Saturday, March 31, 2018

RESURRECTION PLACES


                                                        


In the rubble of Eastern Ghotua, in hearts of the terrified,

HE IS RISEN!

In silent cloisters, deep in monastic hearts,

HE IS RISEN!

Where my brothers and sisters sleep in alleys,

Hearts wounded with illness, addiction, yearning

Simply to be called by name,

HE IS RISEN!

As watered is poured upon the heads of catechumens,

Baptismal fire alighting hearts,

HE IS RISEN!

In wearied hearts in labours camps, angry hearts in prisons,

Broken hearts in solitary, ever slowing hearts in hospices,

Caring hearts in hospitals, hearts of the sick, the lonely,

Elderly hearts, adult hearts, youthful hearts, children’s hearts,

HE IS RISEN!

Not knowing of Him hearts, rejecting Him hearts,

Hearts which brim, overflowing and pressed down with

Love, for Him, for others,

HE IS RISEN!

Cold hearts, angry hearts, hating hearts, violent hearts,

Hungry hearts, thirsty hearts,

In all,

HE IS RISEN!








Sunday, March 25, 2018

THE NEO-NAZISM OF THE LEFT


                                                  

I have noted a common theme, through various e and snail mail, skype, phone chats with people: there is a global fear, discouragement, feeling overwhelmed by the culture of darkness and death.

Most noticeably, faithful Catholics and other Christians feel, with the incessant demeaning of the Faith by society in general, by laws in democratic countries, by blood elsewhere, Christianity is undergoing an intense persecution.

Prior to Ash Wednesday then throughout Lent, with the help of the Holy Spirit and Our Lady, I try and be attentive to a theme, a focus of prayer and spiritual reading.

This year it is to reflect upon the deadly poison of Neo-Nazism of the left!

Flowing from that to pray and fast for the conversion, especially of ersatz democracies, led by governments so obsessed with relativism they are arrogant in their hostile disdain for anyone who stands for the sacredness of life.

How have we come to this?

I find clues, and words of encouragement in an eighty-year-old papal encyclical.

May the holy time of Lent and Easter, which preaches interior renovation and penance, turn Christian eyes towards the Cross and the risen Christ; be for all of you the joyful occasion that will fill your souls with heroism, patience and victory. [1]

Sometimes explicit, but always implicit in every lie and deception of satan is erosion of trust in the victory of Christ, crucified and risen from the dead. Worn down by such evil deception and lies, some people become angry with God or the Church, and walk away; others pick and choose among the teachings of Christ and His Church those teachings which allow compromise with the surrounding culture; some will even cross over to the anti-Christ, anti-life side.

In so doing they become enemies of their very selves.

To assume neo-Nazism merely refers to right-wing extremists, who violently oppose anyone they deem not themselves, is a dangerous mistake.

It is fundamentally a satanic deception which has seduced Christians, and society in general, to be blinded by the flash, deafened by the noise, of extremists, failing to discern the pervasiveness of those elements of actual Nazis ideology which have morphed into the stark reality of the current culture of darkness and death.

The priest's first loving gift to his neighbours is to serve truth and refute error in any of its forms. [2]

At enormous cost of blood, and treasure, the Allies eventually defeated the Nazis.

However, much like fighting massive fires in the boreal forests of Canada, just extinguishing what is visible does not mean the fire has been eliminated. Boreal forest floors in large areas are composed of peat. When peat is wet, as is normal, no problem, but if because of lack of a winter snow cover, or a prolonged period of drought, the peat dries out, it can ignite. Smouldering peat remains active below the surface, even throughout the winter, usually unseen until conditions trigger a surface fire and another major conflagration in the forest.

Neo-Nazi ideology is the smouldering peat, the smoke from which spreads as the darkness of the culture of death, poisoning every mind, heart, soul it penetrates.

Our pastoral heart knows no deeper pain, no disappointment more bitter, than to learn that many are straying from the path of truth. [3]

Any reading of historical accounts of the rise of Nazism, its visible endurance to the end of the Second World War, shows a mixture of hatreds using eugenics, racism, lies, distorted revival of Teutonic myths, use of the occult, relentless propaganda, terror, abortion, euthanasia to wield power and attempt to reshape civilization, ultimately compromising and corrupting those who should have, like Gandalf, stood firm and proclaimed “You shall not pass!”.

True, some religious leaders, secular leaders of various professions and regular citizens, did stand up, many of them paying the ultimate price of martyrdom.

