Jesus is Lord

There are few more tiresome and enervating conversations than those initiated by the unapologetically unknowing who insist Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Savior of Mankind, the Way, Truth and Light, never admitted to being God in the Bible. Instead, they insist Christ's Disciples "fabricated" His Divinity. Despite proof to the contrary, they've not only convinced themselves they're right but that they also have the unalienable "right-to-be-right" and that any "impudent backtalk" from Christians must be the result of our evil irrationalism.
Unaccustomed as I am to public gambling, I'm quick to offer a wager because the prideful and their money are easily separated. If, as they insist, no references to Christ claiming His divinity can be found in the Bible, surely they'll have no problem with betting a buck for each and every Biblical passage that proves them wrong.
Inevitably, the unbeliever's jaw will fall open as they struggle to catch their breath, offering a prayer to the God in Whom they don't believe to extricate themselves from the imbroglio of their own making.
In actuality, there are at least fifty passages in which Christ specifically admits to His divinity including:

Not everyone who calls Me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only those who do what My Father in Heaven wants them to do. When the Judgment Day comes, many will say to Me, 'Lord, Lord! In Your name we spoke God's message, by Your name we drove out many demons and performed many miracles!'
Mt 12:7-8

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Blessed Fr. Martin Martinez Pascual

Blessed Fr. Martin Martinez Pascual left a lasting testament to the grace of martyrdom when, on August 18, 1936, he smiled for a photo just moments before being shot.
A Diocesan Worker Priest of the Sacred Heart, Fr. Pascual had been appointed prefect of St. Joseph's College in Murcia as well as professor at the seminary in San Fulgencio. He taught Latin, and was a popular and beloved priest.
The anti-Catholic persecutions in Spain erupted in 1936, while the priest was on vacation in his home. He made sure to rescue all the consecrated Hosts from the parish chapel, and went into hiding in barns and caves. He only emerged in August once he heard that his father had been arrested, questioned by the local committee on the whereabouts of his son.
His father had sent a message to his son asking that he get as far away from the area as possible, but instead, Fr. Pascual turned himself in, in the hopes the government would release his father. Pascual was thrown into prison along with other captured priests, where he spent time offering the sacraments of penance and the Holy Eucharist to fellow prisoners. On August 18, the priests were loaded on to the back of a truck and driven to a local graveyard.
Before his death, the guards asked Pascual if he preferred to turn around so as not to see the rifles. The priest answered no, and said, "I only give you my blessing that God does not take into account the madness that you commit." He then blessed his murderers.
Hans Gutmann, a republican soldier documenting the work of the militia, desired to capture images of the priest in his final moments. He took photos while Fr. Pascual smiled for the camera. The man standing next to him in the image is the soldier who would moments later shoot him.
Father's last words were "Viva Cristo Rey!"
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7 Bold Insights

1. Men and women are different, complimentary, and we truly need each other.
"Man is characterized by his strength, his courage, his nobility; he's meant to be chivalrous to protect the weak. The woman has something tender, she has empathy, she has a much easier time feeling herself into others. And so they have this complementarity, it is profound. 'It is not good for man to be alone.' In order to be complete, man needs a woman and a woman needs a man. Now this goes so far that the holiest priests I have met in my life, who have dedicated their lives to God and live in perfect celibacy, all have a very special devotion to the Holy Virgin and the Holy Virgin gives them what would be lacking if it was simply a development of male characteristics."

2. The Catholic Church and her Sacramental life are essential for authentic masculinity and femininity.

"The tragedy is that after original sin all the beautiful, magnificent male qualities, such as strength and courage and virility and so on, degenerated into something that is unfortunately a horrible perversion: male brutality - you just need to read the newspaper to find out that day after day women are abused and battered by the activities of their boyfriends or husbands. On the other hand, the beautiful female characteristics of empathy and sweetness, the heart can degenerate into self-centeredness, pettiness, sentimentality, all sorts of distortions. Now when both are distorted, both of them need to be purified. And this is the unbelievable gift of the Roman Catholic Church. I'm a cradle Catholic, and day after day after day, I'm more grateful of the fact that ever since I was a child I have been given Catholic food.

For example, take the seven Sacraments, all of this struck me as a little girl, that every single problem, every single difficulty, has an answer through the Sacraments - through Baptism we are brought back in communion with God, in Confirmation we are strengthened, through the Holy Eucharist we receive the divine food that God, that Christ, promised to his disciples and gave at the Last Supper, through the Sacrament of Penance you can cleanse yourself of your daily sins and imperfections - for every single facet of human life you have divine help."

3. The enemy of femininity is feminism.

"Feminism has actually harmed femininity. In my mind, when you say feminism and femininity, you are saying two things that are radically different. The enemy of femininity is feminism because feminism basically looks down upon femininity as a sign of inferiority and so they say 'man is truly the one who is powerful, is the one who is setting the stage, is the one who is creative, so women have to become like men.' No. Obviously a woman can never become a man. At best she can be a caricature of a man and this is what we often see today: when women behave like men, swear like men, smoke cigars like men, and then believe that they are very manly. In fact, they're betraying their femininity." 

4. The lives of the Saints reveal masculinity and femininity redeemed. Both are marked by holy courage. 

"…what is amazing, is that through grace, man can be purified and his beautiful male characteristics can revive, can be rejuvenated…you see that in the Saints: they are strong, they are powerful when it comes to defending the faith, they are gentle and tender toward the weak. In other words, the great mistake is to believe the opposite of strength is gentleness. It's not true at all. Strength and gentleness belong together - you find this in Christ, who is so strong and simultaneously meek of heart, you find that in the Saints. What is the opposite of strength is weakness and cowardice. 

You find the very same thing in women - the opposite of sensitivity, of empathy, is not sentimentality, which is basically to be sense-centered, it is a holy courage for the faith. This is why, for example, one of the things that always impresses me so, is the Holy Virgin at the foot of the Cross. We have to keep in mind that no human being has ever suffered as much as the Holy Virgin - she had the greatest privilege ever granted to a human being, simultaneously she carried the heaviest cross because she was at Calvary watching every single step of this abomination which is the Crucifixion. And what is absolutely amazing, this struck me already when I was a little girl: Mary was standing. She was not collapsing in self-pity. She was standing because it is by standing that she collaborated most with the Crucifixion of her Son. This is why the Blessed One is also the Mother Dolorosa." 

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Latin

Liturgical conservatives and progressives argue endlessly about this. Their argument will never be resolved, both because Sacrosanctum Concilium was and the subsequent magisterium has been self-contradictory, but also because neither side in the debate is willing to be honest about the historical facts. I am sorry to be harsh, but having read the output of both sides of the debate over a number of years, it is time it was said.

First, Sacrosantum Concilium: how is it self-contradictory? It makes few concrete suggestions, but it does make some. It calls for wider use of the vernacular (63); the removal of 'useless repetition' (34), and a more 'lavish' presentation of the Scriptures in the readings, arranged over a 'prescribed number of years' (51). It leaves further details to local initiative and an official commission. On the other hand, it says (23):

There must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.

