Today’s Question: How is it that Saint Pope John Paul II was able to stand before the Polish people, invoke the Holy Spirit and bring down the mighty, Soviet Union … but he was totally unable to root out any of the homosexual corruption that was … infesting every level of the Catholic Church?

Question: How is it that Saint Pope John Paul II was able to stand before the Polish people, invoke the Holy Spirit and bring down the mighty, Soviet Union (without a single shot being fired) but he was apparently totally unable (or unwilling) to root out any of the virulent, homosexual corruption that was (and still is) known to be infesting every level of the Catholic Church?

Answer: Perhaps there’s only one of those extraordinarily rare, totally unexpected, “Black Swan Events” that instantly change the world, allowed, per customer?

Perhaps the “homosexual collective” within the Catholic Church
is actually more powerful than the Soviet Union,
courtesy of “The Smoke of Satan” that was duly noted
by Saint Pope Paul VI, way back in the 1970’s?

Pope John Paul II was able to successfully galvanize the faithful, Polish people into action, but it’s clear that nothing remotely similar has taken place, regarding the clerical scandals, by any high, Church official.

If anything, the opposite is true.

Diocesan priests have been forced to simply “shut up” and keep their heads down, indicating that silence is the price they must pay for being allowed to continue to do their priestly work.

Other priests – and even, bishops – particularly those with something to hide – are routinely blackmailed into submission – if they’re not summarily shipped off to Soviet style, reorientation (mental) facilities, run by the Church, for just that purpose.

John Paul II’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI,
was allegedly forced to resign,
when he dared to oppose the Church’s powerful,
“Lavender Mafia”.

To this day, nobody knows precisely why he quit.

What we do know, is that Pope Benedict was quickly replaced by “Jorge, the Bergoglion Menace, from Argentina” and the Catholic Church hasn’t been quite the same, since. In fact, if we continue to let “let Jorge do it”, the Catholic Church may never be the same, again.

Jorge Bergoglio – Pope Francis – evidently believes in keeping his enemies close, since he has promoted scandal ridden, openly homosexual clerics to many of the highest offices in the Vatican. Francis prefers to “room” with them, too – in the Vatican’s Santa Marta Hotel – rather than occupy the more traditional, Papal Apartments. The apparent justification: “Who Am I To Judge?”, says Francis.

I can think of at least one person who is totally qualified to judge!
Maybe it’s time we Catholics all got together
to invoke the divine help of Jesus Christ,
in combating Church corruption.

After all, Jesus founded the Church. Jesus remains the head of the Church. And of course, Jesus had his Judas, so he knows how it feels to be betrayed.

It should be noted that Judas constituted
about 8% of the Apostles, at the time.

Jesus is evidently, the only one who has the power and authority to “fire” a corrupt, heretic Pope, who has yet to display any truly Catholic, spiritual credentials.

Maybe Jesus is merely waiting for an appropriate request,
from “The Body of Christ”.

Let us pray…

A reflection on all that we Catholics once owned, by right, that has now been almost totally misappropriated, by scoundrels

In light of the unfolding (or perhaps one should say unraveling) of Pope Francis’s pontificate, we should revisit words once spoken by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, predating and anticipating Summorum—words that now have an alarming portentousness:

I am of the opinion, to be sure, that the old rite should be granted much more generously to all those who desire it. It’s impossible to see what could be dangerous or unacceptable about that. A community is calling its very being into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden, and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent. Can it be trusted any more about anything else? Won’t it proscribe tomorrow what it prescribes today? (Salt of the Earth, 1997)

He has asked a question to which, so far, no honest answer has been given by the Church’s leaders.

The reason is not hard to see.

Ratzinger dared to say that the Church’s very being had been called into question when Paul VI declared the old Mass forbidden—which in fact he repeatedly did, in response to attempts to maintain a liturgy the Church had celebrated for 500 years, and in its essentials, for 1,000 years, and in the core of it, for 1,500 years.

