Thank you Praetorian. I've carried a cross this past week that was orders of magnitude more difficult than all the health troubles I've survived over the last year. Today was an incredible blessing, one I know God arranged in the midst of very real suffering. But what you just said here is the biggest consolation of all. Again, thank you.
You are so welcome. I meant every word. I'm truly sorry for all of the difficulties you are going through, but know that it is saving souls. Thank you from both myself and others who you have helped. Converting one person covers a multitude of sins Be well my brother.
Thanks Praetorian. It is heartening that others see the crisis in the Church as it really is. It is a Grace to be able to see it. Some see it, Some pretend not to see it, Some see it and ignore it because it doesnt fit with their favourite unapproved messages, and some live in fantasy land and think the Church has never been better,like Pope Francis. I haven't posted much lately as I'm a little preoccupied. Some in my parish have gone a little mad playing Chess.
You are welcome Mac. I should really be saying thank you... I was wondering where you had been Thankfully I think more and more people are seeing what is happening every day. When I came back to the Church I just thought it was going to be a "regular" part of my life. I surely didn't plan on making it back in just in time for a global catastrophe but much better to be in than out at this point Thanks again for raising the alarm with all of your trumpet blowing.
This is true. They both woke me up too. It is very easy to see things are off the rails now, it was not so then. As I think Wonston Churchill said one time, you were the dogs who barked and did not sleep. Thank you for this. We all of us need a good kick up the ass sometimes. Thank you for kicking me.
What an honour for you, Brian. I think there will come a time in the not too distant future when just as there are some very modernist secular parishes and other very orthodox parishes, there will be some very modernist religious communities and other very orthodox communities. I see signs of that here already. Although I don't know anyone in the religious communities, it's easy enough to guess whether they are modernist or orthodox.
And thank you for waking up too Padraig The Chinese curse of "May you live in interesting times" is certainly true. I sometimes can't believe it has only been 2 years since I have been back in the Church. It is a different world today than it was back then. The Church and the world crossed a threshold at some point along the way...
I think that the essential temptation that the Devil has placed in front of the Church is this. The Devil rarely, unless we are already very,very evil tempts us to do evil for evil's sake. The devil tempts us rather to do good but that in order to do this that we must do some evil. So, for instance if I am tempted, say, to rob a bank it might be he would put it that I should steal in order simply to make my impoverished family comfortable. With the Church Leaders the Temptation Satan presented and continues to present is that we might make the Church, 'Relevant', and to stop it , 'Going down the cul de sac of culture wars and of seeming Conservative and out of touch with the real world' . The precise temptation is that the Church might somehow be married to the world. This is of course an abomination. We are meant to be the yeast and not the dough. But it flatters greatly the ego and pride of those who give way to it. The devil tells them that they are truly the loving, the merciful, the compassionate ones, those who reach out who are understanding and who have true leadership. Who listen and learn and lead. Who would not be tempted by this? To be regarded and treated as a saint and saviour by a world under the Power of Satan. But they forgot that the proper place of the Christina is to hang upon the Cross and be spat upon , not sat and praised upon some gilded throne. Ah pride, pride, pride the fall of many....poor Princes of the Church , shall you waken only in the fires of hell? But what leads to the Gates of Hell for many may lead to the Golden steps of sanctification, through persecution , for the faithful few.
Within the church...conservative orders are growing and have stronger base. While liberal orders are dying out. The liberal orders that are surviving are those with money. Not to be direct but those that own Universities. All those nuns that lost their habits in the 60's have no or few members to save their orders. They have become a dying breed. Common theme of growing orders is Rosary, Hour of Eucharistic Adoration and Obedience to Pope. It is what Jesuits used to be. Brother al
The Jesuits are very loyal to this Pope. Hasn't Pope Francis also initiated some kind of reform of all religious orders? There are times I get the impression we are turning into a universal Jesuit Church rather than the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. That said, Jesus told St. Faustina that anyone spreading the message of His divine mercy would receive great graces. Nobody could accuse Pope Francis of being silent about mercy.
From my personal reading the Holy Father and the Jesuits are not in agreement on many spiritual issues.
Do you seriously believe that the Holy Father was unaware of the linkes between his friend, Cardinal Rodriguez, PICO, CACG, Catholics United, Soros (and his vast interests in Argentina), Podesta, modernists in the US Church and their disgraceful ties to the psuedo Catholics close to those running the US and, by extension, the UN? There are too many coincidences between their attempts to shift the Church's focus to accepting modernism and his rowing back on the Church's stance against the modernist agenda. The question isn't whether he was in agreement with them but how much he was aware of and supported their shenanigans.
http://www.crisismagazine.com/1984/the-pope-and-the-jesuits This may be insighful into understanding why people often simpy cannot understand the Holy Father. I know I often can't follow him myself and am left scratching my head. It's not simply that I disagree , I mean I literally often can't understand him. I am far from being alone in this. It is as if he has his own private language. 'In part what happened in the Society after 1960 was the discovery of psychology, of the affective dimensions of the human condition. Perhaps because its existence had been minimized for so long, affectivity now flooded in on the Society as if from a burst dam. For the first time large numbers of Jesuits began to think and talk about their feelings, their desires, their “needs.” Some became deeply involved in various aspects of the “human potential movement,” including visits to shrines like the Esalen Institute. In time various kinds of therapeutic techniques, derived from humanistic psychology and the human potential movement, became an institutionalized feature of the training of young Jesuits, and part of the standard equipment of many older Jesuits as well. (Thus in 1982 the student newspaper of a Jesuit university published a feature about a Jesuit scholastic for whom “High school was more a social enterprise than an academic institution.” The young Jesuit told the interviewer that his ultimate criterion for judging the authenticity of his calling was whether it was “fun” and he said he used “gut reactions” rather than intellectual analysis to make decisions. Describing the early Jesuits as men who served others, “having a blast while doing it,” he claimed that the hot tub in the campus recreation center was one of the chief places where he “found God.” The scholastic wanted on his tombstone the inscription, “He made it fun.”) Especially within communities of young Jesuits in training, great emphasis came to be placed on the ability to “share one’s feelings,” and candidates for the Society have sometimes been asked to leave because they are regarded as “too intellectual” or “unwilling to share.” Parallel changes were taking place on the intellectual plane. Just as Jesuits began to discover psychology in a way they had scarcely known before, so also many began to chafe at what they regarded as the narrowness of their own training — mainly the classics and neo-Scholastic philosophy and theology (although many Jesuits had for some time been doing graduate work in secular disciplines in the most prestigious universities). There was a heightened desire to confront the modern world at the point of its greatest brilliance. Young Jesuits (as well as some older ones) became sympathetically engaged with Hegel, Marx, the Existentialists, and modern Protestant theology. as well as with the social sciences. As with psychology, however, a long thirst seemed to make it difficult for many Jesuits to drink in moderation. An “openness” to newer modes of thought soon became, for many, a wholesale acceptance of systems which could be reconciled with Christianity only with difficulty if at all, and a concomitant compulsion to brush aside almost everything from the Catholic past as irrelevant at best, perhaps even false and pernicious. The most contested areas have been almost all aspects of sexual morality, from contraception to homosexuality, as well as the general exercise of ecclesiastical authority by pope and bishops. Under such conditions it was not only impossible to maintain the traditional Jesuit esprit, and the institutional arrangements which went with it, but also difficult to articulate new visions which could command wide assent. Not only was the Society deeply divided between “liberals” and “conservatives” (not entirely along the lines of age), those who favored innovation could no longer agree even among themselves as to what kind.'
