselves whether it is possible to really evangelize the world by capitulating to, and thereby validating, the defective and perverted premises of secular society. In Ephesians 6:12, St. Paul points out the danger of worldly powers which seek to turn the faithful from the authentic truth of the Gospel by offering false ideals, which would seduce them into accepting immoral practices for the sake of fulfilling the demands of what we would call today A New World Order. Thus, no matter how sincere and well planned are the efforts we make to evangelize the world, if those efforts are based on defective or perverted premises proposed by “the worldly rulers of this present darkness,” this whole outreach ministry will bear little lasting fruit. Since its efficacy would be determined on the basis of its ability to engender the excitement of hubris, rather than the humble docility which is essential for authentic conversion, it may manipulate people to conform to an idealistic secular agenda, but will be unable to draw them into the transformative grace of God offered by humility and docility of true Christian discipleship. It is important, then, for us to critically examine some of the defective premises, which have been subtly insinuated into our thinking and which threaten to abort our efforts to evangelize our modern world.

THE NEW EVANGELIZATION VS. SINFUL CIVILIZATION

THE TRAGEDY OF EMBRACING PREMISES THAT DENY GOD’S PROMISES 

by Fr. Tom Collins

One of the basic problems of the New Evangelization is that many Church leaders have allowed it to be trapped in a quagmire of ever-evolving expectations generated by the fads, fashions and fetishes of secular society. In trying to meet people “where they are at”, such leaders have allowed the teaching of Christ to be relativized to suit the premises and prejudices of both individuals and societies. In the process, they have de facto denied the serious need for radical repentance in order to fully participate in the saving mysteries and ministries of God’s gracious love. Instead of initiating people and societies into a whole new spiritual way of being, thinking, and acting, they have found ways to distort the meaning of acculturation so as to embrace pastoral practices that capitulate to degraded understandings of what is good, true and beautiful.

What Does Our Culture of Death Need? A Church of Feasting or a Church of Fasting?

 QUESTIONS CONCERNING PREMISES OF THE NEW EVANGELIZATION   

by Fr. Tom Collins

Over the past two centuries, the Church has been under a relentless attack by those intent on ridiculing and destroying the Faith through the diabolical dynamic of dialectical materialism, the promotion of perverted pursuit of pleasure, and the desecrating cynicism of secularism. Sadly, those intent on bringing the Catholic Faith into harmony with the expectations of secular society have even found sympathizers among the Church’s hierarchy and among leaders in many Catholic institutions of higher learning. One of the most effective strategies in this campaign has been to hijack the interpretation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, so as to make Catholics more amenable to the agendas of the Culture of Desecration and Death. The degree to which this strategy has been able to detour the Church’s life, teaching and ministry from her commission to evangelize the world can be clarified by raising certain questions for discernment, such as the following:

The New Evangelization Begins with Repentance -- From the Top Down!

THE OBFUSCATION OF THE NEW EVANGELIZATION

by Fr. Tom Collins

If the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? I Cor 14:8

A few weeks ago, an elderly man who had lapsed from the practice of the Catholic Faith, summarized his reason for leaving by saying, “Father, let me know when the Catholic bishops finally decide what the Church really teaches”. He had earlier expressed dismay at how quickly Church leaders sought to appease dissidents and how slowly they sought to please God. He gave the example of how quickly the USCCB was willing to change the words of institution from “for all men” to “for all”, in order to appease radical feminists. In contrast, it took over four decades for them to concede that pro multis means “for many”, not “for all”. He went on to point out that The Roman Catechism specifically addressed this issue over four hundred years ago. Yet the Vatican chose to ignore this clearly delineated teaching in order to approve translations of liturgical texts that tended to prioritize relevance over Revelation.

The man also pointed out his consternation over the current HHS-USCCB controversy.

Evangelii Gaudium: Chapter V

I'm finally on the home stretch of the pope's encyclical on evangelization and I love the title of Chapter V: Spirit-Filled Evangelizers! They are the ones "fearlessly open to the working of the Holy Spirit." Does that describe you? Does zeal for God's house consume you? The pope exhorts us to this zeal imitating the christian saints of every age who risked all to proclaim the Lord of Life! How can we have this spirit? --through a personal encounter with Christ:

The primary reason for evangelizing is the love of Jesus which we have received, the experience of salvation which urges us to ever greater love of him. What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known? If we do not feel an intense desire to share this love, we need to pray insistently that he will once more touch our hearts. We need to implore his grace daily, asking him to open our cold hearts and shake up our lukewarm and superficial existence.

And how do we "shake up" our lives and become zealous for the Lord?

Another great article from my friend, Fr. Tom Collins.

OBFUSCATION OF THE NEW EVANGELIZATION

If the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? I Cor 14:8

A few weeks ago, an elderly man who had lapsed from the practice of the Catholic Faith, summarized his reason for leaving by saying, “Father, let me know when the Catholic bishops finally decide what the Church really teaches”. He had earlier expressed dismay at how quickly Church leaders sought to appease dissidents and how slowly they sought to please God. He gave the example of how quickly the USCCB was willing to change the words of institution from “for all men” to “for all”, in order to appease radical feminists. In contrast, it took over four decades for them to concede that pro multis means “for many”, not “for all”. He went on to point out that The Roman Catechism specifically addressed this issue over four hundred years ago. Yet the Vatican chose to ignore this clearly delineated teaching in order to approve liturgical texts that tended to prioritize relevance over Revelation.

The man also pointed out his consternation over the current HHS-USCCB controversy.