The longing for this treasure of faith was mocked, stepped on, suppressed, treated as a form of disobedience, arrogance, or neurosis. And the haunting question rises up: “Can the Church be trusted any more about anything else? Won’t it proscribe tomorrow what it prescribes today?”

If Paul VI in 1969 can abolish the oldest liturgical rite of Christendom and replace it with a new-fangled rite fashioned by committee, according to modern ideas…

Read more at Life Site News

Vatican II – the “pastoral council” that brought chaos to the Church – even before the close of its final session.

Contrary to the official party line, Vatican II was no “love-fest”

Could the great apostasy brought on by diabolically disoriented popes be what is spoken of in the portion of the Third Secret of Fatima that has yet to be revealed?

Let’s consider the testimony of Cardinal Ciappi, who read the Third Secret.  Cardinal Ciappi was a distinguished theologian from the pontifical household from 1955 to 1989.  In a letter to Professor Baumgartner, the Cardinal made an astonishing admission about the Third Secret.

He wrote: “In the Third Secret it is predicted, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.” (6) Notice, he didn’t say it would begin “near the top”, but “at the top” – the same pattern we have seen repeated throughout history.

In a 1984 interview, Cardinal Ratzinger also spoke of the contents of the Third Secret of Fatima.

The interviewer asked: “Have you read what is called the Third Secret of Fatima?”  To his surprise, the Cardinal answered “yes”, and then went on to discuss what it contained.  The Cardinal said “the things contained within the ‘Third Secret’ correspond to what has been announced in Scripture and has been said again and again in many other Marian Apparitions”.  (As an aside, we must ask where Scripture speaks of the failed assassination attempt of John Paul II?)

Continuing on, the Cardinal said the Third Secret speaks of “dangers threatening the Faith… and the importance of the ‘novissimi ’[the end times].”

Once again we see a prelate, who had read the Third Secret, state that it refers to dangers threatening the Faith.

But perhaps the most interesting statement comes from Paul VI himself on the sixtieth anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun, during which he spoke of apostasy at the very “summit” of the Church, which confirms what Cardinal Ciappi wrote to Professor Baumgartner.  Here is what Paul VI had to say on October 13, 1977:

The tail of the devil is functioning in the disintegration of the Catholic world. The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic Church even to its summit. Apostasy, the loss of the faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church.  (7)

Is it just a coincidence that Paul VI made this statement on the anniversary of Fatima?   It seems unlikely.  It seems more likely that he was revealing what is contained in the Third Secret.

But if this is what the Third Secret contains, when would it begin?  Is there a particular date that one could look to as the beginning of this great apostasy that would begin “at the top” – at the very “summit” of the Church?

In the famous 1957 interview of Sister Lucy of Fatima with Fr. Fuentes, about the events of Fatima, the cloistered nun asked her interviewer the following question: “Father, how much time is there before 1960 arrives?”  Why would she ask about the date 1960?  She then went on to explain.  She said when this date arrives, “it will be very sad for everyone, not one person will rejoice at all if beforehand the world does not pray and do penance.”  She then ended by saying: “I am not able to give any other details because it is still a secret.”

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The concentrated essence of the texts of the Second Vatican Council: the cult of man, pantheism and anthropological idolatry.

Pope Paul VI says “all of the Council” not only the ‘spirit of the Council’, not only the radical hermeneutic of rupture with Catholic Tradition. Now here, the authentic interpretation of the Second Vatican Council is given by Pope Paul VI and not Tizio, Caio, Sempronio nor Don Cantone  (equivalent of: Tom, Dick or Harry), nor myself.

Furthermore, Pope Paul VI urges  the “modern humanists” that is, the atheists, who “reject the truths” of supernatural Faith, which transcend human reason “ to give credit” to “all of the Council” for this “religion of man that makes himself God” on his own strength  without the free gift of sanctifying grace.

But if “all of the Council”, and not its hazardous interpretation or its “spirit” can and must please the atheist or pantheists, it cannot please the Christians, who believe in the supernatural truths revealed by God which distinguish the creature from the Creator.