It is perfectly obvious that the this double condition is not satisfied by the concrete suggestions the document itself makes. There is no precedent in the liturgical tradition of the Church, in any Rite, for a multi-year lectionary, and to suggest that such a thing could grow 'organically' out of a single-year lectionary is obviously absurd. There is no precedent for a mixing of Latin and the vernacular in the liturgy, or for the liturgy to be translated into dozens of vernaculars for different countries. The principle militating against 'useless repetition' is entirely foreign to the Church's liturgical tradition. And none of these changes could possibly, in advance, be said to be required 'genuinely and certainly' by the good of the Church.

From this fundamental self-contradiction, you can draw any conclusion you like. Perhaps the 'general principle' of section 23 should control our interpretation of the specific examples of reforms; perhaps it is the other other way around. The fact is, there is no coherent programme of reform in Sacrosanctum Concilium. Let's not engage in make-believe. It is a compromise document with provisions pointing in different directions.

It was, however, interpreted by those appointed to interpret it, and the Novus Ordo Missae was signed off by Pope Paul VI. So what liturgical style are we guided towards by the official documents, documents of the 'living magisterium' as the conservatives like to call them, which accompanied and followed the promulgation of the new missal?

Well, these documents too are mutually contradictory. The architect of the reforms, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, made a great deal of the provision of Sacrosanctum Conciium 34:

The rites should be distinguished by a noble simplicity; they should be short, clear, and unencumbered by useless repetitions; they should be within the people's powers of comprehension, and normally should not require much explanation.

This is his justification for rewriting practically every Latin prayer in the Missal, and then authorising its translation into kindergarten English: projects which were, of course, officially approved and given authoritative promulgation by the Church's Supreme Legislator, the Pope. Where does the 2011 'new translation' come from? It comes from a much later document, the 2001 Instruction Liturgiam authenticam which states (27):

If indeed, in the liturgical texts, words or expressions are sometimes employed which differ somewhat from usual and everyday speech, it is often enough by virtue of this very fact that the texts become truly memorable and capable of expressing heavenly realities

The fact has to be faced: in proposing a 'hieratic', 'sacred' liturgical register, it introduces a liturgical principle for the guidance of translators which simply is not to be found in Sacrosanctum Concilium or in the numerous documents of the 1970s and 1980s, documents like the toe-curling Directory for Masses with Children in 1973. There had been a massive conservative push-back in the 1990s and Liturgiam authenticam was the result. So patent was the contradiction between the two eras that Liturgiam authenticam actually abrogated a whole raft of official guidance from before 1994:

8. The norms set forth in this Instruction are to be substituted for all norms previously published on the matter,

We need to face the fact: the magisterium's own interpretation of Sacrosanctum Concilium is a moving target. It was quite different in the 1970s than it was by the mid 1990s. Who knows where it will be in ten years?

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Recapture Manhood

The disaster that has befallen the Church for the past half century has been a failure of manhood, largely on the part of the clergy, most especially bishops, which has been transmitted to Catholic men in general.
In the face of the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960s, masculinity and paternity became four-letter words, and were roundly mocked by the media and society's trendsetters and influencers. This coincided with a flood of homosexual men entering the seminaries, as well as heterosexual men deliberately being screened out.
Large portions of the priesthood became a kind of career for homosexual men, an accepted fact recognized by such polar opposites as the New York Times and the Vatican. Lousy Catholic Maureen Dowd writing for the New York Times said that the Catholic Church had become a haven for gay priests.
Meanwhile, the Vatican itself has had to deal with the crisis of homosexuality in the ranks of the clergy, from the sex abuse scandal to a special investigation announcing that gay men are not to be ordained to admissions by both Pope Francis and Pope Benedict that "gay lobbies" were at work in the Church.
The presence of all this has severely weakened and distorted a true view of authentic masculinity within the Church. Many Catholic men are simply lost, without any understanding of authentic manhood. They cannot look to the clergy for any clarity in this area because many of the clergy are likewise infected with poor training, a malformation which they received in the seminary.
One of the aims of the rebellion that took place in the Church was to knock out any real sense of the masculine. Wholesale changes in the liturgy subliminally reinforced this message. Abuses in the liturgy which became standard further undermined the role of men. The clergy became effete, the Mass became treated as though it was a personal theater production for many priests, and men became turned off.
No matter how you view it, there is a man crisis in the Catholic Church today, brought about by men in crisis over their own manhoods. This has caused enormous suffering for souls, both in this life and the next, because the strength and courage needed to lead a holy and virtuous life is no longer allowed to be spoken of. False notions of tolerance, rooted in deformed masculinity, now reign supreme in much of the clergy, and many of the faithful, especially the young, have no real concept of the masculine and the demands it places on them.
There is good news, however, little rays of hope here and there. In various places in the Church, attempts to expose the lie of distorted masculinity, the deformed masculine, are beginning to crop up. There are more and more discussions of this topic appearing in various Catholic blogs. A few Catholic apostolates are beginning to increasingly focus on this topic, realizing its importance.
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The Apostles

Giving your life for the sake of Holy Mother Church has been the act of heroism since its founding.

The Holy Scriptures speak of martyrdom. In the Acts of the Apostles 7:56–60, St. Stephen is the first to be accounted for. As for the Apostles, James the Greater (Son of Zebedee and brother of John) and Judas the Iscariot are the only two Apostles whose deaths are cited in the Bible.

Tradition and early writings of the Church account for Peter, John, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, Simon the Zealot, Thaddeus (Jude), James the Lesser and Matthias.

Beginning with the first Pope, Peter is believed — by tradition and the writings of Origen and Clement of Rome — to have been martyred on a cross upside down on Vatican Hill. His remains are in St. Peter's Basilica, which were publicly revealed and venerated by Pope Francis in 2013.

James the Greater was killed by Herod Agrippa I, as recounted in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 12:2). He was "killed with the sword," which is interpreted to be beheading. He is buried in the Cathedral of Santiago in Spain.

James the Lesser (James the Just) is cited by St. Hegesippus and Eusebius to have been thrown from the top of the Temple by Pharisees and Scribes but did not die. He then knelt and prayed for the forgiveness of those attacking him while he was stoned, but he was actually killed by a blow to his head by a fuller's club. His remains are kept in Rome in the Church of the Twelve Holy Apostles, which is a minor basilica.

Thaddeus (Jude), after traveling throughout the East, is honored by many Orthodox churches. There is discussion of his death, whether it be by a club or shot with arrows while crucified. There is also the claim that he died naturally. The most common account, though, is that he was martyred. The manner of his death is the only discrepancy. He is buried in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.

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Primal Fear

Let’s ponder a significant yet often overlooked text from Hebrews, which describes our most basic and primal fear. Our inordinate fear of what people think of us is rooted in an even deeper fear, one which is at the very core of our being. The Hebrews text both names it and describes it as being the source of our bondage.  In order to unlock the secret of the text, I want to suggest to you an interpretation that will allow its powerful diagnosis to have a wider and deeper effect.
Consider, then, this text from Hebrews:

Since the children have flesh and blood, [Jesus] too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death (Heb 2:14-15).

