Sounds idyllic. Thank you, but I'm resigned to ending my days here and being buried near my ancestors unless I can figure out whereabouts in Portugal the dogma of the faith will always be preserved. Should I manage to figure out the location, I'll risk Portugal's melting heat if there's some means of getting there. I liked your post reminding us about the parable about the birds in the air and the lilies in the field neither sowing nor reaping. Then I remember that Joseph saved his people by storing up grain in preparation for the seven years of famine. And then there's the wealthy Jewish man (was it Nicodemus?) who wouldn't have had a tomb ready for Jesus had he not prepared it for his own burial. I'm going to try my hand planting a couple of raspberry bushes in the Autumn. It can be a fruit version of "let them eat cake". Watching the news out of France today, the Paris Prosecutor says that the terrorist at Notre Dame wasn't on their radar because he didn't fit the profile as he was a journalist studying for a PhD. The French still can't smell the coffee.
I was asked by someone involved to remove it for fear of embarrasment. It is a difficult situation , I don't want to see anyone hurt and so am leaving things alone. At their request. I think the less publicity concerning all this the better for all concerned.
Dolours, once we go under the sod, wherever that is, we will (if we pass Judgement!) be members of the Church Triumphant, where we can pray for the poor sods left behind. The only profile that Prosecutor should heed is Islam. Anyone of them can go full jihadist at any moment.
Maybe we will all meet in Portugal. But like you I would find the heat daunting. Poor French. But this blindness seems an equal opportunity employer.
I just checked where you are from and I know Pulaski very well and had a dear friend from there when in college. I used to live in upstate NY but now I am in the wilds of Maine (for 45 years!) it is idyllic if you can past the black flies and the snow.
June 24th, my wife and I will be a little closer to you, as our Texan son, Christopher, will then be running a boys' camp up near Lake Winnipesaukee in NH. I'll pray a prayer for your family while there on a visit. At least it will get to you a little sooner! Safe in the Refuge of the Immaculate Heart!
Well, snow we know about, but the spring frosts must have been just right this year- the black flies in the woods near our camp, were not too bad yesterday. By the way, Pulaski is our PO address. We live in the nearby rural town of Albion, where the only new neighbors are Amish. Safe in the Refuge of the Immaculate Heart!
Lovely. Lake winnipesaukee is beautiful. Would love it for you to say a prayer for me. Our dear Lord knows I surely need it. God bless!
n What worries me isn't so much whether I will suffer hardship. I know that's easy to say and there's no guarantee I won't rationalise all sorts of sin for a little comfort but I'm reasonably confident that I would make the same choice as the Coptic Christians in Egypt when ISIS took them off the bus and gave them the choice to convert or die. Men, women and children on that bus chose martyrdom. I'm reasonably confident because I would only be choosing my own martyrdom. I worry that people I love wouldn't be strong enough to make that choice if their children's lives were at stake. This is the basis of my distrust of what appears to be a message from the hierarchy that all religions are more or less the same and that there's nothing special about Catholicism. Yes, I know that the Church and no members of the hierarchy are actually saying that in so many words but there's a subliminal message that's becoming increasingly hard to ignore. Christian martyrdom is being brushed under the rug in our churches. Our prayers of the faithful are all about peace and justice for everyone and whatever matches the current trend in the secular version of social justice. EWTN's Vaticano programme tonight showed the Pope pleading the cause of Rohynga Muslims. There was a conference addressed by the Deputy head of the UN Commission on Human Rights preaching about our obligation to provide for refugees, etc. If there was mention that the UN doesn't give aid direct to suffering Christians in the Middle East but provides it mainly through non-Christian distribution networks, I didn't hear a mention of it nor did I hear any mention that Christians in the region have run out of food aid with donor fatigue being one of the reasons given along with the UN's aid distribution system (I heard that on an EWTN programme last night). Our Church really needs to start preparing our younger generations for the day when they will be faced with choices similar to that faced by those Coptic Christians and it won't necessarily be at the hands of Islamic extremists. Neither will those Soros backed agencies be demonstrating in the cause of people who don't view same sex unions as marriage or abortion as a simple choice. And what is our Church doing to prepare our younger generations to make the hard choice? Absolutely nothing.
Unbridled cruelty and evil gone amuck. Criminals are humanely killed. So why are sick people tortured to death. What in the name of God is going on. Death by starvation and no fluids is used in a lot of places for the elderly. They call it the Liverpool pathway or some other fancy name so people don't realise that they are sentencing their elderly relatives to death. You see, medicines cost money and who wants to waste money on people who won't be around to make a complaint. Besides it only takes about two weeks to snuff someone out by starvation of food and fluids. And what an agonising way to die. The world is gone mad, or more likely to hell in a hand basket.
