As you listen to this audio clip, you will bear witness to the evil that we are fighting. The enemies are at our doorstep, and they are frothing at the mouth in their desperate bid to kill innocent babies. Think about that. This is the reaction people are having when they are told slaughtering babies is evil.
Satan is the king of lies. He wants to deceive the entire world into carrying out his bidding. As ambassadors of Heaven, our duty is to stand against him.
We will not submit to hate and darkness, no matter the cost. DONATEBiden and his left-wing crew are doing everything they can to overturn and undermine the Texas Heartbeat Act. But we will not falter.
Babies on the Margins of Societyby Judie BrownShareTweetForwardRead online and share: https://all.org/babies-on-the-margins-of-society/The Diocese of San Bernardino recently conducted what some have called a “paganism in full bloom” event during what was supposed be the holy sacrifice of the Mass. The reason was that this particular Mass opened the conference addressing the “synodal path”—an introduction to the “Synod on Synodality . . . a global consultative process that Pope Francis initiated earlier this month to gather input from Catholics and others around the world about important issues confronting the Church.”For the Diocese of San Bernardino, the sixth largest diocese in the nation, the explanation for such an event might be that there are more indigenous people in this diocese than in any other. This is not a distinction that should excuse the changes made during Mass, but some used this fact to excuse the aberrations that occurred.Pope Francis defined the synodal path events in a document, stating that “the purpose . . . is intended to inspire people to dream about the church we are called to be, to make people’s hopes flourish, to stimulate trust, to bind up wounds, to weave new and deeper relationships, to learn from one another, to build bridges, to enlighten minds, warm hearts, and restore strength to our hands for our common mission.”In other words, the events that occurred during the San Bernardino Mass were nothing more than a means to inspire people to not understand the truth about why there is a holy sacrifice of the Mass, but rather to feel relieved and welcome. In fact, according to the Catholic World Report, during the San Bernardino Diocesan Mass, Bishop Alberto Rojas told the congregation that the synodal path is “an invitation to listen to and welcome ‘all the people in the margins of society.’”Once again, the babies are getting short shrift from not only the Church and her leader but from the people—especially those of indigenous groups—as well. After all, the true members dying at the margins of society are babies, and they are the ones who deserve to be saved from suffering the wounds of abortion.One pro-abortion group reports that, though abortion rates are high among indigenous people, these people are often left out of abortion discussions. So once again, the pro-aborts have their fingers on the pulse of the problem while others seem less than interested.To make the point, I defer to one commentator who wrote in the Navajo Times just last year:Abortion is not a solution for Native women. It is part of the problem. It is another one of the lies that is told to keep our people traumatized and beaten down. I have worked with many women who have had abortions and that trauma only further injures their mental and physical health.In my job, I meet many people at the lowest point of their lives and help them through deep pain. I have worked with many of the so called “unwanted children” who come from abusive or broken homes and I cannot imagine thinking that killing them was the solution. But that is precisely what abortion proposes: not to heal lives, but to eliminate them, to take from us our children, our future – as some have sought to take our past as well.So if Pope Francis truly wants to help the people who live at the margins of society, he should address this tragedy that is befalling them, harming them even further, and causing untold pain. Therein lies the answer to ending the marginalization of indigenous peoples—and all people, for that matter.Perhaps our Church leadership should think more about all minorities—including native Americans and their suffering—at the hands of abortion-minded elites. For example, in Washington, DC, an African American assistant police chief says that when she was a cadet, she was actually told that she should have an abortion or be fired!This is not about a particular group of living citizens but about their suffering at the hands of baby killers. True salvation of the people at the margins of society begins and ends with the termination of acts that kill the innocent. Let us pray everyone sees this and ends the madness.
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Is There a Sadder Commentary on the Journey of the Medical Profession?
Ralph A Capone <rcapone15@comcast.net>
Tue, Oct 26, 2021 at 1:48 PM
To: “Bishop Rene Gracida”
Dear Bishop Gracidas I hope this finds you well. I saw this tweet earlier today from a newly-trained transgendered surgeon specializing in transgender surgery. My thoughts follow…
As if our times aren’t insane enough or aren’t growing more unreal, this comes along. (This following on the heels of another physician, Admiral Levine, another sad man who also requires of us our prayers and compassion.)
Medicine has joined academia, the media and the elite in their progressive march to a solipsistic existentialism, otherwise revealed to many of us, by the grace of God, as our enveloping nightmarish and dystopic society.
What happens when the medical profession engages the abnormal as normal? Disease, itself, loses its meaning and the art of diagnosis and treatment is threatened. Patients will present to doctors as an idea, a social construct or even as a caricature but certainly not as a real flesh and blood human person, male or female, who share a common bond of biology and nature.
If the abnormal is acceptable to society as normal, and the medical profession increasingly adheres to this subjective view of human persons, then it’s only a matter of time for the normal to be abnormalized. An example of this today is the increasingly acceptable odd turn of phrase: “people who can become pregnant” as opposed to saying what is the normal term: “women.”
The roots of this are deep and complex. Secular indifferentism was codified in the so-called “mystery clause” written by Justice Kennedy in Planned Parenthood v Casey in 1991. The mystery of life, of the universe is for each one of us up for grabs, they say. There are no universals, they believe, nor is there an objective reality revealed to us by God nor available to us through our senses or intellect. And so, this is what progressivism would have us believe.
We know differently of course. Religious indifferentism has been equally or perhaps even more devastatingly promoted in our time and culture by the passive assertion (through the silence of the hierarchy) of the notion that there are multiple means of salvation. Our Lord said He is the way, the truth and the life. There is no other ordinary way (although God can choose to work in other extraordinary ways, but He’s given us the normal way He wants us to follow.) This truth, this reality shouldn’t really be controversial nor up for grabs. Judgments or statements of religious truth as given by Our Lord taught emphatically and courageously by bishops and priests is just one way to counter the indifferentism in the society and the Church. In this way the normal means of salvation, revealed to us by God, is rescued from indifference by our rational intellect as faith builds upon reason.
Faith and reason are the two wings which alight us on our homeward journey to God per Pope John Paul II. Once this is rediscovered through our own efforts and by the help of orthodox clergy, the chaff of progressivism and modernism which denies objective reality will be revealed as empty and soulless and discarded by many. We know that God loves us, that’s real. We know that there is sin which darkens our intellect and urges us to commit further evil.