In the immediate post-war there was a period from around 1946 to the Second Vatican Council, when foundational Christian values still held sway, in government and society at large. Then, apparently out of the blue, everything seemed to come unglued, in the Catholic Church, other mainline Churches, society in general.

With the legalizing of abortion, the spread of moral relativism since then: The experiences of these last years have fixed responsibilities and laid bare intrigues, which from the outset only aimed at a war of extermination. [4]

This war of extermination continues against pre-born children, with an ever-expanding list of justifications through judicial activism, with euthanasia increaseing the murder of human beings, and with the ever-expanding variety of ‘sexual orientations’, the extermination of authentic personhood is well underway.

Liberalism’s deceptive propaganda would have society at large believe Pope Paul VI pulled his teachings on contraception and abortion out of thin air, when this immutable truth-teaching  of the Church, sustaining both Divine Law and natural law, is rooted in the millennia: Those who use abortifacients commit homicide~ St. Clement, pope & martyr, AD 88-100; The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. The hair-splitting difference between formed and unformed makes no difference to us.~ St. Basil the Great, AD 330-379.

The original Nazis co-opted a significant portion of the medical community, the judiciary, and, if not by their action, certainly by their lack of courageous resistance in word or deed, Catholic and Protestant clergy.

Neo-Nazis today, hiding under the cover of progressive liberalism, in government, the judiciary, academia, the media, have utter disdain for anyone who objects to any immoral law, because they know Catholic and other resistors pose no real threat.

Why?

When it comes to the weakened influence of the Catholic Church, upon so-called liberal democracies, so long as the Bishops, in Canada for example, insist on being agents of the state when it comes to legal recognition of ‘church’ marriages and insist on government money for schools, hospitals, church run social programs, etc., they/we, their priests, religious, laity, are totally compromised.

We know Jesus tells us: "give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God." [Mk.12.17], but He does not tell us to get Caesar to give us back anything, rather Jesus tells us: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? …….So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. [Mt. 6:25-34]

There is an example to consider: The Servant of God, Catherine Doherty, Foundress of the Madonna House Lay Apostolate, forbid members to accept any government funding for any of the mission houses and service to the poor. To this day, some seventy years since their founding, the community simply begs for all that is needed to sustain the mission houses and provide for the poor. In a recent begging letter, this line: In many cultures ‘begging’ appears to be something demeaning, but in my heart it is a ‘song’-something of beauty that points ourselves and others toward a total reliance on the Lord’s providence.

How can we preach to suffering parishioners, urge people to embrace and live out Humane Vitae, the Gospel of Life, be faithful to the sacrament of Holy Marriage, comfort parents worried about their teenage children, truly be, as Pope Francis urges: a poor Church, a field hospital Church -  ever utter words like ‘faith, trust’, as bishops and priests, if our people see us always at the government trough, rather than trusting our Heavenly Father will see to our needs?

Are we, Catholics, no longer the: ….Christianity which keeps a grip on itself, refuses every compromise with the world, takes the commands of God and the Church seriously, preserves its love of God and of men in all its freshness, such a Christianity can be, and will be, a model and a guide to a world which is sick to death and clamors for directions, unless it be condemned to a catastrophe that would baffle the imagination. [5]

There are Catholic priests, religious, laity -adherents of other religions too, and people of no religion, who strive to overcome Neo-Nazism as exemplified by the edicts/laws of government, judicial activism, erroneous and poisonous teachings, actions of various professions and schools of thought.

Critical in this defense of truth is supporting families, which means, we begin with Mothers and Fathers: …. Catholic parents. Their rights and duties as educators, conferred on them by God, are at present the stake of a campaign pregnant with consequences…… the violation…. is nigh, and it will be every one's duty to sever his responsibility from the opposite camp, and free his conscience from guilty cooperation with such corruption. The more the enemies attempt to disguise their designs, the more a distrustful vigilance will be needed, in the light of bitter experience. [6]

Is the great and final catastrophe nigh?

Perhaps.

I do believe there is still time to repent, to be converted anew, to take a courageous stand for Christ, for truth, for the Gospel of Life.

Our wholehearted paternal sympathy goes out to those who must pay so dearly for their loyalty to Christ and the Church; but directly the highest interests are at stake, with the alternative of spiritual loss, there is but one alternative left, that of heroism. [7] 



{Quotes are from: 1-7 paras. 42, 36, 2, 4, 19, 39, 21 of Mit Brenneder Sorge, encyclical On The Church and the German Reich, Pope Pius XI, Passion Sunday, March 14, 1937}