The Health and Wealth Gospel isn’t worth the paper it’s not written on.

I would like to illustrate how the Faith and Prosperity teachings and our adherence to them robbed my wife and I of the one thing we needed the most: Truth, and the grace to carry the cross our Lord graciously and lovingly handed us. My wife was diagnosed with a rare lung cancer at 28 years of age while still nursing a 6 month old. Here’s my story:

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Editor’s note: The Health and Wealth Gospel is a fabrication of modern, materialistic Protestantism that enriches preachers (entertainers) to the detriment of the congregation, through the flagrant and creative preaching of imaginative modern heresies, falsely allegedly to be founded in Bible truth.

Seen on the web: Reader comment about Catholic Schools Week.

Posted by Bob on Wednesday, Jan 30, 2013 4:59 PM (EDT):

“Why did God make you? God made me to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.”

Perhaps not many remember this question and answer from the Baltimore Catechism, but these few lines say so much. Having asked Catholic school students this question, they “danced” all over searching for a satisfactory response. Telling them the answer and they not only understood, but committed it to memory and were able to write a short essay on its meaning. How thousands of children once learned their Faith is now a thing of the past (and generally a taboo subject among administrators).

Likewise are the sheer numbers of school-age students who know little of Catholicism, because some 80% of them do not/cannot attend Catholic school.

Historically, the Plenary Councils of Baltimore set forth the manner in which our Faith was to be accorded to Catholics. The 19th Century councils recognized that public schools were generally detrimental to Catholics and set forth certain guidelines for bishops and their clergy that are certainly applicable today, among which are:

A Catholic school in every parish (where rudimentary Gregorian chant should be taught);
Textbooks should not contain items contrary to the Faith; and
It was desired that parochial schools be free.

Instead of building cathedrals (most new ones are monstrosities anyway), buying real-estate and other expenditures, how about committing these monies to Catholic education?

This “New Evangelization” must start on a firm basis – bishops already don’t pay teachers what their public school counterparts receive and they don’t allow unions to exist within their (arch-) dioceses (though every pope in the modern era has said it is the right of every worker to organize) and many non-Catholics attend our schools (and some teachers are not Catholic either).

How does one explain that ¾ of all students are at the elementary school level, while the remaining ¼ are in high school, where the attendant costs double – what happens to those thousands who can’t go to a Catholic high school? We’ve all seen “scholarships” given to the Protestant quarterback from a public high school – you see it at Catholic colleges for that matter. Is this fair? The charge that Catholic schools are only for the rich seems increasingly true.

Many clerics have said the Church is under siege from a government that sees no value in what our Church (and its schools) provide. Perhaps it is time to relearn from our past and set our priorities anew.

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Newly appointed Archbishop declares the State of Oregon “unchurched”.

The next Catholic archbishop of Portland comes with aTwitter account, aFacebook page and the relatively youthful perspective of a person born in 1960. At 52,  the youngest prelate to be named an archbishop in the United States, the Most Rev. Alexander K. Sample  says he’s ready for the challenge of an unchurched state.

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Editor’s note: There’s quite a few allegedly “churched” states needing attention these days, as well. New York, California, and Illinois, for starters!

The essential truth today’s Vatican refuses to proclaim to “the Jews”

by Doug Lawrence

A recent commentary featured a number of false claims by the writers, coupled with a few self-serving, out of context or erroneous quotes from highly placed Catholic officials, including the late Pope John Paul II. To wit:

“It is absolutely unacceptable, impossible, to define the Jews as enemies of the Church,” said the Vatican’s top spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. “Anti-Semitism in all its forms is a non-Christian act and the Catholic Church must fight this phenomenon with all her strength.”

(Sure! But can’t we all truthfully agree that while Anti-Semitism is indeed absolutely wrong, after more than 2000 years, the bulk of Jewish religious faith traditions and their related philosophies remain totally at odds with the fundamental teachings and practices of the Catholic Church?) 

Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Vatican’s Commission on Religious Relations with Jews, lambasted Fellay: “The Jews are our older brothers,” he declared. “We are inseparably linked with the Jews.”

(Of course, this is technically correct, since The Blessed Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, as well as all the Apostles were Jewish … and we received the Old Testament of the Bible (The Law, the Prophets and the Psalms) from the Jews. But it’s also true that many of our “older brothers” are spiritually blind. Hence, they have a serious problem comprehending the truth of the scriptures, in the light of Jesus Christ.)

Koch recently called for “the Catholic Church to conduct a deeper theological reflection … to throw light theologically on the new relationship with Judaism which has developed after Nostra Aetate.”

