Sign after sign after sign...

I do that. I follow the advice given by someone here of offering the Our Father, three Hail Marys and Glory Be to the Father at the start of the Rosary for the Holy Father.

Does anyone remember what Pope Francis said shortly after his election - something about praying to God that he wouldn't suffer, that death would be ok but he was afraid he wouldn't be able to cope with suffering?

 

Pope Francis said he was willing to die for God but hoped it would not be too painful a death as he did not cope well with pain. Sounds honest and normal to me.

 

He was probably thinking that if ISIS got him he would be tortured to death.

God would give him the strength to endure:

Saint Polycarp Prayers
Saint Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna and a disciple of the apostles, was burned at the stake about the year 155. His feast day is February 23. This is the prayer he prayed before he died:

Lord, almighty God, Father of your beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, through whom we have come to the knowledge of yourself, God of angels, of powers, of all creation, of all the race of saints who live in your sight, I bless you for judging me worthy of this day, this hour, so that in the company of the martyrs I may share the cup of Christ, your anointed one, and so rise again to eternal life in soul and body, immortal through the power of the Holy Spirit. May I be received among the martyrs in your presence today as a rich and pleasing sacrifice. God of truth, stranger to falsehood, you have prepared this and revealed it to me and now you have fulfilled your promise.

I praise you for all things, I bless you, I glorify you through the eternal priest of heaven, Jesus Christ, your beloved Son. Through him be glory to you, together with him and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

Here is a prayer the Church prays concerning Saint Polycarp:

God of all creation,
you gave your bishop Polycarp the privilege of being counted among the saints who gave their lives in faithful witness to the gospel.

May his prayers give us the courage to share with him the cup of suffering and to rise to eternal glory. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever

 

Thanks for that Joe. I remembered him saying it but then began to question my memory because I couldn't find a reference to it anywhere.

Do you see similarities between Jacinta's vision and the current refugee crisis? Lucy's wish that the third secret not be revealed before the 1960's rules out the plight of the Jews under Hitler being the people in the vision. If not today's refugee crisis, what else could it be? "All those people on highways, roads and fields" sounds more like a picture of modern Europe than, say, Africa, and Russia is very much involved in the Syrian conflict. Maybe a specific Consecration of Russia would help after all.

 

Most of those on "...highways, roads and fields" are not from Syria and only a minority that are appear to be true refugees. The Christians in Syria welcomed the intervention of the Russians who have probably saved them from complete annihilation.

What baffles me is the indifference in the West towards our persecuted brothers in Christ, and that includes many in the Church. Political correctness seems to create an obstacle to discriminating between Christian and Islamic migrants. The narrative is all about Islam and how to integrate the Muslims whose behaviour seems only barely above the savage. There is nothing about the Christians who are almost all definitively seeking refuge (and indeed are far more determined to hang on to their homeplaces than the Muslims), yet many Christian refugees are being persecuted in the European refugee centres by the Muslims. It seems that the best way to get help from the European authorities is to cause trouble.

Recently, a young Swedish girl, herself a perfectly-integrated Syrian Christian, working in a refugee camp and thus theoretically helping her fellow nationals was murdered by a non-Syrian refugee and the local police-chief was more concerned with defending her murderer-to him she was only a statistic. Her loved ones and friends were prevented from publicly honouring her lest it offend the Muslims. There are many in our official elites who wish to censure comments like this.

All I usually hear at Mass are vague, useless calls for "peace". The situation calls instead for a violent and complete destruction of those who are attempting genocide against our Christian brothers and sisters. The very least would be a specific call for prayers for them and the end of the attacks on them.

Surely, it is not the Russians that are the ones in need of Consecration?

Sorry, rant over but these are issues that make me cross.

 

Believe me when I tell you that I understand exactly what you mean, especially about how political correctness has even found its way into the Church. There seems to be a reluctance to mention persecution of Christians in the Prayers of the Faithful. Someone I know asked her priest why aren't persecuted Christians being prayed for at every Sunday Mass. The priest's response was something to the effect that they are prayed for once a month. Her reply was that they are being persecuted every day, but nothing changed. I get the impression that the Church doesn't want to be accused of preaching hatred.

A particular bugbear of mine was in the early stage of the trouble in Syria when the Christians were the first focus of attack, and there were reports on the internet (not on mainstream media) about their neighbours plundering their houses as they fled. Hamas launched rockets at Israel and caused terrible repercussions. It was a perfectly timed distraction from what the Western backed rebels were doing in Syria and all the attention was on the poor Palestinians. Trocaire launched a fundraising campaign appealing for help for the Palestinians and never mentioned the slaughter of the Syrian Christians. I haven't given a penny to Trocaire since that day.

