If you are a parent of a child under the age of 21, hide the household i-pads.
Doug Kmiec awoke from the coma on All Hallow's Eve to perform his semi-annual groveling to be relevant publicity stunt.
He had an epiphany and has a halloween message for Catholics.
Guess his message from the following:
a. I am not a Frankenstein. I'm a Fronkensteen.
b. Now that brain that you gave me. Was it Hans Delbruck's?
c. Didn't you...didn't you use to have that on the other side?
d. Put ze candle back!
e. Obama is as Catholic as the Pope.
I'll bet you thought the definition of a Catholic is, a person or persons who are Baptized, Confirmed and actively taking part in the Sacraments of the Catholic Church.
That's right. You see kath means throughout and holos means whole. This means that there are no boundaries.
The wizards at America Magazine found the proof of all this in a short parable in the Bible where Jesus likens the Kingdom of Heaven to a woman who makes bread. Yeast is added to flour and it is found 'throughout the whole'. The dough builds up. It becomes one with, mutually benefits from and contributing to the life of the bread.
Therefore, it isn't necessary to be Baptized or participate in any other Sacraments: nobody is outside of the Catholic Church.
Get it?
You see, yeast is non-colonial. In its own organic way, it inculturates and accepts the ingredients it finds in itself. It celebrates the diversity it finds in the flour.
Isn't this enlightening?
Stupid me. I didn't even know yeast had a brain.
There are bad church leaders who see things in the world that are a threat to Christianity, who exclude those who don't fall in line. But people who teach these things - like Christ and 2000 7
years worth of Popes - they should be excluded because they're not needed. They are outside of the whole.
Fr. Unni has done (and published) a lot of kooky things but this one takes the first place blue ribbon.
When I was finished reading it, this Catholic was thinking about another hole, where this piece of trash belongs.
I'm sure most of you do this as a regular practice, but if not, would you take a moment right now and pray for our priests and consider adding this to your daily prayers and petitions?
I was reminded today that we don't do enough of it.
Leon Panetta claims there wasn't enough information on the ground to send help.
I guess they think we are too stupid to remember that it was being covered live on CNN. We were all watching what was happening on the ground on television.
Or maybe that's not it at all. Maybe they know that educated people know they are lying and they are simply entrapping people who are uneducated or oblivious to the truth. Or people who care about big bird but not the murders of real people.
When you look at the statistics in the polls, the realization that close to half of the country are either uneducated or do not care about the murders of real people - it's a rather pathetic indictment of where the emotional attachments of an awful lot of Americans.
Blinded, they will hail and elect their own murderers.
There was a little bit of controversy a few weeks back when Mike Voris seemed to be inviting the persecutions and mayhem of Christendom. But rather than choosing that path, I think he was just giving the witness.
We all know what happens to Christ's Mystical Body. At some point in time, the beast is going to rise and use the village idiots to persecute and kill us. There is a delicate balance to the mercy of God. When Christendom can and is converting with more efficacy than the beast, we are in a reprieve for the intervention of mercy that does not come in the form of rescue from our persecutors. Christ's Mystical Body reaches the point where It sheds blood and this time, it is us. As the blood of martyrs falls to earth, it seeds conversion.
I think Michael was witnessing to the surrender. In response to Cardinal Dolan's cowardice, he was witnessing to willingness. After begging to let the cup pass, standing up in our gethsemene and pledging allegiance to our fate if this is the time and place.
Selfishly, we all hope it isn't. But somebody has to do it. It's going to happen sooner or later. Our prophets smell blood. We all hope it is foisted upon another generation. Maybe when there are more of us. We've done a crappy job for the last 50 years.
I'm still on my knees calling all the muchachos to beg for another way out.
LOL.
Our Savoir, He can move the mountains.
Our God is mighty to save.
He is mighty to save.
Lena, there's a reason why Michelle and Barack aren't using their own two daughters to talk like a slut.
Might want to lay off the red bull.
ADDENDUM
When I saw this video, I wondered where her parents were in her life, especially her mother. I wondered the same thing about Fluke.
Was she a child whose parents kept vigil over her, advising, protecting?
Did she get caught in a group of peers whose mental and spiritual health were being eaten up by something so powerful that all their attempts to rescue her were not enough? Are they watching their child and are heartbroken, in pain, praying for her night and day?
