The Mysterious Sacrament

As a convert to the Catholic faith, I could not understand the Sacrament of Reconcilation (the Confessional). I had always just asked Jesus directly to forgive me of my sins and felt that was enough. It wasn't until I had read many articles and books and listened to the reasons for this sacrament that I finally was convinced that I needed to go. It wasn't easy. I didn't want to do it and felt extreme dread every time I sat in front of the priest to give an account of my actions that were considered sins by God. Finally, after much prayer and more reading, I realized that what God wanted from me was "Humility". It is pleasing to God for us to come to His representatives on earth, the Priests, and open up our hearts and minds and acknowledge that we have sinned - in all humility. Anyway...I read this article today, Bring Back the Box, by Jerome German about this very topic and felt that the article was so well written that I want to share it with others and save it. Here it is: The year was 1961. The confessional was dark, as it should be. A recalcitrant fifth-grade sinner, I had just poured my soul out to a family friend, the parish pastor. As he finished absolving me for what I was sure were the worst sins ever, he added, “Tell your mother that…” I can’t recall the rest of the message; I only remember my deep mortification. The whole purpose of the box was anonymity. How was this okay? It was perhaps borderline prideful on my part to think my sins that exceptional. And, as a frequent Mass server, he probably just recognized my voice. Still, I felt violated. What was routine for him was a very big deal for me. And still, I was compelled to seek the sacrament. In the end, it always seemed a journey from shadow to light. I was a repeat offender. My sins were monotonous, petty, and yet they oppressed me. Absolution was the light at the end of the tunnel. The confessional was repulsive yet enticing. A few short years later, face-to-face Confession was to become the norm—one might say, the preferred mode. I can’t help but wonder how many souls have been discouraged in the process. Confession is easily the most intimate spiritual thing imaginable. Is confidentiality really enough? Clearly, the creators of the box did not think so. Wouldn’t anonymity help the cause of confidentiality? How is it that in the age of psychology we have forgotten so much psychology? Surely, there are those among us who prefer a face-to-face encounter. Good for us. But personality differences alone will tell us that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to something so intimate. To be certain, the Saturday morning lineup for the confessional is not what it was a generation ago. I seriously doubt that the reason is that the current generation is less sinful; it is much more likely that fewer of us actually believe that sin is a thing. When face-to-face confessing was introduced, there was an effort to make sure that maintaining anonymity was still an option. But now that seems to be less and less the case. I say, bring back the box. The face-to-face experiment has been a noble effort to make the Faith more engaging, more personable—no scary black box. It hasn’t worked. The black box is not scary, except maybe to second graders, but I didn’t find it so. The lack of anonymity is plenty scary for many. My non-Catholic readers may, of course, find no necessity, no utility whatsoever in this discussion because they have embraced a direct avenue to forgiveness. Of course, we Catholics understand that it is God who forgives in the confessional just as surely as He forgives us when we go to Him directly. That being said, Christ’s command to the apostles concerning sin—“Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; whose sins you shall retain they are retained”—is entirely devoid of context without confession, unless we are attributing to all of the apostles the ability to read souls, something that neither Scripture nor Tradition has ever claimed. And if the Church assigns no necessity to the process of confessing, then Christ was wasting words. The Word doesn’t waste words. It is one thing to confess your sins to God, it is another to receive counseling and an objective perspective of the weaknesses in your life in Christ, a perspective that serves to assist a soul in embracing another of Christ’s commands: “Go and sin no more.” Though the Sacrament of Reconciliation is probably the least popular of the seven sacraments, there is nonetheless a human obsession with confession. It requires humility, something perennially in short supply, and yet there is something in the human psyche, some craving, some absolute need to unload, as witnessed by police officers who record statements from the accused that go something like this: “Why am I telling you this? I don’t know. I just had to tell somebody—anybody!” Face-to-face confession began at the local precinct. If you’ve offended your spouse, God will forgive your sin; but that forgiveness will not heal the relationship with your spouse. Similarly, a need to confess to another human being, one of the many we offend nearly every day, is a dimension of spiritual healing that cannot be ignored. Our sins offend both God and humanity; the priest is there as the representative of both. What’s that? You don’t offend people? Immaculately conceived, eh? God knows us and our nature much better than any of us ever will, and that’s why he instituted this terrifyingly wonderful sacrament. When the non-Catholic sects abandoned the sacrament, it left a void, a wound that has