Our Lord did say "But yet the Son of Man when He cometh, shall He find, think you, faith on earth?" This is an extraordinary statement, especially in its context. It rings down through two millenia to our own times. A general apostasy has been prophesied many times and for centuries. We seem to be living through these times. We can only look after our own faith and pray for and encourage others.
I wasn't even aware of this practice until I received an Oregon Right to Life newsletter and read this story. Mild Stroke Leads to Mother’s Forced Death by Starvation and Dehydration I watched an old woman die of hunger and thirst. She had Alzheimer’s. This old woman was child-like, trusting, vulnerable, with a child’s delight at treats of chocolate and ice cream, and a child’s fear and frustration when tired or ill. I watched her die for six days and nights. I watched her suffer, and I listened to the medical practitioners, to a son who legally decided her fate, and to an eldest daughter who advised him and told me that the old woman, my mother, was “comfortable,” except when she was “in distress,” at which times the nurses medicated her to make her “comfortable” again. I watched the old woman develop ulcerations inside her mouth as she became more and more dehydrated; the caregivers assured me these were not painful. I listened to her breathing become more and more labored as her lungs became congested from the morphine administered every two to four hours, and later every hour. This is what morphine does, you see. It relieves pain, but its cumulative effect is that eventually it shuts down the respiratory system. No one explained why the old woman was given morphine in the first place, since she was conscious and trying to speak. It is normal that a mild stroke causes temporary inability to swallow, slurred speech, and a severe headache, but all of these are often reversed when the stroke victim is treated and the treatment includes nourishment and water. The explanation for not giving nourishment and water — a feeding tube and IV (intravenous) — is that these were “extraordinary measures” for keeping someone alive. I watched the old woman day and night for six days. The first night, after the first shot of morphine, her mouth hung open and her tongue started to roll and flutter. At the same time, her jaw trembled continuously. This went on all night and into the early hours of the morning. Her mouth never closed again, except to clamp tightly on wet cloths placed on her lips. Her eyes were partially closed, but they moved back and forth, back and forth, becoming small slits after seven or eight hours, not closing fully until that long first night was over. She opened her eyes only once after that, when the nurse was late with the morphine, on the third, or maybe fourth, day. The old woman started to moan. Not moaning, said the nurses and the old woman’s eldest daughter. Just air escaping from the lungs. Not moaning at all. The old woman’s eyes started to open, and the air escaping from the lungs sounded exactly like a moan of agony, as the old woman’s face twisted in horrible contortions. I screamed, “Her eyes are opening. Oh, God. Oh, God!” Even as the morphine, quickly injected by a disconcerted nurse, caused the old woman’s eyes to close and her face to relax. I doubted its efficacy. I thought back to the night before when I, in tears at the old woman’s slow dying, had been confronted by a delegation of four of the nursing staff, each of them in turn trying to convince me that the old woman was not suffering in any way at all. The morphine, they said, takes away all pain. But, I answered them, she can feel. She’s squeezing my hand and, if I try to take my hand out of hers, she squeezed tighter and, when I hold a little piece of gauze to her lips, she tries to suck the water out of it. She’s thirsty! This is a horror, this is a cruelty. No, they said. She’s not thirsty. It’s just reflex. But, I tell them, I watched her clamp her lips on the gauze so tightly that I had to pull to get it out of her mouth. She reacts when you touch her feet, her legs, and her hair. If she can feel that, she can feel thirst, I plead with them. It’s not the same, they tell me. She’s not in pain. I look at her. But what if you’re wrong? I say. What if you’re wrong? They stand there, saying nothing. Then, one looks at the old woman and says we’d better turn her now. She and another care worker go about the business of re-positioning the old woman, to keep her “comfortable” and the other two leave. The nights and days went in and out of focus. I sat in a chair at the side of the old woman’s bed, one hand grasped tightly by her hand. I slept an hour or two, here and there, waking always with a start. “I’m here,” I murmured, so the old woman would know I was keeping the promise I made to her on the first night, after her son and eldest daughter left to get some food, drink, and rest. I promised her then, “I will not leave here until you do.” The old woman was fading by the fourth day. Her eldest daughter had been visiting for an hour or so each day, usually mid-morning. This daughter, a former hospital worker, lightly stroked her mother’s face and hair