It happens. Parents can do everything right and something or someone will come along and drive them straight off of the cliff.
Who could be a better parent than St. Monica?
And, let us face it, in the Trinity and our Blessed Mother and their Church which was left for us at great sacrifice, we have perfect parents and yet each of us have lost our way at some point or another.
I wondered if her parents started out with good intentions but when their child rebelled against truth, purity and all that is angelic - and held their relationship in contempt, did they grow weak and call her sins virtues? Stand on the sidelines celebrating and clapping as she sank into the abyss of her infirmities?
The vocation of parenting requires spinal fortitude and more importantly sacrificial love. You've got to prepare and keep your own compass and your family's ship always pointed towards Christ. With compassion but conviction and with great confidence, always keep the steady course, even when what you're feeling inside is weak-kneed.
Formation in the truth before they are teenagers is critical.
Use the news, events in your community to teach. This way they can receive the teaching without the emotions that come with personal attachments.
I was thinking about poor Lena and all of this when I heard my own 20 year old call my name in the wee hours of the morning to ask me to iron her shirt.
I love the way she calls my name - sweetly and tenderly, lovingly. It brings me to tears because there was a time when she held the truth in contempt- at least some of it- and she was shooting bullets at the messenger...me!
There will be storms. It will seem as though your relationship with your children relies upon your affirmation of their indulgences. Never give in or up. Keep the ship and all of it's contents steady on Christ (even when the priests or Bishop cannot or is not). The storm will pass. The child will know the truth and that is the gift you give that will guide them for the rest of their lives.
Obama is using women with intellectual, social and spiritual problems to make the entire race of women out to be vulgar sluts.
Meanwhile, his own children are tucked away in a very elite school, being conserved and preserved from their father's sexual exploitation of women living in their poverty.
All we can do at this point is beg God for freedom from it.
Same as every other situation on earth. Every time a person harms another human being or themselves.
The rapist collides with God's will. The collision can be a single accident if everyone whom the crime touches strives to surrender to the will of God. In the extremely rare circumstance when the victim conceives, the collision can turn into a pile up.
Every woman in an unexpected pregnancy who becomes distraught and contemplates abortion seeks help. When well-meaning family, friends and professionals, instead of helping the woman come to terms with God's will under the circumstances, they collide with God's will when they instead, give her the crappy advice to kill another human being under the veil of 'helping' her.
The victim collides with God's will when she makes the decision to kills the child. Then she involves the doctor and all of his employees who assist in murdering the child.
It is a burden - a terrible burden to absorb the blow of such a horrific crime. But the rapist can succeed in doing much more damage to the victim and those who get dragged in the hell of aborting a child conceived. Righteous people who know and see are not going to take the bait.
May God Bless Richard Mourdock and all those who are shedding light into the darkness.
We can be victims of other people and have stuff happen as a result that has absolutely nothing to do with God’s intentions.
God doesn't intend for a drunk driver to hit us anymore than He intends for women to be raped to conceive a child.
But even in terrible tragedies, we can find ourselves with a pearl – something good, a gift – in spite of it all.
When it comes to a life, a Catholic, no matter what the circumstances accepts it – can’t snuff it out, can’t help others to snuff it out, tries to encourage them others not to. It’s actually Marian dogma. Mary, a single woman accepts life from the author, even though she knows she will been seen as a liar/whore.
Seeing the evidence that both she and Obama lied to protect and apologize to the terrorists is kinda creepy.
Photos of Chris Stevens being dragged from the embassy indicate he was beaten to a bloody pulp at 'the hospital'
This is not smoke inhalation:
I don't understand why or how people are ignoring this scandal and instead sniveling over big bird, binders and bayonets.
Bishop Richard Williamson, having distanced himself from the management and the government of the SSPX for several years, and refusing to show due respect and obedience to his lawful superiors, was declared excluded from the SSPX by decision of the Superior General and its Council, on October 4th, 2012. A final deadline had been granted to him to declare his submission, after which he announced the publication of an “open letter” asking the Superior General to resign.
