Traditional or Traditional-ist

As a Traditional Catholic, one who is loyal to the Pope and Magisterium- to the Church, whatever the errors of her individual members, one who can serve Christ and His Church at the same time as resisting and charitably reforming the evil elements and their patsies within the Church, I often peruse so called “Traditional Catholic” websites and fora, in an effort to keep up to date with what is going on in the world of Church crisis. However, I have found that there are Traditional Catholics, and those who prefer to be called Traditionalist Catholic, because for these people, Traditional is just not trad enough. These are the “Catholics” who fondly “remember” (most are not even into their forties, I’m sure) Fascist Italy and think, “Ah, now there was a good, Traditional Catholic country!” I have heard these “Catholics” laud the virtues of the miserably misunderstood Joseph McCarthy, Hitler, and other vicious dictators, because those are the kind of people these “Catholics” most identify with.

I was reading a blog called the Orthometer- claiming to be a meter for Orthodoxy within the Catholic Church. This post glorifying gangster violence sure is Orthodox! Yep, nothing says Catholic like a picture of a heavily armed corporate/government agent assaulting an unarmed woman! Yes sir, that is Orth-O-DOX! But this is what one expects from petty little children, pathetic little tantrum-throwing babies who want the Church to be a paradise for strongarm cowards like themselves. These are the people that call the Church “Newchurch” and the Pope “Newpope” (see how creative!) or, usually, just “Ratzinger.” Who refer to Blessed John Paul II as “John Paul II the Unblessed (witty, so!).” I expect that kind of lowbrow, least-common-denominator, second-grade playground kind of stuff from a Jewish comedian, but come on, guys, even I can think of better Katholic Komedy than that!

I know that the Church is in a very sad and dangerous place. I know the synagogue of satan is trying day and night to remove every last bit of Catholicism from Rome. But I do what other faithful have done- you know, people that today we call Saints and Blessed, and hold up as models of virtue, people with names like Catherine of Siena, Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi- I pray, I trust God and especially the Word of Jesus Christ, who said that the gates of hell would never stand against His Church, and I remain a loyal Catholic, even if the Pope himself is in grievous error (and do not doubt, I believe him to be). And I do not childishly, in opposition to every Christian moral, call those who disagree with me, especially my fellow Catholics, schoolyard names. I am not a venemous, hate-filled tool of the devil like those at Orthometer blog, Traditio network, and several other “Traditionalist”, Sedevacantist, “Catholic” sites. I am a convert. I want the Traditional Catholicism of my grandparents just as much as any convert (most converts I know are unhappy that the Church they entered seems more Protestant than the one they left), but I have the good grace and the love of Christ to see Him in all my neighbors, to grieve for my Church and the deluded souls (and the most sinister threat of those who delude them) therein. And, rather than complain and collect pictures of liturgical abuses and point and say “SEE!”, I pray (I hear many of you vipers laud the Divine Office- how many actually pray it daily?) and I trust God Almighty. The Church WILL get back in line with Tradition, including a complete condemnation of the entire Second Vatican Council, or she will dwindle to nothingness while Traditional Catholics fill the void and bring her back on course. But no modernist or heathen will cause her to fall, that is Christ’s promise. What the “Traditionalists” will do to her remains to be seen. All they do to me is want me to become just the most modernist, Protestantized, liberal Catholic I can be just to spite them. And that scares me.

God bless the children

Jesus Christ had a special love for children, because their innocence and lack of programmed prejudices often allows children to see truth where adults are unable. Let the children come to me, Our Lord said. The meaning of Christ’s statement goes beyond the literal, as do many of His sayings; we are all God’s children, and Jesus desires every person to come to Him. But Christ also said that to come to Him, we must all become as little children. Our minds must be pure and innocent as a child’s, our faith as strong and unquestioning as a child’s faith and trust in her parents. The innocence of children is blessed by God and highly desireable in every Christian.

That is why the enemy loves targeting children. The media owners work overtime to indoctrinate our children into a Godless, evil lifestyle. So called children’s television today would have an R rating just fifty years ago. Public schools continue the indoctrination and subversion of Christian morality. And the evil ones are not always content with just perverting the children’s minds.

We saw this recently with the horrific sacrifice of children in Connecticut. I call it a sacrifice because the shooter, himself little more than a child, whether he knew it or not, was making a sacrifice to the enemy. We can rest assured that this disgusting person was under the influence of satan when he took all those innocent, defenseless lives. Furthermore, we can assume with certainty that the enemy reached him thanks to the decades long effort to strip America of every vestige of Christianity. Americans, especially children, are constantly assaulted by the manipulation of the enemy and its servants.  This tragedy, and others like it, are a direct result of the assault on Christianity in this nation.

I pray for the souls of these children, and the survivors who have to live with the terror of witnessing this massacre, as well as all the parents. Know that the shooter, as well as anyone who enabled him or influenced him, will answer to a higher authority than the police. God will judge all, and the punishment the evildoers receive will be eternal.