As we can deduce from what Pope Paul VI said, it is the text itself of the Council which is in rupture with the Catholic Faith and as such cannot be accepted. The heart of the “problem at the present time” is really the foolish hope of reconciling the irreconcilable: theocentrism and anthropocentrism. The Roman–Rite Mass and the “Novus Ordo Missae”, Divine-Apostolic Tradition and Vatican II.

Read more

Today’s Question: How is it that Saint Pope John Paul II was able to stand before the Polish people, invoke the Holy Spirit and bring down the mighty, Soviet Union … but he was totally unable to root out any of the homosexual corruption that was … infesting every level of the Catholic Church?

Question: How is it that Saint Pope John Paul II was able to stand before the Polish people, invoke the Holy Spirit and bring down the mighty, Soviet Union (without a single shot being fired) but he was apparently totally unable (or unwilling) to root out any of the virulent, homosexual corruption that was (and still is) known to be infesting every level of the Catholic Church?

Answer: Perhaps there’s only one of those extraordinarily rare, totally unexpected, “Black Swan Events” that instantly change the world, allowed, per customer?

Perhaps the “homosexual collective” within the Catholic Church
is actually more powerful than the Soviet Union,
courtesy of “The Smoke of Satan” that was duly noted
by Saint Pope Paul VI, way back in the 1970’s?

Pope John Paul II was able to successfully galvanize the faithful, Polish people into action, but it’s clear that nothing remotely similar has taken place, regarding the clerical scandals, by any high, Church official.

If anything, the opposite is true.

Diocesan priests have been forced to simply “shut up” and keep their heads down, indicating that silence is the price they must pay for being allowed to continue to do their priestly work.

Other priests – and even, bishops – particularly those with something to hide – are routinely blackmailed into submission – if they’re not summarily shipped off to Soviet style, reorientation (mental) facilities, run by the Church, for just that purpose.

John Paul II’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI,
was allegedly forced to resign,
when he dared to oppose the Church’s powerful,
“Lavender Mafia”.

To this day, nobody knows precisely why he quit.

What we do know, is that Pope Benedict was quickly replaced by “Jorge, the Bergoglion Menace, from Argentina” and the Catholic Church hasn’t been quite the same, since. In fact, if we continue to let “let Jorge do it”, the Catholic Church may never be the same, again.

Jorge Bergoglio – Pope Francis – evidently believes in keeping his enemies close, since he has promoted scandal ridden, openly homosexual clerics to many of the highest offices in the Vatican. Francis prefers to “room” with them, too – in the Vatican’s Santa Marta Hotel – rather than occupy the more traditional, Papal Apartments. The apparent justification: “Who Am I To Judge?”, says Francis.

I can think of at least one person who is totally qualified to judge!
Maybe it’s time we Catholics all got together
to invoke the divine help of Jesus Christ,
in combating Church corruption.

After all, Jesus founded the Church. Jesus remains the head of the Church. And of course, Jesus had his Judas, so he knows how it feels to be betrayed.

It should be noted that Judas constituted
about 8% of the Apostles, at the time.

Jesus is evidently, the only one who has the power and authority to “fire” a corrupt, heretic Pope, who has yet to display any truly Catholic, spiritual credentials.

Maybe Jesus is merely waiting for an appropriate request,
from “The Body of Christ”.