This painful decision has become necessary by concern for the common good of the Society of Saint Pius X and its good government, according to what Archbishop Lefebvre denounced: “This is the destruction of authority. How authority can be exercised if it needs to ask all members to participate in the exercise of authority? “
Sandra Fluke and the men she is sleeping with can't afford $10 dollars a month for her contraception, but she has money to travel all over the United States to lobby taxpayers to pay for her sex life.
Only ten people showed up to hear her in Nevada.
Only a handful of women in every state buy into this agenda.
FROM THE PASTOR
October 21, 2012
by Fr. George W. Rutler
When Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council on October 11, 1962, he repudiated “prophets of gloom” who lamented the state of the modern world, and said “… it is necessary first of all that the Church should never depart from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers. But at the same time she must ever look to the present, to the new conditions and new forms of life introduced into the modern world, which have opened new avenues to the Catholic apostolate.”
The Council was almost a synonym for newness. It is less so now, after fifty years. Of the 2,860 who gathered then, only 70 survive and of those, only 12 were able to attend the golden anniversary celebrations.
Much of the Council’s teaching was warped by a heady optimism. The Council echoed Christ’s promise, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5), but some took that to mean a gullibility about all new things. Optimism as an attitude is a pale imitation of hope, which is based on fact, just as is faith, which is “the realization of what is hoped for and the evidence of things unseen” (Hebrews 11:1). This is why Pope Benedict XVI chose the anniversary of the Council to begin a Year of Faith. Just as Pope John surprised the crowds in St. Peter’s Square in the moonlit evening of his October 11 by speaking in an informal and grandfatherly way, so did Pope Benedict speak with remarkable spontaneity in the same spot on his October 11:
“Today, too, we carry joy in our hearts, but I would say a joy that is more sober, a humble joy: in these fifty years we have learned and experienced that original sin exists, and that it translates itself into personal sins, which can become structures of sin, given that even in the Lord’s field there are also weeds, that even in Peter’s net there are bad fish, that human weakness is present even in the Church, that the ship of the Church is sailing with a contrary wind, with opposing threats, and sometimes we have thought that ‘the Lord is sleeping and has forgotten us.’”
Dead babies are less offensive to them than upsetting their delicate and fragile egos.
People hate the truth for the sake of whatever it is they love more than the truth. They love truth when it shines warmly on them, and hate it when it rebukes them.~ Augustine
In this case, self-love comes before slaughtering of the innocents. It is tough to watch and experience the consequences. There is much confusion, scandal and division.
When I was trying to explain to an acquaintance the differences between Christ eating with sinners for the purposes of converting them and Cardinal Dolan inviting a man under the influence of the enemy of truth to convince and convert them to follow a misguided pied piper, I mentioned some of the consequences and damage.
For instance, I told her that I learned yesterday that a priest in a local abbey said he invited a politician who has spent his career attacking the Catholic Church as an enemy because Cardinal Dolan did it and called the event "Listening to other voices".
Here's how she caricatured the vocation of a priest and Cardinal:
If we listen to the Church's voice and we listen to "other voices" we should be able to make an informed decision and choose to listen to the Church's voice. What needs to be done is to explain the Church's position clearly. A bank teller identifies a counterfeit bill when he/she sees it because he/she has studied what is genuine. If we present what is genuine enough, then there is no problem with people being able to recognize the counterfeit when we see it.
Here was my response, which I put out there because it may be a help when you come across this tom foolery.
This is not the role of a prelate. A prelate's role is to give the people the truth as it comes from the Catechism and defined teachings of the Catholic Church without adding or subtracting to it for the purposes of getting the people into a state of grace. We do not invite people under the influence of the devil in to convince them that the lies they believe should be believed by them too.
The Catholic Church is not a forum where priests and bishops gather people and invite speakers under the influence of the devil to convince and convert them and then the people can make 'informed' choices.
Is this how you formed the consciences of your children?
What you are doing sister, is much like telling Catholic mothers that the protocol for forming their uneducated children's consciences is to gather Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan, Cardinal Burke and Mother Angelica and let each of them entertain them with substance on morality and right and wrong and let the children make up their own minds because then they will be educated and informed!
Mothers deserve the truth, don't they?
So do our priests and Cardinals.
To encourage them to continue to feed their flocks this garbage is a terrible disservice to them, to the people they serve and to Christ.