only deepened with fewer and fewer Catholics availing themselves of the graces of the sacrament. Substitutes have been sought, but such are largely an exercise in self-deception: most often, absolution by blame. I’m talking, of course, about clinical psychology. Now, I fully recognize the potential good of that soft science, but the couch, as a replacement for the confessional, is often devoid of ample consideration of two irreplaceable elements: personal culpability and divine forgiveness. The blame game unleashes a spiritual and emotional tempest. If one is driven, by hatred of one’s own guilt, to confess sins, an obvious alternate approach is to hate the things or persons on which that guilt can be blamed: one’s virtual scapegoat—one’s sin offering. Father, mother, spouse, friend, sibling, teacher, supervisor, boss, lover—the scapegoats are legion. And that’s only the human ones. There’s another interesting blame vehicle; that is, a set of scapegoats that are not hated; they are embraced because they are ownable—ownable without guilt. They are one’s own genetics and life circumstances. Oh, and did I mention genetics? We instinctively know that we are different from the animals, and yet, as a race, we continue to think that we can play both sides of the court; that is, to be nothing more than animals when it’s convenient and to be the ordained custodians of the planet when it serves our purposes. That is to say that, on a personal level, people will dismiss their humanity to placate their guilt. We know instinctively that animals do not sin; they simply follow their nature, a nature easily coveted by some of us in an effort to alleviate a guilty conscience. It is a delusion that becomes a get-out-of-jail-free card. We think, “Yes, I did that; but my behavior is only the result of my genetics and environment.” Mysteriously, the same people who claim such are often the ones who play the opposite side of the court when they claim that humans are destroying the planet and the human population needs to be reduced. Does not such moralizing differentiate us from the animals? What animal moralizes? Or are we an invasive species? The amelioration of guilt wrought by such delusional mind games is, by its very nature, insufficient. Sinners still have a need to talk about their sins to someone. Self-justification never sufficiently quells the conscience, a reality that is brilliantly explored in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. To explore this subject further, I defer to Fulton J. Sheen. In a talk titled “Sin is in the Blood,” the good Archbishop starts by saying that, We are living in about the only period in the world’s history that there is a universal denial of guilt. This was foretold by Dostoevsky who wrote; “The time is coming where men will say that there is no sin, there is no guilt, only hunger. And they will come crying and fawning to our feet saying, “Give us bread.” It used to be that we Catholics were the only ones who believed in the Immaculate Conception. Now everybody believes that he is immaculately conceived. And concerning Macbeth, he goes on to say: …we have many complexes that are produced by sin without ever tracing the true cause, which is guilt. Take for example Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Shakespeare was born in 1554 as I recall, and died in 1616, long before there was any such thing as psychiatry; and yet in this tragedy Macbeth has a psychosis and Lady Macbeth has a neurosis. Both of them contrived to murder the King in order to seize the throne. Macbeth thinks that he sees the dagger before him, the instrument of murder, with the handle toward his hand. Lady Macbeth had the neurosis; she thought that she saw blood on her hands, spots. As anyone who has read or seen this brilliant play knows, Macbeth—though a seemingly moral character at the beginning of the play—once he has committed his first murder to gain power, rather than seeking divine forgiveness, launches a personal crusade of guilt abatement, each more horrifyingly murderous act intended to quell the psychosis produced by the former. In short, at every turn more tormented, he becomes a despicable tyrant. Who are the ones among us with heavily placated guilt? Observe them well, and watch them carefully, for they are tyrants in waiting. What they are already doing is tyrannical, but perhaps not in a way that directly effects our daily lives. That will change. Quiet tyranny never remains quiet. This is because guilt, if not forgiven from above, festers and festers until society drowns in its putrid puss. And what are these quiet tyrannies? They are mortal sins of lust and greed against the next generation, nature, neighbor, and God: pornography, fornication, adultery, contraception, abortion, infanticide, divorce, sodomy, pederasty, euthanasia, assisted suicide. They are sins against parent and progeny, nature and the supernatural, natural law and sacred tradition. The guilt load of our current culture is staggering, beyond the comprehension of the dulled minds of the guilty. In the short term, it will not end well. Thankfully, God will have the last word, for He is the first and the last Word. There is, of course, no evil that cannot be forgiven other than the proud refusal to accept forgiveness. We must dedicate our lives to prayer and penitence to obtain for ourselves and all other tyrants-in-waiting the gift of humility—especially for those who possess not the grace to see their own deep need for it. Bring back that dark, creepy, forsaken (but not God-forsaken!), magnificently enticing box.