P.S.
Sorry I have not posted in so long, I have been busy with school. I decided to just stick with my major and get it over with. I will try to post at least once a week, and when I get organized I will start following some other Catholic blogs, so I can at least link to their posts when I am too inundated to write. I’m writing this with the WordPress app, btw, so not sure how it looks. Thanks for visiting!

Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary from Baronius Press is a wonderful new printing of a tried and true classic which every Catholic should include in their library. Much more brief than the Divine Office, the Little Office in honor of Our Lady is a way for lay Catholics to join the universal Church in her daily prayers. Traditional Catholics will love the fact that this edition complies with the 1961 editio typica for the Immemorial Mass, using readings from the Douay-Rheims, Challoner version of the Holy Bible, with Psalms from the Vulgate of St. Jerome, and includes the full Latin text of each Office in addition to the vernacular. Furthermore, Catholics familiar with Gregorian notation can say each Office the same way as countless Saints through the ages- in beautiful Gregorian chant, since this edition uniquely contains the entire Gregorian chant of each Office.

Beautifully bound and printed, with a soft, flexible leather cover and lightweight but sturdy gilded pages, with two ribbons, one blue and one gold, and an included card containing the conclusions of prayers in the Office, which can be used as a third bookmark, the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary from Baronius Press features a classic Missal layout, in bold black and red text, with the English on left and Latin translation on the right. There are actually three books within- one set of Offices for each season, with Office 1 being used throughout the year, Office 2 used during Advent, and Office 3 used from first Vespers of the Nativity until the Feast of the Purification. Each Office also contains a section for Eastertide, so the faithful Catholic can celebrate with the Church all year long. Prefaced by the Very Reverend Father John Berg, Superior General of the Priestly Society of Saint Peter (FSSP), with a wonderful introduction by Theo Keller explaining the history of the Little Office, the book contains the Imprimatur of the Most Reverend Fabian W. Bruskewitz, DD, STD, Bishop of Lincoln.

Besides all this, several appendices contain descriptions of prayers and liturgy, notes on the Office, rubrics, a calendar of feasts, list of indulgences for faithful recitation of the Office, litanies- all in a book which easily fits in a back pocket or purse. It is amazing how much was able to be included in this little two hundred twenty-seven page book! If prayed slowly and attentively, each Office takes about twenty minutes, or the same length of time as a Rosary. So there is no reason why every Catholic should not include the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary as part of their daily prayers.

I wrote this review of The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the free Catholic Book review program, created by Aquinas and More Catholic Goods.

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Why I will never vote Republican

All I see anymore is “Voting Guides” for Catholics. They say a lot about informed consciences and the difference between protecting life and protecting life, but all I hear is “VOTE REPUBLICAN OR YOU ARE A BAD CATHOLIC!”

For instance, there are many US Catholic organizations who will repeat, like Zenit, that “There can never be justification for directly and deliberately taking innocent human life: abortion, destruction of human embryos, euthanasia, human cloning.”

Followed immediately with the qualification that “The death penalty and war are different from procured abortion and same-sex “marriage,” since these latter acts are intrinsically evil and therefore can never be justified. Although war and capital punishment can rarely be justified, they are not intrinsically evil.”

Do you see how they did that? They know that many people like myself will never vote Republican, even to oppose a Democrat, because the Republican candidates, for the most part, support economic, social, and military policies that kill millions of people every year, and many of us believe that the protection of life that is ALREADY BORN is often more of a priority than trying to fix what will always be broken. But they say that war and other forms of murder are not “intrinsically evil”, even if they cannot be justified, so they are somehow less important than abortion. But wait, what part of “There can never be justification for directly and deliberately taking innocent human life” are they failing to understand? It is a well known fact that innocent people die in every war started by Republicans. It is a well known fact that many innocent people right here in America starve to death every day thanks to economic policies favored by Republicans. They say there can be no justification for these innocent losses of life, but then proceed to try to justify it. Hypocrites.

Well, here is the reason I will never vote Republican, even as a “lesser of two evils”. I know many Republican politicians. My campus has both a large Christian presence and a large Republican presence.I know many College Republicans. One of them recently told me something I have suspected for years. The Republican Party will never deliberately end abortion! They need it too much! This Republican actually told me that it would be insane for the Republican Party to end abortion, seeing as it was their single biggest vote-getting “hot-button” issue. “Why,” he asked me as I stood incredulous upon hearing his pronouncement, “would the party attempt to make abortion illegal when it is only the issue of abortion that causes Christians to vote against their economic and social interests by voting Republican?” 

In other words, this guy knows as well as every other Republican politician, that if abortion became illegal today, then tomorrow 95% of Christians would suddenly become Democrats! Because without that single issue, all the other policies and ideals supported by the Republican party are anathema to good Catholics!  Good Catholics oppose Capitalism, Communism, merchant greed, Corporations, unjust wars for profit, greed, disrespect for human life- all things that Republicans hold dear. And Republicans know it. The only way they can trick you into supporting the work of Satan, is to keep abortion legal. So I just don’t vote- it’s the best way for me to assure that I am not cooperating in ANY evil by voting for the wrong person.