You would expect Catholics - especially priests and bishops - to understand how being in a state of Grace is critical to making informed and good choices.
I'm not sure they do.
What is even more perplexing, and alarming, those are the keys to the car that take us all to our destination. They are either know and are withholding them or they have lost the keys themselves. There are an awful lot of Catholics who perceive love as going along with the charade.
The Cardinal did not dine invite and dine with Obama for the purposes of converting him. What he did is exactly the opposite. He invited Obama as an entertainer to raise money and the conduit for raising that money was providing Obama an opportunity to speak to Catholics and invite them to subscribe to the influence that opposes Christ's mission of salvation. Then he ran back to the rectory with his five million dollars.
It was a gross miscarriage of truth and his vocation.
As many have pointed out, including our friends at Boston Catholic Insider, the facts contradict Obama's assertion that he characterized what happened in Benghazi as a terrorist attack on September 12th.
Sir, your pants are on fire.
Obama's narrative on September 12th went something like this:
The Constitutional rights and freedom of speech of Americans to say that islam is a violent political science provoked people who just so happened to be walking down the street to fire the rockets and missiles they had in their pockets:
In fact, on September 24th, Obama was still carrying on with the charade when he went in front of the United Nations, blamed it on religious intolerance and said the future must not belong to those who slander Islam.
On September 25th, on an appearance with the daffy women on 'the View', Obama still refused to say it was a terrorist attack. Rather, he said 'it wasn't just' a spontaneous mob critiquing a youtube video.
If Obama wants to talk about amnesia, dates and quotes on blaming Americans for a terrorist attack might come in handy for a final debate.
Yesterday, the President said his denial of 13 requests for more security in Benghazi, his poo-pooing of the warning that the embassy was going to be attacked, his attempts to force sharia law down the throats of Americans and apologies to the terrorists, the lies and the murders as 'not optimal' during his appearance on a comedy show with John Stewart.
Not optimal, he said, but the fix is in. National Security absolutely comes first in his mind and he's going to find out what's broken and fix it.
That's right. When he finds out he, Joe and Hillary are what's broken, he'll roll up his sleeves and let us all know exactly how he'll make decisions about protecting Americans for the next four years.
Despicable.
It was interesting to watch the talking heads in the mainstream media who carried on with the farce that Obama was on board a terrorist attack all along and shifted the audience to find something funny about keeping resumes of qualified women in binders.
It certainly wasn't the most sophisticated way of describing how his administration actively recruited women for open positions by storing resumes, but I didn't really get what was so funny.
What does Obama do with resumes of qualified women? Throw them away?
Why are Americans, especially women, laughing at that?
Furthermore, Obama wants employers to pay women as much as men for qualified positions but he does not do it himself. Romney should have at the ready the salaries of women compared to men employed at the White House.
That outta wipe the grins off of the faces of women swooning at this malarkey.
If the President and his admirers were as concerned about the Obama's aiding and abetting terrorists as they were big bird and what they perceive as a faux pas of collecting resumes of qualified women in binders for job openings, Chris Stevens and three other Americans would not have come home in a casket.
When it comes to matters of the heart and eros, we can sure do some dumb things. This one is a whopper.
If you read the original story HERE, the sensation story doesn't strike me as unbiased good faith sources. Somebody offered to drive them to the hotel. Instead of pulling up to the door and letting them get out, the super sleuth parked the car and hung around the lobby watching them. Kind of creepy if you ask me and unless you are standing beside them as they check in and you hear the conversation, how would you know if there was one room or two? Then noseynellie showed up at the buttcrack of dawn to watch the elevators. Kind of creepy if you ask me.
Then the next thing you know, they call the newspapers and allege that as their grabbing their undergarments and running out of the hotel, Dinesh called a lawyer and sent him up to the courthouse to file for divorce.
Something smells, yet, it appears he does indeed have a fiancee. A 29-year-old fiancee.
A word to the wise.
If you're the keynote speaker at a Christian Conference (or even attending one) and you have a wife:
Do not bring, introduce nor enter your comfort suite with your fiancee on your arm. The thousand people attending the conference are going to be devoted to salvation and are not always as stupid as they look.