(Boiled down to its essence, that “new relationship” appears to be purely political … and one-sided, to boot: Speak not against Judaism or the Jews, in any matter, regardless of truth or error … and never fail to meekly “swallow” and accept the popular Jewish “line” regarding many uniquely Catholic doctrinal and political matters, from the truth of the Gospels, to the Holocaust, to issues like birth control and abortion.)

In 2000, in an iconic moment for the new relationship, Pope John Paul II prayed at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, according to a Jewish custom. He inserted into the Wall a signed prayer formally committing the Catholic Church to “genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.”

(The good Pope was careful not to mention WHICH Covenant he was speaking about. The Jews are the people of the Old Covenant, which was only temporary, and never had the power to save a soul. Salvation is to be found in Jesus Christ alone … in and through his New Covenant Church. How can anyone … even our beloved Pope John Paul II … hope to pursue “genuine brotherhood” through mere political gestures, without scrupulous attention to the truth?) 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church actually explains the truth of the matter quite well, when it wisely excludes the Jews and all other Christ deniers from inclusion in the group defined as “The People of God” (emphasis mine):

782 The People of God is marked by characteristics that clearly distinguish it from all other religious, ethnic, political, or cultural groups found in history:

– The People of God: God is not the property of any one people. But he acquired a people for himself from those who previously were not a people: “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.”

– One becomes a member of this people not by a physical birth, but by being “born anew,” a birth “of water and the Spirit,” that is, by faith in Christ, and Baptism.

– This People has for its Head Jesus the Christ (the anointed, the Messiah). Because the same anointing, the Holy Spirit, flows from the head into the body, this is “the messianic people.”

– “The status of this people is that of the dignity and freedom of the sons of God, in whose hearts the Holy Spirit dwells as in a temple.”

– “Its law is the new commandment to love as Christ loved us.” This is the “new” law of the Holy Spirit.

– Its mission is to be salt of the earth and light of the world. This people is “a most sure seed of unity, hope, and salvation for the whole human race.”

-Its destiny, finally, “is the Kingdom of God which has been begun by God himself on earth and which must be further extended until it has been brought to perfection by him at the end of time.”

This truth is in no way Anti-Semitic, since it applies equally to every race, culture and creed … offering the free gift of salvation in Jesus Christ, to all.

Any questions?

Link to original article

12 Fruits of the Holy Spirit, in the Catholic Tradition

…altogether we have 12 fruits of the Holy Spirit in Catholic Tradition. As we can see many  of them speak to zeal, while others in a way that seeks to set forth a virtue rooted in moderateness.

One of the great gifts the Spirit seeks to give us is not a rejection of passion or other human gifts, but a moderation and proper appropriation of them. For God the Holy Spirit has given all the gifts of the World, including beauty, and human passions for a reason and for a good end. But the Fruits of the Spirit are gifts to both to inspire zeal and to regulate and appreciate what God has given for a reason and a purpose. By these gifts we steer a middle ground between rejection and indulgence, excess and defect, enjoyment and hedonism. Modus omnibus in rebus (All things in moderation (including moderation)). The Sequence Hymn for Pentecost says of the Holy Spirit:

Flecte quod est rigidum (Bend what is rigid),

fove quod est frigidum (warm what is cold),

rege quod est devium. (rule what deviates).

And thus we see both zeal and moderation in these gifts and in all things a ruling over anything that deviates. Come Holy Holy Spirit, rule our hearts and inflame them with your love.

See all 12

50,000 Pro-Lifers March Against Abortion in San Francisco

The ninth annual Walk for Life West Coast rally at Civic Center Plaza filled the plaza with 50,000 pro-life people publicly showing their opposition to abortion as they walked the two miles from City Hall to the Ferry Building.

The peaceful pro-life walkers traveled through the heart of the city’s shopping and financial districts. More than to 50,000 participated, organizers estimated.

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Jesus scared a would be thief out of a Florida woman’s home.

“When I realized what was going on, I stood up and said, ‘In the name of Jesus, get out of my house now,’” Hagler told WJXT-TV.

And he said, ‘I’m going to shoot someone.’

And I said it again, real boldly”, Hagler continued. “Everybody started chanting, ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,’ and he did a quick scan of the room, and ran out the door as fast as he could go.”

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Editor’s note: Once again … Jesus Saves!

93 photos of the 2013 Washington, D.C. March for Life

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 25, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Huddled under winter coats and hats and scarves, hundreds of thousands of pro-life activists gathered on the Mall in Washington D.C. this morning to send a clear message to politicians in the Capitol, and the whole country: 40 years is too long, abortion must end! But despite the frigid January temperatures, the crowd, made up largely of teens and young adults, was boisterous, with many groups chanting pro-life slogans and singing hymns as they walked.

This year’s March marked the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, since which an estimated 55 million babies have been killed by abortion in America.