Well I no longe…

Well I no longer know how to post html on this blog, and now the editor is like one inch high and will only display split page, so for some reason I have to look at the WordPress main page while I’m trying to edit. So I’m going to look for a different blog provider. If I figure out why and how they changed this thing, I might keep this blog “active”- as active as it ever was, anyway…

The Catholic Warrior

The Catholic Warrior, by Robert Abel, is a book about spiritual warfare and how to take authority over one’s own spiritual life. Robert Abel writes about his own experiences with spiritual warfare- how he discovered the fact that all Christians are constantly tempted, opressed, or even posessed by demons, how the demons have a right to do this, and how most people who suffer from demonic oppression actually have themselves to blame. Many of these truths are backed up with Scriptural references, but there are few references to Catholic authorities. Abel writes in a style which makes the story he tells seem exciting, and a little spooky. However, this book has many problems on a theological level.

 

As someone who grew up in an evangelical Protestant church, I’ve seen charismaticism before. Abel is obviously a "Charismatic Catholic". Now, there is nothing wrong with being ‘charismatic’ and seeking the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but many charismatics are confused as to what the Church teaches about matters of the Spirit. For instance, Abel often speaks of his friend "Athena" (odd name for a Catholic) and how she introduced him to spiritual warfare. He asks her things like, "which prayer were you praying just now?" when he feels a particularly powerful struggle going on within himself. Many charismatics, who often see demons behind every rock, seem to think of prayer as almost some sort of magic spell- this prayer works best for this purpose, etc. But the fact is, God knows what you need before you pray, and, while there is a wealth of prayer in the Church, and some are surely more appropriate at different times, they are not incantations that in themselves have a specific ‘power’ for a specific purpose. However, Abel seems to treat prayer in exactly this manner. Also, he seems to be, for lack of a better word, dishonest. For instance, in explaining how he discovered that he was oppressed by demonic forces, he relates a story of how he "opened the door" to these forces by reading a dirty magazine when he was twelve. This, he asserts, brought a demon of "lust" and "sexual cravings" into his life. However, he also claims in the same paragraph that he never looked at pornography again. Sorry, but if you are being tormented by a demon with lustful sexual cravings, I highly doubt you will go decades without looking at pornography. That statement honestly just leads me to doubt the veracity of all Abel’s statements.

 

Another thing that bothers me is Abel’s emphasis on the individual. While he admits that only the priest, with permission of the bishop, can perform exorcisms, he encourages all Catholics to engage in spiritual warfare against any demonic presence in their own lives, under their own power. He admits that Confession, and a valid one, is necessary to free onesself from demonic influence, but he neglects to mention that the other Sacraments exist for this same reason, and that Catholics are a part of a larger community and Communion, and should never have to "go it alone", as it were. My advise is, if you are ever experiencing demonic oppression (a very real phenomenon), SEE A PRIEST IMMEDIATELY! Do not rely on someone named Athena or your own faith to resist this oppression. God has given us powerful allies in the Saints and Angels, bishops and priests, and we should immediately and instinctively turn to the Church in any matter of faith and spirituality. Who is to say that, by trying to take matters into your own hands, you are not doing exactly what the demon wants? Perhaps you are placing your faith in your own fallible self rather than in Christ and His Church?

 

So, by all means read this book to get an idea of what some Catholics think about faith and spirituality. But don’t take its advice. There are many resons a Catholic might suffer from temptations or sinful desires, and demonic oppression is one of them. There are many reasons one might be oppressed. One may just be very easy to tempt, because their faith is very small. Go to Mass more and receive the sacraments if this is the problem. On the other hand, one might be a saint. One may be so holy, and have such a good future plan, that the evil one tries very hard to sway one from the right path. This seems to be what Abel thinks of himself, as is obvious in the very first paragraph of the book, where he describes being in St. Peter’s Square and seeing a host of angels with Jesus at the head, all cheering for him, because he "entered the battle." I know many Protestants who claim similar visions, of Holy men and women, creatures, and Christ Himself seeming to praise the individual. Those people suffer from many problems, and nobody should listen to them in manners of faith. Real saints feel humble and small in the presence of Holy things. Abel is no saint, that just comes through in this book. However, sice there are no specific contradictions of Canon Law or Church tradition, that I can tell, I will say this mostly adheres to Church teachings.

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I’m making a change…

I’ve decided to change majors. I don’t know how I got talked into electronics- my original major was Religion. Then I chose electronics, and changed to a Religion minor. Then I dropped the minor. But, you know, despite the fact that I’m good at maths and sciences, I just don’t like them. I really can’t stand sitting down and doing math or solving a science problem anymore. It’s not what I love. I love Christianity, and so it’s time for me to get serious. I have been avoiding going into ministry for a long time, but it;s where my heart lies. So, my university has a generic Religion degree- I’m switching to that, with a Greek minor. Then I can go on to get a doctorate in Theology. So, wish me luck! I might have difficulty paying for it, since I might lose financial aid due to changing too many majors and taking too many classes, but oh well, God will provide, if it’s really what I should be doing.