Now this passage is clear enough that the origin of our bondage to sin is the devil. But it also teaches that the devil’s hold on us is the fear of death. This is what he exploits in order to keep us in bondage.
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Mass and Death

One of the reasons why I think there will be an attack on priests who support the Sarah Appeal™ is because the liberal elite hear in it a criticism of their projects perpetrated in the name of the reforms called for by the Council Fathers in Sacrosanctum Concilium.  They think the suggestion that, perhaps, we could say Mass as our forebears did for so long is an accusation that they were wrong all along.  In fact, the versus populum thing was built precisely on a sandy foundation of incorrect scholarship which experts such as Louis Bouyer and Joseph Jungmann eventually repudiated.  However, by the time they did that, the fix was in.
Another reason why there will be harsh blow-back for anyone who supports the Sarah Appeal™ is because ad orientem worship is an invitation to conversion.  In another post, I alerted you to a priest who touched on the moral dimension that ad orientem invokes.  HERE Ad orientem worship is itself an implicit call to right conduct.  That’s certainly a reason for Satan to hate it, to move his agents to stomp it and those who support it into the dust whence Adam came.  That’s why the Enemy will move his pawns, bishops and … queens… into action.  NB again what Card. Sarah quoted, above, from St. Ambrose De mysteriis.
Speaking of “mysteries”, another reason why ad orientem worship will be ferociously resisted is because it is yet another corrective toward producing during Holy Mass the apophatic conditions in which the worshiper might have an encounter with Mystery.  This encounter is both alluring and frightening.  It is alluring because we who are in the image and likeness of God are restless to be with God, who in this life is utterly mysterious, whom we can only glimpse darkly, as if in a glass or perhaps through the crack in the rock as He passes on the other side. It is frightening because it moves us to deal with the reality of death, the knowledge that one day we will cross over.  Holy Mass must prepare us for death.   But if we are too afraid to deal with this, then we fill our liturgical worship with myriad distractions.  We eliminate silence.  We reduce music and ornament to the lowest sort of thing.  We banalize the language and eliminate anything too challenging.  We do all that we can to eliminate the difficult, challenging apophatic conditions that are the necessary propaedeutic for that alluringly frightening encounter.  If Holy Mass is not helping you to get ready for your own death, it isn’t fulfilling one of its most important purposes.
Card. Sarah placed his finger directly on a huge wound.  His speech will some day be recognized as an important turning point, a healing point.  But remember that, as Augustine once pointed out, the doctor doesn’t stop cutting just because the patient screams for him to stop.  Things will get mighty noisy and ugly before this is over, my friends.
Therefore, clean your house.
Examine your consciences, look over your vocation and your duties, and GO TO CONFESSION!
And please, I beg you, pray for me.  I can feel it on the horizon.  Pray for all priests and bishops.  Pray that their minds and hearts be opened and that their actions reflect a loving balance of prudence and courage.

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Eucharist

The Eucharist comes to us as a work and gift of the whole Trinity. – Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM A friend recently told me that her father used to help her mother in the kitchen with the most tedious of tasks. One thing he liked to do was peel walnuts and sort them into buckets. Then, he would give bags of the nuts to friends and family. My friend’s father recently passed away and a few months later she reached into her freezer to get some of the walnuts to make banana bread. As she looked at the bag of walnuts she realized that even though her father was gone, he had left her nourishment for her journey. At that moment, my friend suddenly had a deeper understanding of the Eucharist. Jesus knew he was going to ascend into heaven, but he left his followers with something to nourish them, and not just earthly food but his own Body and Blood. We are looked after. We are cared for. We have a heavenly Father who knows our every need and goes to great lengths to give us what we require. Our daily bread is not a symbol or mere earthly sustenance; it is true spiritual food, the real flesh and blood of our Savior the God-man. The Eucharist is nourishment that transcends ceremony and finds its power and its essence in the very workings of the Trinity itself. Here are some of the amazing effects of the Eucharist:
1) Union with Christ: Reception of Jesus in the Eucharist fuses our being with that of Christ. St. Cyril of Alexandria describes it as similar to “when melted wax is fused with other wax.” The Christian journey is a journey to become like Christ, to “abide in him” and he in us. The Eucharist is the means for this to happen. 2) Destruction of venial sin: The Eucharist destroys venial sin. Destroys! Through sin, the fervor of our charity can be dampened by venial sin. But when we receive the Eucharist we are united with Charity himself, which burns away the vestiges of our venial sins and leaves us cleansed and ready to begin again.
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Why does God allow violence to exist in the world?

Christians are obliged morally to combat injustice wherever it is and to work tirelessly for the salvation of souls.

The mass shooting at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12 shocked and grieved many Americans. Coupled with the high number of shootings in the city of Chicago this year, Catholics are asking, why does God allow such violence to occur? What does it mean?
To shed some light on this difficult issue, editor Joyce Duriga spoke with moral theologian Melanie Barrett. Barrett chairs the Department of Moral Theology at the University of St. Mary of Lake/Mundelein Seminary and is the author of “Love’s Beauty at the Heart of the Christian Moral Life: The Ethics of Catholic Theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar.”
Catholic New World: Gun violence has been at the forefront of the minds of Catholics in Chicago with the rise in violence this year and with the massacre in Orlando. Why does God permit violence in the world? How does our faith help us understand violence? How is violence related to the presence of evil in the world?
Melanie Barrett: Why God permits evil in the world is a mystery. But we can speculate that it has to do with the meaning of love.
God’s very nature is love. He is a communion of persons eternally united in love. Because we human beings are made in the image of God, we too are called to love, not minimally but maximally: to love God with the entirety of our heart, soul, mind and strength; to love our neighbors as ourselves; and to love even our enemies (rather than taking revenge upon them).
Indeed, love is the human vocation. As the Second Vatican Council proclaimed, “Man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself” (Gaudium et Spes 24).
But in order to be capable of love, we must be free. Love can never be demanded or coerced; it can only be given freely. Otherwise, it is not truly love.
Animals perform many good acts — like protecting and nurturing their offspring, even at great risk to themselves — but they do so out of instinct, not love. By contrast, when human beings lay down their lives for the sake of the others — as did the Christian martyrs, in imitation of Jesus — they do so freely, and out of genuine love.
By endowing us with freedom, God makes it possible for us to love. But he also risks that we might refuse to love. And this dichotomy gives rise to the drama of salvation: either we say “yes” to God, through faith expressing itself in love; or we say “no” to God, by opting for selfishness, hatred and malevolent destruction.
We see the “yes” in a world in which the sacrificial love of saints like Maximilian Kolbe shines forth amid the carnage of the Nazi death camps and where Christian martyrs in the Middle East testify to the faith while being raped, tortured and brutally murdered by ISIS.
Although God permits the weeds and the wheat to grow together — because uprooting all of the bad weeds would destroy much of the good wheat as well — at the time of the harvest, the weeds will be permanently destroyed and the wheat will be gathered carefully under God’s protection (Mt 14:24-30). But this will take place on God’s timetable, not ours.
In the meantime, we Christians are obliged morally to combat injustice — wherever we find it — and to work tirelessly for the salvation of souls. We cannot build the kingdom of God on earth perfectly, but we can further God’s reign by preventing the weeds from completely taking over.
CNW: What should we learn from violence in the world? Is God sending us a message when these things happen?
Barrett: I don’t believe that God is “sending us a message” when unspeakable acts of violence occur. But such incidents do challenge us to respond morally with compassion for the victims and their families; with a thirst for justice, to remedy any wrongs that have been committed; and eventually, in the long run, by forgiving perpetrators: for “they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34), and “if [we] do not forgive others, neither will [the] Father forgive [our] transgressions” (Mt 6:15).
CNW: Violence results in suffering. How can we view suffering through the lens of our faith?
Barrett: By creating a world in which freedom exists, God permits evil — and suffering — to exist as well. However, by means of God’s providence, and with the help of his grace, we can grow spiritually through suffering. Because Christ redeemed us by voluntarily suffering on our behalf, “human suffering itself has been redeemed,” so our own suffering can share in Christ’s redemptive suffering (St. John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris 19).
We also can become more virtuous by developing courage, perseverance, patience and compassion. By turning to God in our distress, we can deepen our faith and hope as well.
As St. Paul taught, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom 5:3-5).
Above all, suffering can provide the occasion for us to grow in love: either by allowing others to care for us in our time of need or by actively caring for others who are enduring hardships.
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Disease