The Dark Night of a Priestly Soul

This article is written by Fr. Gordon MacRae who was found guilty of molesting a young man, I think falsely, and is currently serving a very long prison term. I've read everything I can on this issue and agree that the charges leveled against him were without merit. He has always maintained his innocence. He writes a blog within his prison, Beyond These Stone Walls. It is very good. Here is the article about The Dark Night of a Priestly Soul: “It seems to the soul in this night that it is being carried out of itself by afflictions . . . This night is a painful disturbance involving many fears, imaginings, and struggles within a man. Due to the apprehension and feeling of his miseries, he suspects that he is lost and that his blessings are gone forever.” (St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night, Ch. 9, 5, 7) In his new book, Secular Sabotage (FaithWords, 2009), Catholic League President Bill Donohue wrote masterfully of the front lines of the culture war between the sacred and the secular. More than at any other time of the year, these two forces face off in the Christmas season in a culture seemingly at war with its own soul. When I was a younger priest, the period from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day always felt like a mixed blessing. The demands on a parish priest at Christmas are very great. A spiritual observance of Advent and Christmas is an exhausting challenge against an ever-advancing tide of secular materialism.We priests experience in the Christmas season both the hope of the Incarnation and the limits of our human condition. It’s a spiritually vulnerable time that can heighten the intensity of loneliness, the pain of personal struggles and alienation, the agony of loss. Christmas can bring with it a deeply felt awareness of suffering and shadow, of spiritual and emotional vulnerability. It’s a time when, for some, the spring of hope can feel a lot more like the winter of despair.When I was asked to write an article addressing the priesthood crisis,at Christmas time, I felt very limited in scope. I was about to mark my seventeenth Christmas in prison. Frankly, Christmas in here is simply not what it is out there. It’s a time when the people around me suffer a great deal. Those with families and children are separated from them by impenetrable prison walls. Those who are alone have their loneliness magnified by the onslaught of Christmas imagery.I set out to write something warm and fuzzy for other priests at Christmas, but, well, it just wasn’t coming. I kept being drawn to some unfinished business, something that has gnawed at me for eight years. Justice requires that I try to make some spiritual sense of it. Now is the time. What I am about to write may be very painful for some to read. Whether you are a lay Catholic, or a priest, deacon, or religious, if you are reading this, I beg you to read carefully and understand. Eight years ago on December 29, 2002, a brother priest in my diocese took his own life. Father Richard Lower was 57 years old. He was a popular and very gifted – and giving – priest and human being. Father Lower had served Our Lady of Fatima Parish in New London, New Hampshire for the previous thirteen years, and he was much beloved by his parish family.There was a lot that happened in Father Lower’s personal life over the preceding year. He had undergone his sixth painful back surgery. Then he developed septicemia for which he was hospitalized again. Father Lower’s mother died that November. These factors, and likely others that are unknown, left Father Lower physically, emotionally, and spiritually bereft to face the newest terror that was to enter his life two days after Christmas eight years ago.NO CRUELER TYRANNIES. On December 27th, every priest’s worst modern nightmare was visited upon Father Richard Lower. He was informed by a diocesan official that a claim of sexual abuse had been lodged against him from thirty years earlier in 1972. Father Lower had never been previously accused. The accusation stood alone, but was enough – three decades later – to abruptly end a life of ministry and priestly self-giving.Based on the single, uncorroborated thirty-year-old claim, Father Lower was informed that the police would be notified. In accordance with the “zero tolerance” policy of the U.S. Bishops’ new Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, he was suspended from ministry and told that he must immediately vacate the parish he had served for thirteen years. As was every priest in the Diocese of