If you are Catholic and struggling - in every circumstance, seek a priest, a confessor, hang on to Sacramental Grace.
He said he has been separated for two years, met his fiancee several months ago and has been working on the divorce. He said he didn't know getting engaged while still legally married was frowned upon in Christian circles. That's a tough one for me, but I do buy into most of his explanation. He says the people involved in this tabloid story have an ax to grind because they were cut loose from King's College.
I pray that he, his family, the woman and all those affected find their way to Christ's merciful arms where He heals and makes all things new again.
It turns out Obama's caricature of women as sexually impulsive and immortal creatures who must be chemically sterilized for free by taxpayers is not winning him the women's vote after all.
I missed the beginning of the debate but from what I saw, Romney did a great job. I'd like to see Obama forced into explaining his attempt to enforce Sharia law upon Americans as the fix for the terrorist attack in Libya he declined to prevent. Hopefully, Romney will get him into the corner on that one at the next debate.
Let's keep praying.
Wow. This guy can sure tell some whoppers.
I spent some time with Catholic friends I've had for over 40 years and was surprised when one of them said she was voting for Obama. I asked her what news source she watched, what she knew about Libya, Egypt, the persecution of Christians - etc. She knew next to nothing and was shocked to hear the details being discussed by the group.
I hate to say it, but the outrageous nature of the lies, they have to be deliberately preying upon the uneducated and uninformed.
When you have the USCCB calling out your lies, you're really at the bottom of the barrel.
It turns out the prepubescent girls they are giving the hpv vaccine to are not having sex.
They injected children with carcinogens and then watched them like guinea pigs.
Josef Mengele eat your heart out.
One of our heroes in the prolife movement in Boston, Tom Hamill, could use some prayer back up for a medical procedure early next week. Would you keep him,his doctors and family in your prayers?
We love you Tom, and are so grateful for all the work you do for the unborn!
THE IMPORTANCE OF HOLY WATER
A MEANS OF SPIRITUAL WEALTH
Holy Water is a means of great spiritual wealth -- a sacramental that remits venial sin. Because of the blessing attached to it, Holy Mother Church strongly urges its use upon Her children, especially when dangers threaten, such as fire, storms, sickness and other calamities. Every Catholic home should always have in it a supply of Holy Water. We do not sufficiently take advantage of the benefits derived from Holy Water.
LET US CULTIVATE ITS USE
Untold spiritual wealth is concentrated in a tiny drop of blessed water--and we give it so little thought! Did we realize now, as we shall realize after death, the many benefits which may be derived from Holy Water, we would use it far more frequently and with greater faith and reverence.
Holy Water has its great power and efficacy from the prayers of the Church, which its Divine Founder always accepts with complacency.
The following are some of the petitions that the priest makes to God when he blesses water:
"O God… grant that this creature of Thine (water) may be endowed with divine grace to drive away devils and to cast out diseases, that whatever in the houses or possessions of the faithful may be sprinkled by this water may be freed from everything unclean and delivered from what is hurtful… Let everything that threatens the safety or peace of the dwellers therein be banished by the sprinkling of this water, so that the health which they seek by calling upon Thy Holy Name may be guarded from all assault."
PRAYERS EFFECTIVE
These prayers ascend to Heaven each time you take Holy Water and sprinkle a drop either for yourself or for another, whether he be present or absent, and God's blessings descend for soul and body.
DISPEL THE DEVIL
The Devil hates Holy Water because of its power over him: he cannot long abide in a place or near a person that is often sprinkled with this blessed water.
Do your dear ones live at a distance? Holy Water, sprinkled with faith and piety, can move the Sacred Heart to bless your loved ones and protect them from all harm of soul and body. When worry and fear take possession of your heart, hasten to your Holy Water font and give your dear ones the benefit of the Church's prayers.
THE HOLY SOULS LONG FOR IT
Only in Purgatory will one understand how ardently the Poor Souls long for Holy Water. If we desire to make a host of intercessors for ourselves, let us try to realize now some of their yearnings, and never forget them at the Holy Water font. The Holy Souls nearest to Heaven may need the sprinkling of only one drop to relieve their intense sufferings.