Let us pray…

A reflection on all that we Catholics once owned, by right, that has now been almost totally misappropriated, by scoundrels

In light of the unfolding (or perhaps one should say unraveling) of Pope Francis’s pontificate, we should revisit words once spoken by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, predating and anticipating Summorum—words that now have an alarming portentousness:

I am of the opinion, to be sure, that the old rite should be granted much more generously to all those who desire it. It’s impossible to see what could be dangerous or unacceptable about that. A community is calling its very being into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden, and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent. Can it be trusted any more about anything else? Won’t it proscribe tomorrow what it prescribes today? (Salt of the Earth, 1997)

He has asked a question to which, so far, no honest answer has been given by the Church’s leaders. The reason is not hard to see. Ratzinger dared to say that the Church’s very being had been called into question when Paul VI declared the old Mass forbidden—which in fact he repeatedly did, in response to attempts to maintain a liturgy the Church had celebrated for 500 years, and in its essentials, for 1,000 years, and in the core of it, for 1,500 years. The longing for this treasure of faith was mocked, stepped on, suppressed, treated as a form of disobedience, arrogance, or neurosis. And the haunting question rises up: “Can the Church be trusted any more about anything else? Won’t it proscribe tomorrow what it prescribes today?”

If Paul VI in 1969 can abolish the oldest liturgical rite of Christendom and replace it with a new-fangled rite fashioned by committee according to modern ideas, with the two rites having very little in common when one looks at their details, why can’t Francis today modify the Ten Commandments or the Gospels? They, too, are awfully old, rejected by vast numbers of people as irrelevant to modern times, extremely provocative, and rather narrow in their fixation on obeying God or else. Don’t we need to update and modernize the whole of Christianity? If we can do this with what is our holiest and highest possession, namely the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we can do it across the board, top to bottom. What is permitted, what is forbidden, what is to be construed as good, what is to be rejected as evil, is simply up to the will of the reigning pontiff.

Read more at Life Site News

Pope Paul VI’s idea of questioning if birth control is good or bad opened the door to questioning all Catholic doctrine and laid the groundwork for Roe v Wade.

When Pope Paul VI later decided against birth control, bishops, priests, religious, theologians, teachers and Catholics went wild.

Read more

Editor’s note: This is a wide ranging article wherein the author makes the case that trying to change Catholic doctrine to fit “modern man” only leads to death and doom.

Vatican II – the “pastoral council” that brought chaos to the Church – even before the close of its final session.

Contrary to the official party line, Vatican II was no “love-fest”

Could the great apostasy brought on by diabolically disoriented popes be what is spoken of in the portion of the Third Secret of Fatima that has yet to be revealed?  Let’s consider the testimony of Cardinal Ciappi who read the Third Secret.  Cardinal Ciappi was a distinguished theologian from the pontifical household from 1955 to 1989.  In a letter to Professor Baumgartner, the Cardinal made an astonishing admission about the Third Secret.  He wrote: “In the Third Secret it is predicted, among other things, that the great apostasy in the Church will begin at the top.” (6) Notice, he didn’t say it would begin “near the top”, but “at the top” – the same pattern we have seen repeated throughout history.

In a 1984 interview, Cardinal Ratzinger also spoke of the contents of the Third Secret of Fatima.  The interviewer asked: “Have you read what is called the Third Secret of Fatima?”  To his surprise, the Cardinal answered “yes”, and then went on to discuss what it contained.  The Cardinal said “the things contained within the ‘Third Secret’ correspond to what has been announced in Scripture and has been said again and again in many other Marian Apparitions”.  (As an aside, we must ask where Scripture speaks of the failed assassination attempt of John Paul II?)  Continuing on, the Cardinal said the Third Secret speaks of “dangers threatening the Faith… and the importance of the ‘novissimi ’[the end times].”  Once again we see a prelate, who had read the Third Secret, state that it refers to dangers threatening the Faith.

But perhaps the most interesting statement comes from Paul VI himself on the sixtieth anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun, during which he spoke of apostasy at the very “summit” of the Church, which confirms what Cardinal Ciappi wrote to Professor Baumgartner.  Here is what Paul VI had to say on October 13, 1977:

The tail of the devil is functioning in the disintegration of the Catholic world. The darkness of Satan has entered and spread throughout the Catholic Church even to its summit. Apostasy, the loss of the faith, is spreading throughout the world and into the highest levels within the Church.  (7)

Is it just a coincidence that Paul VI made this statement on the anniversary of Fatima?   It seems unlikely.  It seems more likely that he was revealing what is contained in the Third Secret.