Manchester, Father Lower was also painfully aware of an announcement from his bishop and diocese made just weeks earlier. In an unprecedented agreement between the Diocese and the State announced in December, 2002, the files and details of every accusation against any priest – regardless from however long ago – would be included in a vast public release of documents in March of 2003. Any privacy rights of the individual priests under canon or civil law were summarily discarded and waived by the signing of this agreement.Two days after celebrating Christ’s birth with the parish community he loved and served for thirteen years, Father Richard Lower lived Christ’s scourging, and was about to live the Scandal of the Cross in a way for which he had no defense. Succumbing to the darkest night of his soul, this good priest, walking alone in the valley of darkness, took his own life. Father Lower died without having either acknowledged or denied the 30-year-old claim brought against him. He died alone, apparently having reached out to no one. He left no note. A lot of people – including a number of priests – lamented that they could only imagine what Father Lower went through in those three days after Christmas. I did not have to imagine anything. I knew exactly what he went through: the feeling of living in a vacuum, the sense of isolation, the feeling of powerlessness, the utter despair of never, ever being able to erase the scarlet letter indelibly marking the accused – guilty and innocent alike; the sheer impossibility of any defense after the passage of three decades; the overwhelming despair of exactly what Saint John of the Cross described in his Dark Night of the Soul: “Due to the apprehension and feeling of his miseries, he suspects that he is lost and that his blessings are gone forever.”Do you know what you were doing on any given day in 1972? Can you document your answer? If you’re a Catholic priest, you may have to, and your very life may depend on it. Innocent or guilty, what Father Richard Lower faced in those days after Christmas eight years ago is a hopelessness unlike anything one could imagine without going through it. It was for good reason that Dorothy Rabinowitz entitled her 2005 book about the power of false sex abuse claims, No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times.In my prison cell a few days after Christmas in 2002, my eyes closed when I read the headline story. I knew Father Richard Lower. He was a priest I admired, and one of only three priests of my Diocese who ever wrote to me in prison. Nine months before he was accused, Father Lower wrote to another friend lamenting the terror being visited upon other priests. When so many others looked away in silence, Father Lower wrote courageously to challenge the lack of due process and presumption of guilt when other priests were accused. From an April, 2002 letter of Father Lower to a friend: “The minute a man is accused, he’s immediately suspended. He is forced to leave his rectory within the hour. The result of this horrendous policy is that the priest is seen to be guilty until proven innocent.” With reference to his back surgery and other pressures, Father Lower reacted to the media attack that had so consumed the priesthood that year. In the same letter, he wrote: “With all the bad press the Church has received lately, it is very difficult to either work as a priest in public or even to recuperate as a priest. …As Always, the press has had a heyday with this topic and reported things whether true or untrue. Because the Church did not handle it properly in the past, they now have a policy of no tolerance …Another fallout to the scandal is that a ‘witch hunt’ has begun. It feels like all priests are suspects and no one can be trusted. Please pray for us. After Father Lower’s tragic death, an official of the Diocese of Manchester acknowledged the truth of exactly what Father Lower-feared, but also defended the policy. In a local news article, Father Edward Arsenault was quoted thusly: “In parish communities where priests have been put on leave, parishioners already believe them guilty. I know there is some expense. But I am confident that our policy is fair.” TREASURE AND TRAGEDY. It has been documented that some twenty-five American Catholic priests have taken their lives after being accused. Some in the news media have implied that their despair is evidence of guilt. How sad and shallow. People of justice and conscience have expressed concern that our use of the death penalty in criminal cases may have resulted in the execution of some