We have to make countless decisions every day. Sadly, many of us fail to seek God's wisdom. Instead, people in desperate situations often make desperate choices.
But when we make decisions that violate the Word of God, the consequences can be grave. Unwise choices can lead to the destruction of marriages, relationships, families, careers and even life itself.
Some people constantly make wrong decisions based on their faulty belief systems rather than on God's guidance. They think their decision-making processes are under their own private control. But in truth, their choices become casualty covenants with the enemy, resulting in the negative outcomes they have come to expect.
A casualty covenant is a conscious or unconscious agreement made with forces of darkness that may lead to bondage, distress, disease or death. This type of agreement is binding and strong enough to change the course of a person's life.
These subconscious agreements that exist in the mind and emotions can affect our thoughts and behavior without our awareness. Satan's carefully engineered suggestions and strategies are designed to bring death not only to our dreams but also to our bodies.
Psychiatrists recognize that we can make unconscious decisions and judgments that bring about either delight or disaster in our lives. They call these "self-fulfilling prophecies" and death wishes, which can open the door in people's lives to a spirit of death.
Casualty Covenants Affect Our Health
One area in our lives that these covenants can affect is our health. You have heard people say such things as, "All the men in my family died of heart attacks, so I probably will too."
Christians are not immune to accepting this lie of the enemy. If our relatives suffer or even die from a particular disease, we may become vulnerable to the suggestion that we will contract the same illness.
Believing in our hearts and saying with our mouths that we might develop certain diseases fulfills a biblical principle in a negative way. From our hearts, we are speaking what we believe will come to pass; and, therefore, we will have what we say (Mark 11:24).
Satan wants to rob us of life so he uses the leverage of an inherited curse or a genetic disease to persuade us to agree with his lies by speaking and believing them. If we allow that kind of satanic input to dominate our thought life, it becomes easy to make an agreement with our deadly foe, accepting distress or disease as inevitable.
When we lack knowledge of God's Word or are disobedient to its truth, we are like open targets in a pitching booth at the county fair: We can be hit by one of the devil's balls of fire and never know what happened!
Only by understanding and obeying the Scriptures will we avoid being defeated by the devil. Jesus said that knowing God's truth sets people free. This is God's will for all men (John 8:32; 1 Tim. 2:3-4).
That's why we must not be ignorant of Satan's devices. We must follow Jesus' example when He was tempted and counter each temptation with God's Word (Matt. 4:5-11).
We cannot let ignorance of the Bible, religious tradition or false teaching cause us to believe that we can't be deceived into making a covenant that results in casualties to ourselves and our loved ones. If Satan sought to convince the Son of God to agree with him in the wilderness, we can expect him to try to trick us into agreeing with him as well.
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True Greatness

Greatness has nothing to do with who you are or what you have done or where you have been, in worldly terms. True greatness is in who you really are. There is greatness at all levels and stations of life.

Usually, the simple, lowly, and humble -- humble, at whatever level they may be, in whatever role they are called to play -- are the "greatest" in Heaven's eyes, not those who deem themselves great. Be great in the Eyes of God, not the world, and your life has been a smashing success. Be great only in worldly terms and the destination is purgatory (unless there has been an equal measure of spiritual achievement).

To be great in God's Eyes it is necessary to do His Will, at every opportunity, every waking moment; to dedicate ourselves to that. Period. Always remember: the janitor, the motel cleaning woman, a store manager, the mogul (a wealthy man can be humble), a world leader, may have the same level of greatness.

We can't tell from the outside. We can't judge from the exterior, the facade. It's like passing a house: there is no telling, from its immediate appearance, what is transpiring inside.

A pure soul is independent of that. We are called to live this life transparently -- in such a way that there is nothing to hide, and with a self-knowing that knows no embarrassment when we are right with Him.

Simplicity is a key. What's on the surface, as we all know, is not always the true value. In fact, complex ornamentation should be a warning sign.

Look at Jesus: on the Cross. He wore virtually nothing. He had nothing to hide.

It's how we come into this life; it's how we will leave. Spiritually, it is how we should live our lives: no facade.

The Blessed Mother comes with the transparency of crystal that completely blinds with its light.

Our society is now built on having a facade. We have gone to the extreme of cosmetic surgery, tattoos, and even altering the physique that God made. Yet we can't hide our true selves to God, no matter how we distort ourselves nor what we adorn ourselves with.

This also redounds to purity: a pure soul has nothing to alter, nothing to hide. This comes through examination of conscience, something that should not be done only during Lent, or on other special occasions -- periodically. It's to be done each night. Every evening, in prayer, or after reading Scripture, we should ask ourselves: what have I enjoyed this day that came from sin (imperfection) and what have I enjoyed that came from a focus on God?

As a priest was noting the other day, once upon a time a woman set out to buy a silver soup ladle. The salesman at the silversmith's was more than obliging, showing her many ladles. Most were very fancy, gilded pieces with embossed handles and arabesques. She just couldn't decide. Finally the salesman brought out one that was plain and unadorned. But the price!

It was nearly double the rest.

When she asked why, the salesman explained, "You see, on ornamental ware, the flaws of the material don't show. The defects are covered up by ornamentation. As you can see, the plain ladle is free of defects. If there were any, you would easily notice them."

It was that simple.

Are we? Are we that simple?

Strip away make-up, strip away the fancy car, strip away the fancy words about what it means to be a genuine disciple of Jesus, and it all comes down to whether or not we are loving, caring, and forgiving.

No amount of ornamentation nor fancy words nor extravagant devotion can cover that up.