But if this is what the Third Secret contains, when would it begin?  Is there a particular date that one could look to as the beginning of this great apostasy that would begin “at the top” – at the very “summit” of the Church?

In the famous 1957 interview of Sister Lucy of Fatima with Fr. Fuentes, about the events of Fatima, the cloistered nun asked her interviewer the following question: “Father, how much time is there before 1960 arrives?”  Why would she ask about the date 1960?  She then went on to explain.  She said when this date arrives, “it will be very sad for everyone, not one person will rejoice at all if beforehand the world does not pray and do penance.”  She then ended by saying: “I am not able to give any other details because it is still a secret.”

Read more

Christopher A. Ferrara on diabolical disorientation in the Church. And the worst is yet to come.

It was not any “Fatimite,” but Pope Paul VI, who declared in 1972 that “the smoke of Satan has entered into the temple of God: there is doubt, uncertainty, problems, unrest. Doubt has entered our consciences, and it has entered through the windows which were meant to have been opened to the light. This state of uncertainty reigns even in the Church…. We will confide Our thoughts to you: there has been interference from an adverse power: his name is the devil…” (Paul VI, Insegnamenti, Ed. Vaticana, Vol. X, 1972, p. 707.)

It is no use blinding ourselves to reality: we are indeed witnessing what Paul VI himself saw after his “reforms” were introduced:  diabolical interference in the life of the Church, the consequent decline of the Church since Vatican II, and thus the decline of the world at large along with her.

Read more

The concentrated essence of the texts of the Second Vatican Council: the cult of man, pantheism and anthropological idolatry.

Pope Paul VI says “all of the Council” not only the ‘spirit of the Council’, not only the radical hermeneutic of rupture with Catholic Tradition. Now here, the authentic interpretation of the Second Vatican Council is given by Pope Paul VI and not Tizio, Caio, Sempronio nor Don Cantone  (equivalent of: Tom, Dick or Harry), nor myself.

Furthermore, Pope Paul VI urges  the “modern humanists” that is, the atheists, who “reject the truths” of supernatural Faith, which transcend human reason “ to give credit” to “all of the Council” for this “religion of man that makes himself God” on his own strength  without the free gift of sanctifying grace.

But if “all of the Council”, and not its hazardous interpretation or its “spirit” can and must please the atheist or pantheists, it cannot please the Christians, who believe in the supernatural truths revealed by God which distinguish the creature from the Creator.

As we can deduce from what Pope Paul VI said, it is the text itself of the Council which is in rupture with the Catholic Faith and as such cannot be accepted. The heart of the “problem at the present time” is really the foolish hope of reconciling the irreconcilable: theocentrism and anthropocentrism. The Roman–Rite Mass and the “Novus Ordo Missae”, Divine-Apostolic Tradition and Vatican II.

Read more

Official Vatican Document: Declaration On Procured Abortion

A Christian’s outlook cannot be limited to the horizon of life in this world. He knows that during the present life another one is being prepared, one of such importance that it is in its light that judgments must be made.

From this viewpoint there is no absolute misfortune here below, not even the terrible sorrow of bringing up a handicapped child.

This is the contradiction proclaimed by the Lord: “Happy those who mourn: they shall be comforted” (Mt. 5:5). To measure happiness by the absence of sorrow and misery in this world is to turn one’s back on the Gospel.

Read the entire document

Words and pictures: Three (1970) Life Magazine articles chronicle the post-Vatican II revolution in the church.

The present Catholic crisis, comparable only to the turbulence of the Reformation period, closes in on Pope Paul as on no other man. And he has made no effort to conceal the pain it causes. Not long ago the Pope told Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen that he begins his day by reading mail from all over the world. “There is a thorn in almost every letter,” Paul said. “When I put my head against the pillow at night, it rests upon a crown of thorns.”

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Professor says: The main interest of Pope Paul VI’s birth control commission was to determine whether “the pill” could be licitly used.