innocent men. Given the hundreds of innocent men who have been wrongly imprisoned for rape and other crimes, then exonerated by retesting DNA evidence, the concern is justified. But isn’t it just as likely that some innocent priests were on that list of twenty-five who lost hope? Isn’t it possible that what some of them despaired most was the apparent end of justice and fairness, the sheer impossibility of defending themselves? Believe me on this, accusations of sexual abuse are far more devastating for the innocent than for the guilty. I believe that others who have been falsely accused will corroborate this fact. Absent clear and convincing evidence – and there has been none – I presume Father Richard Lower’s innocence. It’s what the United States Constitution bids me to do. It’s what the rule of law – both Church and civil – bids me to do, and it’s what the Gospel bids me to do. To presume anything else, absent evidence to the contrary, would belie a heart too jaded to claim to live justly and fairly, to claim to live the Gospel of Mercy. After the tragic suicide of another priest, Father William Rosensteel, in June, 2007, Catholic columnist Matt C. Abbott published a powerful statement on http://www.RenewAmerica.com. It was from an unnamed supporter of Father Rosensteel: “We need to remember how important a person’s good name is. To knowingly harm a person’s reputation without cause and clear evidence is a serious violation of the Eighth Commandment. The consequences of such violations are far-reaching and irreversible. Even a priest who is known to be guilty of the crime of child abuse should not be required to forfeit his life to satisfy attorneys, insurance companies, the media and plaintiffs. How much more is this true of a priest whose ‘case’ has not yet been decided?” (RenewAmerica, August 7, 2007) As I held the local newspaper in my hand on December 30, 2002, with a headline declaring the scandal of a priest’s suicide, I would have given anything to be on that wooded path that day with Father Lower at what he feared was the end of all things he held dear. I now wish I had the means to write in 2002 what I am writing here. It may have saved this good priest’s life. Even now there is hope – for Father Lower and for us.First, there’s a lesson to be learned. It’s especially important that priests and lay people reach out to priests burdened with the tyranny of decades-old claims of abuse. In “The Sacred Priesthood,” an essay for the Year of the Priest Father John Zuhlsdorf wrote: “The sacred priesthood is the common treasure and responsibility of the whole Church.” Doesn’t that treasure warrant the benefit of the doubt for priests accused? Doesn’t it call us to support them with our words, our prayers, our mercy, and – if needed – our forgiveness? “Today, the Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2283) recognizing that people who commit suicide suffer from anguish that can mitigate moral responsibility. I don’t think anyone can look justly at what happened to Father Lower and not see anguish there.This Year of the Priest is a time to have hope for Father Richard Lower’s soul, and, from our practice of mercy, for ourselves. We owe it to him and other priests who lost all hope to assist them still with our prayers and Masses, with our Gospel mandate to be merciful. We owe it to our spiritual brothers and fathers in the priesthood to resolve to never again let another priest walk alone through the valley of darkness. For my brother, Father Richard Lower: “Softly and gently, dearly-ransomed soul, In my most loving arms I now enfold thee, And, o’er the penal waters, as they roll, I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee. And carefully I dip thee in the lake, And thou, without a sob or a resistance, Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take, Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance. Angels, to whom the willing task is given, Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest; And Masses on the earth and prayers in heaven, Shall aid thee at the throne of the most Highest. Farewell, but not forever! Brother dear, Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow; Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here, And I will come and wake thee on the morrow. ”Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman,Conclusion: “The Dream of Gerontius.” Fr. Gordon MacRae writes weekly for http://thesestonewalls.com . His writings from prison have also appeared in First Things, The Catholic Response, Catalyst, and many online Catholic venues.