REMITS VENIAL SINS
Because Holy Water is one of the Church's sacramentals, it remits venial sin. Keep your soul beautifully pure in God's sight by making the Sign of the Cross reverently while saying: "By this Holy Water and by Thy Precious Blood, O Lord, wash away all my sins."
Imprimatur:
† Albert G. Meyer,
Archbishop of Milwaukee
Jan. 13, 1958
The State Department said Tuesday it never concluded that the consulate attack in Libya stemmed from protests over an American-made video ridiculing Islam, raising further questions about why the Obama administration used that explanation for more than a week after assailants killed the ambassador and three other Americans.
I'm not much of a drinker but will be gathering with friends over the weekend and thought I would do something special.
The holidays are coming and thought I'd share a few recipes I came across. That...and my banana bread recipe was such a hit with the Father Unni crowd, this is the quid pro quo.
As I mentioned in the comments section of another post, I ran into some shenanigans last evening at Mass. The priest made up his own penitential rite. He did do the general absolution but the prayers before it were not from the rite of the Catholic Church.
He also said we were going to hear the best homily ever given in the history of mankind.
He skipped over the first part of the Gospel on the substance of marriage and made up his own version of the second paragraph.
When he got to the homily, it turns out 2000 years of Saints and the Doctors of the Church do not hold a candle to Winston Churchill. "Don't ever give up or give in". Absolutely no context but after he told us the story, he asked for applause.
Good advice for weight watchers but there are plenty of things Catholics are called to surrender. As he was building the drama of the greatest story ever told, ten feet above where he was standing, directly above his head hung the paradox of his own foolish maxim. Christ hanging from His Crucifix.
This was the second time I ran into this priest and he clowned around with The Sacred Liturgy. I stayed away from the place for months. I seldom run into this nonsense anymore. I suppose I know exactly where these priests are in residence. This was a new one on me. I hope he is not on the local circuit. I hate to put more miles on my car. Thank God, he did do a valid Consecration, but I laughed to myself on the way out. After 25 years of occasionally going to Mass at this parish, giving up is exactly what I'm doing.
For those of us in Boston, speaking of the music ministry futzing with our prayers: Tell me something, is the new musical composition for the Gloria painful, or is it me? The refrain is overdone and repeated ad nauseum. The actual prayer gets lost. I hope this goes the way of the David Haas hymnals.
Pious meditation on the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism. Perhaps to dispel the urban legends?
As with every Plenary Indulgence, it may be obtained “by all faithful who, truly penitent, take Sacramental Confession and the Eucharist and pray in accordance with the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff.
While we are on the subject, Fr. Unni at St. Cecilia's continues to earn his reputation. In this week's lesson, parishioners are told that if they want to know God's love, they 'better find somebody to love'.
Somebody, somebody, somebody, somebody...Can anybody find me somebody to-ooo-oooh-oh-oh.. lo-o-o-ovvve?
God's mission is to love creation?
Not in Catholic theology it isn't. God's mission is the salvation of souls.
God's being is love. God's being is God's mission. We have to participate in the mission of justice, forgiveness, mercy, peace.
Again, this is not Catholic theology. We can forgive each other of transgressions but we do not have the power to pardon sin. That is an act of Christ's Church alone which is the entire mission of the Catholic Church.
The disunity in the Church can be traced back to problems, errors, disagreements, concerning doctrine of God and the biggest errors in the doctrine of God are connected to an abstraction of God's being from God's mission. When we bifurcate from the mission of God, we make God into an abstraction and idol we can control and please. When we have relations among ourselves and creation, we obtain knowledge of God and set ourselves free.
Get it?
LOL.
Let me tell you something. If you're going to St. Cecelia's and personal life is such a train wreck that you are all alone in the world, there is another problem going down that needs fixing.
No doubt somebody will come along and tell me I have not cracked Fr. Unni's passive-aggressive code correctly, but nevertheless, I shall proceed in explaining how the theology errs to those who read it and are educated in their faith.
The piece actually gets some parts of Catholic theology correct.
From our parents, to strangers we serve or even meet on the street all of our human relationships and interactions do indeed (or are supposed to!) have some of the same qualities as the love of God. The problem with the piece is, it reduces knowledge of God and love of God to filial love and interactions.
