When the “Reformers” Abandoned the Eucharist

This is a well thought through article that leads us down a path of recognizable outcomes of the Reformational effect of the separation of the physical and spiritual.  In the end, the elevation of personal subjective conscience is an attack on the Incarnation, our own creation as a union of soul and body, and harkens us back to the reason for the fall of Satan in the first place.  His challenge that only the spiritual Angelic form was good which was a direct attack on creation and what God called good.

Source: When the “Reformers” Abandoned the Eucharist – Crisis Magazine

Never forget the bloody horrors of the English Reformation

It is a true statement that history is written by the victors and it is a fair statement to say Protestantism has prevailed in Europe and in the US.  There is no better historical event that demonstrates this than the 500 years of Protestant Reformation that even now continues to spew its anti-Catholic history for its roots have always pushed the application of Protestantism as an attack and reject of it’s source, Catholicism.  Good historians of today know they must read previous Protestant influenced historical accounts with an eye and ear for propaganda if they are to tweeze out the truth. Blindly accepting what seems to be common beliefs of the past shows the true ignorance that many academics demonstrate in our universities, schools, and media.

Take for instance the recent BBC and PBS mini-Series and movies on the Tudor’s, Queen Elizabeth, and Henry VIII. These are full of support for Protestantism and attacks on Catholicism as you would expect since they are trying to show their character, especially Queen Elizabeth, in a positive light and possibly even a pro-feminist characterization.  What better heroine, standing up to attacks and men, than the Virgin Queen? The Protestant version of Mother Mary.  The problem is all the horror and death they leave out that was protracted against Catholics which was the religion of England since its conception.  What right did English monarch’s have to force a Catholic country to become Protestant through mass murder?

Source: Never forget the bloody horrors of the English Reformation

The Continuing Vocation Crisis in the United States

Fr. Mark Pilon notes the stunning differences between priestly ordinations in dioceses large and small: Wichita has more than L.A.!

I would hope the USCCB has this issue squarely on its radar but what is sad is the laity doesn’t know what the stats are nor what is being done about it in the US.  We hear from the Vatican about exceptions being suggested for extreme cases such as allowing married priest but what do you know about your own diocese and what your bishop is doing to address this issue locally.  It can feel like we’ve fallen and instead of figuring out how to stand up we just lay there on our backs telling passerby’s, “No, I can’t get up. I’ve fallen.”

It seems to be a consistent reaction by the current Church.  Instead of addressing the sickness and healing it we call the sickness normal and propose ways to live with it.  It’s just to hard to get well.  We call what should be normal as “ideal” and what is abnormal as culturally normal.  How about we just ignore the whole 2000 years of our Church and the lives of our Saints and martyrs.  Let’s just lay on our backs in the mud and tell ourselves it’s normal.  We can’t change and in fact trying to propose change would be hurtful.  It would be radical and rigid to pursue holiness in a self-sacrificing manner.

Interesting to consider if you’ve ever seen a situation or even a person change by doing what they’ve always done. Great change is always proceeded by great effort and sacrifice.  And great effort by great vision.  Let’s start pursuing the “ideal” instead of fearing the sacrifice it requires.  Anything else will leave us in the mud on our backs.

Source: The Continuing Vocation Crisis in the United States – The Catholic Thing

On the Failure of Homiletics

“They have all zeal and no truth, and we have all truth and no zeal.” ∼ Bishop Sheen

A great article full of magisterial references, Scripture, and Catechism quotes.  What more needs to be said.  It’s time to get busy.

Source: On the Failure of Homiletics – Crisis Magazine

Time to Reassert the Church’s Spiritual Role

This article isn’t a quick meal.  It will take some chewing to get the full benefit.

Source: Time to Reassert the Church’s Spiritual Role – Crisis Magazine

Why fewer adults are choosing to become priests and nuns

In 1965 we had around 179,000 religious (nuns and brothers).  Today we have around 47,000.  That’s a loss in the US of close to 75% over 50 years.  A normal company would close their doors.  Though today the decline can be attributed to older religious passing away, the majority of that 75% has to be put at the feet of those progressives and their courting of the culture after Vatican II opened the windows of the Church allowing Modernism to enter the empty and in order home. (Matt 12:45) The hope was that the stale yet clean and orderly Church would benefit from the fresh breeze of the Holy Spirit when the windows were opened but as we see in Matthew 12 what actually entered was the Spirit of the Age which has made the state of today’s Church worse than it was before. The Church must be cleaned again and filled with Christ before the strong man returns.