When does Tolerance become Tyranny?

Nobody wants to dispute the fact that tolerance is a virtue, and nobody wants to argue for intolerance, however, there does need to be an ordering of virtue. Tolerance is too often mistaken for charity, and having good manners is too often mistaken for being good. Real goodness, like real charity is tough love because real goodness, like real charity, loves the truth and the truth hurts. (please read this article by Fr. Longnecker. It is really good and helps with one's thinking clearly.)
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/longenecker/the-tightrope-of-tolerance-and-tyranny

What's going on here?

I have known that something has been afoot in America for decades. And, not for the good either. I see violence, rioting, hate filled speech, accusations being hurled around, burning buildings, rule of mobs, people getting hurt. I see it every single night on the news. It's unsettling and uncomfortable. The liberals are angry that their candidate did not win. They are well organized, volatile, hateful, promoting divisions among us - yes, dividing us as a people, effectively getting our eyes off of our goal-- what's that you may ask? To serve God of course. What is God's desire for us? What does He think? What is His opinion of all the riots, violence, hateful and vindictive discourse in the public forums?

The problem is....what can one do? The most important thing is to pray every single day for our great nation and I mean the people and leaders; reject whatever the leftist agenda is insisting that we believe and engage in (e.g. politically correct speech,etc.), be the example of Christian virtue that you know in your heart is what God wants of you (this will require personal sacrifice), speak out whenever confronted by evil teachings (e.g. pornography, the argument of relativism, homosexual marriage, etc.), get our children out of public schools, be the parent that God wants you to be, etc. I'm sure there is more. That's all I can think of right now. We have to stop sitting on our couches feeling befuddled, ambivalent and inert. We are not in heaven yet and have a job to do for God. Let us begin.

The collapse of western civilization is going to be very inconvenient

I just finished reading this really great article written by Fr. Richard Simon (aka, RKIA) about the demise of western civilization. He starts out like this: "I had the privilege of teaching dead languages to comatose seminarians for many years at the seminary of Bathsheba Bible College. There I had the even greater privilege of working with Fr. Stanley, a renowned old professor. Once at lunch in the faculty dining room he sighed and said, “The collapse of western civilization is going to be very inconvenient.”

Then he goes on to give the reader a lesson in 20th century history beginning with the great wars, one and two, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the cold war, and how all this chaos and poverty created a longing for material possessions in our culture and the longing became a goal that had to be fulfilled - suddenly, this desire replaced all other desires in our minds even to the point of forgetting our purpose on this earth we greedily reached into pandora's box and pulled out and consumed everything that would make our world better, brighter, happier, and more fulfilling. Out of this box came "the pill" that brought in the reign of sexual fulfillment. Sex without consequences. Sex for its own sake. Reach into the box again and pull out the idea of abortion and how "right" it felt to rid oneself of any impediment to the joy and gratification of consuming things - food, products, time to spend on oneself without constraint or impediment, and on and on. Reach into the box again and pull out sexual perversion in all its many forms - find justification for that in one's own mind and feel fulfilled. Only it really doesn't work that way, does it. The more we imbibe with unbridled restraint, the more we feel empty, lost, without purpose.

I think the 15th c. artist, Hieronymus Bosch, must have been a prophet for our times. We need to take heed, we need to take seriously the warning that God isn't interested in having us muck around in the mud devising every possible pleasure to enjoy. He wants us to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next. And, yes, it is that simple.

Reverend Know-it-all: RKIA on materialsim and the decline in religious observance

Culture of Death and the Dictatorship of Relativism

I just read a very well written article by thelarryd in Acts of the Apostosy blog about assisted suicide and how it affects our culture in a very deep and profound way. After reading this article and reflecting upon the content, it became even more clear to me that we live in an upside down world where it is considered "brave" to commit suicide when faced with a debilitating illness and "compassionate" to help those who want to leave their bodies due to the pain and suffering they will endure.
He talked about how we've come half circle in our thinking comparing what we are allowing in our society with what the Nazi's did in WWII; the next part he wrote in such a succinct way: "What Brittany Maynard's decision (to take her own life) clearly reveals are two of the great sins of our time: the sin of being inconvenient to others, and the sin of not being in control. She didn’t want to be an inconvenience to her family, to take care of her as her health deteriorated. Such a pity. She deprived them of the opportunity to recognize Christ in her sick, diseased form, the chance to minister to Him. Imagine if St Damien had had the same attitude towards the Hawaiian lepers, or Blessed Mother Teresa towards the outcasts in Calcutta. Perhaps her family isn’t Christian. At worse, if they are, they failed to understand the redemptive value of suffering. Instead, they allowed her to self-abort, because she defined herself as an inconvenience to others." He goes on to say that some people in our culture have promoted the idea that we have the right to take our own lives and that this is a sin as well. Even christians have embraced this belief which is entirely contrary to the gospel of Christ. We do not belong to ourselves but to God. https://actsoftheapostasy.wordpress.com/2014/11/03/brittany-maynard-and-the-sins-of-our-times/#comments
In regards to my title, " the Dictatorship of Relativism": I believe the reason people embrace this kind of thinking is that we are told that everything is "relative". If one says, "you have your truth and I have mine", may sound flexible and conciliatory, but it is entirely false. It might sound even reasonable except that it is really not reasonable at all. Our God said that there is only one truth -- not many truths and that He is truth. He has given us His Word and His Church to guide and lead us through life. He is our good shepherd and we must trust Him to guide us faithfully rather than embrace what sounds reasonable and compelling.