Both of the subjects of God and love are complicated ones and my explanation is limited to address, as simply as possible, the errors in the article.
We experience the qualities and characteristics of God's love in human love and service, but human love, from filial to eros, is not the source of knowledge of God. The Love of God is Truine in Spirit. It informs through the Holy Spirit and the source of that love are the Sacraments (the son) and teachings of the Church (the Father's love - parental).
Fr. Unni teaches love without obedience, honor, devotion and fidelity to God's teachings. His fairy tales about love is much like a cartoon caricature of marital love defined as a husband maintaining a sexual relationship outside of marriage and when the wife catches him shacking up, he tries to ratify marital love by telling her he serves in the soup kitchen.
Straw man's arguments, ad nauseum.
An excellent resource to rebut Fr. Unni's errors this week is HERE.
There are three stages in our love for God: servile love, mercenary love and filial love. The word servile derives from “servant”.
A servant (or employee) does his master’s will out of fear of punishment. Likewise, beginners in the spiritual life do God’s will, obey the Commandments, avoid sin, and go to Mass on Sunday..
A mercenary is a soldier who fights because he is paid, not because he is committed to the cause of defending home and country. Colonel Gadhafy hires sub-Saharan mercenaries to help him survive as the dictator of Libya. Our love for God is mercenary when it is focused on our gain, on what we hope to get from God, rather than on what we want to give God. Here is a great trap for many of us, and a trap we remain caught in for many years if not a whole lifetime. Even Jesus’ close friends, James and John, were hoping to have positions of honor when Jesus established His kingdom. We must constantly strive to purify our motives and our faith in order to put God and His will first.
Filial love, the love of a son or daughter for their Father whom we love for His own sake. Why? Because God is total Goodness, Beauty, Truth, Being, everything our heart was made for! Human analogies may help: spouses and friends are able to love each other more than their own selves, and are ready to sacrifice everything for their beloved. This third degree of love is called by the Greek word, Agape, in the New Testament. It is divine love. Jesus lives it, and only His grace enables us to live it. It will help if we constantly practice love of God and neighbor and if we constantly ask for this grace to do everything we do out of pure love for God and neighbor. In our prayer, whether personal or liturgical, we need to concentrate on loving God for His own sake and avoid seeking for signs and “prayer experiences” and good feelings. We need naked trust in God’s pure, tender and merciful love for ourselves. Let us imitate the “Our Father” prayer which Jesus gives us as the model of all prayer. There Jesus teaches us to first seek to give glory and obedience to the Father before asking for any our own legitimate needs. This heals our soul.
The reality is, there are parishes that are menace to our salvation and the diocese is a rudderless ship.
I still say that Boston Catholics need to beef up the blogging community with a blog that is specifically designed to guide Catholics to parishes that are teaching the faith and steer them away from parishes where catechesis is dangerous. One that takes inventory of each parish and writes a brief synopsis of what kind of catechesis is going down. What priest is ramming what down the throats of uncatechized Catholics, shenanigans that invalidate the Sacred Liturgy or even if valid - rises to the level of disrespect.
Pardon my ignorance, but I actually do not understand the significance of the picture of the woman bent over the table with her hand raised into the air. Is she supposed to be flagging down a sex partner?
The number of women who think Obama's caricature of women as tax-payer subsidized prostitutes constitutes 'respect', is truly appalling.
A Catholic priest in Nigeria posted on facebook that Christians are being slaughtered now on a daily basis. Earlier this week, they rounded up the children in the village, separated the muslims from the Christians and shot the Christian children to death. It was picked up in an obscure news source, here. He was quite shaken up. The news story actually says the muslims later burned down a Church and 46 are dead.
Fr. L is an extraordinary priest, newly ordained. He has not posted since Friday. I know you already do, but please pray for the safety of Christians and those who minister to them in Nigeria.
This article actually cites a number of polls that has Obama in the quicksand.
Let's keep praying, especially this week for Ryan. I'm really looking forward to Thursday's debate. With 23 million Americans out of work and only 114,000 jobs created, I hope he hits the unemployment numbers charade, don't you?
Also in the news, Obama boasted of raising 181 million dollars yesterday.
I don't get it.
I thought class warfare was about siphoning money from the rich and then giving it to the people home watching The View in their jammies. That's an awful lot of money to siphon from Americans to spend on himself.