The irreality of so much in our culture today attacks the human person made in God’s image and the family. Transgender ideology is just one front in this battle for our souls and the souls of our children. We must pray that such malevolent efforts to subvert society, the medical profession and even the Church will end. What is aberrant mustn’t become the “norm” by persuasion, coercion, intimidation or by force. By God’s grace we must endlessly resist such efforts even as we pray for our detractors, our enemies and especially those who have been unfortunately afflicted. By God’s grace we pray…
Duplicity Abounds In Chappelle Controversy October 26, 2021 Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the controversy over comedian Dave Chappelle: “Gender is a fact. Every human being in this room, every human being on earth, had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on earth. That is a fact.” Chappelle is twice wrong, but that should not distract us from what he meant. [What he is describing is not gender, which refers to socially learned roles appropriate for males and females, but sex. Ergo, it would be more accurate to say, “sex is a fact.” Also, some babies are born of a Cesarean section.] Leaving aside linguistic technicalities, what Chappelle said is not only inoffensive, it is pedestrian. But in today’s world, where certain protected classes of people demand that the rest of us walk on eggshells—making sure we don’t offend their hyperinflated sensibilities—what he said has been roundly condemned as hate speech by LGBTQ purists and their ilk. In other words, Chappelle is right to stick to his guns and not bow to their twisted understanding of sex. Sex is determined by nature, and nature’s God, and not by some ideological guru who insists that nature does not exist. News flash: The entire world is not a social construction. GLAAD, the homosexual organization, is very upset with Chappelle. It declared that his “brand has become synonymous with ridiculing trans people and other marginalized communities.” The Human Rights Campaign, another homosexual outfit, told Chappelle that “Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary people are non-binary.” Netflix transgender staff members were so angered by what Chappelle said that they staged a walk out. They also drew up a list of demands they want the top brass to honor. Essentially, they want an end to any jokes that might offend them, which means they don’t ever want to be the butt of jokes again, not by Chappelle, not by anyone. Netflix executive producer Jaclyn Moore quit her job after Chappelle’s special, “The Closer,” aired. “I won’t work for @netflix again as long as they keep promoting and profiting from dangerous transphobic content.” Comedian Jaye McBride accused Chappelle of “punching down” with his “mean” remarks. Alyssa Milano said, “it is really important to hold people accountable,” and by that she meant that Chappelle’s “hate speech” special should be discontinued. None of these organizations and individuals should be taken seriously. They’re all phonies. Their interest in objecting to bigotry never seems to include Catholics. GLAAD has been bashing the Catholic Church for years. When Pope Francis came to the U.S. in 2015, it issued a “papal guidebook” advising the media on how to treat him and what words they should adopt, all of which were contentious. Whenever a parish or diocese seeks to operationalize Catholic teachings that it disapproves of, it slams the Church as bigoted. It has sought to cancel me on TV, and has given awards to patently anti-Catholic plays. Human Rights Campaign has a “Catholic initiative” that, among other things, monitors Catholic schools that do not accept its idea of marriage. For example, when a Catholic teacher “marries” someone of the same sex, in clear violation of a contract he or she voluntarily signed, and is then terminated for doing so, it registers its outrage. Moore likes to tweet about “pedo priests,” thus smearing all priests because of the behavior of a few miscreants. McBride has made many similar comments. Milano has denounced her Catholic upbringing, explaining that her two abortions were “something that I needed.” Netflix is also duplicitous. Its co-chief executive, Ted Sarandos, says the company is standing by its big investment in Chappelle—he is their long-time prize comedian—arguing that “The Closer” did not cross the line by inciting “hate or violence.” He is right about that, but there is more to this account. In 2017, Netflix aired “F is for Family.” Episode One featured a husband who had just reconciled with his wife, thanks to Father Pat. He is shown pulling a crucifix out of his pocket, asking the Lord for strength while chanting, “vagina, vagina, vagina.” Episode Six showed their son masturbating while staring at a candle with an image of Our Blessed Mother. Episode Nine depicted the priest—who of course is a homosexual—fondling Jesus’ body on a crucifix, saying, “Oh, you’ve got a swimmer’s body.” Now this may not be hate speech as determined by Sarandos, but many practicing Catholics would beg to differ. Just last year Netflix aired “Cuties,” a soft-core child porn film. Critics hammered it for normalizing pedophilia. For instance, it showed a pre-teen girl taking pictures of her private parts before publishing them online. This is not hate speech, but it is certainly irresponsible and exploitative, inviting sick men to practice their trade. So what’s the answer? We need to lighten up, while also treating every segment of the population the same. Most of us know the difference between cracking a joke that stings and one that is patently offensive. No, not everything goes, but whatever the standard is must be uniformly applied. Kudos to Chappelle for standing up to the sexually confused, especially the bullies among them. Contact Sarandos: teds@netflix.com
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It may seem tiresome to keep repeating truths in opposition to these lies, but we cannot afford to give up and give in. That would be canceling ourselves, and that way madness lies.
President-elect Joe Biden looks at his watch as former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., arrives behind him to be announced as his nominee for secretary of transportation during a news conference in Wilmington, Del., Dec. 16, 2020. (CNS photo/Kevin Lamarque, Pool via Reuters)
I have been reading I Shall Bear Witness, Victor Klemperer’s diaries from 1933-45. Klemperer was a professor of philology and French literature in Dresden, Germany, until he was dismissed because of his Jewish heritage, even though he was a Christian. What saved him from the camps was the fact that his wife was a non-Jewish Christian. Therefore, he lived to tell the tale.
In a very granular way, his daily entries allow us to experience the seeping semantic infiltration through which the Nazis gradually succeeded in establishing a complete state of unreality, not only on the ground but in people’s minds. A day-to-day record of how this was done speaks to our own time. Klemperer’s post war book, titled TheLanguage of the Third Reich, is about how the perversion of language perverted society – from the top down, exactly as it is happening here.
First, some broader context about the meaning of language is necessary. Aristotle said that words indicate the essences of the things they name. There is no difference between the name of a thing and the thing it names. There is an intrinsic connection between words and reality. Thomas Aquinas reaffirmed this relationship, using Genesis to do so. “Man named the animals,” he wrote, “But names should be adapted to the nature of things. Therefore, Adam knew the animals’ natures.” Naming is knowing.
All this changed when modern man decided that things no longer have essences; they are without natures. What, then, are names in relation to them? They are simply constructs that man impresses on natureless reality. There is no longer an intrinsic connection between words and the world. Reality becomes whatever we say it is. Naming is not knowing, but determining. In other words, since reality is nothing in itself, we get to make it up according to our druthers. We even get to make up ourselves. To give a metaphysical basis for this project, Jean-Paul Sartre insisted that existence precedes essence. We somehow are without being what we are. We are what-less creatures. What we become is the result of our will. Or to put it in current parlance, we self-identify as… (fill in the blank).
Does this sound familiar? It should, not only from the semantic gymnastics of the Nazis, but from our very own LGBTQ and transgender ideologies. Dave Chappelle, a comedian of whom I had never heard until the recent brouhaha over his Netflix special, said, “I know that trans people make up words to win arguments…This is a real thing.” Indeed, it is. The challenge from the trans folk seems to come straight out of the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup, in which Chico is caught red-handed lying, and responds: “Who are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes?” The trans version of this is: “Who are you going to believe, me, or my lying chromosomes?: The whole alphabet movement is a charade of made-up words. The word “homosexual”, for instance, was invented in the late nineteenth century precisely to promote the acceptance of sodomy. It took a while, but it worked.
