Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich of Luxembourg, the general relator of the 2021-2024 Synod on Synodality, also issued other bold statements this week including asserting that the idea of a Christian Europe is a “thing of the past,” that people should be accepted and not judged, and that Benedict XVI’s former personal secretary Archbishop Georg Gänswein had betrayed the former pope by not staying in Benedict’s “shadow.”
Show me in Scripture?
The word trinity.
The definition of the trinity.
The word incarnation.
The Nicene Creed.
The Hypostatic Union.
That Jesus Christ is one person with two natures.
The Holy Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and the Son.
The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
The marriage ceremony.
The Canon of the Old Testament.
The Canon of the New Testament.
Your Bible.
What? You can’t find the answers to these twelve examples in Scripture?
But many of the non Catholic ecclesial communities teach these same doctrines. How could they do this if the answers are not to be found in the Bible?
Go To Bob Stanley’s “The Catholic Treasure Chest”
Click here to automatically receive all new posts in your email
Not arriving? Check your SPAM file
All the dictionaries define the term as meaning “socially aware of injustice.” Yeah, yeah. That’s like defining Communism as “wanting to help people.” So I started down the rabbit hole road, and here are the general precepts.
The trial against pro-life sidewalk counselor Mark Houck came to an end today, as a jury acquitted Houck of all charges.
In sum, we are living in anarchy, as institutions themselves have become nihilistic and weapons of the revolution. The Left, in viral fashion, took over the DNA of America’s institutions, and used them to help destroy their creators.
If we are bewildered why Harvard law-graduate prosecutors let out violent criminals just hours after their arrests; or why hyper-rich, pampered athletes who live in near-apartheid enclaves insult the flag, ignore the National Anthem, and sloganeer woke platitudes, it is because they were taught to undermine the status quo by fundamentally becoming it.
In our present anarchy, $7 a dozen eggs are affordable. Unaffordable gas prices become merely necessary “transitions” to fossil fuels. A “secure” border means there is none. Natural gas must be banned because it supposedly causes asthma. Tens of thousands of homeless defecate, urinate, inject, and fornicate in the increasingly vacant downtowns of Los Angeles and San Francisco, as the Golden Bear state, California, discusses reintroducing Grizzly bears.
Cars and yards are evil, elevators, high-rises, and buses sacred. There are 81 genders (and counting), with even more names for them. “Racist” is our exclamation point, fillip, a mere add-on emphatic. Everything from SAT tests to obesity to working out is racist. When little is racist, then everything must become racist.
“If he [Francis] comes here to tell us that homosex [pseudo] marriage, homosexuality, is legal, we will say no,” Makuei warned.
The minister stressed that homosex pseudo-marriage is ungodly giving Francis a catechesis, “God was not mistaken. He created man and woman and told them to marry and go and fill the world. Do same-sex partners give birth?”
“Our constitution is very clear and says that marriage is between the opposite sex and any same-sex marriage is a crime, a constitutional crime.”
…the main subject of Peter’s epistle which is five chapters long is how to cope while experiencing persecution (esp. 2:11-5:11). He wrote the letter while in prison in Rome shortly before his death during the reign of Emperor Nero, whose persecution of Christians was reported by Roman historian Tacitus (who personally hated Christians):
“Their deaths were made farcical. Dressed in wild animals’ skins, they were torn to pieces by dogs, or crucified, or made into torches to be ignited after dark as substitutes for daylight. …Despite their guilt as Christians, and the ruthless punishment it deserved, the victims were pitied. For it was felt that they were being sacrificed to one man’s [Nero’s] brutality rather than to the national interest.” †
The key lines are when Jesus said, “before all this happens…” and when Peter said, “the end of all things is at hand”. For Jesus, the events leading to the end had not started yet but were imminent, but for the imprisoned Peter they had started because the persecutions were underway.
Referenced Bible text: 2nd Peter
The Catechism reiterates:
There are some concrete acts — such as fornication — that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil. It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
After several Catecheses on the priesthood and on my latest Journeys, today we return to our main theme: meditation on some of the great thinkers of the Middle Ages. We recently looked at the great figure of St Bonaventure, a Franciscan, and today I wish to speak of the one whom the Church calls the Doctor communis namely, St Thomas Aquinas.
Archbishop of Santa Fe John C. Wester said in a telephone interview Friday the cash raised by parishes and other sources provided enough money to convince officials to remove the cathedral basilica from a list of properties to be mortgaged to satisfy the terms of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.
A black man with little to no impulse control breaks the law and is set upon by five black men who under color of authority beat him to death; thereby, exhibiting little to no impulse control.
The Democrat Party will try to use the preceding to incite blacks to feel justified in rioting, destroying, stealing big screen TVs and over priced Louis Vuitton handbags, exhibiting little to no impulse control.
The Democrat Party will blame white people under the guise of “systemic racism” for the lack of impulse control of their voters. Does that sum it up?
VATICAN CITY — Black smoke was seen rising from the chimney of the world-famous Sistine Chapel as Pope Francis tossed another Bible into the fireplace to keep himself warm. According to sources, the pope’s penchant for Bible burning has led to a series of spiritual gaffes in which he appears to undermine the Catholic faith.