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Holy Spirit

Pius XII and John Paul II both lamented our “loss of the sense of sin.” It’s an intriguing concept in the abstract; at a personal level, it’s haunting. But do we really understand the phenomenon? And are we free ourselves from the patterns that lead us to that loss? For my part, I’ve become increasingly aware of the continuing need for invoking the Holy Spirit, not only to provide guidance, but to reveal who we really are.
Prominent politicians and celebrities are often unashamed of their public views and private lives. So it only seems fair to point to their life patterns as a warning to others: the news stories of a wealthy and obscene pop star going through another bitter divorce and custody battle. And so forth.
For those of us in the business of conversion from sin, it’s easy to identify the fork in the road where such people chose the path to immorality. In one such case, a celebrity admitted she left the Catholic Church as a teenager when she found herself mocking the notion that someone could be condemned to Hell for a single, willful impure fantasy. The refusal to repent this attitude started her on a life of sexual debauchery. It comes as no surprise to anyone with a true Catholic mind: we become what we freely choose. But are we truly aware of what we have become?
We all have – to one extent or another – demanding personal and work schedules. A schedule may enhance our lives by directing our work (and recreation). In executing our activities according to a schedule, we often experience a healthy sense of accomplishment. But when pressed for time because of distractions, we often cut a few corners and rush things, although we are usually not impatient over the “big things” such as getting a large task done on time.
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Universalism

Universalism – the ugly twin sister of Indifferentism is Universalism–the teaching that God loves everyone so much that he would never send anyone to hell. In other words, in the end, everybody will be saved.  Why bother if we’re all going to get into heaven simply because God is such a nice Santa Claus type figure in the sky who will make sure everyone succeeds? Like indifferentism, the Catholic Church is riddled with universalism and it’s cowardly half breed sister semi-universalism. This is the belief that there is a hell and there might just be a few people there, but there won’t be many and maybe even the ones who are there will serve their prison sentence and be allowed into heaven after all. Universalism is a cowardly, unScriptural and unChristian. It doesn’t take a Thomas Aquinas to figure out that this teaching means not only the death of evangelization, but eventually the death of the church.
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Porn

"Pornography violates all relational values between the individual and self, the individual and society, the unity of our families and our moral fabric and fiber as a nation," Josh McDowell stated. "When we objectify and demean life by removing the sanctity of the human person, our future is at risk."
The study is titled "The Porn Phenomenon."
"Porn addiction is not regulated to any race, religious background, or socio-economic status," Haley Halverson, director of communications for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, told LifeSiteNews. "Most people think that pornography could never touch their community, their church, or their family, but because of the internet, pornography has become so pervasive that it is creating a public health crisis in America."
Author Steve Farrar wrote, "A number of years ago a national conference for church youth directors was held at a major hotel in a city in the mid-west. Youth pastors by the hundreds flooded into that hotel and took nearly every room. At the conclusion of the conference, the hotel manager told the conference administrator that the number of guests who tuned into the adult movie channel broke the previous record, far and away outdoing any other convention in the history of the hotel."
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Love, Humility, Abandonment

If, in life, you reach who you really are, at the end of life -- at the conclusion of this earthly journey -- everything will fall into place. The first person you will meet upon dying will be your true self.

"This means to grow towards the Glory to come and the beauty which is destined for us," noted a religious named Sister Emmanuel, who penned the book on Maria Simma, the mystic who saw souls.

"Each minute, we can still grow in love, but the souls in purgatory can no longer grow. Even the angels envy us this power we have to grow each minute in love while we are on earth. Each little act of love we offer to the Lord, each little sacrifice or fast, each little privation or battle against our tendencies, our faults, each little forgiveness of our enemies, all the things we can offer of this sort, will be later for us an ornament, a jewel, a real treasure for eternity.

"So let us seize every opportunity to be as beautiful as God desires us to be already in His prescience. If we saw in its full light the splendor of a pure soul, of a soul purified, then we would cry for joy and wonder, because of its beauty!

"A human soul is something of great splendor before God; this is why God desires us to be perfectly pure. It is not by being faultless in our ways that we will become pure. No, it is through our repentance of our sins, and our humility. You see, it's quite different! The saints are not 'faultless' souls, but those who get up again and again each time they fall, and ask forgiveness."

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Holy League

A friend in New Hampshire named Tom contacted me to tell me that he and another are establishing a Holy League in response to this call from Cardinal Burke.

This is intended to create a network of parish based men’s groups that meet monthly in a structured Holy Hour. The Holy League was first formed as part of the call to holiness and fortitude that occurred when Europe was under threat from Islamic forces and prior to the battle of Lepanto in 1571. The aim is to reestablish this in every Catholic parish.

The website tells us that the Holy League:

• Provides a Holy Hour format which incorporates Eucharistic Adoration, prayer, short spiritual reflections, the availability of the Sacrament of Confession, Benediction and fraternity.
• Encourages consecration to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the Purest Heart of Joseph.
• Promotes the Precepts and Sacraments of the Church, especially through devotion to the Most Blessed Sacrament and the praying of the Most Holy Rosary.
• Creates a unified front, made up of members of the Church Militant, for spiritual combat.

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History of Catholic Schools

One of the great struggles in the Church today is effectively catechizing God’s people. In a world so full of error, distortion, and half-truths, this has never been more necessary. I was asked recently to present my thoughts on this topic at a conference. I did so from the perspective not only of a pastor but also of one who grew up at the end of the era of the “old Church” and through the cultural revolution of late 1960s. Today’s post is the first part of my presentation at the conference; I’ll be posting the remainder over the next several days. (See “Here's How to Help Fix the 4 Big Mistakes We've Made With Catechesis”.)
Many approaches and experiments in catechesis have been tried over the past several decades and, frankly, all have ultimately failed. Though we need to try something new, that something new is really something old. We must go back to basics and tell the old stories again, within the family environment rather than just at the parish level.
In this first part of this article I’d like to reflect on four failed models of the past. I do not refer to specific programs, but more to some of the educational philosophes that underlie our practices then and now.

I. The professional class

At some point, especially in the immigrant years of Catholicism in this country, the task of catechesis shifted from the family and the culture experience of the home to a kind of “professional” class of teachers, largely priests and religious sisters.
In this system, religious education was almost always conducted away from the home. It took place in Catholic schools, which were being built in huge numbers in those years and staffed by ample numbers of religious nuns and brothers. In a largely Protestant culture, which also dominated in the public schools, the building of Catholic schools was considered a high priority for Catholics. Parents were strongly encouraged to enroll their children in Catholic schools.
Catholic schools and C.C.D. (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) programs were remarkably effective, well-staffed, and well-attended in the immigrant years of the first half of the 20th century and well into the 1970s.
Religious education and upbringing became a task largely conducted away from the home. Children either attended Catholic school, or if that was not possible, went to C.C.D. classes (established to educate children who attended secular schools). The point was that the education of children in the faith was entrusted to professional religious educators, priests, sisters, and some lay teachers.
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Bodily Healing

Praying deeply to bring health in our bodies

[adapted from The God of Healing]

The deeper we pray, the more we can focus on every part of the body, and ask the Holy Spirit to protect and heal our brains, ears, necks, lymph glands, throats (for the throat call on Saint Blaise), blood vessels, hearts, lungs (for the respiratory tract, Saint Bernardine), eyes (Saint Lucy), stomachs, intestines, colons, reproductive organs, breasts (for breasts, Saint Agatha), joints, and skin. [Here are thirty saints for common ailments].

Throughout life, our cells, tissues, and organs take a beating from the environment, bad nutrition, and simple age, so it's wise to go through one's life and pray to rectify potential health problems.

Also, pray you do not somaticize: let your fears and emotions manifest as physical affliction.

God is the Great Physician and each cell comes from the life force of His Spirit.

That Force can heal anyone of anything.