We are the victims of semantic infiltration every bit as much as the Germans were during the Nazi period, although things have not quite progressed to that point yet. We can still resist. However, anyone who thinks that the denial of reality today is any less profound than it was in 1935 Germany is kidding themselves. Success for the LGBTQ-trans dream requires the obliteration of the real and the removal of those who continue to insist on the nature of reality. Does this statement sound too extreme? Then try this: publicly state that surgically disfiguring yourself so that you can pretend you are a person of the opposite sex is both futile and wrong; or proclaim that giving an underage child hormone blockers to skew their sexual orientation is child abuse and immoral – and see how long it takes for you to be canceled.
The purpose of semantic suppression and linguistic jujitsu is to transform reality, or rather to create an ersatz reality, in order to accommodate certain preferred disorders. We don’t want what we do wrong to be wrong in reality. In fact, it’s what we convince ourselves of when we freely do it. Very often, we recover with contrition, but not if we openly celebrate our transgressions. Then, we are lost. And then we must convince others that our wrong is right – in fact, make them accede to this inversion of reality. In response, the very least we ought to do is refuse to celebrate the harm they do to themselves.
Whether then or now, the strategy of attrition is the same: wear down through the repetition of the big lie or lies. It may seem tiresome to keep repeating truths in opposition to these lies, but we cannot afford to give up and give in. That would be canceling ourselves, and that way madness lies. We must insist on the integrity of language and its intrinsic relationship to reality, over and over again.
Let’s look at a recent example of current semantic absurdities, particularly in terms of the misappropriation of parental language.
Earlier this month, Politicoreported that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg had been on paid paternity leave since mid-August, an eight-week stretch. He and his “husband” James Glezman announced, “We are delighted to welcome Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg to our family.” The first thing to notice is that the last names of the infants indicate that the “family” is a matriarchy. Otherwise, why wouldn’t the children have the last name of their “father”?
Next comes the question as to how Buttigieg could be taking “paternity” leave since the dictionary definition of paternity is “the state of being someone’s father.” Yet since he is the “wife” in his relationship with Glezman, he must be the children’s “mother.” Therefore, strictly speaking, he should be on maternity leave, not paternity leave. The black-and-white photo officially introducing the couple’s new babies on social media shows Buttigieg and his “husband” lying in a hospital bed, each cradling one of the newborns. The optics of being photographed in a hospital bed is perfect for encouraging the delusion that one of them gave birth. However, as Dave Chappelle was so indelicate as to mention, “Every human being… on Earth had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on Earth. This is a fact.”
Which raises the subject of the missing person. Throughout all this, the real mother of the twins goes unmentioned. Did she get any maternity leave? Only by excluding the actual mother – by, so to speak, canceling her – can this pretend family displace the reality of motherhood so that Buttigieg can take it on himself. Who will explain to the twins as they are growing up where their mother is and through what ruse they were taken from her?
When criticized for being missing in action from his cabinet position for two months, Buttigieg became defensive: “Look, paid family leave is important. It’s important as a matter of family values. It’s important to our economy.” I’m scratching my head over how not working and still getting paid is important to the economy. That must be part of Bidenonmics, the $3.5 trillion budget that doesn’t cost anything. There is nothing wrong with stay-at-home moms, so long as they are not receiving government pay at the level of a cabinet officer, like the Secretary of Transportation, which is reportedly $221,400. Not bad work if you can get it.
Babies are cute and one’s sympathy naturally goes out to those who care for them. Buttigieg is counting on this misplaced compassion to get away with his hijacking of what families really are. He takes all this as being “pro-family.” The reason he’s been able to go AWOL for two months is that “what we have right now is an administration that’s actually pro-family.” If you are having trouble decoding this, simply remember that everything is actually its opposite.
To preserve our sanity, we need to keep in mind the magnitude of what has been lost in the great act of forgetting which our current culture is. The 1885 Murphy v. Ramsey Supreme Court ruling expressed what was once considered the “pro-family” common sense of mankind. It affirmed that
the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guarantee of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.
We will need our own Walter Klemperer to parse all the semantic nonsense when this is over, so that we can understand how we got from Murphy to Buttigieg, and so that our words adhere to reality once again.
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About Robert R. Reilly 16 ArticlesRobert R. Reilly was Senior Advisor for Information Strategy (2002-2006) for the US Secretary of Defense, after which he taught at National Defense University. He was the director of the Voice of America (2001-2002) and served in the White House as a Special Assistant to the President (1983-1985). A graduate of Georgetown University and the Claremont Graduate University, his books include The Closing of the Muslim Mind, Making Gay Okay, and Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music. His most recent book, America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding, is published by Ignatius Press.
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Is the Francis “Cheerlead[er]” Opus Dei Cult-like as well as Left-wing and Right-wing?
The Traditionalist Catholic Remnant editor Michel Matt has shown his problems with“the ‘conservative’ ‘watchdog of orthodoxy’, Opus Dei”saying “Meanwhile, back at the Circle O (Opus Dei, that is), it’s business as usual… As long as they have their pristine place in the Church with tons of money and are left alone, they will cheerlead whatever The Argentinian [Francis] says.”:
Yes, that’s right– the “conservative” “watchdog of orthodoxy”, Opus Dei, our sentry at the gate, is still keeping the sheeple in the dark about what’s really going on here. As a friend recently noted, “They will not only go along with, but boldly champion whatever the man in white says, no matter what. They willfully ignore all problems–including heresy, approving adultery, banning death penalty, not answering credible sex abuse cover up allegations–the whole nine yards. As long as they have their pristine place in the Church with tons of money and are left alone, they will cheerlead whatever The Argentinian says.”[https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/headline-news-around-the-world/item/4095-opus-dei-promoting-pope-farrell-s-synod-on-young-people]
“Finally, one cannot consider as schismatics those who refuse to obey the Roman Pontiff because they would hold his person suspect or, because of widespread rumors, doubtfully elected (as happened after the election of Urban VI), or who would resist him as a civil authority and not as pastor of the Church.” (Wernz-Vidal, Ius Canonicum [Rome: Gregorian 1937], 7:398,)
Does Voris—or his Opus Dei cult mind-controllers—even care? [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/10/wernz-vidal-one-cannot-consider-as.html]
Is Opus Dei cult-like?