Giving Scandal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights

One doesn't hear much about "Giving Scandal", from any source. So, today, when I read Terry Nelson's journal piece on this subject, it gave me pause -- a moment to reflect. The only time I ever heard a pastor talk about "giving scandal" was when he gave a homily on calumny. I had no idea what that word meant, but he went on to explain that a child had come to him in confession the day before saying that his mother told him that Father was a bad priest because he just bought himself a new car. I have never seen a priest express so much anger from the pulpit - we certainly went away that day knowing that to commit calumny was a grave sin; add to that corrupting a child's mind with gossip. As it turns out, the car was a gift to Father from his Mother and Father.
2284 Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor's tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense.


2285 Scandal takes on a particular gravity by reason of the authority of those who cause it or the weakness of those who are scandalized. It prompted our Lord to utter this curse: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."86 Scandal is grave when given by those who by nature or office are obliged to teach and educate others. Jesus reproaches the scribes and Pharisees on this account: he likens them to wolves in sheep's clothing.87


2286 Scandal can be provoked by laws or institutions, by fashion or opinion. Therefore, they are guilty of scandal who establish laws or social structures leading to the decline of morals and the corruption of religious practice, or to "social conditions that, intentionally or not, make Christian conduct and obedience to the Commandments difficult and practically impossible."88 This is also true of business leaders who make rules encouraging fraud, teachers who provoke their children to anger,89 or manipulators of public opinion who turn it away from moral values.


2287 Anyone who uses the power at his disposal in such a way that it leads others to do wrong becomes guilty of scandal and responsible for the evil that he has directly or indirectly encouraged. "Temptations to sin are sure to come; but woe to him by whom they come!" - CCC (from Abbey Roads Blog)

The Children of this Time

I just read an excellent article about how our children are being socially corrupted in our schools, The Pagans are Happy to Socialize Your Children, by Devin Rose posted on IGNITUM TODAY. It is well worth reading. Here are some excerpts:

"The pagans are happy to socialize your children, and will gladly do so if you send them to public school. In all likelihood, they will be socialized to conform to the prevailing culture, the zeitgeist, and not to Christ. Why? Because the secular society offers a competing vision for life and happiness, one largely at odds to the Christian gospel. Morally relativistic, consumer-driven, materialistic hedonism is appealing in countless ways."

"As a second step, I propose the solution that you offer a better culture to your children. A lively culture based on Christ and His Church, rooted in your family, in the milieu of a community of faith and love. Offer your children a place of beauty and truth, of warmth and welcome, of goodness and loveliness. Offer your children the truth of the Gospel as applied to every part of life."

"In practice, homeschooling offers a good way of doing this. And a good way of not ceding your parental care to others. Some combination of other types of schooling with homeschooling can also offer it. I have yet to see how a five-day-per-week, eight-hours-per-day, standard public school option can offer it. Mom and Dad aren’t allowed in the locker room, where the pagan kids are wanting to sodomize your son."