The significant decline is a clear sign that progressive orders and their rejection of Traditional Church teaching and practices has allowed a rot, a Spirit of the Age, to form that is now mortal to those orders.  Because of their social action works many of these orders wouldn’t recognize this crisis and would rather facilitate the expansion of the spiritual rot but human stubbornness in the face of clear failure is nothing but insanity.

Doing the same thing over and over expecting something to change is a sign of insanity.  It’s not the growing Traditional orders that need to become progressive.  It’s the progressive orders that need to become Traditional unless they are purposely trying to destroy and keep people from becoming religious.  That would be evil, wouldn’t it?

From the Father’s Wife: A Perspective on Marriage and the Priesthood

Here is another perspective on married priests from the wife’s point of view.  As I commented on a previous article on this topic, trying to live out two true vocations is at best problematic and at worst disastrous.  This wife’s courage and devotion are clear but even she admits that her families success is unique and she knows of many others that have ended in broken marriages and lost homes. She clearly believes celibacy for priests makes it easier for the men to serve God.

If you look at the comments below the article you see the  Eastern Rite Church mentioned and their long history of married priests as a support for the issue.  Please remember that even in the Eastern Church Bishop’s can’t and have never been allowed to marry.  This is an interesting topic to consider.  What makes the Bishops ordination different from the priest in the Eastern Church.  How are the priests more similar to Deacons than Bishops?

At the end of the day, simple things like salary, housing, health insurance and school expenses make the issue of married priests in the Western Church financially unrealistic. Even if theologically it would be approved the Dioceses are not setup to handle the additional expense of married priests.  Priests really don’t make much and it’s certainly not enough to take care of a family or even save for college without the priest running around looking for extra work to pay the bills.  As we all know financial stress in a family can draw couples together or more often be a reason for divorce which even this priest’s wife recognizes.

As I mentioned before, just because a thing is possible don’t make it profitable or smart in the long run.  Decentralization of Diocese into individual parishes like the Protestants would be the only real way to handle the financial impact.  Our priests would become entrepreneurs building their parishes to support their salaries possible having to have more than one job.

Source: From the Father’s Wife: A Perspective on Marriage and the Priesthood 

Warning about ordaining married priests — by a married priest

I suggest that an honest and thoughtful discussion of this topic from a traditional understanding of vocation will help to highlight that married priests are trying to live out two vocations.  A house divided can not stand and the growing divorce rate of those Anglican pastors who became Catholic priests is a clear sign.

You can have a vocation and work it out through a chosen profession or job but priesthood and marriage aren’t jobs.  They are vocations.  So you must ask yourself, when a man by oath establishes a covenant with his wife through marriage how can he create a second covenant with God where both covenants are meant for him to give his all.  This is a logical contradiction and a house divided.  I have personally seen the confusion and pain this causes.

Men who are married can always serve the Church through multiple professions or jobs but that doesn’t mean they need to be ordained to do it.  Think about why a man would choose a life of ordained priesthood while married. Have you ever seen what the life of a priest is like?

Source: Warning about ordaining married priests — by a married priest

Why do Eastern Christians make the Sign of the Cross “backwards”?

The Sign of the Cross is a gesture by which Christians signify the blessing of their person in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Everything in our faith has a reason and source that is important to know and understand.  Do you know why you make the sign of the Cross?  It really is something you should do more often.

Source: Why do Eastern Christians make the Sign of the Cross “backwards”?

Muslims Are Converting to Christianity in Record Numbers

How are so many conversions taking place in oppressive countries where proselytizing can bring a death sentence?

Now is not the time to water down the Catholic faith with ambiguous reforms but to stand faithful to our dogmas and Traditions as a guiding little to so many looking for truth and fleeing evil.

How would the devil react to these massive conversions?  He would attempt to corrupt and weaken the source so these converts come into the Church and stay spiritually weak and theologically confused.  You wonder why the words “ambiguity” and “confusion” are used so often these days to describe what the Vatican is recommending?  It’s a clear effort to weaken the Church at a time it needs to be strong and counter-cultural.

Why should we change the truth when so many are converting?  It’s illogical at the least.  Is it possible that the European prelates are trying to re-enforce their position of authority in the Church that they are losing through massive declines in their Mass attendance while facing the growing Southern Hemisphere Church growth.  These converts are not converting because the Church is becoming more culturally accepting.  It’s because they see the truth of the Catholic faith.  Be encouraged and stand strong.

Source: Muslims Are Converting to Christianity in Record Numbers

Why French women are quitting the pill

Why would you medicate a healthy body and in so doing cause complications and side effects?

Does this help women or a liberal agenda?