The conservative Catholic Damian Thompson claims some commenters on the rich organization go too far in their attacks on its seemingly cult-like ways:
“It is nearly a decade since Michael Walsh’s excellent book The Secret World of Opus Dei revealed the true face of ‘the Work’, the time would seem ripe for a proper update. Sadly, Their Kingdom Come is nothing of the sort. Although it scores a few direct hits – quoting a Vatican archivist, for example, on the way Opus researchers dig their way into official records and rewrite them – most of its serious charges are supported by nothing more than innuendo. Robert Hutchison detects the hand of the Work in every financial scandal or political initiative involving the Vatican since the Second World War, but he is frustratingly unable to prove his points, stitching together a crude tapestry of allegations with phrases ‘said to be’ and ‘reportedly’.”
The biggest mistake Pope John Paul II has ever made, by Damian Thompson, The Daily Telegraph, 6 September 1997 [https://roberthutchison.ch/books/their-kingdom-come/their-kingdom-come-reviews/]
But, Thompson isn’t afraid to reveal its problematic ways:
– Damian Thompson@holysmoke·I often find it weird that outrageous behaviour from Rome goes unremarked. One factor: Opus Dei. Commentators who belong to it are not encouraged to criticise Francis. [https://twitter.com/holysmoke/status/1251627921174921216?lang=en]– Escrivá: always keen to listen to visitors
With all this phone hacking around, I think it’s time electronic eavesdroppers had their own patron saint, don’t you? As it happens, I have the perfect candidate: St Josemaria Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei, who died as recently as 1975 and was canonised by Pope John Paul II in 2002.
A few years ago, I interviewed a distinguished priest who, as a young man, had been a member of Opus Dei and close associate of Escrivá. My jaw dropped when, half way through our conversation, he mentioned casually that “The Father” had installed bugs in Opus’s Rome headquarters in order to tape-record the conversations of visitors waiting to see him. I asked him how he knew.
“Because I helped him do it,” came the reply.
The Vatican refused to hear this priest’s testimony when Escrivá was being assessed for sainthood; conveniently, the role of Devil’s Advocate had been abolished. Of course, all saints had flaws. It’s just that you don’t expect them to share the same ones as Richard Nixon (a far more sympathetic character than Escrivá, in my book).
Anyway, the reason I’m bringing up Opus Dei is that this controversial organisation – comically misrepresented in The Da Vinci Code but still secretive and slippery – is planning to open two independent secondary schools in south-east England.
Or, to adopt the official party line, a group of parents, some of whom happen to belong to Opus Dei, are opening schools “inspired by the teachings” of St Josemaria. Hmm. Don’t get me wrong, Escrivá was undoubtedly holy, but he was also vain, a snob and a spiritual control freak. While some of his followers are exemplary Christians, the saturnine ethos of Opus bothers many Catholics, including some outstanding clergy.
A priest I know used to hear the confessions of primary school children at an Opus Dei school. “It was disturbing,” he told me. “I’d hear seven-year-olds riddled with adult scruples, worried that their disposition towards the sacrament wasn’t sufficiently pure and their sin wouldn’t be forgiven.”[https://opusfrei.org/show.php?id=360]
Wikipedia presents evidence that Opus Dei may be cult-like:
Opponents allege Opus Dei uses cult-like practices in recruitment. For instance, Jesuit priest and writer James Martin wrote that Opus Dei puts great emphasis on recruiting, and pointed to Escriva’s writings which say “You must kill yourselves for proselytism.”[55] David Clark, a consultant who specialises in helping people leave cults, claimed in 2006 that Opus Dei used a cult-like recruitment technique called “love bombing“, in which potential members are showered with flattery and admiration by members of the organization in order to entice them into joining.[56] The mother of a member at Harvard Universityclaimed the group separated her daughter from her family, and in 1991 founded Opus Dei Awareness Network, a group that aims to provide information and critique on the group’s practices. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_Opus_Dei]
The strange thing about supporters of the wealthy organization is that they come from both left-wing and right-wing Catholics such as Robert Royal and John Allen as well as others:
Messori, a journalist associated with Opus Dei, also identifies political ideology as the root of some controversies involving some Jesuits. After Vatican II certain sectors of the Church became politically and theologically “liberal,” including Jesuits in Latin America who were experimenting with “liberation theology.” In contrast, some Opus Dei laymen had been working for the far-right Franco regime in Spain and similar regimes in Latin America. Escrivá himself gave a spiritual retreat to Franco, and the numerary priest and bishop Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne was reportedly friendly with Peru’s president Fujimori and unsupportive of human rights advocates.[46][47][48] Messori emphasizes, however, that Opus Dei has also had members from left-wing parties such as the UK Labour Party (see Opus Dei and politics).
[… ]
“Nothing attracts criticism like success,” says author Robert Royal, “In the seventy years since its founding, the Work has grown to almost eighty thousand members, over half in Europe, another third in the Americas, and the rest scattered throughout the world. As Vittorio Messori notes, this movement, which was once thought of as a pre-Vatican II fossil by progressives, has not only survived the heyday of progressive Catholic movements, but continues growing while the left in general, religious and lay, is shrinking.”
According to Time magazine, “church liberals, once riding high, have understood for decades that Rome does not incline their way. They feel abandoned, says John L. Allen Jr., ‘and whenever you feel that way, there’s a natural desire to find someone to blame.’” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_Opus_Dei] Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia.
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet.
Francis Notes:
– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Universities are making themselves not just disliked and
disreputable but ultimately irrelevant and replaceable.
By Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
October 24, 2021
(Emphasis added)
Many of our once revered and most hallowed institutions are failing us. To mention only the most significant ones: our top-ranking military echelon, the leadership of our federal investigatory and intelligence agencies, the government medical establishment—and of course the universities.
For too long American higher education’s reputation of global academic superiority has rested mostly on the sciences, mathematics, physics, technology, medicine, and engineering—in other words, not because of the humanities and social sciences, but despite them. The humanities have become too often anti-humanistic. And the social sciences are deductively anti-scientific. Both quasi-religious woke disciplines have eroded confidence in colleges and universities, infected even the STEM disciplines and professional schools, and torn apart the civic unity of the United States. Indeed, much of the current Jacobin revolution was birthed and fueled by American universities, despite their manifest hypocrisies and derelictions.
Never in U.S. history have elite universities piled up such huge endowments, which soared during the lockdown. Harvard has $40 billion, Yale $30 billion, Stanford $28 billion, Princeton $25 billion and so on. The tax-free income from these huge sums ensures equally extravagant budgets that are somewhat insulated from market realities—at least in the sense that the larger endowments grew, the more likely university costs rose beyond the annual rate of inflation, and the greater aggregate student debt rose.
Just as importantly, spending per pupil is rarely calibrated to whether graduating students leave better educated than when they arrived—the ostensible purpose of universities.
There are certainly no “exit tests” for certification of the BA degree, in the manner of, say, a bar exam, that might set a minimum national standard for any acquisition of knowledge. Such standardized reassurance would rescue the BA degree from the growing general public perception that the campus has become politically warped, therapeutic, a poor measure of real knowledge, and is now largely a cattle brand of a sort that qualifies its holder for some sort of non-physical labor.