My own parish does a charity appeal over Christmas every year. This year it was for the homeless and for refugees. They didn't specify whether it was for Christian refugees, and I have my doubts since earlier in the year there was a meeting in the parish to do with fostering peaceful relations with Muslims. We were treated to a presentation from Pakistani Muslims who, among other things, told us that had Europe been Muslim there would have been no Jewish holocaust. We had a woman from our parish letting us know that Sharia law is nothing to be afraid of because "Sharia is practised every day here". There were young people at that meeting who must have come away wondering whether all religions are the same. Whatever the true purpose of the meeting, the only holy book on offer was the Koran.

All that said, I still can see similarities between Jacinta's vision and the mass of humanity trudging across Europe. We need to be careful that when we give account of ourselves we won't be trying to explain why we did too little rather than too much.

 

It is sobering that our experiences are so similar.

In relation to your last paragraph, I doubt it is part of Jacinta's vision that we abandon our fellow-Christians on the one hand, and our wives and daughters on the other by tolerating their murder, rape and defilement by sex-obsessed savages who we are ordered by our authorities to welcome without the slightest criticism in deference to their feelings. This seems more like a satanic parody of that vision, with the intention of fooling us into suicidal surrender. When the rosaries were prayed at Lepanto, was Our Lady's response a vision of welcoming the Saracens into our midst? We all know that it was a miracle to enable a vastly inferior Christian fleet to liberate thousands of Christian galley slaves and utterly destroy a Muslim invasion fleet including the violent deaths of many thousands of these heathen. Nothing has changed in the intervening centuries except the methodology. Materially, we in the West have the upper hand but have become morally and spiritually weak-the Mohammedans are forced to prey on our stupidity with subterfuge but have lost nothing in terms of their faith and will to dominate us.

I would assert that our accounting will first concern how we stood up for Christ's Gospel and its followers not those who would annihilate both. Otherwise would be to condemn the martyrs of old and the centuries-long defence of Christendom as politically-correct type "intolerance" and "racism".
Should not Peter and Paul have compromised with Caesar in the interests of not causing offence and just getting along? They would have saved their own skins for the sacrament of multiculturalism.

 

“DHS Official: I Was Ordered to Purge Records of Islamic Terror Ties”

I have no doubt that this is true ….. there has been a lots-n-LOTS of Records Purged these past 7+ Years ….. and not just on Billary’s Server … IRS, EPA, DHS, DHHS, DOD & ……….. Oh!! Don’t be forgetting the many NOT Politically Correct People that have been purged from the above and replaced by “True-Believers”. The BO Administration just re-instated Catch-n-Release Border “Control” and cut Border Surveillance by 50% knowing full well, in an Election Year, that RINO Republicans would be too cowardly to seriously “Call Them On It” lest they be labeled racists by CNBC. Even Lily-White Liberals are sensing that “Something Wicked this Way Comes”!
I'd "Bet the Farm" that the situation in Europe was/is the same. It's too late to close the Borders "THEY" are already in ...... along with the leadership and means to wreak havoc!
Get Ready!! … IT’S COMING!!!!

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/dhs-isis-destroy-records/2016/02/06/id/713047/#ixzz3zUZVcYsS

GOD SAVE ALL HERE!!

 

Sad. But to be honest, you could replace this video with almost any inner city school in the United States and this is without immigrants. The school systems in NY, Chicago, and LA to name but a few are as disastrous as this video. Not sure about the case in Germany, but in US it is compounded by the fact there are no fathers, maybe a mother, in the lives of these young people. The key in both places as mentioned by one of the German students is they have no hope. This will not be solved politically for the only true hope is knowledge, belief, and conversion to Jesus. These areas need to be evangelized - I think these are some of the wounded Francis talks about.

 

I doubt Trump or Cruz will hesitate to call out this dying administration.

 

DeGaulle: "I doubt Trump or Cruz will hesitate to call out this dying administration."
............ and why The Media and Democrats despise/fear Cruz ......... Trump is another matter and still an unknown quantity?

GOD SAVE ALL HERE!!

 

Another Story that you won't see covered on ABCNNBCBS-PBS:

"Michigan Man Accused of Supporting Islamic State Planned to Attack Church: ‘It’s My Dream to Behead Someone"

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...attack-church-its-my-dream-to-behead-someone/

Terrorism does not really need all that many horrific acts to do substantial damage to a society ... especially one that's Economy, Mores, Patriotism and Spirituality are in the toilet!
How many folks don't go to Malls, Airports, Theatres, Restaurants, Concerts, Ball Games ... and even Church 'cause of Terror. The ripple effect to an Economy is terrifying in itself!
GOD SAVE ALL HERE!!