While accurate estimates of the number of attendees at the march are hard to come by, organizers had said in the days leading up to the event that all signs pointed to a record-breaking crowd. Hotels in the D.C area sold out far in advance of when they normally do, and organizers installed two jumbotrons just to ensure that all marchers could get a glimpse of what was happening on the stage.

Last year’s march was estimated at around 400,000 participants, likely putting this year’s at the half million mark, or even beyond.

Photos and text

On the Current Christian Apocalypse in Egypt and the Middle East

…thirteen years before the “Arab Spring,” I could feel in my bowels that the end was near; that the apocalypse of Egyptian Christendom was coming. And curiously enough, I sensed this, too, in many of the more articulate Copts I spoke with: that there was something different in kind, in spirit, about the Islamist threat, now even coming from within the Mubarak government, which nominally protected them.

Over the centuries there had been persecution enough, and occasional pogroms; there had been constant pressure on Christians to convert to Islam, by which a nation still probably majority Christian at the time of the first Crusades gradually became overwhelmingly Muslim. Yet all this had been mostly against a background of “live and let live.” Now, perceptibly, the ground rules were changing. “Islamism” wasn’t “Islam” any more.

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The most powerful aspect of the March for Life: Standing room only in the Great Upper Church, and also filling the chapels of the undercroft.

By: Msgr. Charles Pope

As I have remarked before, to March for Life is experience life. So many joyful Christians and others who support life gather and celebrate the glory and dignity of human life. The March is ever young, with the ranks of so many young people growing every year.

Here at my rectory are 15 fine seminarians from the Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit. Fine orthodox, and zealous men who love God and the Church and are eager to preach the Gospel and celebrate the sacraments. Almost 700 seminarians marched into the Basilica Thursday evening along with hundreds of priests, and as many as 8000 lay people, standing room only in the Great Upper Church, and also filling the chapels of the undercroft.

Today at the Cathedral I was privileged to preach to a full Church and hear powerful witness talks from Project Rachel leaders prior to the Mass. Despite cold and some light snow, I would say the crowd was close in size to last year’s 400,000.

Yes, such life, such faith and joy.

I must say however, that my joy is often tempered each year toward the end of the march when I go and try to witness to the “pro-choice” demonstrators who stand in front of the Supreme Court. I often experience great pain in this work.

To be sure they are the hardened cases, but I experience such grief after talking with them. Here are a couple of conversations as I remember them.

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13,000 faithful, 5 cardinals, 42 bishops, 395 priests, 80 deacons, 520 seminarians

Editor’s note: The Mass that is regularly celebrated in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the night before the March for Life, is truly the experience of a lifetime and it should not be missed, if at all possible.

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Latest gossip on the Father Corapi affair

A  blog for Dallas Area Catholics reports: I got the following update last night from a Montana resident who claims to be in the know.  They say Fr. Corapi lives in a gated community in Whitefish, Montana, on Whitefish Lake.  He is seen about riding his Harley.  He never wears clerics or any religious garb.  He is not known to be active in any parish.

Editor’s note: The balance of the post, as well as the various reader responses, shed little or no more light on the subject, which is still an emotional one for many, almost two years after the original incidents.

Summary of all Fr. Corapi articles posted here, to date

Book provides good insights into the true role of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Below are excerpts from the first chapter of the book Meet Mary: Getting to Know the Mother of God, by Dr. Mark Miravalle, professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Thanks to Sophia Institute Press for permitting me to reprint the excerpts in this column. Click here to order a copy of the book in paperback or in electronic format.

Mary in the New Testament

In the pages of the New Testament, we have the oldest historical record of Mary’s life. Almost all that we know of her earthly existence we know from the four Gospels, which were written sometime between 50 and 100 AD, along with the oral tradition passed on by the first Christians.

We know she was raised in Galilee, one of the most remote corners of one of the most remote provinces of the ancient Roman Empire. We know that when she came along in approximately 14 BC, Israel was governed by Herod, a sadistic and power-hungry king who ruled at the pleasure of the emperor in Rome. A representative of that emperor, the governor, also sat in Jerusalem, supervising the soldiers, keeping an eye on Herod, and putting down the periodic rebellions that sprang up among the Jewish people.

We also know that Mary was Jewish, a member of a people that had been persecuted, enslaved, exiled, and oppressed for thousands of years, yet who continued to worship the God of its ancestors and to reject the polytheism of its oppressors. We know that she married a carpenter named Joseph, gave birth to a son named Jesus, watched her son become a man, and later watched him die on a cross.

The most detailed written information we have on Mary’s early life and relationship with her son comes from the Gospel of Luke.

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Stuff the abortion promoters at the Sundance Film Festival obviously missed.