The result over the last few years of this relatively new higher-education marriage of big money and radical ideas is a strange disconnect. On the one hand, never have elite (though often indebted) college students been so demanding of apartment-style dorm living, latte bars, and rock-climbing walls, while virtue signaling their compensatory proletariat bona fides.
Never have universities been more able financially to subsidize and guarantee their own student loans. And yet they have outsourced that responsibility to federal guaranteed student loan programs. The result of that moral hazard of never being held accountable for rampant inflationary spikes in tuition, room, and board costs, is that universities over the last 30 years spent like drunken sailors on non-essentials: from diversity czars to in loco parentis therapeutic “centers” to Club Med accommodations—even as at the core test scores dived, grade inflation soared, and graduates increasingly did not impress employers.
So, universities themselves are largely responsible for the current $1.7 trillion in aggregate student college debt. Such a staggering encumbrance is not just the concern of higher education, but affects the entire country in manifest ways, well aside from emboldening our global rivals and enemies. Even communist China is spending far more of their higher education budgets on the sciences, math, and liberal arts than therapeutics, social justice crusades, and diversity, equity, and inclusion audits.
Students with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan obligations are likely to marry later, delay child rearing, cannot purchase a home in their 20s or even 30s, and more easily slide into prolonged adolescence. The country itself is experiencing a glut of the over- but not necessarily well-educated: history’s menu for radicalized and angry youth who feel they are properly credentialed with various letters after their names but suspect they lack the training and skills to enter the workforce, be productive, and earn commensurate good pay.
There is also something terribly wrong about well-compensated tenured professors of the social sciences and humanities —whose own lives are conventionally materialist and bourgeoise — spooning out the usual radical race/class boilerplate to indebted students who in a sense have borrowed heavily to pay a large percentage of faculty salaries.
Few of today’s woke 20-somethings will graduate with rigorous instruction in language, logic, and the inductive methods with a shared knowledge of literature, history, science, and math. At far less cost, they would likely find better online classes in those now ossified subjects than in the courses that they went into hock to finance.
Never in U.S. history has the university been so at odds with not just the general pulse of America, but with its major traditions, institutions, and very Constitution. Most recently, Americans have been urged by university law schools and political science departments to eliminate the 233-year-old Electoral College, to pack the Supreme Court after 150 years of a nine-justice bench, to end the 180-year filibuster, to admit two new states to gain four progressive senators, and to question the constitutional cornerstone of two senators per state.
It is chiefly the university that scolds Americans that their customs, traditions, and laws have little moral weight, that they are merely constructs reflecting “white supremacy,” detached from either a natural law common to all humans or customs carefully cross-examined and honed after decades and even centuries of use in the public square.
Once abstract campus theorizing about open borders, hiring and admissions based on race, zero bail even for repeat felons, critical-legal-theory district attorneys, and Green New Deal energy policies have now all seeped out to warp the daily lives of Americans.
Yet unlike free speech movements of the 1960s, in 2021 it is the university that now wars on the First Amendment, castigating unwelcome expression as “hate speech” if found inconvenient for its agendas.
It is the university where the relevant amendments to the Constitution governing due process and confronting one’s accusers is jettisoned when the accused is of the wrong gender or race or both. It is the university that has renounced the legacy of the civil rights movement of the 1960s that once championed open housing, desegregation, and racially blind criteria.
Instead, many colleges now allow students (at least those self-identified as “marginalized”) to pick their dormitory roommates on the basis of race, to declared certain areas of campus racially segregated “safe spaces,” and to discriminate in student admissions and faculty hiring. If Martin Luther King, Jr. were to return to Harvard, Yale, or Stanford and to repeat verbatim the speech I heard (at age 11) that he gave in 1965 at San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, about equality, shared humanity, and the need to excel at whatever task one takes on, regardless of his station (“Be the best of whatever you are”), he would likely be jeered and derided as an integrationist and assimilationist.
One final irony? From the university we hear calls to either end or reform radically our major institutions and cultural referents: recalibrate the First and Second Amendments, scrap the border, tear down that statue, rename this plaza, do away with existing classes of gender pronouns, heckle speakers, and destroy the lives of unwoke faculty. And yet from such critical faculty scolds, there is oddly zero self-criticism or indeed any self-reflection of their own shortcomings.
ü Do academics ponder over why the reputations of their universities are eroding in the public mind?
ü What exactly is the campus responsibility for graduating students with bleak job possibilities and unsustainable debt?
ü Why is the clueless 21-year-old graduate now the stock joke of popular culture and comedy?
ü How did the enlightened institutionalize a two-tier system of privileged tenured grandees resting on the backs of exploited contingent and part-time faculty?
ü Why are critics of a supposedly non-transparent American society so secretive about their own admissions, hiring, and budgetary policies?
ü And how did the locus of cheap anti-corporate boilerplate become so deeply reliant on siphoning corporate cash?
The racialized civil strife of 2020-21, and indeed the entire woke and cancel-culture revolutions originated ultimately from campus fixtures who never suffer the real-life consequences of their abstractions. And meanwhile, China, the greatest threat that the United States has faced in 30 years, smiles at our universities’ importation of most of the bankrupt and suicidal ideas abroad, from Frankfurt School nihilism and Foucauldian postmodern relativism to Soviet sclerosis and Maoist cultural revolutionary suicide.
Unless the university itself is rebooted, its rejection of meritocracy, its partisan venom, its tribalism, its war with free speech and due process, and its inability to provide indebted students with competitive educations will all ensure that that it is not just disliked and disreputable but ultimately irrelevant and replaceable.
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Part I: The Dangers of Government Falsehoods: Background on Government Propaganda Machines
Introduction
The danger of government lies, and the implications of official deception of whole peoples and nations, could not be more relevant than it is today when our God given natural rights and our Constitutional freedoms are systematically being ground into the dust under the guise of protecting the “public health” from Covid-19.
In his 1928 classic Propaganda, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward L. Bernays [1] explains approvingly of how governments, powerful corporations, and foundations are capable of manipulating and regimenting the public mind in all areas of life including war, politics, business, education, and medical science.
According to Professor Mark Crispin Miller,[2] who wrote a new introduction to the Bernays masterpiece in 2004:
“Bernays (1891-1995) pioneered the scientific techniques of shaping and manipulating public opinion, which is called ‘engineering of consent.’ During World War I, he was an integral part – along with Walter Lippmann – of the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI), a powerful propaganda machine that advertised and sold the war to the American people as one that would ‘Make the World Safe for Democracy.’ The marketing strategies for all future wars would be based on the CPI model.”[3]
The Existence of an Invisible Government
Writing in the 1920s, Bernays, an Austrian-American Jew, “the father of public relations,” gleefully acknowledged the reality of “invisible governors,” who rule the world and bring organization out of chaos to society:[4]
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. …
Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership. Their ability to supply needed ideas, and by their key position in the social structure. …[5]
Of course, the most important factor Bernays initially leaves out is MONEY. After all, today’s contenders for domination in the New World Order – like Bill Gates or George Soros or Mark Zuckerberg – would be just another Tom, Dick, or Harry without their billions.