One must cooperate by casting away resentment, unforgiveness, and anger -- which also wear on our organs -- and so start a journey to health by going through a review of life and loving anyone we have not loved and forgiving everyone we have not forgiven, including ourselves.

Pray. Meditate on Scripture. Listen.

Ask Jesus to "reverse the clock."

Let's say you smoked: go back, ask the Lord to forgive you for smoking, cast out spirits that may be associated with nicotine, and ask Him to pervade your lungs with healing. "Soak" yourself in holiness.

Cast out spirits of "tobacco" and "addiction."

When you're pure inside, entities are not comfortable; Jesus called them "unclean spirits"; foul does not mesh with clean.

Your angels are there. Saint Raphael will come. If you drank too much, focus on your liver. If you ate the wrong things, focus on your colon (and stomach), if obese, cast out the spirit of gluttony. If there is a genetic weakness, ask the Lord to reconfigure your genes.

Do a life review of your health and pray over each organ, looking for blotches that may cause future problems, for the non-physical transmits to the physical and it is Grace that heals through deliverance. Look at how many times Christ cast out demons and unclean spirits before the healing took place!

If you have jealousy, this could produce bile (bitterness). If you're angry, you harden your heart (and its vessels; "Harden not your heart," Psalm 95:8). If you reject yourself, you may have acne. If your heart oozes "gall," go back through your life and neutralize this acid. (An acidic system is more prone to cancer.) If you've failed to forgive you may be attached in a "sick way" to whomever you have not forgiven.

It is often the spiritual garbage inside of us that attracts the "flies" that can carry disease and fester within.

Saint Teresa of Avila said (about the Light that gives us life) "it is not a radiance which dazzles, but a soft whiteness and an infused radiance which, without wearying the eyes, causes them the greatest delight; nor are they wearied by the brightness which they are seeing in this Divine beauty.

"So different from any earthly light is the brightness and light now revealed to the eyes that, by comparison with it, the brightness of our sun seems quite dim and we should never want to open our eyes again for the purpose of seeing it. It is as if we were to look at a very clear stream, in a bed of crystal, reflecting the sun's rays."

It's when we allow that light to dim or blur that trouble and breakdown begin.

God is the Great Physician. In deep quiet listen for Him. He reverses the curse; He reverses the letters in "evil" and turns them back into "live." 

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The Male Only Sanctuary

Several things immediately differentiate Lincoln from nearly every other diocese in the country when it comes to the sacred liturgy. 
To a large extent, Lincoln has preserved a male only sanctuary. In this area the diocese has simply given more weight to tradition and common sense instead of “modern sensibilities” that are more secular minded.
The diocese remains the only one in the country to maintain an altar serving policy of boys only. As I have written about before, this is in direct recognition of what Rome itself acknowledged back in 1994:

The Holy See wishes to recall that it will always be very appropriate to follow the noble tradition of having boys serve at the altar. As is well known, this has led to a reassuring development of priestly vocations. Thus the obligation to support such groups of altar boys will always continue.

Lincoln also utilizes installed acolytes and lectors for the Holy Mass. Since it is an instituted ministry, the role of an acolyte is only open to men. Both of these instituted ministries commenced during Bishop Flavin’s time during the 1970’s.
As an example, a parish with 1,200 or so families could have as many as 30-40 acolytes. They function mainly in a capacity to serve during Mass, often much like an altar boy or deacon: they turn the missal pages for the priest, carry the processional cross, distribute communion, handle the thurifer for incensing, and so on.
These acolytes are utilized on an as needed basis and are not viewed as simply another way to increase lay participation. An average Sunday mass with 800 people would typically have only 2 main acolytes and 3 more assist the extra priest to distribute Holy Communion. It’s also interesting to note that the faithful only receive under one species in Lincoln, foregoing the need to double the number of acolytes. This is of course in stark contrast to most dioceses that make ordinary use of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, to the point of abusing the intention set forth by Rome.
As stated previously, Lincoln also utilizes installed lectors for most Sunday Masses. Back in the early 1980’s Bishop Rembert Weakland (the progressive homosexual prelate of Milwaukee at the time) publicly chastised Bishop Flavin of Lincoln for not embracing the innovation of female readers for Mass. While Flavin’s successor Bishop Bruskewitz would eventually acquiesce and permit their use in the diocese, female readers are still more commonly utilized for daily masses and school masses, with lectors more prevalent for Sunday’s and holy days of obligation.
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Necessity of Purgatory

This is how Pope John Paul II explains why purgatory is necessary. For, he continues, we are called "to be perfect like the heavenly Father during our earthly life... sound and flawless before God the Father 'at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints' (1 Thess 3:12)."

Here John Paul re-affirms the old wisdom concerning the existence of a "state of purification" after death. Purification means atonement for sins and their effects on the soul. It is not a painless, automatic process of "growing" the soul, of attaining full "self-realization" through the acquisition of ever more insight after death, as is the soothing theory of some spiritualists. It is not an accumulation of learning, through a series of "reincarnations," until some point of perfect wisdom is reached, as in the fantasy of some Western New Age disciples. Such are childish attempts to suppress man's deep awareness that the basic dimension determining his destiny in the next world is not knowledge or experience, but moral purity: sin, and the traces it leaves on the soul, versus holiness.

In our culture today, of the three destinations that traditional Christian doctrine teaches may follow death and judgment — heaven, hell, and purgatory — only belief in heaven or some such happy state has widely survived. The prevailing cheap optimism holds that (if there is anything at all across the threshold of death) the life of practically everybody automatically ends up in a state of bliss. De-christened and inwardly impoverished Western man may acknowledge having his imperfections and shortcomings, but doesn't look upon himself as sinful. To him, atonement for or purification from sin is a "medieval" idea.

Already 150 years ago, Cardinal John Henry Newman saw the rise of this superficial, humanist mentality:

We are cherishing a shallow religion, a hollow religion, which will not profit us in the day of trouble. The age [our age considerably more than his!] loves an exclusively cheerful religion. It is determined to make religion bright and sunny and joyous, whatever the form of it which it adopts. And it will handle the Catholic doctrine in the same spirit... we take what is beautiful and attractive, shrink from what is stern and painful.

Purgatory (to say nothing of hell), penance, expiation, God's holy Justice: these just do not fit in with today's cheerfully cheap religiosity. However, the truth remains that man has to be "sound and flawless before God the Father" when, after death, he appears before Him to render an account of his life. Only holy souls have direct access to the blissful abode where "nothing unclean shall enter." Therefore, "every trace of attachment to evil must be eliminated, every imperfection of the soul corrected." The place for this correction of the soul's imperfections is purgatory.

This is a profound and holy mystery, and also an appalling mystery, whose frightening aspects cannot be glossed over. But the reality should not terrify us. John Paul II continues: "One last important aspect which the Church's tradition has always pointed out should be re-proposed today: the dimension of 'communio'... the ecclesiastical solidarity which works through prayer, prayers of suffrage, and love." Here John Paul teaches us that penance and pain in purgatory are mitigated by the comfort of mercy. In the final analysis, purgatory is the mercy of Christ working through his Mystical Body, the Church.