 

Trump is no saint, far from it. Still, he deserves credit for being the one to send Bill Clinton running with his tail between his lecherous legs. More importantly, it is Trump who has established the immigration and Islamic issues as the crux of the campaign. My reading is that Trump is the one who frightens the life out of the liberals, moreso than any other candidate.

 

One of the attractions of Islam for its adherents is the permission, indeed encouragement, it grants to exercise their most base instincts.

In all societies there are those who have dreams to murder others in the most personal and grizzly fashion imaginable; to rape and sexually assault as many women or girls as they can; to forcibly sodomise small boys, ostensibly to relieve "unbearable sexual tension". Historically, all societies have regarded such fiends as wicked psychopaths (unfortunately, some huge errors have been made in modern times with a tendency to medicalise these criminals as suffering "mental illness"). Islam is the one exception, where such behaviour is tolerated and in some cases encouraged.

 

North Korea just launched something on an ICBM.

 

Yes, we must first stand up for the Gospel. We also have to be careful not to feed the atheist/masonic mantra that religion is the cause of all wars. We know that they want to destroy Christianity even if it means destroying European culture. They seem to think that they can replace it with some kind of new atheist culture. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, they tell their followers that all these Muslims will love secular Europe so much that they will abandon Islam for atheism. Although their journalist hacks buy it, I don't know about your area, but around here the most vocal opponents to mass immigration are traditional Labour Party supporters because they know who will bear the brunt of being pushed to the bottom of the housing list, competition for jobs and university places, low wages, transformation of neighbourhoods, etc., and it won't be the children of politicians or human resources managers in multi-national companies.


It is as clear as the nose on Sutherland's face that this mass movement of people was engineered and most likely many years in the planning. Nevertheless, irrespective of their origin, a lot of the displaced people are innocent victims of the power brokers who want a United States of Europe sooner rather than later, with NATO's Turkey in full membership as a carrot to dangle in front of other countries that are considered strategically important, and they will get it thanks to puppet politicians. The Eastern Europeans are holding out but, as one reporter on radio said without so much as taking a hesitant breath "the Poles and Hungarians will pay for this". Watch out for civil unrest in those countries under the guise of infringement of some sort of human or civil rights.

Being careful to avoid accusations of hate speech shouldn't prevent Catholics praying at Mass for persecuted Christians in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Neither should it prevent us from raising money for displaced Christians. There's enough atheist and Muslim money floating around to help the rest. And it certainly shouldn't be used as an excuse for availing of parish property to promote a false religion. I don't know what else we can do. It makes no difference who we vote for. Masonry and greed have too strong a hold on parties of the right and militant atheism controls parties of the left.

An even more sobering thought would be that it wasn't today's immigrants in Jacinta's vision, but European Christians in the not too distant future.

 

Great reply. You describe it as it is.

I would be more optimistic for the Eastern Europeans, particularly those in the Balkans. Between the Ottomans and the Bolsheviks they have been through all this before. Christianity seems more robust in these countries, even flourishing in the likes of Croatia and Slovenia. There are many reports of Muslims reverting in Bosnia. Many in the West could become those European refugees you suggest, seeking refuge in the East.

Your comments on Labour support ring true. The polls indicate continuing collapse as the plebs abandon the Bacikists.

Like you, I perceive myself disenfranchised. In fact, I consider the Republic of Ireland no longer a sovereign nation and the upcoming centenary "celebrations" of the 1916 Rising an obscene burlesque, a dancing upon the graves of, no matter one's Civil War disposition, better men.

 

Crewdog,

You will like this one...Obama wants his military to consider climate change when it is planning military action.

The Pentagon defines resilience to climate change as: “Ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions and withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from disruptions.”

To four-star generals and admirals, among them the regional combatant commanders who plan and fight the nation’s wars, the directive tells them: “Incorporate climate change impacts into plans and operations and integrate DoD guidance and analysis in Combatant Command planning to address climate change-related risks and opportunities across the full range of military operations, including steady-state campaign planning and operations and contingency planning.”

The directive, “Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience,” is in line with President Obama’s view that global warming is the country’s foremost national security threat, or close to it. Mr. Obama says there is no debate on the existence of man-made global warming and its ensuing climate change. Supporters of this viewpoint label as “deniers” any scientists who disagree.

Too Much...and he actually gets away with this stuff.

 

Yes, dancing on their graves.

I fear that Bacik is Mother Teresa compared to what's ready to step in when they see off Burton.

I hope you're right about the East holding out. It's easy to pray and hope, not worrying is the hard part.