February 24, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Documents now open to the public reveal a new story about the fascinating inner workings of the Pontifical Commission on Population, Family, and Birth-rate, commonly referred to as the “Birth Control Commission,” which was behind the critical papal encyclical Humanae Vitae.

Dr. Germain Grisez, emeritus Professor of Christian Ethics at Mount St. Mary’s University and a close friend and advisor to Commission member Fr. John Ford, S.J., has made the documents available on his website, along with a narrative of the events surrounding the Commission’s work from 1964 to 1966.

In an interview with LifeSiteNews, Dr. Grisez revealed further information about the significance of these documents, which he believes stand to correct mistaken public perceptions about the events leading up to the issuing of Humanae Vitae.

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DECLARATION ON THE RELATION OF THE CHURCH TO NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS

The Vatican document NOSTRA AETATE, proclaimed by Pope Paul VI, on October 28, 1965, makes a number of important points about Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism. And once a few inexcusably vague and misleading passages are suitably parsed and properly understood, it says nothing that any good Catholic would not (or should not) already know.

Unfortunately, most Catholics have never read NOSTRA AETATE, so it has often been misquoted and misused by some Catholics, as well as those of other faiths, to take unfair advantage, and to spread further confusion in the Catholic ranks.

I suggest you read the document for yourself. Note what is actually stated and what is not. Be very careful to make absolutely no assumptions about language therein which appears to reference certain events and/or covenants, but fails to specifically name them, describe, and/or explain their precise significance.

Also, pay particular attention to the following verses from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which have often been taken out of context, in order to state something that St. Paul obviously never intended:

“theirs is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the law and the worship and the promises; theirs are the fathers and from them is the Christ according to the flesh” (Rom. 9:4-5)

Read the complete text of the St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.

The true meaning of the document:

Catholics are called to act with unbridled charity to all, no matter what their faith tradition. Unjust and unwarranted discrimination is always to be avoided, and the dignity of persons, along with respect for their religious freedom is always to be observed, without exception. Doing anything less constitutes a serious sin. Meanwhile, Catholics are bound to affirm and uphold all the authentic teachings of the Catholic faith. Compromising on ANY of these, constitutes a serious sin.

The false, liberal “take” on NOSTRA AETATE:

All religions are valid paths to God. Those of other faiths are no longer in need of evangelization, since they have their own covenant(s) and arrangements with God.  Catholics are obligated, out of guilt for past offenses, to “roll over” and “give in” any time a non-Catholic criticizes the teachings or the actions of the Church. To do otherwise is inconsiderate, hurtful, rude, and most significantly … politically incorrect … and being politically incorrect constitutes the “unforgivable sin” against liberals, progressives, and modernists, everywhere.

Read NOSTRA AETATE for yourself

Many people forget (and many more are too young to remember) how radically the introduction of the birth-control pill changed popular thinking and altered our approach to sexuality.

Not long ago, moral leaders of every description condemned contraception and agreed that if the practice ever became widespread it would inevitably lead to disaster.

Consider, for example, the words of Mohandas Gandhi: “There is hope for a decent life only so long as the sexual act is definitely related to the conception of precious life.”

Or listen to Sigmund Freud: “Moreover, it is a characteristic common to all perversions that in them reproduction is put aside as an aim. This is actually the criterion by which we judge whether a sexual activity is perverse–it departs from reproduction as its aim and pursues the attainment of gratification independently.”

In 1930, when the leaders of the Church of England broke from the previously universal Christian consensus and allowed for the use of contraceptives, an editorial in The Washington Post lamented that the move “would sound the death knell of marriage as a holy institution by establishing degrading practices which would encourage indiscriminate immorality.”

Gandhi, Freud and The Washington Post were obviously not promoting a “Catholic” or “Christian” position. Their opposition to contraception was based on a simple, age-old understanding of human nature. In the 1960s Americans ignored such warnings and plunged headlong into the sexual revolution. Now, with the casualties of that revolution visible all around us, are we still foolish enough to believe that this generation understands human nature–and in particular human sexuality–better than all its predecessors?