Close to the Vatican, alongside the Tiber in Rome, stands a beautiful neo-gothic church — the only one in that style in the whole city — which is devoted to the Sacred Heart of Suffrage; suffrage in the meaning of help to the souls in purgatory. In a room in the sacristy are exhibited a small number of strange, fascinating "relics": objects bearing visible, physical traces left by souls in purgatory. The collection is known as the little Museum of Purgatory, the Piccolo Museo del Purgatorio. The Museo and the church of the Sacred Heart of Suffrage represent two sides of purgatory: the collection offers impressive bits of tangible evidence for the harrowing existence of the souls there, while the church itself displays the Christian comfort of the mercy and charity for the suffering souls as practiced since time immemorial by the Catholic Church. The great central triptych in the church, representing the Sacred Heart, the poor (or holy) souls, and various saints, has even been called "a visual compendium of Catholic doctrine on purgatory" by Pope Benedict XV.

The church is a monument in honor of the mercy of the divine-human Heart of Christ for the souls in purgatory, and at the same time an invitation to the faithful to practice charity for them in union with his merciful Heart. For the devotion to the suffering souls is inextricably linked to the devotion of the Sacred Heart. That has been made especially clear by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the apostle of the devotion to the Sacred Heart. As Father John Croiset wrote:

The revelations she received about the sufferings of these souls, about our Divine Lord's tender love for them and His eager desire for their deliverance, of the great efficacy of the devotion to the Sacred Heart for their early release, and the fact that ... (she) combined these two devotions so intimately in her own person, indicate that there is such a close connection between the two devotions that the devotion to the souls in Purgatory may be said to form a part of the devotion to the Sacred Heart.

The "paranormal" evidence displayed in the Little Museum of the church and some additional evidence, notably the burned-in hand in the corporale of Czestochowa in Poland, is instrumental in developing devotion to the suffering souls. It brings us nearer to the reality of purgatory by allowing us a closer look into this awful abyss of purification.
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Love and Fear

Shame and bitterness overcame me when the priest said that my parents were not married. They had spent thirty years together and had raised three children, but because my father was a Catholic who had married outside the church, the church held that he had never married at all. Or so this priest told me. I thought him a bastard—after all, he was saying I was one.

Truth can sting. Pope Francis wants to soften it, to minimize its assaults. In his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, he uses the euphemism “irregular unions” to describe relationships that Catholics consider objectively adulterous. He suggests that people living in a persistent state of sin may receive communion if certain conditions are met—not least, if they are “tactful.” Francis would like the church to be tactful, as well.

I have felt the Church’s teaching on marriage land like a sharp blow, yet I take no encouragement from this shift. Amoris Laetitia suggests that an objective assessment of whether or not one is in a state of mortal sin can be replaced with a more subjective “discernment” of one’s “interior disposition.” While this may seem merciful, it leaves Catholics less sure of how they stand before God.

Francis writes: “We must make room for the conscience of the faithful, who very often respond as best they can to the Gospel.” This notion of conscience as a licensing agency, as “making room” for actions that otherwise would count as sins, is strange to me. Far from reassuring me that I am worthy to receive communion, my conscience has often reminded me that I am not. As Mary Geach said:

One way in which moral advisers may fail people who have doubts about whether to commit respectable sins, is telling them that they must follow their consciences . . . would you say “follow your conscience” to a man whose code of honour obliged him to kill his father’s killer?

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Priest Shortage

The Catholic Church is in dire need of priests. She had plenty of priests before the onset of liturgical abuses not sanctioned by the Second Vatican Council's Sacrosanctum Concilium. Mathematician and computer programmer David Sonnier has plotted out the precipitous decline in vocations after the Council, illustrating it by an asymptotic curve he calls, with mordant irony, the Springtime Decay Function, whereby he concludes that we are missing more than 300,000 priests who otherwise might have been ministering to the people of God today. He shows his students the data, telling them that it marks enrollment at a college, and he asks them to guess what happened. They reply in one way or another that the college in question must have made a dreadfully bad decision in 1965.
“Did they get rid of football?” asked one of the students.
The answer to that is yes, they did “get rid of football.” Nowhere in Sacrosanctum Concilium or in other documents of Vatican II, as Professor Sonnier observes, are the following liturgical innovations mandated or recommended or even suggested:
* orientation ad populum
* Communion in both species
* Communion received in the hand
* Communion received while standing, as at a delicatessen
* removal of altar rails
* prohibition of Masses said according to the 1962 missal
* exclusive use of the vernacular
* girls serving at the altar
Instead, Sacrosanctum Concilium forbids innovations in the liturgy, “unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing” (SC, 23). Not one of those innovations above can pass that severe test, and, as Sonnier notes, several of them had already been condemned.
Sonnier understands that correlation and causation are not the same; though it defies all reason to suppose that a decline so sudden and so calamitous was strictly coincidental. One way to show that it was not coincidental – that the foot's agony had something to do with the shotgun and the trigger – would be to go to those dioceses and communities that did not pull the trigger, and to see whether they are walking about hale and hearty and on two feet. And so they are: Lincoln, Nebraska; Arlington, Virginia; Ciudad del Este, Paraguay; the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate; the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter.
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Mexico

I find it interesting that the Good Friday ceremony took place in the Coliseum, a place where Christians were butchered as entertainment for the cause of Christ. It is a statement, to have the ceremony in such a place, as though to say, ‘Christians were once killed in this place of despotic pomp, but now it is in ruins; Christianity is still here, and we have vanquished your edifices.’
The Catholic world is under attack and it is being flooded by both heretic and pagan, Muslim and infiltrator. Even in Mexico, where the Catholic Faith once flourished, Satan is making his onslaught and conquering the souls of the people.
The nations of the West have been quite weak with their borders in so many disturbing ways. The US, for example, makes it difficult for good people to enter the borders, but easy for evil people to get through the borders. We have Mexican cartel agents entering with ease into the US. Look at what evils they are doing in their own country!
I would greatly encourage you to watch my interview with Jorge Vazquez Valencia, the official spokesperson for a self-defense militia fighting the cartels, on the diabolical and very brutal atrocities being committed by the cartels in Mexico:
The Mexican drug cartel in the state of Guerrero entered a village — consisting of Catholic Christians — and ordered everyone to leave. When the local people refused the cartel took a fourteen year old boy, and before the entire village ritually cut out the heart  and presented the heart to everyone in the village in a pagan ritual. They then declared that if everyone did not leave the village, that they would take all the women and decapitate them all. To discuss this satanic violence that is flooding all of Mexico, I interviewed Jorge Vazquez Valencia, the official spokesperson of the Autodefensas, a self-defense group that has been fighting the cartel in gun battles that I believe are eventually going to escalate into a full out civil war:
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Friday Fast