Pro-choice author Magda Denes witnessed abortions while writing her book In Necessity and Sorrow: Life and Death Inside an Abortion Hospital. She was disturbed by seeing the intact body of a baby aborted in the second trimester (5):

I remove with one hand the lid of a bucket … I look inside the bucket in front of me. There is a small naked person there floating in a bloody liquid- plainly the tragic victim of a drowning accident. But then perhaps this was no accident, because the body is purple with bruises and the face has the agonized tautness of one forced to die too soon. Death overtakes me in a rush of madness … I have seen this before. The face of a Russian soldier, lying on a frozen snow covered hill, stiff with death and cold. … A death factory is the same anywhere, and the agony of early death is the same anywhere.

More…

Deliberate moral blindness for purposes of political expediency.

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The egalitarian ideology of our time cuts the human heart and soul out of the profession of the teacher.

Forty years ago, a few wise men at the college where I teach, motivated both by that acknowledgment of authority and by their belief in the ontological equality of all mankind, embarked on a brave reform.

At the time when the elite colleges were scrapping their curricula, effectively burning the books of three thousand years of our Western heritage, our faculty dedicated themselves to something beyond themselves, deserving of their honor. What if the elites at Harvard no longer honored and studied Dante? The students at our college would do so—the children of ordinary people, not rich, and perhaps not destined for riches, either.

What if the technicians of education no longer saw any use for the political wisdom of Aristotle and Plato? The faculty at our school, not exalted technicians with conveniently reductive equations, but rather human beings asking the human questions, would try to recover and hand on something of their wisdom.

They welcomed those young people with equal heartiness into a world of glorious inequality. I cannot say we have always succeeded at the task. But it has at least been a human enterprise. And that is more than I can say for most of what goes on in the egalitarian prison house that goes by the name of “school.”

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Just wondering…

Submitted by Ken K.

By their fruits you will know them: In 92 years of life, “Stan the Man” Musial never let anyone down.

Broadcaster Bob Costas, his voice cracking with emotion at times, pointed out during a two-hour Mass that in 92 years of life, Stan the Man never let anyone down.

Costas noted that even though Musial, who died Jan. 19, was a three-time NL MVP and seven-time batting champion, the pride of Donora, Pa., lacked a singular achievement. Joe DiMaggio had a 56-game hitting streak, Ted Williams was the last major leaguer to hit .400, and Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle soared to stardom in the New York spotlight. Musial didn’t quite reach the 500-homer club – he finished with 475 – and played in his final World Series in 1946, ”wouldn’t you know it, the year before they started televising the Fall Classic!”

”What was the hook with Stan Musial other than the distinctive stance and the role of one of baseball’s best hitters?” Costas said. ”It seems that all Stan had going for him was more than two decades of sustained excellence as a ballplayer and more than nine decades as a thoroughly decent human being.

”Where is the single person to truthfully say a bad word about him?”

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The Catholic Church has long been criticized as “too dogmatic”.

The church has long been criticized as “too dogmatic.” Demands are constantly made that it change its 2,000-year-old teachings on marriage, family, sexuality, morality and other matters related to the truth about human beings. But even if others do not agree, the church understands that what it proclaims is revealed truth — the Word of God.

The church’s teachings are timeless. They cannot be changed, even though adherence may be upsetting to some. That the church is built on a rock with fixed beliefs is a positive feature, both because it can withstand the shifting winds of public opinion and because of the cherished content of our faith itself, which fosters love among Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

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Pope: Support for US march for life.

(Vatican Radio) Pope Benedict XVI has pledged his support for the March for Life in the United States.

Using his @pontifex Twitter handle, the Pope said, “I join all those marching for life from afar, and pray that political leaders will protect the unborn and promote a culture of life.”

This year’s March for Life is marking the 40th anniversary of the US Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal in all fifty states.

Earlier this week, the Holy Father issued his Message for World Communication Day, in which he called on Catholics to be engaged through all forms of social media, especially new media, in spreading the Good News and building up public discourse.

 

Archbishop Samuel Aquila’s personal experience: Abortion is a violent act of murder and exploitation.

I spent my first three years of college working as a hospital orderly and assisting in the emergency room, at a university student health center and in a hospital in California during summer break.

When I began the job, I hadn’t thought much about human suffering, or about human dignity.

But during my employment in hospitals, something changed. At that time, some states had approved abortion laws that I wasn’t even aware of. Because of those laws, when I was in college I witnessed the results of two abortions.

The first was in a surgical unit. I walked into an outer room and in the sink, unattended, was the body of small unborn child who had been aborted. I remember being stunned. I remember thinking that I had to baptize that child.

The second abortion was more shocking.

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