Source: Why French women are quitting the pill

 

The Morality of Amoris Laetitia Is Not Thomistic

In a formal address delivered during his recent visit to Colombia, Pope Francis implored his brother Jesuits to defend his embattled exhortation on marriage, which remains haunted by its obscurities and fervent vagueness. In his short discourse, the pope also enlisted Thomas Aquinas in this enterprise by insisting upon the Thomistic properties of Amoris Laetitia.

The Pope and directly those that write his papers and speeches for him clearly aren’t theologians of a high caliber.  Consider Fr Martin for example, the communication propagandist of the Vatican specifically picked by the Pope.  There is no way to justify with Church teaching anything he is spewing yet he is constantly going around the country giving speeches.  Consider this, why is he allowed to go on a continual book tour when we have a priest shortage in America?

As the article demonstrates it’s easy to refute the statement that AL is Thomistic.  A simple key is how Thomas addressed positive moral rules and negative ones.  The theologians behind the Pope’s works show they aren’t so much trying to properly defend their reforms as to use slippery logic on an audience they know doesn’t know better.  Like giving candy to a baby.  The baby will always desire candy.

The time that the laity can stupidly sit back and accept everything the Vatican says is gone because the wolves are in the sheep pen.  We must return to the old rules of authenticity.  If we don’t know it’s origin and we can’t see it was passed down from the apostolic Church we reject it.  Only those first church’s who received the Gospel from the first apostles where listed to at the beginning. Return to the documents of the Church.  Read the Church father’s, JPII, and Benedict.  Test everything and only keep what passes mustard.  The rest is liberal propaganda.  The longer we go down this road the longer the journey back.

Source: The Morality of Amoris Laetitia Is Not Thomistic – Crisis Magazine

Married Priests and Missionary Failure

A modification in response to pastoral failure within the Latin rite would be a brand-new step.

As mentioned in the article, the great need for evangelization, the lack of priests, and the initial cultural character of the Amazon are nothing new.  Africa, at a time not to long ago in regards to Church history was in the same situation yet now it’s Catholic population and vocations are outgrowing neighboring once primarily Catholic nations.

These excusses can’t be used to justify ordaining married men in the Amazon as priests without ignoring the past or without declaring failure of the call to a new evangelization by Vatican II.  The old models of missionary work must be applied and other countries should be leaned upon to send priests.  Let’s start acting like we have missionary work to do rather than satisfying our own local desires.  All we do is navel gaze.  What a clear sign of the vices of gluttony, hubris, and sloth by the laity and Church.  Are our prelates Machiavellian again?

Its interesting that the Church doesn’t seem to be interested in doing the long hard work of evangelization any longer.  They simply want immediate solutions.  These are normally short sighted, insufficient for the long term, and prefer the acceptance of the cultural norms over the integration of Catholic teachings.

Think about England, Europe, and the Americas if we followed the current Church praxis under Pope Francis hundreds of years ago.  The Church would never had grown.  We need heroic priests willing to give their lives to spread the faith.  We need a Church that really believes in the great commission rather than being accepted by the culture.

Source: Married Priests and Missionary Failure

Cardinal Burke on the Rule of Faith

Cardinal Burke, “The Church must proclaim Christ’s truth; it must not deny it.”

More wise words from Cardinal Burke.  He is absolutely correct that the interpretations of AL that contradict Church teaching actually are an attack of the Sacraments.  We can’t change one thing without changing the other.  It’s an attempt to say the sacraments are just a sign of community rather than what they really are which is our unity with Christ.  Once baptized we are always a member of his body.  Sacraments assist in our journey of holiness and aren’t just outside signs of community.

Consider Adam and Eve in light of the distorted personal conscience interpretation of AL.  Following AL Eve never sinned  She did what she could at that time in the face of temptation.  Then there really is no sin and no fall and no need of Christ.  Now you can see the evil in this interpretation.  It is another version of the serpents lie in the Garden.

In the end AL agrees with the twisted lie in the Garden and makes God a sadist for killing his son for no reason.  There is only sin if we feel there is sin.  The exact argument Satan uses for his own actions.  You won’t die.  You’ll become just like me.

Source: Cardinal Burke on the Rule of Faith – The Catholic Thing

Cardinal Burke Addresses the ‘Dubia’ One Year After Their Publication

In wishing to honor two recently deceased cardinals, the American cardinal makes a final plea to the Holy Father for clarity, saying the “grave” situation is “continually worsening” and that it is “urgent” the Pope “confirm his brothers in the faith.”

Consider Cardinal Burke’s filial plea to the Holy Father in light of this Scripture.

Which one of you would hand his son a stone when he asks for a loaf of bread, or a snake when he asks for a fish? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him. Matt 7:9-11

Is the Holy Father giving his Cardinal a stone or bread?

Source: Cardinal Burke Addresses the ‘Dubia’ One Year After Their Publication