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“Evil is no longer just a deficiency, but an efficiency, a living, spiritual, perverted and perverting being.”

During the General Audience on 15 November 1972 Paul VI delivered an address on the invocation of our principal prayer: “Our Father… deliver us from evil!”.

In this he confirmed the traditional doctrine on the Devil, and stressed the necessity of studying again and examining closely this chapter of Catholic doctrine.

Here are a few of the main points that (especially in these days) are worth seriously considering (especially if you happen to be a politician … or a bishop):

We find evil in the realm of nature, where so many of its expressions seem to speak to us of some sort of disorder. Then we find it among human beings, in the form of weakness, frailty, suffering, death and something worse: the tension between two laws-one reaching for the good, the other directed toward evil.

We come face to face with sin which is a perversion of human freedom and the profound cause of death because it involves detachment from God, the source of life.

Evil is not merely an absence of something but an active force, a living, spiritual being that is perverted and that perverts others.

“I put on the armor of God,” the Apostle tells us, “that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the Principalities and the Powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness on high.”

The Devil is the number one enemy, the preeminent tempter.

He is “a murderer from the beginning, . . . and the father of lies,” as Christ defines him. He undermines man’s moral equilibrium with his sophistry. He is the malign, clever seducer who knows how to make his way into us through the senses, the imagination and the libido, through utopian logic, or through disordered social contacts in the give and take of our activities, so that he can bring about in us deviations that are all the more harmful because they seem to conform to our physical or mental makeup, or to our profound, instinctive aspirations.

Are there signs, and what are they, of the presence of diabolical action? And what means of defense do we have against such an insidious danger?

We can presume that his sinister action is at work where the denial of God becomes radical, subtle and absurd; where lies become powerful and hypocritical in the face of evident truth; where love is smothered by cold, cruel selfishness; where Christ’s name is attacked with conscious, rebellious hatred, where the spirit of the Gospel is watered down and rejected where despair is affirmed as the last word; and so forth.

Defense Against the Devil

Grace is the decisive defense. Innocence takes on the aspect of strength. Everyone recalls how often the apostolic method of teaching used the armor of a soldier as a symbol for the virtues that can make a Christian invulnerable. The Christian must be a militant; he must be vigilant and strong; and he must at times make use of special ascetical practices to escape from certain diabolical attacks. Jesus teaches us this by pointing to “prayer and fasting” as the remedy. And the Apostle suggests the main line we should follow: “Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. “

With an awareness, therefore, of the opposition that individual souls, the Church and the world must face at the present time, we will try to give both meaning and, effectiveness to the familiar invocation in our principal prayer: “Our Father . . . deliver us from evil!”

Read all of it for yourself

Pope Paul VI: “…The Smoke of Satan Has Entered the Temple of God.”

THURSDAY, 29 JUNE 1972

Referring to the situation of the Church today, the Holy Father affirms that he has a sense that “from some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God.” There is doubt, incertitude, problematic, disquiet, dissatisfaction, confrontation. There is no longer trust of the Church; they trust the first profane prophet who speaks in some journal or some social movement, and they run after him and ask him if he has the formula of true life. And we are not alert to the fact that we are already the owners and masters of the formula of true life. Doubt has entered our consciences, and it entered by windows that should have been open to the light. Science exists to give us truths that do not separate from God, but make us seek him all the more and celebrate him with greater intensity; instead, science gives us criticism and doubt. Scientists are those who more thoughtfully and more painfully exert their minds. But they end up teaching us: “I don’t know, we don’t know, we cannot know.” The school becomes the gymnasium of confusion and sometimes of absurd contradictions. Progress is celebrated, only so that it can then be demolished with revolutions that are more radical and more strange, so as to negate everything that has been achieved, and to come away as primitives after having so exalted the advances of the modern world.