and timed the length of her mother’s “breath apnea,” the length of time her mother stopped breathing. She announced the number of seconds and then counted the number of breaths between each stopped breath. Seven breaths, she said. Eleven breaths. Sometimes she described the progress of her mother’s death. She’s probably down to about 60 pounds now, she pronounced. Sometimes — I’m not sure when I first noticed it — the nurses asked us to leave while they attended to the old woman. Other times they didn’t. Once, perhaps on the fourth day, I told them I didn’t have to leave. I had watched them turn her and I had seen her tiny naked body as they gently washed her. I didn’t even flinch anymore when they injected the syringe of morphine. We have to give her a suppository, they said. A suppository? Why? For anxiety, they said. Anxiety. So that she would appear to die with dignity. The morphine was no longer enough. This courageous old woman, who could face, who had faced, unimaginable hardships with nothing but her faith and her dignity, she could teach you about dignity, I thought to myself. On the fifth day, the eldest daughter visited twice. On her second visit, several staff members entered the room with her. They were all talking loudly, about nothing in particular, except for one care worker, fond of the old woman, who walked over to the bed and called the old woman’s name loudly enough to interrupt the others’ light conversation. She examined the old woman’s hands, lifted the sheet covering her and looked at her legs and feet. She called the old woman’s name again, and the care worker’s face showed alarm. How long has it been? She asked. She’s not even mottling! (Mottling is the term given to describe the blackening of the feet and hands as the body, dehydrating, tries to preserve the vital organs by stopping the flow of blood to the limbs.) You know, continued the care worker, I don’t think it’s her time. It’s been, what, five days? If she had been ready to go, she’d have gone in 24 hours. The room went quiet. The care worker and I looked at each other. You’re right, I said. The eldest daughter and one of the nurses began to tell her she was wrong, and a nurse hustled her out of the room. By the sixth night I was not sure I could go on. I slept for an hour or so every four or five hours. I still sat in the chair by her bed, but now I slept with head on the bed, near her stomach. The old woman’s breathing was labored, her will to live defying the system and the foolish young doctor who, on that first night, gave her 24 hours to live, as though he were God Himself. My heart was breaking for her. I could do nothing to save her, could do nothing but suffer with her. I cried much of the time, but softly, so she would not know. I didn’t want to add to her agony. I had been there six days. She could no longer hold my hand, so I slipped my hand gently under hers. I felt an anguish so profound that I began to wonder if I could survive it. In a split second, the frown that had creased the line between her brows was smoothed away. Her head rested gently to one side. Two care workers entered the room. I saw them in my peripheral vision, but I kept my gaze on the old woman. We’re just going to turn her, one of the workers said. No, I said, my mother is dying. One of them left to get a nurse, and then the old woman — my dear mother, my little, child-like, beautiful mother — died. I put my arms around her, kissed her poor, closed eyes and her now relaxed mouth, and held her limp, tiny body, no more struggling for breath. I watched an old woman die of hunger and thirst. I watched her die for six days and nights. I watched her suffer, and struggle, and hold onto life. She had not always found life easy, but she had always found it worthwhile. She was 94 years old. She had been born and had lived all her life in Canada. She had worked hard all her life, married, raised three children, voted, paid taxes, saved enough money to buy her own home, obeyed the laws, donated to charity, done volunteer work, paid her bills, and given much love and brought much joy to many, many people in her 94 years. In return, in the spring of 2009, her son and her eldest daughter, with the permission and assistance of the law, because this old woman had had a mild stroke, refused her food and water. She could not swallow, so she would have needed the food and water administered artificially. And the youngest daughter could do nothing except watch her mother die slowly, and write this, in the hope that my mother’s death, like her life, will have made a difference. [Kate Kelly writes for Human Life Alliance. This story was posted on LifeNews.com on January 13, 2017.
Congress & The Public were alerted to to this natural/weapon threat 13 YEARS AGO!! The USA Debt has doubled since then ... NINE TRILLION $$$$ in Lord Obama's Regime .... and NOTHING spent $$$$ on hardening The Grid or anything else! My only explanation is Satanic Deception/Distraction! What other possible explanation fits!?? The cost of hardening The Grid is Chump-Change compared to the $$$ Trillions squandered this past 9 years!! Got Candles, Batteries and other necessaries????? GOD SAVE ALL HERE!!