Later, however, Bernays does admit that “the invisible government tends to be concentrated in the hands of the few because of the expense of manipulating the social machinery which controls the opinions and habits of the masses.”[6]
WWI Created New Propaganda Techniques
Bernays claims that:
It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind. The American government and numerous patriotic agencies developed a technique which, to most persons accustomed to bidding for public acceptance, was new. They not only appealed to the individual by means of every approach – visual, graphic, and auditory – to support the national endeavor, but they also secured the cooperation of the key men in every group – persons whose mere word carried authority to hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers. They thus automatically gained the support of fraternal, religious, commercial, patriotic, social, and local groups whose members took their opinions from their accustomed leaders and spokesmen, or from the periodical publications which they were accustomed to read and believe. At the same time, the manipulators of patriotic opinion made use of the mental clichés and the emotional habits of the public to produce mass reactions against the alleged atrocities, the terror, and the tyranny of the enemy. IT WAS ONLY NATURAL, AFTER THE WAR ENDED, THAT INTELLIGENT PERSONS SHOULD ASK THEMSELVES WHETHER IT WAS POSSIBLE TO APPLY A SIMILAR TECHNIQUE TO THE PROBLEMS OF PEACE (emphasis added).[7]
Interestingly, Bernays states that the new dictatorship is not limited to government matters but embraces dictators in all fields of life including that of fashion. For example, he notes that Paris fashion leaders set the mode of the short skirt [worn by bob-haired flappers] for which, twenty years before, any woman would have simply been arrested and thrown into jail by the New York City police, and the entire women’s clothing industry, capitalized at hundreds of millions of dollars, must be reorganized to conform to their dictum.[8]
In his chapter, “The Psychology of Public Relations,” Bernays asks, “If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?”[9]
Within certain limits and up to a certain point, Bernays answers in the affirmative.
Citing the earlier studies of Wilfred Trotter and Gustave Le Bon on group psychology, which established that the “collective mind” differs from the “individual mind” or “consciousness,” Bernays affirms that “the group mind does not think in the strict sense of the word. In place of thoughts, it has impulses, habits, and emotions. In making up its mind, its first impulse is usually to follow the example of a trusted leader.”[10]
“But when the example of the leader is not at hand and the herd must think for itself, it does so by means of clichés, pat words, or images which stand for a whole group of ideas and experiences,” says Bernays.[11] “By playing upon an old cliché, or manipulating a new one, the propagandist can sometimes swing a whole mass of group emotions,” he says, adding that, “Usually, the individual mind will succumb to the will of the crowd.”[12]
Before Bernays moves on to explain how propaganda functions in specific departments of group activity including business, politics, education, social work, and the media, he states:
I have tried to explain the place of propaganda in modern American life and something of the methods by which it operates – to tell the why, the what, the who and the how of the invisible government which dictates our thoughts, directs our feelings, and controls our actions.
In 1928, the same year Bernays’ Propaganda was published, pacifist British MP, Arthur Ponsonby, issued his anti-propaganda classic Falsehood in War Time – Containing An Assortment of Lies Circulated Throughout The Nations During the Great War.[14]The modest-size book, available as a free PDF online, highlights major lies that were inflicted upon the hapless wartime civilian populations of the Allied Forces (Russia, France, Britain, and the United States) against the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria) during the First World War.
Ponsonby acknowledges in his introduction that falsehood is a recognized and extremely useful weapon in warfare, and every country used it quite deliberately including the Allied Forces and the Central Powers 1) to deceive its own people, 2) to attract neutrals 3) and to mislead the enemy. [15]
According to Ponsonby:
The ignorant and innocent masses in each country are unaware at the time that they are being misled, and when it is all over, only here and there are the falsehoods discovered and exposed. As it is all past history, and the desired effect has been produced by the stories and statements, no one troubles to investigate the facts and establish the truth.[16]
Ponsonby, however, does take the trouble to enumerate a number of British, French, American, and other Allied and Central Powers official wartime falsehoods including a number of atrocity fabrications like:
The Belgian Baby Without Hands – That German soldiers were cutting off the hands of babies and children (and eating the parts), and impaling them on bayonets; and violating Belgium nuns, were popular themes of Allied propaganda.[17] When the reports were questioned by British members of Parliament, (and in the case of the violation of Catholic nuns investigated by the Vatican), no evidence was ever produced to support the charges against “the Huns.”
The Crucifixion of a Canadian (or an American or a young naked girl) sometimes on a barn door – These reports were backed up by fellow soldiers even though there were no eyewitnesses. In the case of the Canadian officer said to be crucified near the Belgium town of Ypres, U.S. Army Commander General Peyton C. March later denied the story. However, on April 12, 1919, the U.S. magazine, Nation, published a letter from Royal West Kent Private E. Loader, who declared he had witnessed the crucifixion of the Canadian soldier. The letter was subsequently repudiated by Captain E. N. Bennett who wrote to the Nation, informing its editors that there was no such private on the rolls of the Royal West Kents, and that the 2nd Battalion was in India during the entire war.[18]
The Corpse Factory – On April 16, 1917, the British Times reported that Germany was chemically treating the dead bodies of its soldiers (and enemy soldiers) to 1) distill glycerin for the manufacture of munitions, 2) to provide fat for lubricating oils 3) and was grinding human bones into powder for mixing with pigs’ food and making fertilizer.[19]
To make sure the lie gained world-wide traction, the Crown and Parliament, both of which were well aware that the propaganda reports were ludicrous and absolutely false, remained silent, even when informed that the “Corpse Factories” were, in fact, factories for the disposal of dead carcasses of horses and other animals found on the battlefield.[20]
It was not until December of 1925 that the truth of the matter was finally admitted by Sir Austen Chamberlain KG[21], the half-brother of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who put the final nail in the propaganda coffin when he bluntly stated, “there was never any foundation for it [the rumour].”[22]
The Sinking of the Lusitania
Ponsonby’s report on the tragic sinking of the RMS Lusitania, a British ocean liner on route from New York City to Liverpool, England on May7, 1915, is especially instructive since the event provided “the necessary lever at last to bring America into the war.”[23] Americans were told that a German U-boat had torpedoed a defenseless passenger ship flying the American flag and bearing only civilian passengers and an ordinary cargo.