It used to be that Catholics would abstain from meat every Friday — except when it falls on a major feast — and not just Fridays in Lent. Some think that the bishops or Vatican II did away with this Friday penance. Not only is that not true but we are commanded by Christ to do penance. Despite what some may think neither the Vatican nor the bishops can completely abrogate this obligation.
In the same way the Church gathers together to celebrate the Mass on Sunday, the day Christ rose, we unite in penance on Friday, the day Christ died. Historically this penance has been mandated as abstaining from meat. In 1966 Pope Blessed Paul VI removed the obligation to refrain from meat provided it is replaced with a substantial penance. This alternative penance could take the form of abstaining from alcohol or adding a rosary or act of charity.
Meat was chosen because of its connection to sacrifice. Warm blooded animals were offered to God in the Old Testament and Christ gave up His flesh as part of His sacrifice on the Cross.
The reasoning behind Blessed Pope Paul VI's desire to lift the obligation to fast from meat — but not the obligation to do penance — is that around the world meat wasn't and isn't a common part of many cultural diets and other individuals simply don't like meat so the penance didn't mean much for a large swathe of the Catholic population.
When Blessed Pope Paul VI lifted the obligation in the late 1960s, American bishops began to tell Catholics they could now eat meat on Fridays outside of Lent and left it at that. The silence on this issue is deafening to this day. It's possible that bishops are concerned that penance will harm ecumenical efforts, or maybe they don't believe American Catholics are capable of fasting, but whatever the reason Catholics simply gave up fasting and penance on Fridays outside of Lent.
However, despite the bishops' reluctance, the requirement to do penance on Friday remains on the books and to simply blow it off is grave matter, similar to skipping Mass without cause. Since the bishops will not teach the flock it is up to the flock to teach themselves. Continue to give up meat on Friday, or if that's not your preference, give up something else or add a Mass or rosary.
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Jesus' Death on the Cross

I. Return – At that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
The significance of the tearing of the Temple curtain and the way in which it happened ought not to be underestimated. Consider that God had walked intimately with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of day (cf Gen 3:8), but that after sin, they could no longer endure His presence; they had to dwell apart from the paradise that featured God’s awesome presence. Consider, too, how terrifying theophanies (appearances of God to human beings) were after that time. For example, the appearance of God on the top of Mt Sinai is described in the Book of Exodus:
When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die” (Ex 20:18-19).
Had God changed? Was He different from when He walked with Adam and Eve in intimacy? No. We had changed and could no longer endure the presence of God.
Throughout the Old Testament, a veil existed between God and Israel. There was the cloud that both revealed God’s presence and concealed it. There was also the curtain in the sanctuary, beyond which the High Priest could only venture once a year, and even then in fear and trembling.
Sin had done this. Mere human beings could no longer tolerate God’s presence.
But with His Death on the cross, Jesus has canceled our sin. We once again have access to God through Christ our Lord. His blood has cleansed us and the ancient separation from the Father and from God’s presence has been canceled. But we will not encounter God in a merely earthly paradise; He has now opened the way to Heaven.
It is now up to us to make the journey there, but the way has been opened, the veil has been rent. Through this open veil the Father now says, “Come to me!”

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Embodying Mysticism

The Catholic tradition has a long history of faith seeking understanding. St. Thomas Aquinas, the most notable of Dominican friars, believed that philosophy can prove, through reason unaided by mystical experience, some truths proposed by Christian faith. Reason is also capable of clarifying truths that cannot be proved, and it can defend the principles of Christian faith against detractors. The mystical experience, it follows, because it can be explored through reason (in that reason can clarify truths which cannot be proved), must be approachable through some kind of intellectual activity. It is here, for Aquinas, and for Robinson as well, that the mystical experience becomes a special sort of theology.

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Priest as Victim

The priest has many vocations, but his primary calling is to offer sacrifice. Does he also understand that he himself is called to be the sacrifice?
Only when the man on his way to ordination comprehends his mission can he set out to fulfill his vocation well, to face the opposition that always comes when good men confront a world swamped with evil — and that vocation is one of suffering, of offering sacrifice and of himself being sacrificed. Seminarians must keep this understanding foremost in their minds.

In 1963, Abp. Fulton Sheen wrote a book titled "The Priest Is Not His Own." In it, he mentioned the various functions of the priest — leader, teacher, servant, spiritual father — but drove home the point that no role more truly defines the priest than that of victim.

Pagan people, without knowing it explicitly, sensed the truth that "unless blood is shed, there can be no remission of sins" (Heb. 9:22). From the earliest times, through the kings and priests, they offered animals, and sometimes even humans, to turn away the anger of the gods. As in the Levitical priesthood, however, the victim was always separate from the priest.The sacrifice was a vicarious one, the animal representing and taking the place of the guilty humans, who thus sought to expiate their guilt in the shedding of blood.

The separation of victim — who atones for sins — from priest — who offers the sacrifice — was the hallmark of pagan offerings. What distinguishes Christianity from the pagan cults is the union of the one being sacrificed with the one who offers sacrifice — in Jesus Christ, Who is both Priest and Victim.
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Path Less Taken

Evil spirits tempt, but when we succumb it is our fault

A devout Catholic friend of mine went to the doctor because she was feeling physically run down. She mentioned that she could be maliciously catty about others and that it drained her of energy, but that she felt lighter after confession. This was her remedy for mental exhaustion caused by being dragged down by the weight of her sins. Probing a bit further, the doctor asked her if she believed temptation may be the work of bad angels. My friend answered “yes.”

The medic, seeing that my friend was calm and collected, said he respected her religious views and he believe in God but that he had to warn her that thoughts of bad angels inspiring people to do bad deeds was dangerous fantasy. Furthermore he thought that people were blame-shifting- they ascribed blame to imaginary spirits and not to themselves.

My friend told her doctor that he had a point – people could blame the sources of temptation – but not take responsibility for themselves. She clarified that God has given each human enough grace to withstand temptations – and that when she spoke badly of others to the point where her listeners thought badly of the people she maligned – that she had been to blame because she had not relied on God’s grace to help her overcome her destructive longing to backbite. Thus she was the one who went to Confession, and not the fallen angel.

Perhaps the difference between feeling tempted and acting on temptation is like the man who becomes violent after too much whisky. If he sees a flashy, provocative ad for hooch, and decides to get drunk, after which he beats his wife and kids, he may say the ad was to blame because it gave him the idea to pickle his brain in spirits.

When we only blame that which tempts us – we are not placing the emphasis on what would prevent us from falling in the first place – relying on God’s grace. My friend got it right when she said that she sinned because she had not sought God’s grace.

So few of us have such humility. We fall into sin often because we doubt God’s love for us – He loved each of us so much – that he has endowed each soul with enough grace to overcome the tailored set of temptations that each of us face.

There are as many temptations as there are sins, but I think there is one temptation that is particularly dodgy for anyone. It is when we use the sins of our past against ourselves. ‘I’m the person who did this and that, I am a hopeless case who may as well give up the fight to do better,’ is often our personal voice-over that accompanies flashbacks on our mind’s cinema of times when we’ve behaved badly.

Tim Stanley admirably tackled this problem of despairing on account of one’s sins when earlier in the week he appeared on Thought For The Day. Stanley shared how shortly after he converted to Catholicism, he went to confession and told the priest that he didn’t think he could make it because he was still sinning. The priest said to him, ‘by the very fact that you’ve come here to confess your sins, you’ve shown that you have changed.’

Taking Stanley’s example to heart, I suggest opening a dialogue with one’s conscience and relying on God’s grace. Seeking God’s grace can seem so lofty, but in urgency we can offer arrow prayers (“God help me”) and say to our favourite saint, “please pray for me.”

Something that I am starting is praying the Litany of the Holy Spirit, so that I am enlightened as to what might be a temptation.
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