Does Paddy Power gives odds on who will be next in line for a Cardinal's hat? This should shorten the odds on Bishop deKorte: Catholic cathedral welcomes ‘Pink Saturday’ gay pride gathering with bishop’s blessing https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/c...ink-saturday-gay-pride-gathering-with-bishops June 5, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — The southern Dutch town of ’s-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch for short) has been chosen to host the Netherlands’ “Pink Saturday” on June 24. The capital of the historically Catholic province of North-Brabant will welcome LGBT persons from all over the country and beyond with a first-ever event: an ecumenical prayer service for participants to be held in the Catholic cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist in the presence of Bishop Gerard de Korte. The Roman Catholic bishop recently confirmed that he will give a blessing at the end of the ceremony. Gay rights groups are overjoyed. The local radio, Omroep Brabant, tweeted “Hallelujah” when the news was made public. “Roze Zaterdag” is the Dutch version of Gay Pride, including a parade with provocative and outré dress and attitudes. Nowadays, cultural, musical and other events officially organized by the host city are thrown in, usually a full week before the day of celebration. It got its name from the protest marchers that were held during Holy Week in 1979 in Limburg, the southernmost province of the Netherlands, against the “anti-homosexual” teachings of Bishop Johannes Gijsen, who was at the time one of the few non-progressive bishops in the country. “Pink Saturday” was chosen as a counterpoint to the Catholics’ White Thursday and Good Friday. At the time, Bishop Gijsen of Roermond said that practicing homosexuals could not be considered as “full members” of the Church because they could not receive the sacraments while choosing that lifestyle. Given these beginnings, the Den Bosch “Pink Saturday” will have a bitter taste of revenge, and will certainly appear to be a disavowal of what Bishop Gijsen said in the 1970s. From the start, the Dutch “Pink Saturday” was a place to push for gay rights. In progressive Netherlands, lesbians, gays, bi- and transsexuals have little left to ask for in 2017, and the event has become more festive, although there are still many gay-rights organizations present and information stands are part of the affair. The official day always opens with an ecumenical service, but up to now this had never taken place in a Catholic church, let alone a cathedral. It was, perhaps, the last place left to conquer. The choice of the cathedral of Den Bosch – the fruit of two years of talks with the local clergy and other denominations that are taking part – is a symbolic one. The last time homosexuals made themselves heard in the beautiful, flamboyant Gothic building was during a Sunday Mass in February 2010 when the then-parish priest in the village of Reusel refused to give Holy Communion to an openly homosexual “Carnival Prince.” At the time, the cathedral’s parish priest, Geertjan van Rossum, made a public statement reminding the faithful that only people who observe the Ten Commandments are admitted to Holy Communion: “Proper living out of sexuality is part of that,” he said, triggering the angry departure of the gay activists. It is the same Geertjan van Rossum who negotiated the “Pink Saturday” event in the cathedral. He will personally welcome the participants and take the lead role, surrounded by Protestant pastors and “pastoresses,” including an openly gay minister who will all speak during the ceremony. In an interview published on the “Pink Saturday” website, Father van Rossum announced that the bishop himself would take part. “Ours is a hospitable town where all citizens should be able to live with dignity and we should not make each other’s lives sour, and that is why personally, but also in the name of our Catholic parish, we want to support this initiative,” Father van Rossum said. “We want to have a nice town for all its inhabitants and all its guests. As a Christian and as a believer, I also know there are Christians and believers who belong to the LGBT community and who also want to be involved with the community of the faithful. So as a priest, together with the cathedral parish, we also want to be involved with Pink Saturday, and also with the ecumenical celebration.” Father van Rossum admits he had some “hesitation” about holding the prayer in the “Sint Jan” that has been at the center of Catholic life in Den Bosch since the Middle Ages, also as a Marian pilgrimage site where a miraculous statue of Our Lady is still venerated today. But in the end, the large Gothic vessel seemed to him the most appropriate for the reception of many participants expected to join the ceremony. Bishop de Korte has shown his acceptance of the LGBT community. His spokesman, Joos Goes, told Gay.nl that the bishop wants the Catholic Church to be an “open and hospitable institution.” “The teaching of the Church does not change,” Goes added. But he immediately relativized this reminder, saying: “We understand that people can feel shut out and be disappointed with the Church, but we think that everyone should find a spot within the community of believers. Subjects such as sexual orientation collide with the teaching of the Church, but in practice it’s often not much of a deal. Today, there are already homosexuals who are joyful members of a parish.” Bishop de Korte is known for his opposition to traditionally-minded Cardinal Wim Eijk of Utrecht, who has called homosexuality “mutual masturbation.” When De Korte took possession of his see in 2016, he abundantly quoted Pope Francis, calling for a Church that is