Unfortunately, the “ordinary cargo,” consisted of thousands of cases of small arms ammunition, shrapnel shells, and brass percussion fuses weighing about 173 tons. The ship, which had been secretly financed by the British Admiralty and fitted for military service including gun mounts installed on her decks,[24] sank in a record 18 minutes killing 1,198 passengers and crew including 124 Americans.
Had the Lusitania only carried “ordinary cargo,” it is estimated that time and circumstances would have permitted many of these victims to have survived and reach the Irish shore at Kinsale, instead of being blown to bits by the second ammunition explosion.[25]
However, the British and American propaganda Lusitania campaign that followed ensured that all the blame fell upon Germany, and on April 6, 1917, the United States declared war on Germany.
The reader will note that when Progressivist U.S. Senator Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette (1906-1925) stated that the Lusitania carried munitions, he was threatened with expulsion from the U.S. Senate. The threat was withdrawn when Mr. Dudley Field Malone, collector at the port of NYC, confirmed that the ship carried a large munition cargo consigned to the British Government, saying he would testify in favor of Senator La Follette.[26] However, the Wilson administration refused to permit the publication of the facts.[27]
U.S. Government Opens Propaganda Office
As noted earlier, the U.S. Committee on Public Information (CPI) patterned itself after the British Crewe House propaganda machine headed by Alfred C.W. Harmsworth, later Alfred Lord Northcliffe, a British journalist and legendary newspaper magnate.[28]
The CPI, also known as the Creel Committee, named after its chairman, journalist George Creel, was the United States Government’s first official Office of Wartime Propaganda Machine.
“The frenzy with which the whole propaganda was conducted in America surpassed anything we experienced here [Britain],” Ponsonby says.[29]
Some atrocity fabrications, like the Germans giving poisoned candy to children to eat and live hand-grenades to play with, were so outrageous that General John Pershing, General of the Armies, who served as Commander of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front during the Great War, issued a cablegram that instructed the U.S. War Department to publicly disavow these stories which had no basis in fact.[30]
Similarly, Admiral William S. Sims, Commander of all U.S. Naval Forces in Europe, repudiated hideous U.S. news stories and movies promoted by the CPI against German submarine commanders. In a statement published by the New York Tribune in April 1923, Sims stated that “There exists no authentic report of cruelties ever having been committed by the commander or the crew of a German submarine. The Press reports about cruelties were only meant for propaganda purposes.”[31]
WWI War Ends, But Government Propaganda Machine Continues
Unfortunately, as Bernays points out, why should Government kill a good thing for itself?
And Ponsonby prophetically states, “… of course, we know that such clever propagandists are equally clever in dealing with us after the event as in dealing with the enemy at the time.”[32]
The CPI’s successor in WWII was the Office of War Information (OWI) promulgated by Executive Order 9182 under the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration on June 13, 1942. The various propaganda departments of the OWI included the Foreign Information Service, Bureau of Intelligence, Psychological Warfare Branch, Book and Magazine Bureau, Extensive Surveys Division, Bureau of Public Inquiries, Bureau of Motion Pictures, and the Propaganda Intelligence Section, etc.[33]
The OWI was officially terminated on September 15, 1945, but was succeeded through the years till the present day by a litany of federal propaganda departments including the United States Information Service, the Office of Strategic Services, and the Central Intelligence Agency.[34]
Ponsonby’s final observations that:
War is fought in this fog of falsehood, a great deal of it undiscovered and accepted as truth. The fog arises from fear and is fed by panic (bold added). Any attempt to doubt or deny even the most fantastic story has to be condemned at once as unpatriotic, if not traitorous. This allows a free field for the rapid spread of lies.[35]
In wartime, failure to lie is negligence, the doubting of a lie a misdemeanor, the declaration of the truth a crime (bold added).[36]
In future wars we have now to look forward to a new and far more efficient instrument of propaganda – the Government control of broadcasting. Whereas, therefore, in the past we have used the word “broadcast” symbolically as meaning the efforts of the Press and individual reporters, in the future, we must use the word literally, since falsehood can now be circulated UNIVERSALLY, SCIENTIFICALLY, AND AUTHORITATIVELY (caps and bold added).[37]
There are some who object to war because of immorality, there are some who shrink from the arbitrament of arms because of its increased cruelty and barbarity; there are a growing number who protest this method, at the outset known to be unsuccessful, of attempting to settle international disputes because of its imbecility and futility. But there is not a living soul in any country who does not deeply resent having his passions roused, his indignation inflamed, his patriotism exploited, and his highest ideals desecrated by CONCEALMENT, SUBTERFUGE, FRAUD, FALSEHOOD, TRICKERY, AND DELIBERATE LYING ON THE PART OF THOSE IN WHOM HE IS TAUGHT TO REPOSE CONFIDENCE AND TO WHOM HE IS ENJOINED TO PAY RESPECT (caps and bold added).[38]
The Current Battle for Our Humanity
I don’t think the reader can find a better description of the current Government debacle surrounding the Coronavirus (Covid-19) “pandemic” than Ponsonby’s warning made almost 100 years ago.
The nature of the current war in America and the world, being orchestrated by the reigning Technological and Pharmaceutical Oligarchies of the so-called New World Order is much different than previous wars we have fought. And the implications of failing to defeat the enemy are much greater because we are fighting the ultimate battle for God, family, and nation.
Indeed, what is at stake is what it means to be HUMAN!
[2] Mark Crispin Miller is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. See https://markcrispinmiller.com. The 2004 edition of Propaganda with Miller’s introduction, which this writer used, is available at Amazon.com. As Miller notes, “Propaganda mainly tells us that Bernays’ true métier [job or occupation] was to help giant players with their various sales and image problems.”
[3] Bernays, Propaganda, commentary by Miller on back cover
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on The nature of the current war in America and the world, being orchestrated by the reigning Technological and Pharmaceutical Oligarchies of the so-called New World Order is much different than previous wars we have fought. And the implications of failing to defeat the enemy are much greater because we are fighting the ultimate battle for God, family, and nation.
Holy Communion is the Bread of Life, the Medicine of Immortality, the eternal pledge of God’s Infinite Love. The whole visible creation is as nothing at all compared to Jesus’ Real Presence among us in His Eucharist, which is truly and substantially His Body and His Blood, united to His Soul and His Divinity.
Holy Communion is the Fruit of the Tree of Life which is the Cross of Christ. In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, Heaven comes to Earth, the gates of Paradise are open to us, and the Sacrifice of Calvary is offered on our Altars. And the most precious Fruit of that adorable Sacrifice is the Holy Body and Precious Blood of Jesus Christ. By devoutly eating of the Fruit of this Tree, we inherit eternal Life.https://11c2ddb163ed7aabe24aa0a330da4ba4.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Holy Communion devoutly received has three principal effects (1) the infusion of grace and corresponding increase in merit, (2) the remission of venial sins and a preservation from future mortal sin, and (3) the restoration of a deeper abiding union between Christ and our souls, that prepares us for everlasting union with Christ.