This state of uncertainty even holds sway in the Church. There was the belief that after the Council there would be a day of sunshine for the history of the Church. Instead, it is the arrival of a day of clouds, of tempest, of darkness, of research, of uncertainty. We preach ecumenism but we constantly separate ourselves from others. We seek to dig abysses instead of filling them in.

FOR A LIFEGIVING AND REDEEMING “CREDO”

How has this come about? The Pope entrusts one of his thoughts to those who are present: that there has been an intervention of an adverse power. Its name is the devil, this mysterious being that the Letter of St. Peter also alludes to. So many times, furthermore, in the Gospel, on the lips of Christ himself, the mention of this enemy of men returns. The Holy Father observes, “We believe in something that is preternatural that has come into the world precisely to disturb, to suffocate the fruits of the Ecumenical Council, and to impede the Church from breaking into the hymn of joy at having renewed in fullness its awareness of itself. Precisely for this reason, we should wish to be able, in this moment more than ever, to exercise the function God assigned to Peter, to strengthen the Faith of the brothers. We should wish to communicate to you this charism of certitude that the Lord gives to him who represents him though unworthily on this earth.” Faith gives us certitude, security, when it is based upon the Word of God accepted and consented to with our very own reason and with our very own human spirit. Whoever believes with simplicity, with humility, sense that he is on the good road, that he has an interior testimony that strengthens him in the difficult conquest of the truth.

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Revival of Traditional Catholic practice may help protect the Pope from further attacks

One only has to look at old black and white footage of pontiffs prior to Paul VI to see how popes always used to enter the basilica being carried shoulder high in the sedia gestatoria. Not only that, but there was always a throng of people around the chair, not only the actual bearers but numerous chamberlains and nobility and a large number of guards: Swiss Guards, uniformed Gendarmes, the Palatine Guard and Noble Guard. These comprised the old papal court which Pope Paul VI abolished and which formed a kind of buffer zone between the Pope and the crowds, no doubt as much a practical defence measure as a piece of ceremony.

The use of the sedia continued until very recently and many are unaware that the last pope to use the sedia was actually Pope John Paul I. While the abolition of this ancient form of transport may have since been considered appropriate in the context of the late 20th century and the need to democratise the appearance of papal ceremonies, the reality has left the Pope an isolated and vulnerable figure separated from the deacons ahead and the MCs behind, one who appears all too often like the figure in the Third Secret of Fatima: a victim walking alone simply waiting to be attacked.

While there are bound to be some who would see the return of the sedia as yet another example of this Pope “turning the clock back”, in fact not only would it save an elderly man’s tired legs but it would allow more of the crowd to see him. Most importantly, it would actually insulate him from the kind of physical assault we saw at Christmas by virtue of the mob of people surrounding it (who could these days be swelled by Swiss Guards and the gendarme officers in suitably formal garb) to work alongside the suited officers at the perimeter.

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What We Have Lost: 5-Part Video Series On the Post-Vatican II Catholic Church

Five Part Video Series that’s well worth watching:

What we have lost…and the Road to Restoration 1/5

What we have lost…and the Road to Restoration 2/5

What we have lost…and the Road to Restoration 3/5

What we have lost…and the Road to Restoration 4/5

What we have lost…and the Road to Restoration 5/5

“In 1968, something terrible happened in the (Catholic) Church”

Retiring Cardinal Stafford reflects on how dissenters to Humane Vitae tore the Church apart – and how rift left scars that remain to this day.

It was the year of the bad war, of complex innocence that sanctified the shedding of blood. English historian Paul Johnson dubs 1968 as the year of “America’s Suicide Attempt.” It included the Tet offensive in Vietnam with its tsunami-like effects in American life and politics, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee; the tumult in American cities on Palm Sunday weekend; and the June assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Southern California. It was also the year in which Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical letter on transmitting human life, Humanae Vitae (HV). He met immediate, premeditated, and unprecedented opposition from some American theologians and pastors. By any measure, 1968 was a bitter cup.

Read the article, courtesy of California Catholic Daily