A multitude of bishops reportedly confronted the Holy See regarding recent declarations that “being homosexual is not a crime” and suggested that he’s confusing the subject, making it harder for homosexuals to confront their sin. But when they attempted to appeal to him with scripture they discovered all the Bibles had been passed through the flame.
“The pope is in a constant battle against the sin of climate change,” said Vatican spokesperson Fr. Mario Pizza. “What do you want him to do? Be cold?!”
The tank proffer is, sad to say (for the dignity of our country), a joke, kind of a last feeble pretense before the whole thing ends in ignominy for the “Joe Biden” team — whoever that actually is. The repercussions are liable to be ugly for our country, not necessarily in terms of more military trouble in other lands (which we probably lack the capacity to engage in now), but something more personal: the collapse of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and a vicious loss of purchasing power here at home. That would provoke a situation worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s, and that’s probably where things are going.
Saint Isidore of Seville is one of the most famous and beloved saints of the Catholic Church. He is the patron saint of the Internet, computer users, and students. He was born on April 4th, 560 in Seville, Spain, and died on April 4th, 636.
Saint Isidore was a great scholar and theologian…
Question: Has God the Father ever changed Himself in any way whatsoever?
Answer: His wrath was changed to mercy, by the redemptive work of his divine son, Jesus.
Send us your question. Receive a Catholic answer.
Go To Bob Stanley’s “The Catholic Treasure Chest”
Click here to automatically receive all new posts in your email
Not arriving? Check your SPAM file.
The Church shapes society as her sacred pastors answer the call to lead their flock by “preaching the fullness of truth in season and out of season; reproving, entreating, rebuking in all patience and doctrine” (cf 2 Tim 4:2).
Had the post-conciliar claimants to Apostolic Succession been doing so over the last six decades, perhaps the number of true believers would not have declined as it has, the frequency of Mass attendance would not have plummeted, numerous religious orders would not have fallen extinct…
Cardinal Pell went on to offer an excuse for himself and his con freres – men who at the very least allowed the errors of the Council to flourish unabated – saying that “many factors are beyond our control.”
This is courage?
Currently, in the Far-East and in the Middle-East, the martyrdom of Catholics is clearly a very red martyrdom. Countless Christians are executed by communists and Muslims every day. (I challenge anyone who doubts this fact to join me on a podcast and we’ll debate the numbers.)
But in the Western hemisphere, the martyrdom of the Mystical Body of Christ (at least for those who take the traditional faith seriously) is a white martyrdom unlike any age of history. Why is this martyrdom white so unprecedented? Because the marytrdom comes from persecution within the Church.
Now, I now many will now say “Oh no, no! Most saints were persecuted from people within the Church.” Yes, that is true that many great saints (like Padre Pio) were persecuted by prelates out of jealousy for their extraordinary gifts. But never in Church history (except maybe the Arian crisis) have we seen a global persecution against anyone who holds to very low-level orthodoxy in the Western Hemisphere.
St. Vincent of Lerins said long ago that in any Church crisis of confusion, we can be on solid ground by holding to the ancient faith as it was kept ubique, semper and ab omnibus (everywhere, always and by everyone.) That is, we are called to keep the faith and liturgy by not following the current spirit of the world, but rather clinging to the faith and liturgy of all past saints, Popes, confessors, martyrs and virgins.
But this time in the 21st century is unlike the Arian crisis in that even the Vatican and average bishops gaslight traditional Catholics.
Unsurprisingly, the very thing Christ died to save us from – sin – barely registers in the Cardinal’s essay. Nor do we read anything about that beautiful Sacrament by which Christ offers us a remedy for even the gravest of sins. In some 3,000 words on the pastoral urgency for inclusion, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is not mentioned even once.
Sin, mercy, conversion, redemption: all these dissolve into flaccid platitudes about inclusion, listening, dialogue. Behind this fog of abstractions and platitudes, the fundamental drama of salvation – the very substance of the Good News – is obscured.
What we’re left with is a vision of Christian life which lacks any hint of the freshness of the Gospel. If that’s the path the synod takes, it will be a path to nowhere. And all of us, not least those in the difficult pastoral circumstances Cardinal McElroy is so genuinely and admirably concerned about, will be the worse for it.
“Ire may be understood in two ways.
In one way, as a simple movement of the will that inflicts punishment not through passion, but by virtue of a judgment of the reason: and in this case, without a doubt, lack of ire is a sin. This is how Chrysostom understands ire when he says: ‘Ire, when it has a cause, is not ire but judgment. For properly speaking, ire is a movement of passion. And when a man is irate with just cause, his ire does not derive from passion. Rather, it is an act of judgment, not of ire.”
In another way, ire can be understood as a movement of the sensitive appetite agitated by passion with bodily excitation. This movement is a necessary sequel in man to the previous movement of his will, since the lower appetite naturally follows the movement of the higher appetite unless some obstacle prevents it. Hence the movement of ire in the sensitive appetite cannot be lacking altogether, unless the movement of the will is altogether lacking or weak. Consequently, the lack of the passion of ire is also a vice, as it is the lack of movement in the will to punish according to the judgment of reason.”
(St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II, II, q. 158, art. 8)
Doug Lawrence's Catholic Site 