I've been reading and reflecting on these reports over the course of the last week and am truly at a loss to understand the apathy of American citizens.
If I didn't know any better, I'd wonder if Obama has persuaded the masses to support the Taliban whom they know will one day will destroy them.
Has a familiar ring, doesn't it?
Being attracted to things that will destroy us is the story of our lives. We are moths to the flame.
Without Sacramental Grace, we are without the tools to resist our own destruction. It is always veiled in something attractive.
The Trojan Horse rolls in. By the time the druids come out of the trap door, we are so captivated by the craftsmanship that we embrace our own executioners.
In a good faith effort to serve God and our brothers and sisters with some need, we start a service project.
Conflicts with the First Commandment are most difficult to recognize, aren't they? Before long, we forget God is the wind behind the sail. We collect the victories in the treasure chest of our ego and grow smitten with the false idol in the mirror.
Then there's the id.
Prince Charming arrives on his horse to whisk us off to Camelot. Where there is no common understanding and fiat, there is no ground game. By the time the eros is in full swing, the battle to resist the resistance either consumes the relationship or we surrender to temptation and embrace mortal sin with full consent of our will.
It's the same old song and dance.
In high school, a very attractive woman joined the staff. Faith immature as teenagers who had not yet tasted nor understood the intimacy of Christ, we once asked why she would 'waste' her life, how she survived the gauntlet as an attractive woman.
She told us she was attracted and tempted all the time. She said just recently began taking the bus to the school and had developed a friendship with a fellow male passenger.
She paused and waited for our questions.
In our Sound of Music moment, we excitedly asked her what she anticipated would be next.
She burst our bubble by telling us that she stopped taking the bus. She taught us what mature faith only recognizes after numerous and profound failures: Nip it in the bud.
The more entrenched it gets, the less likely you will recognize it; the more attractive its appearance; and, the harder it will be to resist.
A few weeks back, Ben Stein wrote a piece called Something is Wrong. Those of us living this maxim can smell the sulfur.
As I watched Obama's defeated demeanor during the debate this week, I think deep down he knows he's caught up in the ancient habit of pinning a rose on our own destruction. We always do.
If the people who are still employed and doing the full-time jobs of the three people who were let go would swallow this, Obama won't look like a liar. The Wall Street Journal didn't buy it.
The reality is that more than three years into this weakest of economic recoveries, 12.1 million Americans are still out of work—nearly 23 million by the broader definition that includes those who have stopped looking or can't find full time work—and the labor participation rate is still down to 1981 levels at 63.6%. Hooray!
Of the 114,000 new jobs, 104,000 were in the private economy, and all of the 86,000 in upward revisions for July and August came in government jobs. Job growth for 2012 has averaged 146,000 a month, which is down from 153,000 in 2011.
You know what's troubling?
Harry Reid an the democrats let extended benefits exhaust, setting Americans up to run out of benefits so Obama could appear to be heroic. They set people up to run out of benefits right before the election.
The exploiting hungry and desperate people so Obama could get good press. Disturbing.
Another misunderstood teaching of the Catholic Church.
Excellent source from Fr. Hardon.
The essence of detraction is the unwarranted disclosure of a hidden failing, which implies that there are occasions when the disclosure can and even should be made.
When the revelation of another person's fault is necessary or very useful, as in defense of self or of others, no injustice is done in revealing it. This would be the case when the failing or defect is made known to parents, or superiors, or for the purpose of seeking counsel or help, or to prevent harm to others, though again, there must be adequate proportion between the lessening of a person's reputation (which is not intended) and the good to be achieved by the disclosure (which is intended). This would cover such contingencies as anticipating unjust harm to oneself in the law courts, or even seeking consolation of a trusted friend by revealing the injustice done.
It is also not detraction to make known what has become juridically notorious, since the culprit has lost his right to esteem in the matter. It is conducive to public security that criminals should be known for what they are. However, since one's reputation may reflect upon a group like an organization or class of people, criminal acts of a single member of that group should not be widely disclosed so as not to jeopardize the reputation of all the persons with whom this one individual is commonly identified. Indiscriminate disclosure of this kind is the seedbed of class prejudice