The First Effect of Holy Communion: Increased Merit and Sanctifying Grace
For My flesh is meat indeed: and My blood is drink indeed. He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, abideth in Me, and I in him (Jn 6:55).
Our Lord promised us that we who are given the heavenly privilege to eat of His flesh or drink of His blood grow in Grace into an abiding, lasting union with Him.
In Fr. Michael Mueller’s must-read work, Blessed Eucharist: Our Greatest Treasure, Father explains the priceless value of the slightest degree of sanctifying Grace. If only we knew and appreciated the Treasure first Sacrificed to God, and then offered to us as the living Victim on our Altars! All the wealth of all the world is as a little dust before the Lamb of God in One Holy Communion!
The Holy Eucharist, then, differs from the other Sacraments in this, that while the other Sacraments bestow upon us one or another of the fruits of Christ’s merits, this gives us the grace and merits of our Saviour in their source. The soul, therefore, receives an immense increase of Sanctifying Grace at each Communion. Dear Christian, let us reflect upon this for a moment… St. Thomas tells us that the lowest degree of Sanctifying Grace is worth more than all the riches of the world. Think, then, of all the riches of this world! The mines of gold, of precious stones, the forests of costly wood, and all the hidden stores of wealth, for the least of which treasures the children of this world are willing to toil and struggle and sin for a whole lifetime. Again, consider that the lowest grace which a humble Catholic Christian receives at the rails of the sanctuary at dawn of day, before the great world is astir, outweighs all those riches.
But why do I draw my comparison from the things of this world?
St. Teresa, after her death, appeared to one of her sisters in religion and told her that all the Saints in Heaven, without exception, would be willing to come back to this world and to remain here till the End of Time, suffering all the miseries to which our mortal state is subject, only to gain one more degree of Sanctifying Grace and the eternal glory corresponding to it.(!)
Let all mortal flesh be silent, and stand with fear and trembling, and meditate nothing earthly within itself:—For the King of kings and Lord of lords, Christ our God, comes forward to be sacrificed, and to be given for food to the faithful; and the bands of angels go before Him with every power and dominion, the many-eyed cherubim, and the six-winged seraphim, covering their faces, and crying aloud the hymn, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.
Let the example of the Angels inspire in us greater zeal and more rapt devotion when we assist at the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar before receiving Holy Communion
The Second Effect of Holy Communion: The Remission of Venial Sins and Preservation
As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth Me, the same also shall live by Me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead. He that eateth this bread, shall live for ever (Jn 6:58-59).
Our Lord seems to connect regularly eating of His Flesh with overcoming sin, obtaining its remission and finally departing in the state of Grace. This is because, as the Council of Trent teaches us, as cited in a decree of Pope St. Pius X encouraging frequent Communion,
The desire of Jesus Christ and of the Church that all the faithful should daily approach the sacred banquet is directed chiefly to this end, that the faithful, being united to God by means of the Sacrament, may thence derive strength to resist their sensual passions, to cleanse themselves from the stains of daily faults, and to avoid these graver sins to which human frailty is liable… Hence the Holy Council calls the Eucharist ‘the antidote whereby we may be freed from daily faults and be preserved from mortal sin.’
Holy Communion is that Daily and Super-Substantial Bread [see Mt. 6:11, compared to Lk. 11:3 – panem nostrum supersubstantialem in the Vulgate] which Mother Church desires us to strive to live in such a way so as to receive daily. The Catechism of the Council of Trent cites St. Augustine in this regard, ‘St. Augustine, however, lays down a most certain norm: Live in such a manner as to be able to receive every day.’ …The words of St. Augustine, ‘Thou sinnest daily, receive daily,’ express not his opinion only, but that of all the Fathers who have written on the subject, as anyone may easily discover who will carefully read them. That there was a time when the faithful approached Holy Communion every day we learn from the Acts of the Apostles. All who then professed the faith of Christ burned with such true and sincere charity that, devoting themselves to prayer and other works of piety, they were found prepared to communicate daily.
And in the same Catechism, the remission of venial sins is mentioned as one of the proper effects of the Eucharist,
It cannot be doubted that by the Eucharist are remitted and pardoned lighter sins, commonly called venial. Whatever the soul has lost through the fire of passion, by falling into some slight offence, all this the Eucharist, cancelling those lesser faults, repairs, in the same way (not to depart from the illustration already adduced) as natural food gradually restores and repairs the daily waste caused by the force of the vital heat within us. Justly, therefore, has St. Ambrose said of this heavenly Sacrament: ‘That daily bread is taken as a remedy for daily infirmity. But these things are to be understood of those sins for which no actual affection is retained.’ It is of the utmost importance that they who purpose and resolve to love and be devoted to Jesus Christ in His Sacrament of Infinite Love aim, at least by degrees, to give up all attachment to sinful living.
The Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist therefore, received devoutly, infuses graces, remits venial sins, and gives strength to overcome future mortal sins.
The Third Effect of Holy Communion: Deeper Union with Christ
Our Lord goes so far as to threaten us that eating of His Flesh is necessary for salvation, and that therefore they who neglect this have no good hope of eternal Life.
Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day (Jn. 6:54-55).
On the contrary, he who regularly – and reverently (i.e. kneeling and on the tongue) – receives the Body of Jesus Christ is virtually assured of obtaining final perseverance, complete sanctification and full Theosis, and thus, everlasting Life.
The Communion is called the bread of heaven; because as the body cannot live without earthly food, so the soul cannot live without this celestial bread. Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you (John, vi, 54). But on the other hand, to those who frequently eat this bread, is promised eternal life. If any man eat of this bread he shall live forever (John, vi, 52). Hence the Council of Trent calls the Communion a medicine which delivers us from venial, and preserves us from mortal sins (Sess. 13, cap. 2).
There is no safer, surer, sweeter and shorter path to Heaven than frequent Communion! Only, we must take the utmost care, to confess our sins regularly, and immediately upon being conscious of mortal sin; to approach the Heavenly Altar with the utmost reverence, with holy fear and trembling, and infinite gratitude.
Let us remember to spend some time, at least half an hour after Mass, in thanksgiving. All of eternity is not enough to thank the God Who has loved us so much, that being a Prisoner of His Infinite Goodness, He wishes to remain with us forever, in the Most Blessed Sacrament of His Eucharist. The word Eucharist literally means Thanksgiving. Let us give thanks for It!
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on THE POET ASKED THE THEOLOGIAN, ” ARE YOU SUGGESTING THAT I SHOULD TAKE HOLY COMMUNION LIKE AN ASPIRIN?” THE THEOLOGIAN REPLIED, “YES, LIKE AN ASPIRIN!”
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM INVOCAT / DEEP CALLS TO DEEP 
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