"Our country is firmly secular, and becoming more so everyday. Public schools are an indispensable apparatus of the state to indoctrinate children into a particular way of seeing the world, of seeing themselves, one that is in many ways antithetical to the Christian Faith."
(http://www.ignitumtoday.com/2013/06/24/the-pagans-are-happy-to-socialize-your-children/?utm_content=buffer85631&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_source=buffer)

Lee James Rigby, British Soldier

Because I couldn't leave the posting of the Muslim extremist standing as it was, I'm posting a picture of the poor soldier who suffered at their hands and lost his life. He has a baby son who will never know his father. It breaks my heart that these kind of vile acts are tolerated so willingly.

The Fanatics who threaten us.....

Published on May 22, 2013

MUSLIM EXTREMIST BEHEAD British SOLIDER in London.
A British soldier has been butchered on a busy London street by two Islamist terrorists, one of whom proclaimed afterwards: "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."

In the first terrorist murder on the British mainland since the 7/7 suicide bombings of 2005, the men attempted to behead the soldier, hacking at him like a "piece of meat" in front of dozens of witnesses, before both were shot by police who took around 20 minutes to arrive.
After reading about this at The Crescat and Abbey Roads I searched around for confirmation and what my friends knew or thought about this terrible and vicious crime. My cousin posted the following by a German survivor of the holocaust during the Nazi reign:
The author of this email is Dr.Emanuel Tanya, a well-known and
well-respected psychiatrist.
_____________________________________________________

A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II,owned a number of large industries and estates.

When he was asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.

'Very few people were true Nazis,' he said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care.
I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come.

My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.'

We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace.

Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of fanatics rampaging across the globe in
the name of Islam.

The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in
history.It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide

.
It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or
tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave.
It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque.
It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals.It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.

The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority,
the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder ofabout 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.

China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people..

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And who can forget Rwanda, which
collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?

History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated off points:

Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up,because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans,Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, andmany others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until
it was too late.

Now Islamic prayers have been introduced into Toronto and other public schools in Ontario, and, yes, in Ottawa too while the Lord's Prayerwas removed (due to being so offensive?) The Islamic way may be peaceful for
the time being in our country until the fanatics move in.

In Australia, and indeed in many countries around the world, many of the most commonly consumed food items have the halal emblem on them.Just look at the back of some of the most popular chocolate bars,
and at other food items in your local supermarket.
Food on aircraft have the halal emblem, just to appease theprivileged minority who are now rapidly expanding within thenation’s shores.

In the U.K, the Muslim communities refuse to integrate and thereare now dozens of “no-go” zones within major cities across the country thatthe police force dare not intrude upon.

Sharia law prevails there, because the Muslim community in those areas refuse to acknowledge British law.

As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts - the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

Suicides in Military

I am so troubled when I read about people committing suicide. A recent article caught my attention, "Military suicides increasing. More soldiers committed suicide in 2012 than were killed in battle for entire year". How infinitely sad; how tragic; why did these people think that destroying themselves was their only option? Did anyone in their lives notice that they needed help? What does this say about our culture - the society we live in that a human being can walk among us so filled with despair and anxiety that no one notices? Perhaps they do notice but choose not to intervene or "interfere" with the one who is lost? It makes me want to cry, to sob out loud, to rend my clothing, and pour ashes on my head when I hear of these poor lost ones who choose to end it all.
Maybe we let them go because we have lost the capacity to care; we have lots of excuses to turn our eyes away from the despairing one -- "I'm too busy", "Let someone else deal with it", I have too much going on right now"....
This morning before the dawn arrived, I lay in bed thinking of these poor lost souls and wondering what God would want me to do, and then something that Mother Teresa of Calcutta said came to my mind, "Serve Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor". If only there were someone in each of their lives who told them how precious they are in God's eyes and that giving in to despair was something that they should not do and that God will give them the strength and the graces they need to carry on each day...perhaps then they would have been willing to pick up their cross and carry it.
"Just allow people to see Jesus in you
to see how you pray
to see how you lead a pure life
to see how you deal with your family
to see how much peace there is in your family
Then you can look straight into their eyes and say
"This is the way". You speak from life, you speak from experience."
Mother Teresa

The Senseless violence in Newtown, Conn

Prayer of St. Francis

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

This is tragic