prepared to be “dirty,” and for “bridges, not walls.” The Dutch press is already comparing his “openness” with Pope Francis’ style. “Pink Saturday” will also have events in the small town of Oss next to Den Bosch. Its parish priest, Father Cor Mennen, well known as a conservative Catholic blogger, published a critical post reminding the faithful of the teaching of the Church as exposed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “This moral standpoint is clear. It does not mean that the Church rejects the homosexual faithful. They can be members of the Church and take part in Church life. The Church does ask her faithful to be prepared in an upright manner to live according to her morals, which come straight from the Bible and natural moral law,” he wrote. But, he added, “It is against Catholic belief, and therefore not pastoral, morally to approve of homosexual acts or to do as if it were a normal variant of human sexuality.” This is exactly what “most homosexual organizations” are after, he says – which explains their demand for a celebration in the “Sint Jan” cathedral. “They want to conquer the last bulwark that is holding fast to the scriptural disapproval of homosexual activity and of all acts that go against natural moral law,” he explained. He goes on to say that friendliness cannot justify a celebration that not only appears to condone the homosexual lifestyle but scandalizes “normal Catholics who want to remain true to the Church’s teaching, not least those homosexuals who make the effort of living chastely in accordance with it.” He concluded: “It is certainly no coincidence that on June 24th, the Church celebrates the day of the birth of Saint John the Baptist. John was beheaded by King Herod because he reproached him his immoral behavior – Herod was living with his brother’s wife. He who stands up for God’s laws seldom reaps applause.”
I was thinking about you after last night. This is a worry we all share. We must remember that no matter how much we desire salvation for our loved ones, God desires it infinitely more. He created us all for salvation, we are not pre-destinationists. We must beware of presumption and the universalist heresy, but God isn't going to let anyone casually go to Hell. The barrage of devilish propaganda that modern people in the west have had to face is unprecedented. In parallel has been an abandonment of Godly propaganda with the collapse of cathechesis. These are mitigation factors for the ordinary soul. People of other eras might have fared no better if faced with such a satanic challenge. Remember that, even in the early Church, there was much heresy and apostasy. Gnosticism, Arianism (taking with it most of the hierarchy, even a pope at one point) and many other heresies were common. There were many martyrs, but many, perhaps much more, that took the easier way out. The Church, in Her Wisdom, didn't come down too hard on these people and suppressed another consequent heresy, Donatism, over it. Indeed, it is arguable that we are living in the greatest age of martyrdom. Outside of Western Europe (and we still have the example of that French priest in Normandy), Catholics and other Christians are braving martyrdom, in the examples you present and all over the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Phillipines, China, and for differing reasons, Mexico. In conjunction, there is huge growth of Christianity in these parts of the world. I read only yesterday a report that in Iran in 1979 there were only a few hundred Christians. Now, there are conservatively hundreds of thousands. There might even be a million. The quotation from Our Lord about finding no faith can be interpreted both prophetically and as an admonition. As a prophecy, it is presented as a possibility, in the form of a question, because the matter is neither deterministic nor pre-destined. Free Will takes primacy, and Our Lord may have presented the worst end of the spectrum as a warning against complacency. And, in typically human fashion, the Church in the West has collapsed quickly from a point in which it seemed most solid. Of course, these are just my thoughts on the matter.
Yes, where sin abounds grace abounds all the more is something I cling to. I still can't shake off the the sense that this is shaping up to be a long drawn out apostasy. We're headed back to the days where being a faithful Catholic will mean discrimination in work and business except that this time it will be apostate or "cultural" Catholics doing the discriminating. I suppose that initially the persecution will be bloodless until enough people have abandoned the faith.
These are health care professionals. They know exactly what they are doing, just like the abortionists. There is about them an aura of wilful spite and determined sadism that places them in the same category as the ISIS perpetrators of the most savage atrocities. It is a fundamental rejection of Love and the Good that goes way beyond mere wrongdoing. It seems to me a conscious self-alignment with the forces of darkness, a deliberate 'two fingers' to God. It's as if they have become voluntarily possessed. Perhaps there is no 'as if ' about it.
It is amazing how many people now prefer death over life. There was an article over in journal.ie today about a girl was place in psychiatric care rather than giving her an abortion, which the doctor believed wasn't in her best interest to have. Effectively a life has been saved, but there is big uproar about it and many would have preferred the child in the womb to be discarded. Someone even used the "burden to the taxpayer" argument to justify the abortion!
You can bet this Bishop will not hear a word from Pope Francis about this abuse. This would not stand with the past Popes of the Church.
